Day 28 : Foolhardy

Lack of sleep AGAIN. What the hell is wrong with me? It's Friday and I'll be too knackered to go out tonight. You know where I'll be. If it's another insomnia night I'm just going to break a rule and get out of bed and play through the night.

Anyway, I'm sitting up, coming round to the fact that I need to get out of the house. I'm not thinking straight when I remember the ore from yesterday. I've never mined that stuff I saw in low sec. I should go after it and add it to the ore samples at least. Yeah, writing this later, I don't know what I was thinking either. I warp into one of the belts. At least I'm relatively tooled up in a Destroyer class ship. I see the usual rats. One of them.... one of them is a fucking BATTLESHIP! Now I am awake, now I am running. That was scary. I've never faced one before. They can pour out major damage from a distance.

Maybe I'm not that awake. I think something along the lines of "in EVE nothing ventured nothing gained". I can afford to lose this ship. I've obeyed the rules,  I've thought about it. I've thought about it with an insomnia adjusted IQ of about 5 but I've thought about it. No damn battleship is going to scare me on a Friday morning and get away with it. They are probably momentary fodder for the EVE hardcore. Yeah, thats right Space Noob, psyche yourself into oblivion.

I warp in. They have frigates racing at me. I'm in an anti-frigate platform you fools. I waste these on the way through and launch the drone. I'm heading in and over the top of the battleship. I'm a little worried that the vicinity of rocks is going to slow me to a stop. At that point I'm cannon fodder. All there really is between me and going home in a pod is speed. Burn Afterburner, damn you, burn! I settle into a looping orbit without much damage, the damage control unit indicator rotating slowly like it didn't have a care in the world. Something weird happens then. Slowly, and oddly to my mind, I start to pulverise the ship. Stray shots are zooming all around me. I'm like the lead in a Hollywood western, the shots just go wide. It's now, when I'm laughing at my invulnerability and yet expecting one clean shot to reduce me to rubble, that I notice the bounty price on the ship. It's 600k. 600K. With a big K! I'm used to rats with a bounty of 10k tops. Now I'm nervous again.

After a long time of this, the damn things are tough, my enemy explodes and leaves behind a skeletal wreck. Since I'm cheeky I've not employed all my hardpoints to use weapons. I have a Salvager on board. I loot any cargo they might have had first, then salvage the wreck. It comes to more than the bounty. I'm going to have to get better at mining, thats all I can say. Lets have another bash at this. I warp to another belt and find an even slower battleship. As it turns out I play for an hour, not even concentrating, and add around 20% to my bank balance ( not including the infamous 50 mil from http://diaries-of-a-space-noob.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/day-five-renumeration-fixation.html )

So there you go. I think some quiet nipping through low sec might be in order. Time to properly plan a ship fitting that will clear it in better time. If it hadn't been morning I bet I would have had some upset visitors and had to run away.

Later on, after a LONG day at work, I kit out a ship suited to the kind of ratting I think I'm in for. I'm awake now, surely it should go even better. After fitting out the ship I send in Maverick to scout the system beforehand. There is a red flagged player in there and sure enough, third belt in, he warp scrambles me and blows me to hell. This is amusing. I've scouted the system and this guy has blown my scout out of the water. I'm in EVE! I'm not mining! I'm getting turned into toast!. He pod kills me too which is a little petulant. I don't think I'd pod kill someone now I know what it's all about. I'm not sure what the morals of the situation are, or even if there are any in EVE.

I think my best PVP ship might have to be called the Jack Burton, or maybe the Pork Chop Express. Full nerd points to anyone who recognises the quote.

Just remember what old Jack Burton does when the earth quakes, the poison arrows fall from the sky, and the pillars of Heaven shake. Yeah, Jack Burton just looks that big old storm right in the eye and says "Give me your best shot. I can take it."


EVE track of the day

Shoot to Thrill - AC/DC