A Pirate's Life For Me

About a week ago, I came to the realization that I needed a change of pace in EVE. There were quite a few reasons for my decision, stemming from both my own preferences in the game and the environment that seems to have taken hold in Caldari-Gallente factional warfare. (The explanation of the whole thing is long and relies on people having knowledge of the current FW scene, so I'll leave it out.) Eventually, I decided that I'd hang up my State Protectorate badge for the third time and look for other opportunities.

Huo and I talked about our next steps at length; I mentioned not too long ago that he'd joined the pirate corp Meatshield Bastards, and while he was enjoying the PVP, the inconsistency of being a US time zone player in primarily EU-based corp was starting to take its toll. He wanted to continue lowsec piracy-style PVP, and I've been more and more interested in the field myself of late. The decision wasn't without its hiccups - we had a couple of significant differences of opinion on exactly how we'd go about the next chapter of our lives in EVE, but eventually, we came to an agreement.

Welcome to Molden Heath

So, last night Huo and I were bored. (That isn't a new occurrence.) We fiddled around with ideas about various things that we could try doing, but nothing seemed particularly appealing - I was in a pewpew mood, instead of a bearing mood, but there didn't seem to be any non-FW blob fights to be had in the combined area of Black Rise, Placid and Essence that we currently live in. Aria was a sweetheart and mentioned that some corpies of hers from Gunpoint Diplomacy were off ganking Hulks in Molden Heath highsec. Huo was slightly less enthusiastic about the prospect than I was (as he'd participated in Hulkageddon and I hadn't), but I decided to set off for Bosena to meet Huo and see what kind of trouble we could get into.

Following a fairly amusing escape from a Minmatar militia gang in the market hub in Rens (I could've taken the Sentinel and Thrasher, maybe, but the Myrm would've broken the balance), I arrived in Teonusude bearing Huo's nano Drake. It turns out he opted to fly a Jaguar instead, while I fitted up an autocannon Hurricane. Emboldened by confidence and boredom, we set out for the lowsec portion of MH (i.e. the majority of it) to see if we could get ourselves some action.

Broadening Horizons

Looking back over the past ten days, I'm not sure which has surprised me more - how much my perspective on PVP has opened, or how it took me this long to really realize things that people have been telling me forever. The previous week and a half has been a collection of events that have ended up meshing in my head - not terribly coherently, at first, but hopefully I'll be able to sort them out enough that they make sense to read!

As we often do, my fiancé and I have decided that in addition to the prospects we're already waist-deep in, we wanted to try something different. A friend and former corpmate of mine is a member of Fiskl Guards, a corp which fairly recently left the blue-to-IT Black Star Alliance and decided to join up with Red Overlord in Feythabolis. Huo and I agreed that it seems like an interesting place to be, between their PVP fleets and the opportunity to do some carebearing away from prying eyes. So, I've packed up my alt and am currently waiting to get her and her things moved down to the middle of nowhere. I can't really offer much more on that at the moment, since I've only been a member of the corp for a few hours, but I'm looking forward to seeing what comes.

Moving right along...

Shortish post this time around, since I haven't really had much going on in the world of EVE lately - between working late shifts and being sick with migraines, by the time I was able to get online for most of last week there wasn't a whole lot happening. Still, since people are actually watching this, I should probably post something. :P

My PVP life has been practically nonexistent for the past week - I haven't posted a kill since the 0.0 roam I went on with Wensley and crew. He's described it quite thoroughly in his post on Rifter Drifter, which you can read here if you're interested. (On the other hand, I haven't gotten a loss since then either, so I suppose I can't complain too much.) I finally passed the 100-kill mark on that roam, though, so hooray for that! I also noted with some amusement that none the ten most recent kills on my KB are factional warfare opponents.

Quick Update

Had a long post planned for today, but circumstances (a migraine among other things) have pretty well killed any motivation I have to write. I'll give it another try soon. In the meantime, I present you all with a VERY pro Hurricane fit, also known as "can i has mods?", courtesy of Wensley.

EDIT: That fit is probably funnier with the explanation. I tagged along on a Molden Heath roam last night, which Wensley has described here. After fantastically losing my Hurricane in the first engagement, I bought a second one off Wensley for the second leg of the roam. The first one I'd purchased from him had come fully equipped with fitting, ammo and drones. The second, not so much. As Wensley quite reasonably pointed out, though, it did take me three jumps or so to realize the problem. This exchange on comms followed:

Dian: "Uh, guys, I'll catch up with you in a bit, just need to run back to Teonusude."
Wensley: "Sure, no worries."
Dian: "Apparently Wens was in a hurry when he sold me this Cane, since it doesn't have any modules on it."
Fleet: *pause, followed by hilarity*

1v1 = 1vWin?

Sorry in advance if this entry is kind of incoherent. I'm still a little shocked that the entire thing happened the way it did. I'm sure more details will come once the adrenaline wears off, but I'll record what I can for now, and add to it later if I need to.

This particular encounter was an unintentional Part 2 of what I'm starting to think of as the Loren Gallen saga. Last time I fought Loren, it was very intentional, very uncertain on my part, and ended with the loss of my ship. This time was different, on all three counts. I'd been in my Jaguar, ferrying some ammo from the nearby highsec hub of Ichoriya to my home base in Enaluri. As soon as I jumped into Akidagi, the highsec gateway between the two systems, I spotted a familiar face in local. I waved to Loren in local chat, he waved back, I didn't think anything of it - until I landed on the Enaluri gate and saw his Ishkur. There was second's pause, since I was surprised to see him, and he probably expected that I would jump through the gate and run, like I usually do when I meet him on a gate.

So, what did I do? I pointed him.

1v1? More like 1vFail...

I don't get into many 1v1 fights out in militia lowsec, for a few reasons. First, the times that I want to go out and get kills, I normally end up joining a fleet (or more often FCing, lately). The times I'm more inclined to actually solo, I'm stuck with the "lowsec curse" of either finding nothing or getting blobbed. I think I've had a grand total of four 1v1 fights - a frigate duel I narrowly lost with both of us in structure, a Taranis that tried to tackle my Ishkur on a gate, an inconclusive duel between my Jaguar and a Hawk (he couldn't keep point on me and I couldn't stay in range to break his tank), and one far more lopsided fight - which is the subject of this post.

My opponent in this particular duel was Loren Gallen. Loren's something of a celebrity in the Caldari-Gallente FW community, due to the staggering number of kills he packs into the course of a day, ranging from ganks of highsec mission runners to 1v1 duels in lowsec. (Despite some Caldari militia members turning their noses up at both his highsec ganking and a few fairly obvious cases of killmail whoring, holding a #9 rank on Battleclinic is nothing to sneeze at, in my books.) Aside from that, Loren and I get on quite well with each other, having developed something of a friendship since the first time we met on the field.