Corruption In The Heath - Chapter 1

A smoky haze fills the room. The stench of years worth of cigarettes seeps from every wall, but it doesn't bother me, it smells like home. A low murmuring can be heard from the far side of the room, three men talking, the sound of conversation interrupted only occasionally by the thud of a half-empty beer glass against the table.

“Another beer, Al!” One of the men pipes up. I pour him a new drink before retaking my lone seat in the corner, pressed against the wood-panelling of the walls. An odd material to be used on a star-base, but I like it. In front of me lies a pile of newspaper clippings. There has been no shortage of news lately concerning the state of the Molden Heath region. Rampant piracy, stargate blockades, indiscriminate slaughter of innocents, illegal drug manufacture and trafficking, you name it.

But information on who is actually involved or even running these operations is shady at best. Rumours within rumours within rumours. Some things are clear though. All the evidence seems to suggest there are two main organisations running this system of fear and destruction.

A corporation called RANSM appears to be the primary source of evil in this cesspool of crime. I've no idea what the acronym RANSM stands for, but I'm not really sure I want to know, these underworld types tend to have the foulest sense of humour.

Perhaps the most information I have gleaned concerns RANSM's supposed leader, Sard Caid. Due to his shameless pursuit of fame and recognition, a decently detailed picture can be drawn of this man's personality. As long as you get past the media front that is. Featured in magazines, given honourable mention during Alliance Tournament coverage, invited by several high-profile capsuleer training organisations to give guest lectures. This is a man who has built such a wall of false publicity and high-profile business contacts around himself, you invite public disgrace upon yourself to even attempt to warn people of his true nature.

He has even gone so far as to run his own regular TV show. In it he portrays himself as some sort of lone knight hero, roaming the skies of zero security space, fighting the “good fight” against cut-throat bands of mercenaries and lawless thugs. But the truth is far more sinister. A thug from the very beginning, when most people sneered and dismissed Molden Heath as some backwater mining region, Sard Caid saw it's potential as a criminal's paradise. Reports say that for a long time he operated mostly alone. Yet these days those few scarred humans who manage to return from the region alive whisper that he has taken a whole gang of violent thugs under his wing, although details of the individual members of this gang are almost non-existent.

One member of this group who gets at least some mention in the press is a man who goes by the initials D.P. However he has not been seen or made mention of for some months now, leading some (myself included) to wonder if perhaps Sard Caid has had him bumped off because he started to view this D.P as a threat to his power or popularity among the press. We may never know for sure.

The sound of chair legs scraping against wood draws my attention back to my surroundings. The three men having a beer have become two, and the two are now leaving. I hurry over and open the door for them.

“You both have a good night.” I say.

“Night? Al, it's two in the morning already.” The taller man says, I think his name is Geoff.

I peer through the smoke at the clock on the wall. “Oh yes, so it is.”

“Hah! Take care of yourself man, get some sleep.”

“Will do!” I call out as they head for the station's shuttle bay.

But I have no intention of sleeping tonight. I close the door and return to my desk.

 _____________________________________

While written in the first person, the protagonist of this story is not me personally.

Shamelessly inspired by Miura Bull's wonderful blog (http://brutorbullfighter.blogspot.com.au/). However this is by no means meant as a copy of what he does. This is planned to go in a fairly different direction to most other EVE blogs.

Coming Soon

Watch this space.

A State of Mind

Coming to terms with what solo means

When I first started soloing, I suffered a lot of frustration. When I say soloing I don't mean roaming about a few systems by myself looking for carebears to gank, I mean fighting against other pvpers, most of the time against gangs of them, with no scout or link alt to back me up (though using alts does not declassify you as solo by any means).

I was originally inspired to start doing this by watching videos of the great soloers. People such as Kil2, Kovorix, Garmon, Endless Subversion, the list goes on. Ever since I watched a solo PvP video for the first time (it was Garmonation 7), I was blown away by what these guys could do all by themselves against many times their numbers and knew that this was the sort of skill that I one day wanted to achieve in EVE. But it was more than a year after watching Garmonation 7 before I finally began trying to emulate these heroes of the game in earnest.

In any solo PvP video there is a certain amount of deception needed which is absolutely necessary to create an enjoyable video. You do not see all the ships the player lost while being perma-jammed by Falcons, or because the other gang brought in logistics, or simply because they blind jumped into a system and got caught in a 20 man gate camp. This sort of stuff is not interesting to watch, unless the player managed to somehow overcome these odds, which is incredibly unlikely.

So when I began soloing I was not prepared for what I was about to encounter. It seemed as though every small gang I found to fight had at least one Falcon with it. If they didn't have a Falcon they had a Scimitar or an Oneiros. If they didn't have logistics then they had about 40 ECM drones swarming around you jamming you almost as consistently as a Falcon. I had expected some of this, but had thought I'd have at least 1 good fight for every time I was ganked. Huge underestimate.

During this early period I became quite frustrated and even angry with the state of PvP in EVE. Every time I was set upon by a Falcon or a logistics ship I would rant and rave to my corp mates. “Oh man, these guys are such pussys. What a bunch of faggots. I hope they all go die in a car accident. They're killing solo on purpose because they suck etc. etc.” Often refusing to accept or realise that they probably had that Falcon in their gang because they were expecting to find another gang to fight that also had a Falcon. Or that everyone in their gang had ECM Drones because they planned to use it to jam out enemy gang logistics ships.

Certainly there are some in EVE that will purposely dock in their home station and reship to a Falcon or something similar to gank a pilot they know are soloing and has no backup, and for these people I will never have much respect for. EVE is after all, a game, and I can not understand those who care so much about their virtual spaceship they will do anything they possibly can to make sure it never ever dies. But I have come to realise that most of the time would-be gankers are not trying to gank you, they are simply killing some unlucky player who happened to cross their path while they were searching for a gang of equal strength to fight. Fleet mentality barely recognises the solo PvPer. To a gang a soloer is just one more unlucky sod to jump into their camp and is hardly paid any attention most of the time. However for the soloer, that gang they died to might have been exactly the sort of gang to fight they had been searching for all night, if only it wasn't for that Scimitar. This sort of difference of perspective creates a vast gulf between the soloer and the fleet PvPer. Fleet members are from Mars and soloers are from Venus.

Much of this I believe is a result of something I have come to believe firmly in, that CCP did not really intend people to fly solo in this game.

Why I love solo

So that's the big negatives. I don't think anybody would disagree that solo is an incredibly hard thing to do in EVE. So what's the point in doing it, what keeps soloers going? Well I think it is for the very reason I just stated: Soloing in EVE is incredibly hard.

In my view there are two things in EVE that are at the absolute peak in difficulty. Fleet Commanding and Solo PvPing. Many people, probably most, who try their hand at soloing give up after a while out of frustration. Whether it be lack of targets, too many blobs, too much ECM, the conclusion is always the same: “Solo is dead”. This oft-repeated statement is a big part of the reason I (and I believe many others) persevere with solo. To succeed at something many consider near impossible, something that it seems even the games creators did not intend people to do offers extraordinary satisfaction. A thing easily achieved can only offer a limited amount of fun. What at first seems to be the thing that is killing solo (falcons, blobs) is in my opinion the very thing that is keeping it alive. The rush when you finally get a really good fight, and you manage to win in a situation that most people would consider you defeated before the fight has even started, and you did it completely by yourself, with no help or reliance on anybody else but your own mind and reflexes. Those are the moments a solo PvPer lives for.

So thank you to all those gankers out there. The Falcon and Blackbird pilots, the logistics pilots, the titan alts bridging 30 man gangs across regions to wipe out a single battleship. If it wasn't for you solo wouldn't be like it is, and I'd probably start looking for a real challenge.

Operation: Annihilate Pandemic Legion anyone?

A Different Perspective

A couple of months ago I was solo roaming in an Armageddon and after a long uneventful roam had found myself in Hagilur. Warping around between planets, I finally found on scan a small gang consisting of a Cerberus, Drake, Dominix and an Ares. Also on scan was a neutral Hyperion which I assumed was part of their gang. I quickly decided that if I could split them up well enough I had a chance of taking out the Cerberus and Drake before I died.

So after warping in at range on their Dominix that was sat at a gate, I turned and warped to the sun at a range of about 70km. Sure enough in a few moments their Ares landed on grid with me at the sun, but from a different angle and so had to burn at me with its MWD. It was smart about approaching at an angle though and quickly had me pointed and fell into a smooth 20km orbit around my bulky, propulsion-less battleship. My massive lasers were unable to track such a fast and small ship. I had a trick up my sleeve though, I deployed Warrior II drones and zapped the Ares with my heavy neut. It took a little bit of time, but sure enough with the little interceptors MWD cutting out regularly with each cycle of the heavy neut my drones soon popped the Ares just as his gang landed right on top of me. Fighting everything at close range was not ideal for me however, so I warped away before any of them could get a point on me.

Once I had left the battlefield, the Drake followed me to give chase and the Cerberus warped off to some other celestial while the Dominix sat at the sun. I warped around to different planets and stations for a little bit and then warped back to the sun at 100km. The Dominix was still there and a few moments after I had landed the Cerberus arrived back on grid, but about 80km from me. I quickly picked a celestial that seemed a good warp in point to try to get on top of the Cerberus, and warped away to it and then back in at a different range. No luck though, the Cerberus had moved. So I tried the same thing a couple more times. Eventually I made a mistake though, and one of these attempts to get the Cerberus ended up landing me 30km off the Cerberus, but within 20km of the Dominix. The Dominix quickly pointed me as the Cerberus began hammering me with missiles and the Drake warped back in, as well as the neutral Hyperion I mentioned earlier. At this point there was nothing to do but fight and the Cerberus had burned away to about 50km range, so I locked up the Dominix and was about to start brawling him when suddenly both Drake and Dominix launched ECM drones. They jammed me for the entirety of the “fight” and I quickly went down in a blazing fireball.

At this point I am ashamed to say, I lost my head a little bit and started insulting them in local for using ECM in an already easy win (prior to this I had a string of losses to gangs where every member of the gang deployed ECM drones). When the Hyperion pilot claimed in local he was not with these guys and was just a third party I considered it bullshit and called him a liar. After self destructing my pod and returning home though, I soon calmed down and decided to check the Hyperion pilot's combat history. Turned out he had never flown with those guys before and so I mailed him to apologise for calling him a liar. The Hyperion pilot's name was Presidente Gallente and we began chatting via mail about the different way in which we both interpreted that event.

I was frustrated with the gang for what I perceived as cowardice. It is a difficult thing for people who don't solo much to understand, but when you summon the courage to engage something you have very little chance of beating and you know you will almost certainly die during the fight, it is incredibly frustrating and painful to then be jammed by Falcons or drones. It is why I never fly with ECM drones while I am in a gang, I understand all too well the pain it causes solo pvpers and the way it degrades the game for those people.

Presidente however, saw things a little differently. He readily admitted that he mainly flies in gangs, and explained to me how he justifies the use of ECM. I won't copy/paste the mail he sent me as it is far too long for this blog, but his basic arguments and thoughts went something like the following:

He believes that solo pvp is pretty much dead. Falcons and ECM drones are an inevitable and unavoidable part of the game and the only way to deal with them is through counter-jamming. He explained that he has no love for ECM and would not mind if it were removed from the game, but as long as it is in the game and other people are using it, he will make use of it himself, so he is not at a disadvantage. He does not think badly of the gang that killed me, as there was a possibility I had a gang of my own ready to jump in. He also expressed his surprise at my behaviour in the Armageddon. To him I had thrown away my ship pointlessly, persevering with a fight I could not possibly win. He also made a point that Solo PVP is only possible these days if you put a lot of ISK into it, citing Gods Coldblood as an example of a modern successful solo pvper, but that is an issue for another blog post.

His seems to be a philosophy of adapting and doing what is necessary to survive and win. I used to share some of this philosophy until I grew bored with the sort of gameplay it created. I completely disagreed with most of what he said to me, but I found it an interesting insight into a mindset very different to my own, yet one that is apparent in almost every opponent I battle against every time I go solo roaming.

An Introduction and a History

My EVE Online experience began all the way back in 2007. I'd read about the game in a magazine and when I heard that CCP offered a free fourteen day trial I decided to give the game a shot. EVE seemed incredible to me back then, the game world so vast, the scope so epic, so much to learn, so much to do, so many possibilities. I was enthralled and played the game obsessively, running level one missions and mining in high sec for about ten days of my trial ... then I stopped. My desire to play EVE and get good at it was beaten back like a vicious dog by the sheer difficulty and complexity of the game. As a newbie, EVE can feel so complex it's a daunting prospect just to log on some days.

So I picked up Guild Wars and Counter-Strike again and forgot about the world of EVE. But a year later I was bored with these games and looking for something fresh and exciting. Then I remembered EVE. Suddenly the memories of the excitement, the grandeur of EVE came flooding back and I decided to give it another go. I'd forgotten everything I'd learnt the first time I played though and I wanted to start afresh, so I created a new account with another fourteen day trial. I created my main, Laktos, who was going to be a noble Caldari warrior, loyal, stoic and an incredibly skilled pilot. A few days later I created my alt, Jotto. An older, grumpy Amarrian with a knack for trading and mining ore, he was going to make me rich, stripping the asteroid belts of New Eden clean of Veldspar.

After a few days I upgraded to a full paying account. In the meantime I had become captivated by the idea of being a pirate. I'd read countless guides and stories on the internet about EVE piracy, including Skira Ranos's Beginners Guide to Piracy and a can-flipping guide written by the Gentlemen of Low Moral Fibre [SCONE] corporation. So with a gleam in my eye and a fire in my heart I bought a Moa cruiser and set off for Amamake, having absolutely no idea it was one of the pirate capitals of EVE. Needless to say that Moa died, and after a few more losses and not having made any friends, I became disillusioned with the game again and quit after only a few weeks.

Another year passed. I began reading about EVE piracy again and in 2009 I subscribed once more to try my hand at piracy and mining. This time I found a friendly industrial corporation that I joined with Jotto, and with Laktos I began my fledgling career of piracy in the Amamake area once more, but in a properly fit Rifter this time. I had a couple of kills and a handful of losses, but progress was slow and because of my inexperience I had a horrible time trying to find targets and would roam for hours without finding anything to shoot. I lasted about a month this time before quitting again.

But only half a year later, in January of 2010 I resubscribed. I didn't know why, but something about this game just kept drawing me back.. I felt that this was the perfect game for me, if only I persisted with it. And persistence paid off this time. On only my second day back I met two young pirates, SinthEmortal and Diddy Meerkat who had just started their own pirate corporation: Beyond Redemption Corp. We hit it off really well and before I knew it I was moving down to Aralgrund with two new friends who could teach me piracy and a hauler full of Rifters to lose. Sinth and Diddy were themselves fairly inexperienced at pvp, so it took me about a month to catch up to them in knowledge of the game, and then for more than a year we lived a simple life in Aralgrund, learning from and with each other.

After about six months living in Aralgrund, a very experienced pirate by the name of WayCharles moved in to our system. Ex-Mean Corp, now running his own corporation, the Mountain Militia, he had a vast amount of knowledge and experience of EVE, yet not a whiff of elitism about him, and we quickly became friends. Life went on fairly simply from this point, the Mountain Militia and Beyond Redemption Corp became closer and closer, eventually forming our own alliance together called the Mountain Sprouts, which also included the one man corporation London Fields Coffee Club, run by Serenetor.

But eventually this situation came to an end. Me, Waycharles and a few others moved into a C3 wormhole to conduct low sec pvp operations from. To be able to access the POS properly, I changed corporations from Beyond Redemption to the Mountain Militia. During this time Sinth and Diddy started to lose interest in the game and started playing less and less. WayCharles became busy in real life and was playing more and more infrequently. Sinth and Diddy soon effectively left the game and with the wormhole starting to lose it's spark the Mountain Militia moved back out into low sec, to the Aedald system in the region of Molden Heath. Aedald lasted a few weeks, but WayCharles soon told us that due to real life he was going to be leaving EVE for a long time. So with the corporation in stasis I decided it was finally time to branch out into the world and discover new things, after all, EVE is a vast world with countless pvp corporations to try...

So I leaped three systems across to Oddelulf and joined Gunpoint Diplomacy [RANSM], talking my way in with offers of free sexual favours for my good friend Dirty Protagonist.

And now here I am, writing this blog. I've long been tempted to start a blog, but have resisted until now for want of keeping my inane thoughts and ramblings from clogging up the internet highway. However I've decided I've got nothing to lose by giving it a shot, so here goes.

Oh, and why the title: Crime, Punishment and Spaceships? Simple, it combines two of my favourite things in one sentence. The novel, Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky, and EVE Online.