You are crap. You therefore deserved to die.

"You are crap. You therefore deserved to die," said Gorgoleon to me in his very, matter-of-fact tone. Sadly, I had to agree though I did not want to take anything away from the victorious Lau Wensink and his deathmatch offer. Yes, I lost to Lau in an arrange 1 v 1.

However, just a couple of hours before the duel - Jaxx and I found ourselves out in space in our recons (Jaxx in a Lachesis, me in my rapier) and we started to poke around our local area of space. We had new corporations move into our immediate area and we were interested in finding out who they were and whether they are 'fun' and potentially lucrative. A gang was formed and we went hunting. It would be an hour before I was ready and in typical fashion, I had not even fitted a ship.

Lau had challenged me to a duel and I agreed though I wanted it in a Bastard fashion: so I stipulated that it would be cruiser hulls with one (or more) battleship sized weapons. For me, I choose the rupture and bolted on a dual 425mm repeating auto-canon. My engineers had to add extra reinforced bulk heads to the hull so that I could dock without the weapon shearing off its mount. To power this monster gun required an entire rackful of reactor control units to provide the necessary power for the weapon. Extra large ammunition was added and crammed into the hull and I even managed to fit a medium smart bomb with three racks of 125mm auto canons. Truly an abomination. I then threw in some warrior II drones and with a scram, mwd and ECCM; I considered myself ready.

I had a bookmark set up and Lau, wisely came in his pod to bookmark the location and then warp off back to the station. He wanted to hide is ship until the very last moment. I was already undocked and was in a rupture, the overly large dual-425mm canon a very obvious addition.

My tactics were predicated on a number of things:

1. Any BS sized weapon would have problems hitting a cruiser, especially one moving with a MWD. Therefore, I fitted a MWD.
2. Therefore an alternative and supporting method of attack would be required and they would range from target painters, webbers, scramblers, nos, ecm and drones. I would be relying on drones and my smaller, frigate sized auto canons to do most of the damage. Hence warrior IIs and x3 125 mm auto canons.
3. I know Lau has been using ECM before (against VenomOrchid for example) and it was possible, that he would come in a vexor with a load of drones (some ECM) and nos. Therefore I fitted, with some difficulty, a medium smart bomb to take care of the drones.
4. I had no tank however and was probably cap unstable, toyed with the idea for a cap booster but decided to fit a ECCM module just in case he was cheeky and fitted a racial ECM.

It was with some surprise (and worry) that Lau arrived, after being counted down by Jaxx to initiate hostilities, at the bookmark in his rupture. Not what I expected.

As soon as he arrived, I locked him as he did me. I punched my MWD and moved into a wide elliptical orbit. Lau spat out his drones and I kept mine inside. As soon as I started taking shield damage - I hit the smart bomb with a grin. Meanwhile, I fired up all my weapons and my ship shuddered as the dual 425mm canon opened up, spitting out large calibre EMP shells the short distance to Lau's rupture. He started to take damage but I noticed with alarm how quickly my shields melted. His drones were not quite dead, even after three pulses of the smart bomb and with little armour behind the shield, I was concerned. Once his drones were gone (or hastily recalled); I sent out my own lovelies out. My armour continued to wink down and my scram shut off. My MWD had long since turned itself off as well. I had no cap left.

Odd; I thought. However, my auto canons required no capacitor to fire, being almost entirely mechanical and they bucked as they spat out shells. Lau was down to armour but I was now down to almost hull. With no damage control available, I would be dead.

His surviving drones buzzed into me and my ship blew up.Everyone had a good laugh, myself included.

Great fight by Lau, looking forward to the write-up

After the duel, Lau joined our pirate fleet and we moved around sniffing for targets but we ended up with him losing his drake to a gate-camping abaddon around the notorious Akkio to E0A-ZC entry-point. Gorgoleon, always a hoot to have in our fleet, with a dodgy microphone this time round, managed to get in on two kills including a hiliarious drake kill of an ex-corp mate's drake (not an agreed 1 v 1 or anything like that, target was in a belt) who calmly stated to Gorg, that he "had lost a friend."

To which Gorgoleon, shrugged and replied, "I will make more more friends on dating sites." Gorgoleon is a true Bastard.

The drake setup wasn't too bad either.

OK - back to some admin stuff as well as tweaking our requirement page. Yes, The Bastards are getting ready to open up recruitment. I will announce the day here and in the EVE-O forums too.

Final news: http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1171104 - looks like we might be back on the reserve list but with such a short time to prepare; I wonder if it's a good idea to submit a request?

Chasing them complex runners

Many pilots now run complex missions deep inside space, hard to probe out but if done - then it could prove rich pickings for pirates. A mixed gang was in place as a call went out for more DPS. Someone from M34N corp had found a gang comprising a megathron, drake, drake and rokh inside a known complex. Due to spatial anomlies, the complex entrance tends to shift so relocating it was a boon and we assembled a fleet as quickly as we could. We hastily refitted with afterburners to ensure a decent turn of speed inside the odd conditions within a complex.


Warping in assembled and took stock. The fleet included:

Hurricane
Astarte
Stabber
Prophecy
Typhoon
Taranis

(sorry if I got the ship types wrong!)

We approached the first gate - the mission runners had been inside the complex for a while and we had to hurry. They could be finishing their last level and we were merely at the entrance. Speed was of the essence.

Activating the first gate, we were catapulted to the next level, deeper inside the spatial anomaly. It was empty, only wrecks visible and evidence of the passage of the mission runners. There was a second gate, 48km away and the fleet hit their afterburners and tore themselves over to the next gate. It took precious minutes to get the entire fleet there. We jumped into the next level and found that, like the first, it was empty apart from wrecks. Checking our scanners we realised that the megathron and rokh were now present and probably behind us. Maybe they were aware of our presence and were thinking of a trap?

We ploughed on. The third and fourth levels were like the first and second: disappointingly empty with the next gate always further away than expected. The last level was the location of the hive mother. Yes, the complex was infested with rogue drones of all strains. Some absolutely massive and horrifying. Bursting from the previous level, I saw the monstrosity for myself: a drone of massive proportions with mutated ships growing from it. In front were two Drake-class battlecruisers, all that remained of the mission team we were hunting. We had to avoid the hive mother but also tackle the drakes. We were also 60KM away and had to circle round. The mission runners appeared to be unconcerned about our presence (or oblivious) and continued to fire on the hive mother.

I was caught on some debris and my velocity stopped dead. Meanwhile, a tackle was made on one of the drakes by our taranis and battle (albeit long-range) was joined. I was set up for short-range destruction so was unable to participate. However, I did get close enough to be shot at by the hive mother.

One of the two drakes warped off while the tackled one was destroyed. The fleet stayed and destroyed the hive mother all the time waiting for the megathron and rokh. However, once the last drake was destroyed, the megathron and the rokh also disappeared, reckoning that our fleet was too big for them. Fair enough - we hovered all of the compounds dropped by the rogue drones, especially the huge cache by the hive mother.

Vexor kill.

Kane Rizzell has been a regular scally wag in Eifer and we've been chatting on the independence channel for a bit. I was making my way back to Gusandall to drop off some of the loot from my foray into Hadozeko; when Kane asked me to help him with a huginn problem. Laughing, I discovered that he was tackled by the huginn and Kane was now jammed to kingdom come. However, the damage from the huginn was pitiful and Kane was in no danger of his armour being scratched. By the time I reached Eifer, Kane informed me that the Huginn had left.

No matter something else had caught my attention: my address book informed me that 'Wuabba' had logged back in. Now this was fun, chances are he would be back in auren; ratting. I also noticed that Wuabba, OriasV et al had left The YingYan Concept corp and formed a new one called the 'White Flame Armada'. No matter.

I jumped into Auren and yes there he was. A quick scan and I found him in a vexor-class cruiser in a belt 5. Quickly informing Kane if he would be interested in helping, I jumped in and tackled the deadly drone boat. My priority was to destroy his drones so with 1pt on the vexor, I webbed and blasted the hammerhead drones. Wuabba probably wasn't paying any attention and didn't get his drones to attack me until he was down to three. He then launched two more and it was game on. The drones buzzed round me and chewed my shields while I quickly tried to despatch his drones. I killed three more before they were withdrawn and then released. Looks like Wuabba had learnt some tricks.

Meanwhile, Kane had arrived in his hurricane class ship and it would be game over for the unfortunate Wuabba.

So it was, I tried to snag the pod but Wuabba had logged!

Fair enough, we would sit here and wait for him to relog.

We waited for about 30 minutes and nothing. Kane had to leave and I stuck around for another five minutes before I too, had to leave.

Wuabba eventually relogged an hour later.

Rupture Ass Kicking......mine.

Logged on for an hour and met up with Rakanas. We tracked a rupture down to Auren and engaged it. Bad communication and horrible performance on my laptop meant that we attacked singlely.

The rupture was tough with drones that killed the rifters. I got out with 25% hull while Rakanas was taken down.

Drones need to be targetted first. Always.