If you cant beat 'em, join 'em...

For a long time I've lied to myself. For a long time I've been flying Crows, Claws, Stilettos pretending they were great interceptors. But now the charade is up.

About a week ago my skill training finished for the legendary Taranis. Ive always said it had nothing on the other Inties I could fly. Many a time I've had Spectre laugh at me, trying to get me to see what I'm missing out on.

Ever since I've been able to fly it, I haven't flown much else, and my conclusion is....

ITS THE GREATEST SHIP IN THE GAME. EVER. PERIOD.

What makes it so great you say?

Amazing dps for a frig, fast, full tackle, tanks well for a Inty, and it completely WRECKS any other interceptor. The only downside it has, is that it looks like the elephant man.

51 kills in it so far and yet to lose one.

So, if you like interceptors, and you cant fly a Taranis... my advice is...

... Train Galentee Frigate V... RIGHT NOW!

Clusterfuck

Clusterfuck.

I try to use good English on my blog, and rarely use any swear words. But today's title is the word that describes today's post most accurately.

There are several pirate corps in our area. They shoot us, we shoot them, its just one big, happy, free-for-all. But sometimes, when the situation sees fit, we pull together and point our guns at a common goal instead of each other.

It all started when we were sitting in a safe spot waiting out our timers, after we had just killed watched some guys Drake self destruct. Self destruct? yeah. You heard right. Golden helmet had the bright idea to make him eject from his ship, but we all failed to see the message were it said the Drake pilot had initiated self destruct.

So we were sitting there, praising GH about his wonderful ideas when a call came over the comms. It was Diva PRM from Quantar Swords.

"What the hell do they want?" I thought. "Their not usually the chatty type"

Accepting the call, I soon learned that Quantars had a Sandstorm. Archon tackled outside their home station. And Quantars wanted our help to kill it.

We don't get on well with Quantars, but I do have alot of respect for them. talking to Diva we made a temporary truce not to shoot each other if we came to help kill the Carrier.

I docked up my ship and quickly boarded and undocked my Tempest, then set a course for Propel Dynamics factory. Which is where the Carrier was said to be tackled.

Exiting warp I saw I wasn't alone. There was already 10+ ships shooting each other and it seemed that the Sandstorm. Archon had got some backup too. I watched to see which ship our temporary friends were shooting, and focused my fire on it. Which just happened to be the Archon.

A little while went by, and not much changed. We were shooting, they were shooting, but none of us were able to down anything due to the carrier repping capability. I thought about just deagressing, when a bunch of red entered system. Checking their info I saw they belonged to Bamboule, Carebear Stare, and Dirty Filthy Perverts. They landed outside the station with a couple of BS's and I assumed they were here to help us kill the Carrier as they didn't agress any of us at first. They opened up a cyno and they brought in a Carrier or two of their own. Still, they didnt shoot us.

So assuming the newly arrived pirates were just here to help, I continued to fire on the Carrier, just as it seemed the Archons tank was starting fail, I noticed one of the Bamboule guys lock me and open fire.

Maybe a mistake?

He fired again, totally destroying my shield. I saw several other Bambo, DFP, and CBS pilots lock me and I knew I was toast. Id had been called primary and their was nothing I could do about it. I overloaded my hardeners and armor repairers in a feeble attempt to maybe hold out long enough to deagress and dock, but it was hopeless. A few moments later my Tempest exploded and I was warping back to my home station in my pod.

Quantar, realising the newly arrived pirate gang wasnt here to help kill the carrier after all, started to deagress, then dock their ships up and it seemed the fight was over.

Looking back at the battle, I think I know why BAMBO, DFP, CBS, didnt shoot us at first. And that's because they also assumed we were on their side. They thought we were helping them to kill Quantar. As soon as they realised we were shooting their new friends, they turned their guns on us. Turning the battle into a clusterfuck.

So there we have it. The problem with being pirates is you can never be sure who's actually on your side and who isn't. I think from now on its better to not assume anything and if a bunch of reds turn up in local, its safe to assume they didn't come to help you out after all.

Frigates, Frigates, everywhere...

Frigates

Quite recently in Aurohunen, a large corp has moved into the nearby low sec and they spend alot of their time roaming in huge 15-20 man blobs full of... T1 fitted frigates.

One frigate alone isn't much to worry about but when you see a huge 20 man blob that can dish out 2000 dps and the only way to hit them is with your drones, well that's when you start to worry.

So anyway, today me, Spectre and Felix decided we would fly around in our nanod out cruisers and maybe get to kill something before we all docked up for the night and went to bed. Space was pretty empty until we saw 19 reds enter local and checking their info we realised it was the frigate gang.

We figured we could definitely take them being nanod, and most of the pilots in the blob were only a few days old, which means most of them wouldn't of learnt to use Microwarp drives just yet.

After seeing them jump into Dantumi, which is right next door to Aurohunen. we decided to give chase. Aligning to Dantumi we were interrupted by Spectre:

"Ah Crap, just gota sort something, back in a mo"

Being good corp mates, me and Felix decided to leave Spectre alone in space and go hunt the frigate gang ourselves. We both jumped into Dantumi and saw the gang towards a planet. We immediately warped and landed a few kilometers of them all. We activated our microwarp drives and got out of their web and scram range, then released our drones and hoped for the best.

We were soon joined by a couple of Monsters (a corp in our alliance) and all the frigates started dropping very fast. 11 or so frigate explosions later the rest of the frig gang decided to cut their losses and run leaving just a couple of capsules lying around space, which were quickly podded and their corpses collected. (Don't ask why we collect corpses, its best you don't know).

It was while sifting through the wrecks trying to find something useful to take home and maybe sell when Spectres voice crackled over the comms:

"OK back, what I miss?"

Well where do I start?

Sleight of Hand

Sleight of hand is a term magicians use when performing magic. Its about turning the audiences eyes away from the "magic" part of trick with some kind of distraction. And today, that same corp you just read so much about tried to do something similar.

It wasn't long after the previous battle when their leader decided to offer a challenge in the local channel of Dantumi.

"Anyone want a 19v1 fight?"

19 vs 1? that's hardly fair. But it got my interest nevertheless. Opening a private conversation with the guy, I asked what kind of ships we were talking about. Apparently if I accepted the 19v1 challenge I could fly whatever I like, "even a dread" and the opposing gang would only fly frigates.

My thoughts wondered to my tempest floating in my hangar and the huge stack of smart bombs I had just brought from Jita. If this was for real it would be awesome.

We continued our conversation discussing details about the fight and any rules we would have to follow. We agreed to fight at a planet and my friends could watch from a distance if they liked. Everything seemed fine until I started to get a little suspicious of the time they were taking to form up. Apparently they were forming up in Korama and were nearly ready. But again, they were taking a long time about about it and it seemed as tho they were stalling us or something.

Maybe they gota buy new ships or something right?

Wrong.

Ossa is a dead end high sec system next to Dantumi, and its like the Frigate corps second home. they go in and out of there alot and imagine our surprise when one of the alliance scouts, sitting on the Dantumi gate in Ossa, cloaked, told us that there was a FREIGHTER from their corp about to jump into Dantumi.

Auro local began to fill up a little and it seemed the frigate gang was coming after all. But they wasn't coming to fight me, they were coming to escort their freighter through low sec.

Smart, keep us distracted with the prospect of smart bombing 20 or so Frigs and their pods while at same time bring their billion isk freighter through low sec right under our noses.

We played along and watched their freighter jump in and warp to Aurohunen. Some of our gang were already on the gate and as soon as the freighter jumped in Spectre got a point and called for backup.

I was still in my smart bomb Tempest, which isn't exactly the best thing for killing a freighter, but i warped to the gate anyways and as I saw a few of the Frigate gang land trying to protect their freighter from our rather weak gang.

I had landed next to the gate and for those not familiar with the use of smart bombs you cant activate them within 5 k of a gate. So I slowly headed towards the freighter who was about 10km of the gate now. And hoped that I could maybe get out of the gates range quick enough to get a few frigs.

I was scrammed and webbed and only able to go about 50ms, but I eventually made it out of the gates range and activated my full rack of smart bombs destroying a couple of their frigs, a few pods and even one of my own alliance mates (Sorry Dextor!). The remaining frigates bailed and accepted thier freighters fate, which was destroyed shortly after. Unlucky for us it was empty and it refused to pay us a decent ransom.

So the Moral of today's story is:

1. Don't go AFK, even for a few minutes. Or like spectre, you could miss a huge fight.

2. Even carebears are capable of being smart.

One rule to pod them all!

Now when it comes to podding. I don't hesitate, honestly, its the squish that does it for me. There is nothing quite like it. And I know some of you will say that I'm just a homicidal maniac (and your right, I am), but usually the person I pod generally deserves it.

My corp members are all united on this philosophy. Podding someone is like a perk of the job. Today however, after an extra long, and mostly uneventful roam to Old Man Star, our points of view clashed on this.

We arrived in Old Man Star and were disappointed to see that there was absolutely nothing to kill. The whole roam had been relatively boring and all we killed was some idiot in a drake, and then we killed his totally unfitted cormorant afterwards. ANYWAY! Old Man Star. After arriving and seeing that there was nothing to plunder. We decided to head towards Hevrice where a notorious pirate corporation hangs out, called The Tuskers.

So off to Hevrice we headed and when we arrived once again we were disappointed to see that there was nothing in scan in the entire system. Disappointment soon turned to joy however when just as we were about to leave a Tusker Vexor appeared on scan towards the station. Eagerly turning my Belicose (my new favourite ship BTW, but more about that later) I landed on the station and started firing my missiles at it. Little did the Vexor know my gang were waiting next door. And I almost cheered when I saw the vexor agress and the CEO of the Tuskers, Ka Jolo, undock in a Myrmidon. Signalling my corp mates to jump in I kept myself out of web range and dodging Ogre II drones, while the whole time trying to keep a point on the Myrmidon.

The two Tusker pilots must have saw the local channel raise, and they both immediately deaggressed. By the time my gang had landed the Vexor was well into cancelling his aggression timer and a few seconds later he docked. The Myrm who was out of dock range had also managed to warp out. Nothing seemed to be going right today.

We sat on the station a while and contemplated what to do. The Myrm was still out there somewhere but we assumed he was a safe. We were all scanning away trying to pinpoint him regardless tho:

"Hes at the moon"

"No, hes at the other station"

"No hes at the SS"

"No, hes 3k off me!!"

Who said that? 3k? I heard someone call on comms that they had managed to slighly bump him out of dock range and that they had him webbed and scrammed. I aligned immediatly and warped to my corp mate and my other corp mates landed soon after. We quickly melted his Myrmidon and we quickly got a point on his 100million-isk-of-a-bounty-pod.


"Awesome" I thought "not only do we get a squish we also guna get some iskies for it. I pressed my finger against the trigger only to quickly take it off again when Spectre3353 screamed down the comms:

"STOPPP! DON'T POD HIM"

Silence filled the comms for a Moment, but it didnt last long.

"We cant pod Ka jolo, hes my hero" he said quietly

"You cant, but we can" I laughed. Everyone agreed except Spectre3353.

"NO STOP!!! YOU ASSHOLES!" he screamed again.

So here is the situation. Pod some guy you don't even know, and get a fat 100million isk stuck in your wallet and also risk getting kicked out of the corp... or listen to our bleeding heart carebear of a CEO and respect his wishes.

While contempleting this, I watched with horror and Ka jolo managed to creep his pod over to the station and dock.

Comms erupted with disbelief.

"MUTINY!"

"PRIMARY IS SPECTRE!"

"LYNCH HIM!"

"KAMIL ARE YOU PLAYING EVE AGAIN? ITS WAY PAST MIDNIGHT??!! YOU'VE GOT SCHOOL TOMORROW!"

The argument lasted several minutes but in the end we all saw the funny side of it. Spectre would never live this down. From now on whenever something bad happened we would have some ammo to throw in his face. We even got him to change his corp title to something more suitable as we felt he deserved a scar on his record for letting some guy live, when he had a 100 MILLION ISK BOUNTY for no other reason than that he reads his blog sometimes.

What would you have done? would you have podded him? right now I'm wishing I didn't respect Spectres wishes and just pulled the trigger, I know next time I definitely will!

The reason I gave up posting for a while was mostly because I havent had the time. Also I rejoined the newly formed Python Cartel and spent alot of time settling in. But I should be back to posting now, so enjoy :)