Zen and the Art of Internet Spaceship Maintenance

As mentioned on the recently released Bozokast 11, I did not win the CKIAGFEBBC contest. I would like to congratulate the winners but you’ll have to listen to the podcast to find out who they are. All I can say now is we’ll just see how it goes next time.

Also mentioned in the podcast; we took some time out from the move to engage in some good old fashioned high sec ganking. We picked off first one hulk, then a second. The later went all kinds of Russian communistic emo in local as a result, first spewing that Russian gibberish, then switching to English and finally ending random characters making absolutely no sense. With a taste of carebear blood and emo tears in our mouths we decided to suicide gank some ice miners with a smartbombing battleship gang. Beo was running a bit too low on security status at this point so I brought along Salvor as my pinch hitter. Unfortunately the KB shows Salvor as a hostile but so be it. We managed to take out 2 Mackinaws but the Orca we were hoping to pop as well managed to get out in deep structure. Still it was quite fun for us all.

Our move to Curse was for the most part completed Sunday. Since then I have been out on several fleets with Bozos. It’s been quite nice. I can see why the other Bozos who lived here before have been ranting about Syndicate so much. Though it isn’t a quantum leap or anything there is a noticeable increase in both traffic and targets who are willing to engage. This has led to a few interesting engagements. One such was when we headed out in a fast moving HAC gang and ran into some of our friends from Genitalia Club and Cult of Wang alliances. We managed to take out a few of them even though we were outnumbered by more than 2 to 1, and I managed to get out keeping my trusty Ishtar alive to fight another day.

The next day we ran into these fruit cakes again and a cat an mouse game ensued. We were in mostly HACs again as they were and again they outnumbered by a good measure. They finally engaged even though they couldn’t seem to decide which side of the gate they would do it on since some aggroed and some jumped through. We took out what we could. They tucked tail and ran. Frustrated we flew home, swapped to battle cruisers and headed back out while seething with rage. This time they finally decided to engage as they had a fighting chance by only outnumbering us 3 to 1. Of course with the numbers as they were they managed to hold the field but with a pretty paultry 59% considering their overwhelming numbers. This time I was the only one to survive. With my Brutix at about 70% structure remaining I warped out to a celestial and started dropping bookmarks. Most of the guys had been podded but one of our newer members had gotten out in his pod and came back to try and scout me home. He spotted a Stiletto hugging the other side of my outbound gate and about that time I started seeing combat probes show up on my directional scanner. I continued warping around as I had 2 safes which were on opposite sides of the system by this time and my aggro timer had not yet run out. At one point I was just warping off from one safe as the hostile probe ship was landing. Fortunately my timer was up by then so I logged off and sent Salvor over in a noob ship to keep an eye on things. When he first arrived the Stiletto was still watching my exit but after about fifteen minutes I was able to log Beo back on and limp home.

A new first for me occurred yesterday. Though I am fairly experienced fleet pilot I have never had much experience in solo or near solo pvp and this is something I have decided to rectify. Piloting Minmatar ships is also something I have never done but with the excellent results I have seen other Bozos get flying them I have begun training the appropriate skills. One good first deserves another I figured so while waiting for an upcoming roaming op I hopped in a newly fit disposable Rupture and joined up with a couple Bozos camping a sling bubble in our home system. We popped a lone Rifter and his pod before the others either retired or went AFK. I docked up for a few and came back to find the sling bubble gone but the wreck from the earlier Rifter kill remained to pinpoint the sling bubble location. I once again docked up and grabbed a small bubble before heading back to the location and anchoring it in place. While doing this I noticed an Abbadon hanging around outside the station. Figuring it to be a bait ship likely with a cyno all ready to hot drop someone I ignored it. Once in location with my bubble up I began playing the waiting game. There was some chatter on comms about the Abbadon which seemed to indicate he was leaving the area but then after a few more minutes he came back into system. I spammed the directional scanner but saw nothing. Click, nothing, click, nothing, click, scanner recalibrating, DAMMIT, click, nothing, click, WAIT. There he was on scan. The Abbadon from earlier. Seconds later he landed on grid and was sucked into my waiting sling. I fired up the MWD, point and web, approached and watched for the drones I knew would be my major problem. While approaching my shields were ripped off by his lasers and my armor was going the same way but as I got closer the damage dropped off and I was able to swing into a close orbit where his primary weapons couldn’t touch me. I kept waiting for his drones to descend on me but it never happened. My target was slowly inching towards the gate so I called out for assistance and a few other Bozos came out to add to the DPS. I tried to squeeze some Isk out of the guy by offering a fake ransom but the douche bag didn’t go for it. About a minute later we saw the message letting us know that our quarry had realized he was doomed and had activated his self destruct. We overloaded our guns and managed to beat him to the punch. Elated by our victory we looted the wreck and left to go get ready for th next roam.

It wasn’t really a solo kill to be sure but nonetheless I was quite excited by the part I played. Once docked I checked out the killmail and saw what an idiot the pilot had been in his choice of fittings if nothing else.

All in all its been a real blast the last couple weeks and I can’t wait to get out in space again tonight.