I Guess They Were French

As the gate bubble around my ship dissolves, I punch in the coordinates that will send my ship through the warp to the assistance of my CEO, Ozkar, and I shudder into maximum warp. As I decelerate into the asteroid belt, my sensors sweep about and tell me who I’m sharing it with. The first thing I see is floating wreckage, and a moment of frustration passes through me, but then I see Oz and his Jaguar sitting calmly right beside the blasted shell of a Hulk class mining Barge. We scoop what loot we can together, and as we warp to a safe spot to wait out his criminal flag, I ask him what exactly happened, and why he didn’t wait. He explained that moments after he engaged the Hulk, a squadron of Fighter craft from a nearby allied carrier had appeared from warp, so he had finished the hulk quickly and prepared to flee. However, once the Hulk they were protecting was dead, they didn’t seem interested in revenge, and simply left. But that wasn’t the strangest thing about the fight. It appears that the Hulk pilot had fitted powerful warp stabilizers on his craft, preventing Oz’s propulsion jamming from operation, but the pilot still did not warp out and died in his ship.

As we sit in the safespot, laughing about this, I notice the local comms channel demanding attention. I check, and see the pilot we just attacked and his friends saying some very rude things in local, but in Gallentean, I suppose in the hopes that we wouldn’t know what they were saying. Luckily for us, I speak fluent Gallentean after my year as a refugee on one of their planets, and translate for my CEO.

As we banter back and forth, my long range scanners start picking up a small signature nearby, and my technician quickly resolves it down to a Caldari Hawk-class Assault Frigate, probably flown by one of the pilots we just offended with our attack. Oz and I take a moment to confer, and we decide that I will hunt this ship in the asteroid belts and lock it down so that Oz’s much more powerful Jaguar can come and kill it. I engage my warp drives, and fly to the third belt, where I saw the Hawk last, but when I exit warp he is nowhere to be found. As I begin scanning down each belt in turn, I load the powerful but extremely short range EMP ammunition into my guns. It may not have the extended reach of the rocket assisted multi-warhead Barrage rounds I usually load, but the devastating lightening bolt of energy it releases upon impact will cut through the Caldari’s foolish preference towards shields like nothing else.

Finally, I get a solid sensor reading at a belt, and my warp drive hurtles me to his location. I exit the warp no more than 3 klicks from the other ship, and targeting systems stab out from both craft. As my computer feeds me the clean tone of a good lock, the brackets about my enemy suddenly flash from yellow to red, indicating that not only has he locked me as well, he has also aggressed me in the eyes of Concord. Both of our combat systems activate, and I punch in an orbit at five hundred metres from him. For the first few seconds he seems faster than my Rifter, which is very strange, but once I activate my advanced afterburner systems, my ship gains substantial advantage and I leap to once again close the range between us. Once settled into a comfortable orbit, I signal to my backup, and engage my autocannons. I don’t expect to be able to break through his powerful defensive systems by myself, because if there is one thing the Caldari know how to do, it is build shields for their ships, and for it’s size, the Hawk will have some of the most powerful. To my surprise, however, the blinding blue flashes of artificial lightening created by my shells are stabbing deep into him, and a glance at my deep sensor readout, showing his probable defensive integrity, reveals that my guns are rapidly peeling layer upon layer of his defences away with ease.

As I notice this, however, my CEO’s craft bursts from the warp onto the scene. I send him a message asking to wait, because I want to see how much of this my little craft is capable of on its own. By the time I’m finished with my comms, there is a crackle of energy from the other ship and the rest of his shield relays and projectors evaporate into space, overheated by the strain of sustaining power while my guns shattered them. I think to myself that perhaps this is some strange experimental Hawk with heavy armour plating, but the armour seems to fall just as fast as his shield, if not faster. Before the enemy craft falls completely, I tell Oz to fire a shot into his structure to so that concord will include him on the mail. After all, we are a team. Very quickly it is all over, and the Hawk, under the fury of two sets of powerful cannons explodes into a ball of nuclear light, causing my view screen to darken momentarily.

We warp away together back to our safe spot, and look at the kill mail sent by Concord, and a shock awaits us. The Hawk had been fitted with incredibly expensive modules made by the Angels and Serpentis corporation, worth something over one hundred million isk in total. We immediately leap back towards the belt where we got the kill, and the wreck is still there. Wonderfully, when we examine it, we find that half of the equipment was not destroyed in the blast, and we scoop it up. And who says crime doesn’t pay?

Close, But No Cigar

My ship burst from warp to the asteroid belt, and a quick glance at my sensor readout showed that the other Rifter was still there, only 5 klicks from my own. Immediately, the microwave lasers of my targeting systems stab out and painted my target with the glow of an active sensor lock, enabling my tracking computer to guide my guns to their target. I kick my combat modules into activation and as blue waves of energy fly from my craft to interfere with his drives, my own engines scream into the red with the force of my advanced afterburners. I settle into a comfortable 4 klick orbit around my opponent, far enough out that his earlier-model weaponry has difficulty reaching my ship. The whirring of my Autocannons cycling into life is almost impossible to hear over the roar of my drives, but the thunder of their battle cry cuts through all other lesser sounds.

My Rifter, the Baying of the Hounds, will have little trouble with this lesser foe. His shielding has already evaporated under the fury of my ACs, and I bite deep into his unresisting armour. His own firepower is barely managing to land a few paltry scores into the tungsten plates surrounding my craft, but what little harm they do is mitigated by the roiling green nanobot soup flowing from reservoirs and knitting new plating atop the damage. Just as the nuclear fire of my own weaponry begins to cut through his plating and stab into the bulkheads and systems of his ship, I see a new foe on my scan. It is a Rupture class Cruiser, one of the most deadly cruisers I would ever have the misfortune of facing. Worse, it is piloted by a Capsuleer of the same corporation as my first target. The Rupture is still 40 klicks from the fight, and I am certain that I can dispatch my first target before it comes within range of the electronic warfare systems necessary to catch and hold my craft.

I cross my fingers within the bubbling green goo of my pod, and as my heart thunders in my chest, the thunder of my cannons continues to shred my enemy. I find my self counting down the range to Actylla’s Rupture. If it gets within 24km, the of the advanced warp disruptors his ship probably fits, it is all over for my craft. Though my original enemy poses little threat to me, my capacitor is already sorely taxed from running full combat systems for the duration of this fight, and the nearly full flight of Warrior II drones The Cruiser has already released from his ship can easily rip my ship into vapour and floating shrapnel. As my count reaches 25km, the pounding of my heart seems to drown out everything else. A warhead launched from my 150mm Autocannons finds a gap in the other Rifter’s already melted and torn armour, flying true into the centre of his warp drive. The resulting detonation turns his ship into nothing but an expanding cloud of gasses.

Just as the Rupture’s drones speed out to make mincemeat of me, I lurch towards the course already set into my navigation computers, my warp drive shrieking as I exit to freedom. I breathe out, realizing I had been holding my breath, and allow myself a smile of satisfaction. Next time perhaps Actylla will remember to align his ship to his bait instead of the celestial body it is located at. However, this time the day is mine.

Eve + Flu = Dead Ships

Hey there gentle readers! Or what is left of you after my taking a week's holiday after only 2 posts. Heh. Heh. Anyway. Today, I have a bit of wisdom for you, gathered from my day's eveings. Mainly, I fly Rifters, and though I tend to have a rather suicidal aggression in my piloting practices, I've gotten relatively good at getting my ships out of sticky situations. When I first started piloting, I would lose a ship more or less every time I took one into combat. Nowadays, I'd reduce that to about 1 in four or less depending on the day. I've even gotten good, or lucky, at escaping from situations which really should kill me without a bit of effort, as you will all see in a relatively minor instance in my next actual post (Yes Raxip fans, I do in fact have one on the burner as I type this, but it needs a little more work). Anyway, today has seen a massive exception to the growing trend. Today I have lost three Rifters, gotten no kills, and gotten in fact into no fights. That's right, one from gate sentries, and two from concordokken, one of which was when I jumped into a 0.6 system with a GCC. Go ahead, laugh. I dare you. Jerks. The lesson to be learned from this is never play EvE with a fever so high you can't stand up without black spots encroaching on your vision and the room gently twisting counter-clockwise. Yes, I should've just stayed in bed.

My Ship Is Not The Hammer

Once again I find myself sitting in the Bosena system, absorbing the beauty. However, this time my interest is not directed towards the system itself. Instead, the lenses of the drone which acts as my eyes in space are focussed towards my new ship. She’s called the Broken Nose, a Maller class Cruiser, made by the Amarrian Empire. Honestly I wouldn’t care if she was made by Jamyl herself; the Broken Nose is mine now. I sit at the lagrange point, panning about and admiring the clean lines of the heaviest armour in the class, broken only by the jutting turrets of the five 200mm autocannons.

Moments later, my scanner pings, and I glance away to see the signature of a Minmatar Wolf assault frigate. I’ve flown those before, I know exactly how dangerous they are. I am, however, confident in my belief that I am more dangerous than this intruder, but still I broadcast orders to my crew to go to full combat readiness. I narrow him down to a belt, but since I’m supposed to be playing the part of a simple lower class pilot not prepared for duels against other immortal ship-gods, I decide to wait and let him come to me. I sit patiently, checking my scanner so that I’d know if he decided to leave, but he seems stationary. Alright, I think to myself, if you want to make me come, I’ll comply. I set in a course for the asteroid point he seems to be lurking at, and activate my warp drive. It is a sharp contrast to the drive of my ramshackle Rifters: instead of screams reverberating and shaking the entire ship, this brute simply purrs and rumbles, all the vibration of the massive drives absorbed by my still more massive armour plating.

However, just as my ship is about to pierce Einsteinian limits and hurl itself towards the point in space, I see on my displays the bracket and icon of a new ship flying into the point I’m sitting at. A Wolf class assault frigate. Damn, should’ve been patient. It’s too late to cancel warp, but in the brief second I see him, I notice that the white brackets around his ship in my HUD are filled with a blinking red overlay, symbolizing that Concord, in it’s infinite wisdom, has decided that this Capsuleer has done enough damage to peace and stability to warrant open season on the ships he flies. Not only will the sentry gunners at gates and turrets not engage me if I decide to attack him nearby, but Concord will not penalize me for destroying his ship around his pod.

The moment I arrive at the place I first saw the Wolf on my scanner, I snap out orders to reverse direction and spin up the warp drive as fast as my engineers humanly can, so that I can fly back to my origin. The Wolf is still there, fourteen klicks off my bow. I order my sensor tech to get a lock on his ship, while laying in a course to orbit him as close as I can, and send out a ping on my corporation comm channel. The instant the intermittent blips of the targeting software turn to the clear tone of a solid lock, I slam my fists on the activators for my guns and my propulsion jamming suite. As we both approach each other under one kilometre, struggling for a position of advantage on the other, his guns find their range, and my shields, which are only an afterthought on this ship, fade instantly to the barrages of nuclear fire spitting from his craft. Moments later, my own cannons, slightly at odds with the software of my craft which was not designed to compute firing solutions for such unwieldy weapons as projectiles, spew their solution into the turrets’ trackers. My own hail of ammunition, perhaps not as accurate but certainly greater in volume, slam into his ship, rocking it, melting his shield projectors to drifting vapour. He begins to dig into my armour, but my massive bulwarks of tungsten, layered with energized nanite webs, absorb it like so much space dust. The lines of my fire begin to trace back and forth across his now-unshielded craft, and I see that even as the stitching paths of hell run across his ship, green mist bubbles from the depths of his hull and reform the twisted scraps into clean and shining plates.

I engage my frigate-sized capacitor neutralizer, but even with it’s help, he’s holding up marvellously. Slowly but surely the monstrous output of his guns are chewing precise well grouped holes into my armour. To make matters worse, an opportunistic captain of an Angels faction cruiser has decided to add his pitiful firepower to the mix. Luckily, my comms ping from earlier has finally been answered, and the two new members of my organization exit warp and engage the Wolf. Under the firepower of myself, another Wolf, and a Rifter, my opponent quickly melts. I let his pod go while I chase down the impetuous Angels captain, and punish him for his impudence, permanently.

The fight over, I retire to a prepared safe spot, and check my comms for any chatter I need to respond to. I see that the pilot whose frigate I just tore apart around him has said “Good fight” in local. I respond in kind, and he mentions that he in fact suspected it was a trap, but engaged anyway. I laugh, but inside I’m smiling grimly. That’s exactly why I won.

Then I see the best news of all in a local pirate’s channel. Before I tell you, first, some back story. When I first came to be a black hat in the realm of New Eden, I met a great man by the name of Sard Caid. Not only did he teach me all I know about combat and hunting as a Capsuleer, he was also a good friend and a deadly wingman and commander. Of late, however, he has been inflicted with a strange glitch in his pod interface implants, meaning that occasionally without warning, while piloting his ship, he suddenly falls unconscious. This of course has meant that he has been able to in combat safely. However, with the help of a man in my corporation, who was a cybernetics expert before he became a killer, his problem has been fixed.

Everything Begins Somewhere

There is no sound more relaxing than that of an idle ship at your command. It all blends into a gentle massage, the thrum of the superconducting capacitors, the soft whir of the autocannon barrels in standby, the calming buzz of the engines at neutral power. I sat in my half opened pod, enjoying the sounds, and the red-orange mists of Bosena glowing up from the monitors. I'd had a busy day, this was exactly what I needed. Until, of course, the insistent bleep of the ship's long-range scanner alarm shatters the calm of my mind.

I sigh and close the pod around me, then bring up the scan interface, and quickly manage to localize the source of Aura's panic to one of the lagrange points surrounding the planet where asteroids tend to collect. It's a Thorax class Cruiser. Gallente manufacture, and when it comes to ship design, the Gallente don't mess about. I consider for a moment. After all, my Rifter class Tissue Fang is tough, but it's only a frigate, and the Thorax is one of the top tier combat ships in it's class. My indecision lasts very little time, however. I am, after all, an immortal Capsuleer. I shout orders to my crew, and as my ship aligns to the point in space where the cruiser was, the warp drive screams it's fury to space and hurls my tiny craft into speeds greater than anything even imaginable in the human psyche.

As my ship decelerates into the asteroid point, I pan my drone about and take my bearings. At first I think I am too late, when I spot nothing but rocks and a single wreck. But on second glance, I notice my overview claiming that there is a thorax only 30 km from me, and then I see it seemingly hiding behind the wreck. I engage my engines and order my helmsman to set course straight for the enemy vessel, planning to start manoeuvring to avoid his guns when he's locked me and getting as much closing as I can before. I'm surprised, though, when I manage to get within 8km of him before he even locks be, but once I set in an orbit a klick away from him and engage my various combat systems, he deigns to open up on me with his blasters. At that point, though, my rack of 150mm autocannons are already spitting tiny nuclear death at him, and I can see the bright flashes as his shield relays and projectors fail one after the other, until with a bright flash they disintegrate altogether and the brilliant sprays of metal and fission from my guns being to impact on his armour. However, by this time he's also managed to blast through my unguarded shield, so I spring the surprise I kept up my sleeve on him. I direct my crew to begin draining his capacitor with my newly fitted NOS, and activate the nanite repair pumps to patch the chips he's flaking off of my armour plating. Things are going well, and my cannons are steadily walking across the thick plates of his armour towards his relatively unguarded warp drive when I see a secondary proximity alarm. A Jaguar class Assault Frigate and another Thorax, both belonging to the same corporation as the first. Things are, of course, over very quickly, and as my pod is blasted out of the wreckage of the Tissue Fang, I lament that I didn't have those extra few seconds I would have needed to bring that thorax down before his gangmates showed up. Perhaps next time. Well, I suppose it was a glorious death for my crew. Time to start interviews for a new one, I guess. Sometimes it's tough being an immortal.


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Hi. My name's Raxip Elamp, but you can call me Rax. Everyone does, after all. This is my blog about EvE online, and it'll probably drift between In character and out of character posts. I haven't really made up my mind yet, heh. In EvE, I guess I could be best described as a pirate, but I've also been known to dabble in other elements of PvP such as Highsec Wardecs. I've been Doing PvP solidly for about three or four months now, so I wouldn't exactly call myself a newbie anymore, but I'm by no means a vet.