So, with my suitcase in the capable hands of Red Frog Freight (whom I highly recommend), I thought it would be a good idea to take stock of what I was able to accomplish on my first-ever contract as a member of Noir.  I pulled up my KB and created a campaign to collate the results and here’s how it looks at first glance:

100% efficiency, 24 kills, 0 losses, 1.71 billion ISK damage.

Of those kills, 15 were in a Purifier, 9 were in a Vagabond.  I had no solo kills but I’m okay with that.  I had a couple opportunities that I probably could have scored a solo kill but I became a bit paranoid about a massive fleet of Russian carriers just waiting for a cyno to go up.

Beyond the kills and fights I can look back at this experience and make the following observations:

1. I have been looking for small-gang warfare for the last year. I found it first in Rote Kapelle but it was tinged by friction with my corp. I feel very lucky to have found it again and in the context of getting to know some really nice folks as well.
2. It was very strange to essentially “live” in my ship for a month.  I had to have everything I needed – paste, ammo, drones, etc. – on board with me.  Losing drones became a major headache and something I never would have considered a problem before.  When you’re deep in sovereign 0.0 however, it’s no easy thing to fix.
3.  Having this experience has underscored the feeling that I need to focus on just a couple ships – if for no other reason than to just keep my hangar lean.
4. I’m done with bombers.  I think they can be fun and I’m sure I’ll play with one again sometime but they are so specialized you really need to enjoy a certain type of combat and it’s just not me.

It was a great introduction to Noir. and it challenged me in new ways.  On to the next!

We landed on the gate as our interceptor pilot reported him moving back toward us.  He jumped in system and held cloak.  I began manually orbiting the gate and spamming the directional scanner at the same time, thoroughly expecting him to be bait.  He breaks cloak and starts burning back toward the gate.  I pulse my MWD and manage my first-ever pr0 bump, sending him careening away.  His buffer is still too much for us and he jumps out with 1/3 shield left.

On the other side of the gate our interceptor pilot reports him holding cloak again.  My aggression timer expires and I jump in just as he warps off with our ‘ceptor pilot in pursuit.  He is chased to a second planet’s custom office and then logs off.  I just happen to have an alt in the neighborhood that I have been using for scanning duty (and giving me good probing practice).  I log him in and warp to the system with the dirty CTL+Q’er.  Launch probes and first scan resolves him to 50%.  One more scan and I have him at 100% leading to the inevitable outcome.

My scorecard for the night included a Drake, a pod, a successful scan-down and a good bump. Not too shabby if I say so myself.

We took a bit of a walk last night hoping to stir up the local ratters.  After no joy other than a single shuttle kill we began heading back the way we came.  We had a Crane jump into a system with us at one point and as we were traversing a system I noticed the +1 was that same pilot.  (Side note here – why am I good at remembering name+ship combination in EVE but struggle with names in real life?  Anyone else suffer the same affliction?)  Our interceptor pilot warps back to our in gate as local bumps by two more.  There is now a Paladin on our in gate.  Our FC orders us back to the gate once our ceptor pilot calls a point.  As we’re in warp I said over comms that my “Spidey sense was tingling” and, as it turns out, with good reason.  I land on grid as the gate fires again.  The Crane, our original target, decloaks and starts burning back for the gate.  I ask for orders and the FC tells us to engage the Paladin.  As soon as we start yellow-boxing the Paladin a Drake and Tengu uncloak with us on the gate and the Crane jumps back through.  FC orders us to bug out and since I’m closer to the gate I figure I’ll jump with the Crane and see if I can catch him.

Grid loads in the next system and I begin moving to break cloak.  The Crane uncloaks as well and I start burning for him as he re-cloaks.  Almost simultaneously local bumps by 1 (I recognize the Tengu pilot’s name) and he uncloaks only 2500 km from me.  I try and burn off him but he snags me with a scram.  I’m now snared 7500 from the gate and starting to take damage from him.  I know the other ships are waiting but I have no choice other than to jump back.

I’ve calmly been informing my fleetmates about what is happening and as I load grid I report the Drake and Paladin still on the gate.  I overheated my MWD and pointed my slippery lil’ dragon away from them, double-clicked in space and lit my prop mod.  20k turned to 40k in a flash and I warped to a safe.

In all, it was a good test of what I can expect from flying a Vagabond.  Scrams will mean death and I’ve got to always maintain range; much like flying a Rifter I will have the upper hand over most other ships I encounter and I’ve got to use it to my advantage.  My only complaint?  It seems to take AGES to lock anything in it, especially after flying a frigate for the past two weeks.

Since joining Noir. I’ve been flying a Purifier on our current contract.  It’s the first time I’ve flown a bomber and to be honest, I don’t like it.  The advantages of high DPS/alpha and warping while cloaked aren’t offset enough by it’s incredibly slow AU/sec warp speed and pathetic maneuverability.  I’m planning to swap it out for something else that I actually enjoy flying tonight.  The Dramiel tempts me like a tempting temptress…  I’ve also thought about unpacking my Curse or buying a Vagabond.  Decisions, decisions.

Speaking of choices, I really liked Eelis Kiy’s post titled “Killmail Ship Stats – What Do Yours Say About You?“  I have combed my killboard and here’s what mine say about me.

First off, my kill totals seem really, really low for a two-year-old character.  Granted, Tai sat in a station training learning skills for the first four months of his career and there were a couple periods of inactivity, but 259 kills in 18 months works out to less than a kill every two days.  I gotta get busy…

Armageddon: 57 kills (22% of total).   This was my POS-bashing ship of choice.  It’s no wonder I got burned out with the big fleets.

Harbinger: 45 kills (17% of total).  If there was a call for a BC gang, shield or armor, this was my first choice.  I do enjoy the Harb as a brawling battlecruiser though it leaves much to be desired in terms of agility.

Zealot: 25 kills (9% of total).  I started flying the Zealot as an alternative to the Harbinger.  I found that even shield-tanked it did a much better job controlling range and keeping up with shield fleets where people normally flew a…

Hurricane: 20 kills (8% of total).  I accumulated all of these kills within the past 30 days or so since finishing up my medium projectile specs.  Love the ‘cane.

Arbitrator: 19 kills (8% of total).  My favorite T1 cruiser.  So much fun to fly with a shot of Exile and dual reps.  Check out my Arbitrator Guide for more discussion on the golden wedge of death.

Purifier: 15 kills (6% of total).  Accumulated all within the past 14 days.  As I mentioned before, I think these may be the LAST 15 kills I get with it.

Huginn: 12 kills (5% of total).  I’ve blogged about my Huginn before.  I kind of dig it but it’s usefulness is somewhat limited, especially in situations where a Rapier offers more flexibility.  If you’re just brawling/camping on a gate it’s pretty good.  Plus it has green engine exhaust.  Green!

Rifter: 12 kills (5% of total).  Most of these kills were from my time in Red vs Blue.

All my other ships make up the rest.  I have a few kills in other assorted T1 and T2 cruisers.  I was surprised that I only have 9 kills in a Curse.  It seemed like that was all I was flying for a good bit of time but I was probably constantly primaried and warping in and out of the fights.

Thanks again to Eelis for a fun exercise.

….Non-EVE content ahead….

With the return of warmer weather I’ve started running again, averaging about 6-10 miles a week.  I’ve built back up to last fall’s endurance and pace and signed up for a 5K on May 14th.  I’ve set out a training schedule for the rest of the summer and if all goes according to plan I’ll run a few more races and end 2011 by running in the Kansas City Marathon in October.  Wish me luck.

HUMMER Escape Pod

I couldn’t help but laugh hysterically as I imagined a Hummer wrecking, the tailgate instantly swinging open and the driver being ejected in an Aveo with a slightly bewildered look on his face.

I joined LUCRH to help grow the US timezone activity level and I sort of knew that I would be a bit disconnected given the difference in timezones.  No matter, I joined anyway, believing that Rixx was out to create a truly elite PvP corp, using EVEOGANDA to bring in the best and brightest.  We spent just a little bit of time in Black-Mark before receiving (and accepting) an invitation to join Rote Kapelle.  I was, in a word, ecstatic.  I knew exactly what I was getting into and had every expectation to get trolled to hell and back if a dumb loss showed up on the board.  I also assumed (correctly) that they don’t tolerate other forms of ‘teh dumz’, whether aired publicly on the killboard or not.  I, for one, didn’t care because we were being given the opportunity to fly with one of the truly ‘elite’ PvP alliances in all of EVE.

One of the hopes for the relationship was that we (LUCRH) would bolster the EU presence of the alliance and for a while it seemed to be working.  We were getting kills in the EU times and I was happily contributing during the US prime.  The corp was growing, we were shooting up the rankings and having fun all at the same time.

And then something changed.

I can point my finger on the exact instance but it’s not important.  Save to say I found myself feeling more and more embarrassed by my own corp and the impression I felt they/we were making.  I began to see less and less effort toward integration and more and more effort toward pissing everyone off (and if you need further proof of that, take a look at the comments on Rixx’s post.  Trust me, they’re nothing like the threadnaughts on the RK forums).

Eventually I came to a tipping point.  I realized that I needed/wanted to fly with people like Stim/Rote who demand excellence, don’t take crap off anyone and wear that intolerance as a badge of honor.  Their attitude is ‘if you screw up, prepare to be trolled until you get it right. If you can’t take the trolling then GTFO’.  I’m old enough to realize that there are times when I need to swallow my pride and actually listen to what’s being said, stuff my emotional response of ‘who the hell do they think they are?’ and learn from it.  I’m already doing that with my new corporation and it’s not easy.  It takes a lot for someone to admit that they may not know what’s best and to TRUST the advice being given.  It is far easier to lash out or obstinately to do the opposite.

I’ll close by paraphrasing Mike Lin, an architectural graphics guru who I’ve had the pleasure to take a class from.  He says that design is all about attitude.  He believes it so much that he applies it to life in general and makes the point that your attitude colors your relationships, your work, your design, everything you experience all day long.  He says it something along the lines of “have shitty attitude, have shitty day.”

I had a great time in Rote Kapelle.

I’m already being put to work (hooray!) and everyone I’ve chatted with so far has been extremely helpful and friendly.  This is going to be a new adventure for sure and I’m really looking forward to it.

I’m a “professional” PvP’er.

When I log into EVE all the competitive traits that I have in real-life like my desire to succeed in my career, my goal of running a marathon this fall, helping my oldest son to become a good pitcher – all of these coalesce into a motivation to be really, really good at PvP.  I scour the killboards for fits, I read the alliance forums on fitting discussions, I devour the posts on tactics – all in an effort to improve my knowledge of how to make space pixels go ‘pop’.

I exhibited the same behavior ‘back in the day’ when I played FPS’es at a competitive level.  I wasn’t satisfied with being ‘decent’ and would spend hours practicing, studying and watching demos before a scrim or match.  I was never ‘elite’ but did make a bit of a name for myself in two titles I played.

Looking back on my EVE career I see this same pattern.  I left my first starting corp because they were carebears, joining the Rule of Five to get an introduction to 0.0.  I left that corp once they became more enamored with building stations than roaming.  I returned after a hiatus and joined Senex Legio, the PvP arm of LAWN alliance but grew frustrated with the blob.  Joining Lucifer’s Hammer got me into Rote Kapelle where I found kindred spirits who don’t tolerate fail fits or FC’s who derp their fleets.  Some see that attitude as ‘holier-than-thou’, ‘elitist’ or just trolling; I see it as not suffering fools gladly.

I guess, in the end, I take my internetspaceships game seriously.  Some will argue that I take it too seriously and perhaps I do.  Some people will say ‘it’s just a game’ and they’re right.  Others will point out that stats and killboards and records and Battleclinic are irrelevant and they’re just as right.  My retort to all of these positions would be that everyone should play the game the way they want, the way they get enjoyment from it.  The marvelous thing about a true sandbox game is there’s no “right” definition for playing it or even being “good” at it.  There are professional traders who have the capital and experience to dominate a market.  There are professional industrialists who manage production chains down to the nth degree, wringing the maximum profit from each module or ship.  There are professional miners, explorers, mission-runners, etc.  They are all working to become very good at their “profession”.

My “profession” has been PvP for the past two years.  It’s time I stepped up and became professional about it.

Tai is going to join a nice highsec corp and turn his attention to industry.  According to EveMon he should be able to fly an Orca in about a month or so.  I undocked last night in an Arbitrator, warped to a belt and started mining.  I have to say that the sound of the mining lasers was really soothing.  I also discovered that if I’m just mining I can really multi-task a lot better as it was really easy to browse the ‘net from the in-game browser. I was able to clean out a lot of PVP-related browser bookmarks too.

Speaking of cleaning out, I had about 300 bookmarks from my 0.0 roams that I deleted while I was mining.  I also traded a bunch of PvP ships and modules to my alt and put them up on the market.  I should be able to get a real good start on the Orca fund from those sales.

I hope my change of direction doesn’t turn off what few readers I have.  I plan to continue to blog but just change the focus to more industrial and PvE pursuits.  If you just found the blog through some PvP-related search I’m sorry for the change of direction.  I don’t plan on removing any content as it’s still worthwhile but I doubt I’ll add much to it.

Look for a revision to the Arbitrator guide that focuses on a good fit for mining.  It actually does really well and once I get the mining drone skills up I’ll be chewing through the space rocks in no time flat.

Yes, it is a momentous day for me.  I’m looking forward to the new set of challenges before me as I dive head-first into the deep end of industry.  Here’s to a new beginning.

1) A player-versus-player encounter wherein equal numbers of pilots engage in combat.
2) A primary motivation for joining and/or FC’ing a fleet.
3) The EVE equivalent of drawing a Straight Flush.

Thirtyish in NM-OEA local as we warped to the station. Not much there at first, but a whole lot of Drakes start undocking and we start burning through them.  We were a bit heavier and better balanced which explains the lopsided result but props to Valor for giving us the oh-so-elusive GoodFight™.   The rest of the roam was fun but that fight was, by far, the most memorable part of it.