Enemy frigates outside our door!

"We have lots of war targets outside." Informed Shae in her cloaked and hidden position above our station. After over a month of official war with GIS and their friends, where we have been successfully attacking their more expensive ships in our much cheaper T1 frigates, the enemy came back to visit us last night in similar T1 frigates. No doubt to entice us to fight and to cut down their losses. Their killboard efficiency isn't too good at the moment.

"Can you ID the ships Shae?" I asked as I quickly scrolled through the available pilots list.

"Er, incursus, incursus, rifter and griff. There's more in local than there are ships."

"So expect some cloakies, probably falcons." I observed. GIS are well known for their love of ECM. A valid tactic by the way and something we need to work on.

"Yup."

"Shouldn't matter; all pilots 'x' up to kick GIS and their frigates." The corporation communication channel, always populated and busy flashed several times and we had a small fleet of eight pilots.

We undocked and then we danced with the GIS frigates who didn't immediately engage us but tried to dock. On several occasions, buzzing us and taunting us with their close fly-bys and then docking up. It could not continue and we eventually popped three of their frigates. Through a combination of poor tactics and sloppiness on their part and good placement of ships by us. This is where the war declaration has helped us as we could engage these chaps without any interference from station guns and CONCORD.

Long live bribery!

We've learnt some more and will adjust our tactics and ships accordingly.

I lost my rifter due to a moment of absent mindedness where I locked and fired on a neutral. The gate guns, detecting an illegal weapon's discharge, dismembered my rifter in very short order. Obviously, we didn't bribe enough people!

During all this, and since we were pirates, we still managed to probe down and tackle a drake. Forcing the pilot to eject from his ship was a bonus but the pilot wasn't in a talkative mood when we offered to sell back his rigged ship.

Finally, the frigate/destroyer fleet - restless for more booty went off on a roam towards Metropolis / Heimater. We managed to ransom a rifter and killed an arbitrator and a falcon. The arbitrator pilot was very unhappy with us as we tried to first ransom his cruiser and then when his ship popped, we tackled his pod. He wasn't too happy with us.

Cooch took over the fleet as I had to dock up - there was a very odd bug where my global criminal countdown kept on resetting back to 15 minutes every five minutes. This went on for over forty minutes! Very odd and quite disturbing. The arbitrator pilot, just before he popped, threatened that his friends would find me and deal with me. Maybe this was what he had in mind?

Crime does pay
Finally crime does pay as the list below shows you the pay-out from yet another batch of loot that we have sold.

**** 106,010,958.01
**** 11,105,295.58
**** 69,740,264.89
**** 21,870,671.50
**** 19,612,745.53
**** 9,931,825.00
**** 23,492,253.50
flashfresh 26,791,258.38
**** 60,780,529.25
**** 99,981,083.50
**** 257,043,220.38
**** 45,905,777.00
**** 67,048,803.00
**** 34,709,465.75
**** 2,928,337.04
**** 24,085,517.52
**** 31,507,797.67
**** 111,800,468.37
**** 27,544,864.15
**** 55,779,574.33
**** 58,828,362.91
**** 21,963,471.13
**** 10,481,149.30
**** 2,743,399.30
**** 460,331.98
**** 80,226,163.64
**** 21,538,028.42
**** 16,092,014.48
**** 1,593,181.82
**** 154,550,897.47
**** 83,056,499.50
**** 20,580,517.82
**** 47,697,812.10
**** 11,284,585.71
**** 24,271,850.71
**** 60,041,643.82

Total sales were around 1.7 billion isk and there's another load of gear being repaired, repackaged and loaded up.

One of the strengths of our pirate corp is the equitable split in all loot collected. We've developed an application that takes all kills and loot and hyperlinks them to each pilot involved, the killboard and the item values from EVE-Central. In one place, everyone can see the value of the loot drop per kill, the pilots involved as well as total value.

A very slick, almost automated loot management and isk distributing system, developed by pirates for pirates. Something that we, The Bastards are very proud of. Here's an example from the application.



The Recruitment -'Recruitment for The Bastards is now closed'.
New recruits are fitting in quite nicely but we still have a number in the queue being evaluated - it's a long process and unfortunately, mistakes during the evaluation period might result in the application being rejected. It's a bit harsh but we can't afford for someone to be a paper weight.

January to March 2009 Recruitment Intake Details

Total Applicants: 29

Instant rejection due to failing to complete form as directed: 2
Rejection due to failing basic security, AGE and API checks: 2
Rejection due to failed interview (ex. no vent): 1
Rejected due to inexperience in piracy: 4
Rejected due to other reasons: 12

Still in progress: 5 (to be completed by middle of Mar 2009)
Passed and accepted on a three-month probationary period: 3
Those in the queue and ready for next recruitment cycle: 2