Day 15 : Can Flipper Mardi Gras

Up early again. Insomnia all damn week. I don't need to be getting up at 6.30am, after 5 hours sleep, on a Saturday.

Zombified, I launch the Vexor and go mining. I start it up and go make a cup of tea. When I get back I'm vaguely amused to see a cargo hauler has nipped in and made off with my first minute of ore. He jumps out before I can do anything. I've no weapons on the Vexor which is fully kitted for mining and before I can launch a ship he has left the system. A good job too.

I fit the Vexor with a gun to deter other flippers.

The second comes in later when I've got three minutes of ore in the cargo pod. I shoot back but one gun isn't going to cut it against a combat frigate geared for piracy. In fact I may be in trouble, I'm slow and lightly armed and taking some damage from the frigate. Luckily I have a warp stabiliser and so am able to warp out even though the frigate is attempting to jam my ability to do so. I'm mildly concerned by how fast the frigate was damaging my shields.

Returning to the station I lauch my destroyer. Its new and partially fitted since yesterdays accident in low sec space. Amusingly my can flipper friend is outside the station. I open up with the guns and a webifier and warp disrupter. The can flipper gets away but with all its shields and armour gone. It's a close thing and very nearly my first PVP kill. Against a player a year old too. Since the destoyer is an anti-frigate platform I'm not too boosted by it but I did manage the incoming damage better and I did get into combat better. I'm learning slowly but surely. One of these days I might actually get a kill. I spend a few minutes zipping across the system trying to find my enemy but space is big. I need combat probes for scanning down ships but the lauchers are CPU intensive and I'd have to manage that against the other stuff I am carrying. I need some safe points in the system to scan from too I think, somewhere to attack from. Something in between the regular warp points. More learning....

I spend the late morning and early afternoon faffing. A bit of mining, a bit of buying and go fetch stuff. The tennis on TV starts to distract me until I find out about

http://community.eveonline.com/en/tournament/evetv

Apparently there is a tournament on in EVE and its streamed. I watch, after some technical delays on their part, and find myself too much of a noob to understand half of what is happening. Still it adds to the already packed summer sport schedule I am so enjoying! Some team just got pasted because they didn't plan for ECM, Electronic Counter Measures. These disrupt targetting and range and some speed up modifications. I don't know how you counter ECM, I guess you bring your own to the party and it evens out.

The whole of the fight is bewildering. Like watching a sport you know about but know none of the rules. Again I find out that there is tons to learn. Amusingly most of the fights remind me of the Battlestar Gallactica remake. This isn't the first time this has happened.

Anyway, my Rifter is now ready. I ran all over the place buying bits and bobs for it to equip it as a passively shield tanked (ie I don't have to click anything) raider. I undock ready to head to the 0.6 system Silvala which is a quiet lower sec system in which I've been mining some ore thats used in ship building but which I can't get in Gallente space.

I spend 20 minutes looking at the ship. How cool is this! A fast gun and missile toting frigate with rough looks and brutal orange engine jets. I've named it the General Lee. Turning the afterburner on brings ooohs and ahhhs of appreciation. I'm such a soft loser geek noob.

In Silvala I find things not so quiet. Half of the universe seems to have rocked up for large scale mining ops. The belts were always chock full of rocks compared to 0.9 space but this is ridiculous. Every belt has some operation going on with 3 or more large ships. Wrecks of computer controlled rats dot the area on my Overview. Fortunately there are a couple of rock belts that haven't yet been cleared and I spend a couple of minutes verifying that the Rifters lousy DPS doesn't reflect actual performance. Its a cool ship. It packs Minmatar weaponry which basically means big cannons and machine guns that look cool. It's also packing a missile launcher which makes for nice fireworks. Knowing EVE I'll probably lose the General Lee soon. Thats ok - I can build others thanks to my random acts the other night.

Over two weeks in and if anything the obsession with this game is growing. For the first time ever in playing a game I'm highly tempted to make a video.