Tuesday 5 May 2009

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.

5 comments:

  1. I would suggest finding a small scale PvP corp to join, and base yourself in small to medium sized gang warfare. You can do solo stuff any time you want; in a populated corporation, when the solo PvP gets tiring, there's always buddies to work with.

    I would also suggest moving the hell away from the carebear corp and basing your roots in a PvP corp, pirates or not. They may be great people, however you'll find great people all over EVE Online, and with a similar interest in PvP to boot. There is nothing stopping you from contacting or visiting your carebear friends in the future.

    Lastly, before you commit yourself to piracy, you should consider how you're going to support yourself in lowsec. Do you have an alt for empire logistics? Do you have means within lowsec for making money, such as missions, plexes, mining, etc? Do you have access to nullsec, where you could rat for money and equipment? Once you go down that outlaw path, it'll be a long time coming to dig yourself back out again, and in the mean time all that easy isk you were making in highsec, as well as ability to purchase supplies and equipment with your main will be gone.

    I'm not knocking the life. I am saying that there's more to it than what's seen, skin deep.

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  2. It's really cool reading about where your roots are. You have me thinking about how I learned to use my directional scanner: scanning down belts for good ore instead of flying to them one by one. I used to be the biggest miner my first few months of EVE!

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  3. I have to agree. I know quite a few people that started out solo, or are still solo, and not just the bloggers. However, solo is still solo, and out of a varied genre like MMOs, I will say EVE is one of the few that makes you not only want, but need, others.

    As Sard pointed out above, there are still other things to consider - ISK making, logistics and whatnot. When I made the jump into pirating (having done some mining/missioning), I just jumped in with both feet - found a great small sized pirate corp, and really can do just about anything piratical that strikes my fancy.

    Not only do you still have the freedom to go solo, but you get opportunities to run some camps, go on some long roams with other people, have a blast in vent - and they'll even take care of your logistics for you! The only major issue I've left unresolved for the long run is ISK making - currently I'm slowly burning through the 600 mil or so I made off selling a GTC. Eventually I'll have to figure out a solution, but for now, its all fun!

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  4. /me points to Clown Punchers Syndicate...

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  5. I was going to comment but then I realized that Sard and Luc already said almost exactly what I was going to. It will probably work out fine to start out solo and learn the ropes but pretty quickly you will want some friends. It is very difficult to find 1v1 fights in Eve in anything bigger than a frigate as most people will never engage in a fight unless they're certain they're going to win. It's nice (and almost necessary once you move past frigs) to be able to roam around solo and then also be able to call in friends when you find a larger target/blob.

    Anyhow I really like the blog... look forward to seeing more updates :)

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