Blog Banter #8: "We're caught in a tractor beam! It's pulling us in!"

Welcome to another installment of the EVE Blog Banter, a monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter invites enthusiastic EVE bloggers to address a common topic for a period of one week. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Direct questions about the EVE Blog Banter to Crazy Kinux. Links to other EVE Blog Banter articles will be listed at the end of this post as they become available.
This month's topic comes from Ga'len at The Wandering Druid of Tranquility, who asks: "What new game mechanic or mechanics would you like to see created and brought into the EVE Online universe and how would this be incorporated into the current game universe? Be specific and give details, this is not meant to be a 'nerf this, boost my game play' post like we see on the EVE forums."


"We're caught in a tractor beam! It's pulling us in!"
-Han Solo


Remember the scene in Star Wars IV when Leia's Corellian corvette was caught by the Star Destroyer's tractor beam and is being pulled into the hangar?

Tractor beams in EVE only work on objects like wrecks or containers and are mainly used for looting. What about a more dynamic, aggressive approach?
Why not make a tractor beam lockable to a ship? Depending on ship's mass, speed, thrust, size of the beam, and skill of the pilot a large ship could drag a small one closer, or a small one could use a tractor beam to hold on to a bigger one that's moving fast to stay close as if using a towline.

Tractor beams could be used in PVP like a mixture of a warp scrambler and a web. Flying towards each other, two ships would be accelerated using a tractor beam while on the other hand would be slowed down when flying away from eachother. A tractor beam would make it difficult to escape, but not impossible.
A small ship with high thrust could be able to out-maneuver or break free or maybe there are defensive modules to counter a tractor beam. Maybe tractor beams would have tracking speed like turrets do?

A lot of different tactics come to mind. The obvious being the battleship pulling frigates into smartbombing range. A flight of small ships with microwarp drives could drag a clumsy freighter to help him align (or prevent it from doing so). Locking a tractor beam to a ship would be an act of aggression so you won't be able to drag a hauler out of sentry range at a gate without getting shot at, but you would be able to drag him away from the gate in order to prevent him from jumping.

This could make Marauders interesting not only for highsec mission runners, but also for PVP pilots since those massive ships get a bonus to tractor beams.
I neither fly these costly vessels, nor do I like big massive ships in general. However, I think it could bring some interesting tactics and dynamics to space fights.

1. CrazyKinux's Musing, EVE Blog Banter #8: Care for a little game of SecWars?
2. Life in Lowsec, Blog Banter #8: The Exasperation Factor
   
3. The Wandering Druid of Tranquility, Wow, that new thing is so shiny!!!
4. I am Keith Nielson, EVE Blog Banter #8 - Return of the Top Gun
5. A merry life and a short one, EVE Blog Banter #8: In the Year of Our Awesome
6. Inner Sanctum of the Ninveah, Planets
7. Helicity Boson, Bantering the blog
8. Achernar, Unique adventures
9. Ecliptic Rift, OOC: EVE Blog Banter 8: Standings and secondary factions
10. The New Edener, EVE Blog Banter #8
11. Journey to New Eden, Eve Blog Banter #8: What new mechanic should be added to Eve?
12. Life, The Universe and Everything, Blog banter 8: mentorship
13. EVE Guru, EBB 8: Yarr! Prepare to be boarded!
14. The Ralpha Dogs, Greed Is Good, Greed Works
15. Rifter Drifter, Blog Banter 8: Strategic Gunnery
16. A Mule in EVE, Expanding EVE
17. Letrange's EvE Blog, 8th Blog Banter
18. Roc's Ramblings, Blog Banter #8
19. The Nude Nerd, Blog Banter #8
20. Speed Fairy, EVE Blog Banter #8: Charisma Tanking
21. Industrialist with Teeth, EVE Blog Banter #8: It’s Like Tetris for OCD People
22. Diary of a Pod Pilot, EVE blog banter #8: Killing in the name of
23. Talk Unfraid, Physical Communications
24. Sceadugenca, EVE Blog Banter #8: Fighter-Class Ships and Sqadrons
25. Kyle Langdon's Journeys in EVE, 8th Blog Banter
26. Into the Unknown, Eve Blog Banter #8: Player Bases
27. EVE's Weekend Warrior, EVE Blog Banter #8
28. Life in Low Sec, Blog Banter #8: The Exasperation Factor
29. Symptom of a Greater Cure, EVE Blog Banter: #8 - Tug Me Away
30. EVE Journey, OOC - EVE Blog Banter #8: Marine Leader : “We have secured the ship, Sir!”
31. Thoughts from an Accidental Minmatar Revolutionary, All Hands on Deck! We are at War!
32. Ripe Lacunae, Into the Great Unknown (Eve Blog Banter 8)
33. Mdhi Lihu's EVE Online Blog, 009 - Blog Banter #8
34. Break Vol, EVE Blog Banter #8
35. Inanity and Doom, EVE Blog Banter #8 - If I Ran The Universe
36. More to come...

Becoming famous!

When I logged in today I noticed something unfamiliar. I had to check twice but it's true: Someone wants me so badly he put a bounty on my head! \o/


This is my first bounty and I have been wondering when it would finally happen. Maybe I owe it to Mr Scandere?

It was just the day after I wrote about my recent customers and the lack of more expensive ships in my region when I entered yet another system with three or four people in local. Following the usual routine I warped to my scanning spot when suddenly a Myrmidon battlecruiser appeared on scan along with some wrecks in a belt. Without thinking twice I fired up the warp drive, activated defensive mods, and initiated the warp disruptor.

Within seconds the asteroids came into view, along with the Myrmidon and a flight of small drones. I was so excited about my luck! The target quickly resolved and the warp disruptor caught Mr Scandere who was pounding away at an Angel Commander. Activating my microwarp drive I set a close orbit of 2000m and once within range six autocannons began to grind into the enemy battlecruiser's armor while two medium energy neutralizers sucked his capacitor dry.
Suddenly everything went pretty fast. I expected high damage from the Myrmidon's drones so I sent my own warriors after them first. At the same time the local population exploded when ten or so people jumped into the system. A trap? A quick glance at the enemy ship's status indicated he was already deep into armor. My own ship was barely scratched but my capacitor was almost empty.
Usually I do not have any cap isues at all with the fit I use on my Hurricane, but this time I was a bit distracted by scanning for enemy reinforcements so I just deactivated the neutralizers, sent all drones to finish of the Myrmidon, and hoped for just a few more seconds.

Reinforcements never came and the enemy gang left the system as quickly as they had come. When Scandere's ship exploded in a flash of light and the wreck quickly drifted out of range I finally noticed the reason for my empty capacitor: I had left the microwarp drive running!


Mistakes like this make me realize how important it is to stay calm even when something unexpected happens.
However, this fight is a good example of why I love flying solo in lowsec also: With neither a backup fleet nor a scout to provide intel it can be win or lose each time I warp towards a potential victim. I like the unpredictable!

Solo impressions

Daily business

For some time past I have been operating from my base in Metropolis. First I flew around in my Jaguar to make myself feel comfortable in the area. I made several bookmarks, both for scanning and retreating, and I tried to get as much information as possible about the local population. Three major parties are mainly to be found: New players who roam the borders of lowsec to kill rats at belts, mission runners both solo or in groups, and other pirates or pirate hunters. Pirates and pirate hunters (or anti pirates as they often call themselves) are hardly to be distinguished between however. Both tend to move in blobs, camping gates and killing everything that comes in range.

Those gate camps are a plague for the aspiring solo pirate! Often created at a highsec to lowsec gate they block off any potential new customer. I am sure most ratters or mission runners would prefer a personal treatment I could provide instead of the anonymous mass processing a gatecamp offers. Luckily some pilotes are smart enough to sneak around those blockades and enjoy their PVE activities while the lazy guys remain sitting at their gates.

While the Jaguar is great for scouting and shooting at inexperienced pilotes, this ship has some drawbacks. First of all it's lack of tank limits the amount of potential targets. I cannot attack at gates nor stations, else the senties would rip me a new one quickly. The dps is rather low also. Enough to kill other frigates and T1 cruisers, but hardly enough to engage bigger ships.


Size does matter!

So I went back to my base and hopped into a Hurricane battlecruiser. Fitted with a passive shield tank it is quite agile and with a good fitting, it is a very versatile ship.


Here is a list of some guys I met last week:

Ceetee Emess and Avil Ligotum were ratting in a Rupture and Caracal respectively. Avil called me names in local a few days before when I couldn't disrupt his warp drive fast enough with my Jaguar. This time however he couldn't escape.

Hoki Moonwolf was doing a mission. Unfortunately there isn't a probe launcher equipped on my Hurricane. Fortunately I had reinforcements close by!
Some quick scanning led me to his mission site, through two mission gates, and several dozen km from my warp-in point to his ship. Maybe doing missions is so exciting he wasn't able to look at the overview or it's so boring he was browsing a forum or reading a book. His Thrasher had some shiny modules but unfortunately most of the loot blew up with the ship.

Cattirbrie was also ratting in a Caracal. Obviously he was planning to stay in lowsec for a long time since he had several skillbooks in his cargo hold.

Gemba used an interesting fit on his Thrasher destroyer with mixed guns, a mixed tank and cargo and ship scanners. I wonder if he scanned the rats for loot before he killed them?

Tangodude had two Warp Core Stabilizers equipped on his Blackbird so he would have been able to escape in case of an attack. However, he never used them although it took me some time to maneuver my 'Cane around all those asteroids to get in range.

Skarr is also a pirate. He was part of a small gang that often roam Wiskeber and the surrounding systems. This time I met him solo in a Rifter though. I expected a trap but went in to have a look anyway, and a flight of Warrior II drones made short work of him. His mates arrived minutes later with a blob of 10+ ships but fortunately didn't bring a probe launcher.

Omd was idling a few km off a gate in an Iteron MK III. He had one unit of frozen food and one unit of Kernite in his cargo. Looking at his recent losses I wonder if he is a hauler bot with a broken script? I sold the Kernite and microwaved the food while looking for new customers.

CleverCougar was also idle 40km off a gate in an Imicus. Turned out he is a textile vendor of some kind, carrying several hundred units of polytextiles in his bay. Sitting 40km off a gate in lowsec isn't as clever as his name suggests though.


No impressive kills unfortunately. For some reason it looks like all solo pilots I meet are new players in T1 ships while all the older guys are only roaming lowsec in gangs. I'd like to fight something bigger like a battlecruiser or maybe even a battleship without a support fleet next door. But then again it's been a bit more than a week only.
So far it's a lot of fun!

Birthday

It's my birthday today! \o/

33 years old and still interested in internet spaceships. This stuff is what keeps me young at heart.

Fly reckless!

Wormhole shenanigans

Several weeks ago my corp decided to move into a wormhole system and live there for some time. We had a POS somewhere in Providence we wanted to move out anyway and the alliance we had joined was beginning to break apart. We planned to move several remote repping battleships, some pvp fit ships, haulers, and POS structures in, set up base at a random moon within the wormhole system, and see how things evolved.

After some hours of probing we finally found a suitable class 3 wormhole in Kheram in Domain, hauled all ships and huge loads of equipment in, and set up the POS. The system was relatively small and there weren't any competitors but several sites promised good loot.


Pew pew!

How is w-space PVE compared to missions or 0.0 ratting? First of all the sleepers we found are not as predictable as those NPC you engage in missions. Sleepers change targets often, depending (as far as I can say) on how much of a threat an individual attacker is or whether or not his tank is holding. That said, the sites we tried usually had several waves of some frigates, cruisers, sentries, and one or two battleships and didn't pose a risk to a gang of 5 or so battleships with remote repairing modules. Two or three reps on a ship seem to be enough to keep up with the incoming damage. Some of the targets spawned at a range of 70+ km though so I was happy I picked a long range Typhoon.

Once a site has been cleared some guys hopped into their salvage ships and with the POS close by it took only a few minutes to loot and salvage everything. Half an hour of shooting at sleepers at two sites yielded roughly 60 to 80 mil ISK in total.

The sites inside a wormhole are limited though, and I think they do not respawn on a daily basis. When doing missions or ratting there is an unlimited supply of targets. Once you set up a POS in a wormhole system however, you are bound to stay there for a while. Targets will respawn eventually, but it might take some time.

With no sleepers to shoot at, we soon began to look for other victims. As soon as the entry wormhole collapsed, a new one spawned so we hopped through and had a look.


A cruise around the world

I have been on two cruises IRL so far, on the Nile in Egypt, and through the fjords of Norway. Usually I do not like ships because the space is so limited and you never have a nice quite spot for yourself. The good part is you don’t need to make long trips to see all the exciting places. The ship is docking at a port and if you want to, you can enjoy a few hours of shore leave to take some pictures or to buy a souvenir. Once you are done you board the ship again, hang out at the bar or go to bed. In the next morning the ship has usually moved on and the next port is within sight.


Having a POS in a wormhole system is almost exactly the same. Granted, you neither have a bar nor a pool, but there will be a new wormhole exit to some random part of New Eden every day with ample opportunity to take pictures or pick up souvenirs.
You shoot some stuff, go to bed, and the next morning the wormhole has docked at another port with new local folk to harass.

For some people in my corp this is so tempting they don’t want to leave the wormhole anymore. Miners are happy because there are often juicy belts in the system, the PVE lovers are having a blast killing sleepers, industrialists are starting their T3 production thingy and those looking for PVP always have a lowsec wormhole close by. But there are some major flaws in this idea also, the main reason why I eventually left w-space and set up my own base:

-You never know when a wormhole is going to collapse. You get some vague idea about the remaining time by looking at the hole’s info, but “reaching the end of it’s natural lifespan” could mean anything from a few hours to a second. Are you going to jump through in your shiny recon or expensive battlecruiser when there is a risk you won’t be able to go back? The people still in w-space could probe down a new entry for you, but it might be dozens of jumps away, maybe in a region you cannot access with your sec status.

-Supply is even more of a problem than it is for a normal pirate. You have a hauler alt in Jita? Too bad the new entry is 40 jumps away. And where do you set up your medical clone?

-You’ll always be a stranger. Information about the local systems usually is a big advantage, but when living in w-space you often have no clue about local corps, mission hubs, trade routes, and so on.

I am sure I’ll go and visit my friends in case an entry is close to my hunting grounds, and I like reading their daily reports, but in the meantime I’ll stick to my fixed base of operations.

Consecration

Final preparations

Reallife has been a bit busy lately, so I was eager to finally set up my base and blow something up. My trusted readers made me aware of several problems the pirate-to-be should think of, so I double checked my strategy:

Money
Piracy is a money sink. Experts might actually earn money by looting wrecks or ransoming customers, but a solo noob like me is likely to loose more isk than he earns. How do I fund my adventures?

-Fly cheap ships: Frigates, T1 cruisers, and battlecruisers are relatively cheap. I'll stick with those when flying solo until I am audacious enough to use their more expensive T2 counterparts.

-Wormholes: Some friends set up a pos in a wormhole system and they are killing sleepers regularly. Whenever an entrance to the system is within reach of my new home I can join them for easy cash.

-Missions: In case I really have to use him I have a mission runner alt ready to go.

Logistics
-To keep the supply of ships and modules up and running I have a freighter alt in training at the moment. In two weeks he'll be able to hop into a Providence. I will try and set up my base in range of one of the major trade hubs to keep flight times low.

"Seriously dude, that's way too complicated! Go and join a true pirate corp!"
-Nope. It will be tricky and there is a risk I'll totally mess it up but I'll go and try to be solo for some time. I am still in my corp so there is the corp chat for those lonely nights, but I will be far away from most of them for some weeks at least. I want to learn how much of a challenge it is to make allies and foes, deal with logistics, and fight on my own.
Me likes challenges! :)


Conquest of the promised land

With my hauler alt still in training, it took me some hours to move all equipment to my new base. Buying modules for half a dozen different ships is a pain. I always list all mods from EFT in a textfile, copy it to the ingame notepad, and start shopping but it's an annoying task. Why isn't there an option to buy all mods you need for a predefined ship setup at lowest price automatically?

Two battlecruisers, one heavy assault ship, four assault frigates, and a huge load of t2 drones, ammo, and cap boosters later I was ready to go. Undocking from "my" station in a 0.5 system in Metropolis I set course for the lowsec gate and began my quest for glory and plunder.



Lacking customers I jumped into the Heimatar region. The systems around Eifer used to be busy and full of targets last time I crossed them but tonight, fortune didn't smile on me. Some systems were empty, some full of macro haulers I couldn't take on with my Jaguar, and some were busy with large gangs. I zipped around, dodged a gate camp or two, scanned belt after belt but without success.
A few jumps later I entered Molden Heath. Teonusude and Oddelulf are highsec mission hubs and a lot of mission runners enter the bordering lowsec systems to do a mission or kill a few rats. Unfortunately not tonight. A battleship gang roamed the area and scared away most pilots. When I noticed the first flight of combat scanner probes aproaching my savespot, I decided to dock and call it a night.


First blood

The next morning I couldn't resist and logged in an hour before I had to go to work. Only a few pilotes were in local and none of them belonged to the same corp. Quickly I noticed a Thrasher on scan but when I tried to pin him down I realized he was way off any celestial object, probably in a mission. (Note to self: Go and buy a covops ship with a probe launcher next time you're in Rens!)
Cursing my bad luck I read some intel channels for a while, randomly scanning for targets when suddenly the Thrasher disappeared from scan. "Done with the mission, are we?" I muttered, but for some reason the pilot didn't leave the system. Rather bored I set my Jaguar in motion and entered the coordinates for another scanning spot.
Even before the warp bubble collapsed I had the Minmatar destroyer on scan again, this time in the direction of some asteroid belts. Usually I warp to a planet first to confirm the exact position of a victim but this time I had a feeling I should hurry. I quickly warped to the last belt in the system and only seconds later the Thrasher landed directly on top of me.

Granted, a young pilot in a destroyer isn't a particularly tough opponent but a kill is a kill. This poor guy has been the consecration of my new career. May there be many who follow him!

Status report

Before I really start with the present, I need to bore you with a short sketch of my past. As I wrote in the previous post, I have been wandering around aimlessly for some time now. My first timid approaches into piracy took place in empire some time ago. I flipped cans, helped industrious miners haul their ore to my hangar (Masta420kush: "oh so its like that u fuckin dumb nub"), I even went so low and baited other thieves into flipping my cans.
Another approach into being a villain was ninja salvaging, and i quickly managed to acquire some happy customers:

Fayde Ayur: "it's so sad that your mother never told you the difference between "yours" and "not yours", but strange people with weird convictions...sigh. Get some skill, some friends, (that could be more difficult) and go and have fun and stop bothering people just for your sake.."

Although these endeavours helped me understand basic mechanics like aggression timers, using the directional scanner or how to probe out mission runners, annoying people in highsec isn't much of a challenge. You can only be attacked if you want to, but those totally predictable fights aren't fun anymore - at least for me. A lot of pirates frown upon those who bait pilots into fighting them in high security space, and to some degree I can see their point.
At this stage I was very close to leaving the security of highsec and join a small pirate corp, but unfortunately my real life prevented me from doing so. Instead, I joined a bunch of nice relaxed people I could fly with and even more so chat to.

A lot of their activities however involved missions, industry or ratting, which just doesn't appeal to me. So after some time of relaxed flying and some approaches into solo piracy in lowsec, I am now dead certain I want to leave the safety behind once and for all.


With this in mind, I am pondering on how to start my new career:

-Stay with my corp and convince them to become full time outlaws. I don't think this is going to happen. They are great people and it is fun to fly with them, but although their willingness to shoot people grew during the last few weeks, we will never be a true pirate corp. On the other hand, being an outlaw in a mixed corp that is doing a bit of everything in highsec, lowsec and 0.0 will limit my options since I might have a hard time accessing regions of space they might call home.

-Join a true pirate corp. This would throw me into business right away and I'd probably learn a lot. I am sure this is an option I am looking forward to in the long run, but for now, I have a feeling I need to try it on my own first, leading to:

-Set up a base at the border of lowsec and be a solo pirate. Several well known pirates started on their own (or still are) and while they had a hard time doing so, they are now famous like rockstars and probably bathing in exotic dancers, wine and gold. Being solo also means I don't need to wait for anyone. In case my corp decides to become a lowsec corp I can still join them, but in case they settle somewhere else, I am free to mind my own business without the need to grind my sec status up again after every fight.

An introduction

Ahoy stranger! Take a seat, help yourself with a mug of grog and enjoy your stay. Is this yet another Eve-Online pirate blog you ask? Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. Only time will tell.
Of course I am going to write about the incredible adventures Scopique is going to hurl himself into, hopefully with a lot of pew pew. On the other hand, I am going to use this log as some kind of golden thread for my career in this great game. My life as a pilot has been bumpy at times. A bit of this, a bit of that. I tried a mining alt (for a very short while!), did some missions, have been in pve corps, we joined an alliance and so forth.

Ever since I started playing Eve however, I have been attracted to the life of piracy. Maybe it's the audacious and dangerous atmosphere that's linked to it. Maybe the number of highly entertaining pirate blogs I stumbled upon caught my attention. For various reasons, I have often been distracted from my goals, but this time of struggle is coming to an end now. By writing down my ideas, my plans, my musings and the outcomes, I will hopefully be able to focus on my goals.

Last but not least the world of Eve is a harsh one. Being solo without any rules and responsibilities is tempting, but it can be tricky also and it might be a good idea to have some likeminded friends. I hope to meet such pilots in space, either inside or outside of all the well established pirate corps. Usually pirates don't love each other. Every wreck is a source of income and there is nothing to give away for free. But there also seems to be some camaraderie among pilots even though they are not linked by a corp or alliance. On one day they shoot eachother, another day they are good friends. Writing about my interweb spaceship experiences will hopefully help me establish some contacts.

Edit: Hurray for my first post! \o/
I just noticed I created a blog that is pronounced "scopslog-dot-blogspot-dot.com". What a tongue twister! A good start? Oh well! :)