The Enigma affair, comments and rages

The Original Enigma?

Just before going on leave for a week, I posted that two of my Bastards had snagged a ship flown by a CCP Dev and ended up podding him and getting a super rare ship in the drop, an Engima. I then left it at that and when I came back, I was a bit shocked at the amount of text that was generated across a number of different forums and killboards: from Reddit to EveNews24 to EVE-Kills to Eve-O.

I was a bit disappointed with the comments from various persons who accused us of faking kill mails (to pad our kill board) to being close friends of CCP and getting some cool toys because of it. A list of where people talked about it is at the bottom of this post.


After spending some time reading through all the relevant posts I wanted to take the opportunity to answer back, clarify and refute as much as possible but helpfully, TFS Tibbs, one of the two Bastards who was involved decided to put something down on and I share it with you all.

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The Enigma Affair

It was a early morning and I was drifting around Dudreda after a previous night's fun with the Eve-Uni blob. I thought I would run around the Arifsdald pocket, just behind the Eve-Uni base system. This system always has a few explorers to hunt down.

I jumped my prober into Ansen, a nice small system always good as everything appears on directional scanner. So a quick and easy task and on entering the system, I saw only one pilot in local. However, hang on a minute, it was a CCP guy!  My first reaction was that it was some kind of roleplaying event. I wonder what its for?

I hit the directional-scanner and spot a single ship.....a cockroach? WTF is that?

Second thought– I vaguely remember a role playing event where stuff was left in a wormhole for players to find -okay must be one of those frigates. I dropped probes.

A member of the Meatshields is passing one jump away, I pull him into fleet and I have a tackler now.
2 scan cycles later and I have a warpable target. We both jump in and I squad warp to target.

We land close to a weird looking ship and I hear “point”, joy. The mystery ship was warp scrambled. Thank you Bracer! So quickly we start shooting this spider looking craft. It had shields and such and Bracer's ishkur's drones tore into it. No return fire, no movement to escape, no magic weapon. Nothing, holy shit, the pilot wasn't asleep was he? Once it was down to near hull we stopped shooting and kept points only; it was ransom time. This will be epic on The Bastards' ransom board!

I invite the Dev to our ransom channel, I have to pay a CSPA charge (SERIOUSLY WTF!) however, there was no response; the Dev is definitely AFK. 

CSPA Charge? For CCP?

Now what? We had about 20 mins to downtime – okay time to kill the stupid frigate and it went boom!

Kill the CCP DEV

We grab the pod, let's try another ranson but he is still AFK. Ok kill him, at least a nice corpse to add to TheHermit's mortuary ( a great website by the way..)

Job done and then we check the loot, silence our jaws dropped. IT-IS-AN-ENIGMA!
[At this point a million things go through my mind – Is this legit? Are CCP introducing the Jove?
Did I just win EVE? Etc.] Anyway its only 15 minutes to downtime. Stop thinking, scoop the loot and think later!

We have isk!!!

I hit 'scoop all' – no too big – f*ck we need a hauler. The next ten minutes are spent floating in space next to the wreck waiting for a prowler to arrive – no stress – calm, be calm.


5 minutes to downtime and the hauler arrives and grabs the ship. It slowly rumbles away. 

1minute to downtime and the hauler docks in high sec. The Enigma is sitting in my hanger – oof.

Tibbs and Bracer celebrating....

Downtime hits – WTF do I do now?

So – I start up a few convos – “no one will touch that thing unless CCP say its legit” is the general response.

OK – I do the right thing – I petition it.

And then the Jove came and took it away – oh well – at least we got a ransom payout in the end (1 plex each – for the record).

No elite PVP skills here – just doing my piracy basics – a freak event, a little bit of EVE history, and a few glorious hours of staring at a very red shiny ship in my hanger.


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So there you have it, straight from Tibbs himself who was one of three witnesses of the event. It is a freak, possibly once-in-a-lifetime-event, Tibbs and Bracer were in the right place and had the presence of mind to do what pirates do.

We do not have any relationship with CCP or the CCP Devs / Bug hunters.


The killmail has been API verified so I hope that removes all doubts. Great pity that we could not have kept the shiny red ship. I mean no-one can fly the damn thing so why not? It would make a wonderful addition to someone's hangar. A two plex reward is better than nothing and I have created and awarded a special medal to Tibbs and Bracer too but it is a poor reward when compared to keeping the ship!


Out of interest, if this ship WAS allowed to be kept - I wonder how much Tibbs would have gotten for it? I keep hearing 100b isk but surely not? Who would pay for this ship?



Here's a list of where the cockroach kill had been mentioned and some of the chatter in it:

Killmail comments (very funny and some quite rage-fuelled too!)

http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=12405684
http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=12401428

Eve.O forum threads (a tad dry but some funny posts)

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=68458&find=unread
https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=68486&find=unread
https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=68697&find=unread

Failheap thread
http://failheap-challenge.com/showthread.php?5610-Cockroach

Kugu
http://www.kugutsumen.com/showthread.php?3647-Comedy-Killmails/page58

Eve-Uni thread
http://forum.eveuniversity.org/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=51164

Reddit
http://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/pje5p/pirates_scan_down_ccp_dude_loot_enigma_have_to/

Jesters Trek blog
http://jestertrek.blogspot.com

Oldergamers
http://www.theoldergamers.com/forum/eve-public-intergalactic-superhighway-public-forum/415176-la-cockroach.html


Shameless plug...


While we cannot guarantee cockroach kills or CCP Dev bodies, we do have regular ops and roams (all small to medium fleets) as well as having a laugh. If you want to join us pirates, come on over to the Eve-O recruitment thread, bump it, follow the instructions and apply to join. We invite recruits to our regular fleets as part of the interview. Go on, you'll love it.

Also we have a need for US Timezone pilots (or corporations) to join us. Drop me or TFS Tibbs an evemail or convo.

Roaming fleets - I love them and WTF is a COCKROACH?

The Low Sec Roam
We undocked into our local space and the Sansha incursion was still there - hanging around gates became a very bad idea as these chaps could hit HARD. Local was at an usual high of 60+ and a check scan revealed a fleet from the Volition Cult in their huginns and scimitars. SniggWaffe came in and chased them off while we were still getting ready. Snigg then got bored and also left the scene; meanwhile a sizeable Sicarius fleet went into Hagilur no doubt to do battle with a smaller fleet made up with pilots from the 'Something Posing as meat' alliance. Then there was the presence of Eve-University in Hagilur too. Yes, quite a typical night in this neck of Metropolis.

All in all, I knew something would kick off somewhere. We lept in to impose ourselves onto the local scene but we couldn't get anything useful. Man, I do miss Max and his stiletto in these times. We were too slow to cross the distance and the fight had petered out by the time we arrived. It wasn't all bad luck, z0de managed to kill a caracal in his paper thing brutix and we also snagged a Celestis; both with Eve-Uni. This then kicked off a some sort of hunt where Eve-Uni, The Fendalian Collective and Sicarius (shame on them, all flashy and criminal) joined up to camp the gates blocking our exit route back to Evati. Sicarius should be fighting Eve-Uni and The Fendalian collective since I thought they are pirates! There was chatter that leaked out into local from the Fenders:

"HOLD FIRE!"

Then followed by:

"Sorry, your flashiness scared us."

Yes, that is what happens when you have criminals in your midst. The overview can be distracting, just invite them into fleet. Anyway, we moved deeper into the Hagilur pocket looking for more targets. If people wanted us, they will have to find us. Camping gates is one of the most boring activities around and I was sure that people would just get bored - thereby offering us an opening. Eve-Uni for most of this time stayed docked up, poking their heads out only occasionally before ducking back in. We rolled around Ansen, Arwa etc before we decided it was time to leave. I checked with my scouts and sure enough, the exit gate was now cleared, the carebear camp lasted no more than 15 minutes. We moved through. Just as we emerged into the familiar Evati star filled sky, another one of my scouts informed me that a pirate fleet had come in through Thelan and had jumped into another camp!

So we raced back and only managed to get a few scraps. However, a man has to eat so we were grateful for the meagre morsels. We the moved around again into the outskirts of The Forge when we spied a megathron and friends, we jumped in and killed them only for a third fleet come piling in. We killed their stealth bomber and made a hasty withdrawal. All the while enduring some silly smack from the newcomers. They were awfully confused mistaking us as members of yet another fleet of pirates next door and calling us out for running away.

Anyway, no worries from us as we were quite chill with kills and loot aplenty. We docked up and rested, some pirates leaving their ship hangars to deal with other business while new pirates, fresh from resting came on board. The Bastards' are more active now (though with the occasional quiet day) and this can only be good for us as an organisation.

The remaining week had us messing about with bubbles in null-sec, some gate camping and more roaming fleets. As pirates, we tend to fly with whatever and whoever so plenty of solo and duo-fleets head out from Evati. Not for us where no-one undocks unless there's a fleet of 50+ with logistical support! Hell no, we're pirates and we have to eat so we go with what we have!

It just so happened that BracerKirk and Tibbs on one of these roams spotted and killed something....amazing. I don't even know what it is or why it was sitting where it was at but am going to give them each a medal.

Please look at the kill of a CCP 'Cockroach' and the 'enigma' loot.


++UPDATE++

The Kill has been API Verified now. It is genuine so please, refrain from accusing The Bastards of faking killmails.

http://the-bastards.com/kb/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=23244

Well done gents, well done!

Some Italian Vomit, A huge gate camp, and lots of alcohol

Introductions please
The latest drunk roam for me kicked off with some of my fellow fleet mates already well drunk by the time I linked in. Mirtillo was slurring into the communications while Dam1987 was being drunk and Scottish: a fearsome combination. There were some new faces there but within minutes we were all fast (and drunken) friends. Shizraak, one of my old drun roam attendees was absent due to some illness. The best cure is alcohol my dear Shiz!

So we compared notes on what we were drinking and insulted each other as nicely as we could about our choices. I was actually mixing my drinks but had settled on that old stand-by: Disaronno and coca-cola. 

Drink of choice

The Incursion
What happens when an incursion appears, there's alcohol sloshing around and the pirates are bored? Well carnage. As our first outing, we decided that we would rush straight into the Sansha incursion and see just how hard these Sansha chaps were. They were appearing in space like the poverbial bogeyman and sucking up hapless citizens into their ships. That simply wouldn't do!

So we undocked in our ships (I forget which one) and warped to the beacons; so many Sansha about and aggressive too. My ship arrived amidst a see of red - an incursion fleet was in full flow. I ordered targets to be locked and fired and before I even finished, a spikey Sansha battle ship volleyed my craft into pieces. All around me, my drunken fleet mates were sliced to pieces. The alcohol played its part: dulling our senses and responses but still, the power of the incursion fleet was most impressive. After losing one too many ships we thought that we should now go on a roll.

I decided on a bait maller and called it (cunningly) as 'bait'. 

We set destination to be Ardar and left via Arnher.

The Camp

Well, one jump out and there was a camp on the Evati gate in Arnher. It looked like members of Dark-Rising (now out of the Executives alliance) in a fleet of perhaps a dozen battle cruisers and support. Even drunk, I still retained enough wits about me. I ordered the fleet to burn back towards the gate and sure enough, the [-Dark] fleet went red on all of us. However, their alpha damage was quite poor, or did they not concentrate on primary and ended up spreading their damage? Either way, we all managed to get out. Result! One for the drunken bastards!

The vomit then the tackle
At this point, Mirtillo announced that he was going to vomit and off he chundered.

The Second Camp
After our brush with Dark Rising, the fleet wandered up towards the Hagilur pocket - always fun as EVE-Uni has made it one of their low-sec PvP 'summer camps'. We warped around here and there and didn't manage to entice the Unistas so I offered to move around a bit more.

After several attempts at reading the map, I figured out where I needed to go - into Miroitem and straight into another camp. This time is was held by the infamous 'Negative Ten' alliance who promptly destroyed my ship and smart bombed my drunken arse back to Evati. Take a note Dark Rising: that's how to camp a gate.

More Alcohol
With myself being podded, it should have cleared my alcoholic fugue, right? No. I was still drunk when I emerged from the cloning vat. I cannot remember anything else from the roam; apart from applauding someone for throwing up (live) on the vent server and some other madness.  I think I probably insulted everyone I could think of too and no doubt, most of this was recorded onto vent.

Which reminds me, there's a four hour drunken roam recording that TheHermit has stashed somewhere. I shudder to think what is on it...