26 May 2009

Some RL issues

Hi chaps, need to curtail my EVE time due to a real life family emergency - I need to concentrate on family rather than New Eden for the time. Will be back soon.

F

20 May 2009

Star Trekking, across the universe.......


Due to a real-life emergency (involving A&E 15 minutes before the kick off time) the much anticipated 'Star Trek' roam was postponed to a later date. It was to be a destroyer-based roam with each ship named after a 'famous' vessel from any of the Star Trek movies and series. To add more atmosphere; one had to try and use a signature quote from the film during an appropriate time during the roam.

Examples: 'Klingons on the starboard bow!' (enemy spotted) or 'She cannae take it Jim!' (overloading my guns is bad m'kay?).

You get the idea and I will re-organise this once I clear my time-table. I plan on FC'ing and doing roams at set times; just to give people some structure and the ability to plan. Star Trek Roam will go ahead.

Anyway, been quite focusing my efforts on recruitment; the current batch is being cleared down now and we're getting ready for the new batch, after the exhausted recruiters have had their break. Recently, there's been an update that has affected the agility of all ships. We decided to check out the rumours that frigates could now get caught quite easily without bubbles. We laughed that it wasn't possible. However, me and Snake Boy were proved to be in gross, error tonight and both were instantly caught by a camp and cut to pieces. However, every cloud has a silver lining and this means that we can now catch other ships just as easily! Bonus.

We chased a smaller fleet around around 21:00 but all who docked and logged off as soon as AntonioBanderas appeared in local! We were amazed to be honest. Earlier in the night, we were in frigates and were roaming around looking for kills and loot and I was lucky enough to have a drake land next to me at a gate and open up (illegally) at a neutral hauler. Not quite believing my luck, I pointed and webbed the drake and called in the backup. Who promptly and gleefully killed the foolish pilot.

So, a fun night - not being on for a few days; it was good to catch up with some of the pilots and find out what things are going on. The Bastards and Hellcats are a family and we care deeply for each other. Our forums are active and bursting with great content and threads. Examples include Bandies foodie thread - he can cook and very well it seems, Ronin's Music threads (this guy knows his sounds!) and the cool picture thread of us pirates in real life. Yes, some of us have decided to post our 'real' pictures up there and it is of great interest to me to see how they look in real life when compared to their vicious avatar persona.

Things are great at the moment; we as an organisation are getting stronger each day and we have ambitious but achievable goals in the near future. However, just wanted to end this post with a big thank you to all at The Bastards, The Hellcats and my readers.

So, to help with our Star Trek Destroyer roam, I would like to have a collection of ST quotes that I can either use or give to other fleet pilots to use. Pop your entries into the comments box........

.....and watch the current Star Trek movie, I loved it - like to hear your views dear reader.

19 May 2009

testing intense debate comment (again)

testing intense debate comment (again)

15 May 2009

Bastards in teh news

Bastards in the news, okay old news but any exposure is good.....Massively

13 May 2009

80's Movie Roam

Tuesday nights will become Flashfresh's regular roaming gang operation type thing - and I will try and make it a regular event though not every week. As in the tradition of The Bastards, there has to be a theme to bind the pilots together, either some fitting restriction, ship type or some other stipulation.

Last night, it was 80s movies nights in destroyer-class ships or an equivalent. I sent out a call to the corp and allies that they had to have a destroyer class ship, fitted for gank first and foremost with points and for them to pick a signature 80's film of their choice. Some research had to be done to ensure that they have thought long and hard on the choice. It generated a lot of chat and interesting fittings and as the operation kick-off time rolled around, it looked like there would be a fleet of about a dozen ships.

Untypical of a Bastard roam, some of the pilots were assembled around Evati an hour or so before the mission was due to kick off. Happy San spotted a dominix class battle ship nosing around Evati and the proto-fleet went out to give them a typical Evati welcome. Leading the charge in her stealth bomber was Mynxee and the dominix was melted down extremely quickly. Just check out the damage from the stealth bomber. I know that recent upgrades had given this ship class a lift but this is impressive!

So, once 20:30 ticked along, the fleet was ready to go. Destination set, scout roles allocated and order of battle communicated. 'Top Gun' (1986, grossing $350million worldwide), a thrasher class destroyer rolled out of Evati, sporting several 200mm auto canons loaded with EMP ammunition. This was going to be my baby. I was joined by Scrumptious Shae in catalyst named 'Blade Runner' (1982, by Ridley Scott, one of the top 100 films of all time) while Happy San in his crow, called 'The Blues Brothers'(1980, $58million US Gross) raced off ahead as our scout. He didn't have the skills for a destroyer and was a better as our scout. A crow was much more suitable.

We had four thrashers, one catalyst, one wolf, one cheetah, one incursus and one crow. Ok, not a 100% dedicated destroyer gang but close enough.

However, it was Gorgoleon in his cheetah ('First Blood', 1982 with $157million world wide gross) who spotted the first victim of the night. After brushing past a very lack lustre GIS camp in Egmar we proceeded another few jumps. Happy San was locked by a GIS falcon but ignored it and carried forward. Hanging at the back of the main fleet was Jmarr in his incursus.

"Flash, GIS merlin, falcon and brutix are following us. I think."

"Roger that Jmarr, no worries - we have some distance on them and they would be foolish to tangle with us." A thought flashed through my mind. "However, once we're in Klogori - hold gate cloak on the gate please."

There was a ripple of acknowledgements and the fleet jumped into Klogori. If the pilot was sensible, he wouldn't just blind jump after us, especially not in a battle cruiser.

However, common sense doesn't seem to be in supply amongst those space warriors and the Brutix pilot jumped in after us. We knew because we had already made a note of his name and that there was a gate fire behind us. Silly boy.

"OK - this chap is not an outlaw so only war targets need tackle. Only war targets."

Once the gate cloak had vanished, the brutix was sitting there like a big whale, it turned and tried to race back towards the gate - spitting out drones.

"Tackle. Tackle. Tackle!" I said, nudging my thrasher towards the brutix. I was about 32KM away and hit the micro warp drive.

"Point." Said Mynxee, her thrasher was aptly named 'I'mGonnaGetYouSucka' (1988, US Gross $19million) got point as did several others.

"Point." Said an unfamiliar female voice, she didn't sound like Shae or Mynxee. Then there was a huge explosion and I realised that one of two Hellcat applicants had gotten carried away and also initiated hostile actions against the brutix. The sentry guns, detecting an illegal weapons discharge, since these neutrals were not in a sanctioned war, promptly dismantled Amy Fae's thrasher.

However, against the damage dealing fury of this gang, the brutix was peeled apart. Since the fight was against a recognised war target - no-one had a global criminal countdown. We all laughed and prepared to continue moving.

"Grab the loot and let's go!" I said, the fleet whipped around and went to a safe spot. However, GIS rarely travel or fight alone and soon the merlin and the falcon were at the gate; no doubt more were on the way. Some of us went back to joist with them but the merlin and falcon jumped back through and no doubt ran back to Egmar. We had more important things to do. Ten minutes later, 'First Blood' had probed out a hurricane, again in Klogori. We all piled in and killed it with extreme prejudidice. We wanted to ransom the pod but the tackle was missing as the capsuleer expertly whipped his egg out from under our noses.

Waiting out our criminal countdowns, we saw a lot of traffic and most were towards Ardar. Eliviron, the second of the new Hellcat applicants did not have a criminal countdown and was tasked to explore the surrounding systems.

Finding nothing and with our countdowns expired we went to the next system and again, Gorg drew 'first blood' having probed out a drake and myrmidon in safe spot. I tasked Jmarr, Kamoonga and Mynxee to do the deed however while the drake was tackled, the myrmidon bolted. Wishing for a quicker kill, I ordered the rest of the fleet to jump in after the tacklers and as we landed - the myrmidon returned. No doubt shamed into flying back to rescue his friend.

"Primary is the drake. Secondary are the myrmdion's drones. Confirm your points please." I said.

"Point on drake." Replied Jmarr.

"Point on myrmidon." Said Happy. Other pirates confirmed webs and target painters.

"Target and pop the myrmidon's drones. Keep the myrmidon pointed but knock his drones out."

The myrmidon was promptly pointed and webbed while we went to work on the drake. The drake was popped but not before it managed to snag and destroy 'Blade Runner' with a well-aimed salvo. We took swift and brutal revenge and managed to snag the pod. We were going to have fun with it later. Our attention switched to the Myrmidon and we pounded the hell out of it. Fenneck was smart and targetted the drones throughout the engagement, forcing the myrm pilot to scoop his drones on a regular basis in order to save them.

The space between our ships was thick with auto canon projectiles, missiles and drones zipping between the antagonists. As the myrmidon went into structure, I wanted to grab this pod along with the drake pilot's pod we had earlier. I had no idea what I was going to do, ransoms were so routine.

"Tacklers, take points off the myrmidon, get the pod." There was a flash and my thrasher was showered by gallente battle cruiser debris. The pod zipped away amidst a lot of cursing but at least we had the other one.

"Sorry boss, I lost the first pod, I moved too far away and lost point...." Cursing at the loss of both pods, I decided we had to move on. No matter, loot was scooped and we went to a safe spot to cool things off. We also examined the kill mails and discussed the ship setups. Pushing further south we ended up in Frerstorn and tackled an Armageddon - what a treat! However, local then shot up by dozens and the order was given to bail out. It looked like a blob was pushing their way through here - possibly called in to combat us or maybe not. We couldn't take the risk. Gorg, all cloaked up and sneaky reported back that there were at least four battle, ships, seven cruisers, nine frigates, a couple of interceptors and some battle cruisers all close by. The 'geddon may or may not have been bait. We couldn't take the risk.

Of course, even if we were doing nothing, something always happens and there was a smaller fleet who were also present in the same system who initiated chat with us - blaring out greetings in local. It turns out that they were readers of our various blogs (this one, Shae's and Mynxee to name three) and we exchanged pleasantries. Of course, this would also mean that it would be doubly more fun to kill them and therefore give them a mention.

Oh we got some love in Local while roaming last night. It was highly amusing and I would like to give a shout out to: Griznatle, Jyren's Rage, Vhis Iridion, kapu4u. Some memorable lines of chat include:

z0de > I've touched Shae in rl, who wants to lick my hand?
Griznatle > Me! and lines up
flashfresh > I've done more than lick her HAND
Mynxee > ROFL
z0de > lol
Griznatle > FLASH!
Griznatle > JEBUS
Griznatle > OMG
Shae Tiann > hehe it's true.....

This group soon left, passing through Ardar and once our GCCs were up - we went this way too; with our scout and covert ops moving ahead. The presence of a vengance assault frigate, a rupture class cruiser and a golden hued 'geddon was observed and Happy tried to lure them off the station towards a planet. He danced and wiggled to entice but nothing, yet. Gorg was also there and relaying more information. Just as we decided enough was enough and that our beds were beckoning, Happy reported back that we he may have been finally successful in his bait antics and in this case, kapu4u and Jyren's Rage were coming. Two of the four chaps we had chatted to earlier.

"Vengance just landed about 45km from me. Burning towards him."

No one spoke, we just waited at the safe in the next system.

"Jmarr and Kamoonga. Warp to the Ardar gate but do not jump." Two ships peeled off from the fleet and warped to the gate.

"I am closing.....thirty kilometres, twenty-nine, twenty-eight.." Counted down Happy. A few seconds ticked by.

"Point. Point!"

"Jmarr and Kamoonga. Jump and warp to Happy. Rest of fleet, warp to Ardar gate and hold." The rest of the fleet, already aligned, jumped towards the gate, the ships almost straining to get involved in the kill.

"This is Gorg. Hostile Rupture inbound. Hostile Myrmidon inbound." The trap was sprung.

"Kamoonga, this is Flash, call primaries please."

"Roger. Primary is vengance, secondary the rupture."Jmarr bravely tackled the rupture on his own, amid a swarm of drones. We jumped in after Kamoonga and Jmarr and the main fleet dropped out of warp into the middle of the fire fight. We sincerely hoped that the 'geddon would also come in but it didn't. Still, the fight was brief and brutal with no losses on our side and with a decent haul in loot. The distinctive thick, red curling stream of energy neutralisers snaked out from the dying myrmidon but none of this could save him.

Would've been supremely funny to have gotten Griznatle but his group moved on apparently.

The operation was approaching the end and I decided to call an end.

"All ships, head back home at your own speed. Gorg and Happy are ahead of us and the path is clear."

With the acknowledgments ringing in my ears, the fleet broke up and made their own way home. Leaving myself and Kamoonga to pick up the loot. As the first elements of the fleet entered Evati, they managed to tackle a harbinger and then a cyclone. However, our strength is due to our size and numbers: going into a belt in dribs and drabs would kill us. The lure of an extra kill or two just to end the evening was too tempting for most of us and we engaged the harbinger and cyclone. I stupidly lost the thrasher (with some of the evening's loot) but we succeeded in killing the pair AND recovering the lost loot.

The pair were determined to have their revenge and they returned in battle ships that killed our battle cruisers but then we were hot dropped by a couple of carriers. Not what we had expected and we had to scatter; the abbadon we had targetted would have gone down eventually to our battle cruisers but not quick enough.

A disappointing ending for me, when the evening was such fun.

11 May 2009

My pie!!

I was asked to FC a small roaming gang on sunday night. We had a x2 ruptures, x2 wolf, x1 incursus, x1 crow, x1 stabber and x1 caracal. I felt confident that we would have fun and I was right, though it didn't go too well: a HAC gang had been probing for us and they caught us with our (my) pants down with half of us in a safe spot waiting for the scouts to respond.

Just as we were leaving, this HAC gang snagged one of our ruptures - the rest had some distance already and could have warped out but we decided that since it was only one rapier we could take it. Of course, my 'well-honed' combat sense should have told me that more were on the way and indeed, two vagabonds, a jaguar and some others all piled into our little group. Needless to say, we failed to kill anything.

So scratch one rupture and incursus and wolf.

Sheepishly, I passed the FC over to someone else and warped home in my pod.

The night got worse. We lost the stabber and the second wolf due to a rather humerous episode. Instead of putting together a narrative, let me try and recraft the conversation between the stabber pilot (now FC) and the wolf pilot; moments before they were probed out.

Stabber pilot: "OK - scout, give me an update on any targets in the next system."
Crow pilot: "Roger that. On my way."
Stabber pilot: "We just sit tight and wait ok?"
Wolf and Caracal pilots: "Roger"

A minute pass.
Stabber pilot: "SHIT. My pie! My pie is burning!"
Wolf pilot: "Wha?"
Stabber pilot: "My pieeeeeeee!!!!!!"
Crow pilot: "Er..."
Stabber pilot: "Wolf is now FC. Going to rescue my pie! I think kitchen is on fire. AFK"
Line goes dead.
Wolf pilot: "Hello? Hello?"
Crow pilot: "Guys?"
Caracal pilot: "Must be an important piece of pie?"
Wolf pilot: "I want some pie too."
Crow pilot: "OK some targets in the next system, narrowing down."
Wolf pilot: "Check, check, check! Rapier de-cloaked close to us."
Sounds of auto canon fire.
Wolf pilot: "All ships scatter!"
Caracal pilot: "Going."

Wolf pilot realises that the stabber pilot is still afk, no doubt rescuing his dinner and decides to try and save the stabber pilot. Brave but the wrong decision. Both go down in flames. Another minute pass.
Stabber pilot (sounding relieved): "That was lucky, that pie was a ginsters pasty and they don't burn........what the hell?"
Wolf pilot: "Yeah...."
Caracal pilot: "How was the pie?"
Crow pilot: "Hope it was worth it."
Stabber pilot: "I lost a stabber -"
Wolf pilot: "and a wolf."
Stabber pilot: "For a ginsters pasty. Damn thing wasn't even burnt."

So the evening ended with a net loss of all but two ships, a failure in my books but every cloud has a silver lining and we did discover that the majority of the fleet (Bastards and Hellcats) had a fondness of pies, those pastry encrusted parcels of goodness, filled with a variety of meats from various parts of animals from all over the world.

My personal favourite is a STEAK and ALE pie, with lots of peas and chips on the side. Might have to do a poll and see what combinations other pirates have a hankering for.

Finally, some other pie related news: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/cornwall/7550563.stm - I hope Rodney (the stabber pilot) didn't have the misfortune to have such an addition to his pasty?

7 May 2009

OMG!!

I logged on quickly to check some applications emails and some orders that I had posted but was hastily asked to join a fleet of Battle ships rumbling out of Evati. There were two typhoon class battle ships en route and we were going to tackle them. I was the tackler and I was piloting the hurricane.

Both typhoon pilots did not aggress but sped back and jumped back out. Disappointed the fleet moved forward two jumps and managed to engage an abaddon and his thorax companion. Both were smashed to pieces.

However, this post isn't about that kill - no, it's about one that happened a few hours later once I had logged out and went to bed. The Bastards were part of a mother ship kill. Holy cow - an Aeon was probed out and located just as it cloaked up. The pilot then went AFK - a large fleet was assembled and, Benny Hill style, swept a 100 x 100 x 100 cube of space in order to decloak him.

Patience won out and the kill was made of a mother ship by The Bastards.

Mynxee has a blog post about it, as she was lucky enough to be online to do it. A fair few Euro based Bastards were online too; at 01:00 in the morning? Man, some people need to sleep and yes, I was weak and succumb to the sleep monster.

Well done you pirates, well done!

6 May 2009

Slow night but ransoms are good for the soul


Last night was a fun episode - we came close to grabbing a number of mission runners, our probes and tacklers arriving literally seconds after the mission runner. Quite frustrating but the motley crew of pirates didn't give up. In a broad circle centered around Evati, the fleet had eyes and ears in several systems. Shae was chased by a thrasher while I had little luck with a rupture.

Happy and Jmarr had tackled a caracal in Las and grabbed the pod and then spent a good ten minutes figuring out what to do. I strongly suspect that they're answering the call of a forum thread to hold a pod 'from dusk to dawn'. An interesting concept. However, a nervous twitch by Jmarr and he blew the pod to pieces. Not a good move and the ventrilo server was filled with groans and howls of anguish. Ok, a bit over the top but it was funny.

There was a prize however: Hera had spotted a missioning rokh class battle ship and three probes did their best to track him down. Twice, we missed him, by seconds in one case as our tackler caught the warp trail signature of a departing ship. Pirates, are persistent if not dangerous. Now after observing the pilot, who disappeared from local a number times we decided to wait for the rokh with a couple of HICs and tackle the ship as he came back in.

Once again, the rokh pilot disappeared from local. The order was given and five pilots zipped off to the five different gates / systems. One by one, each pirate reported that the target was not visible. The last destination was a high sec system and a Hellcat, due to her, still acceptable security rating was approaching the system and requesting permission to jump. When she arrived, we smiled as she informed up that the target was indeed, in system and had docked up. Still apparently oblivious to our attempts at tackling him down.

We formed up around the Anher gate in Evati and waited.

Five minutes later, our scout in Anher announced that the rokh pilot had undocked and was heading back towards low security space and hopefully into our warm embrace. There was Viginti in his devoter (or lol-devoter), myself in a broadsword, Hera in his domi and a few other ships. There was a gate flash announcing the arrival of a new ship. Local updated with a new list of pilots, our mark was there. We tensed and waited. The Rokh pilot held cloak until the last minute before decloaking. To our horror, he was 35km from the nearest tackler. Fearing a failed tackle, I urged my broadsword forward, as did Vig and Hera. The rokh aligned slowly but it was enough and it's warp engines engaged.

Fighting back disappointment and recriminations - we visually followed the escape vector of the rokh. It was headed to the top asteroid belt or top planet. The fleet split into two and screamed after the escaping rokh.

Jmarr landed first at the belt and got a point, followed by me and then everyone else.

With the broadsword and devoter using their warp disruption generators - no amount of warp core stabilisers can prevent a ship from being ensnared. It was trapped and we easily stripped the shields down to armour. Being pirates, we decided to ransom the rokh pilot for 150m isk - he had only 147million isk and we took it gladly. For the eight pilots involved, it was a nice 18million isk payout. Not bad for risk free work.

Interestingly the rokh pilot had no idea how we found him. He thought he had escaped the camp and didn't assume that we could track him. I want to meet more pilots like this individual.

1 May 2009

EVE Blog Banter #7: This isn't me...

This is the seventh installment of the EVE Blog Banter , the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux . Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed here.

Check out other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

This month's topic comes to us from CrazyKinux Himself, and he asks us Bloggers: "What three things haven't you done in EVE and why? Would you be willing to try one day? Why so? Why not?"

Hmmmm, so much I want to do and haven't done in New Eden and the fact that there is no end-game means the choices are near infinite.

So, in now particular order here are my three things that I have not (yet) done....

1. CAPITALS and the Doomsday
Yup, I like big shooty ships like anyone else but I have held back from going down this route due to the high cost (obviously) and the limited use of these ships. Still, I would like to pilot one of these ships or even better - the titan class ship and hitting a Doomsday and seeing a sea of ships turn into wreckage.

2. Write a series of short stories or a novella
I love writing and use New Eden as my inspiration - have written small pieces here and there but I would love to have the time to pull it altogether into a coherent story. Many fine writers already in New Eden already and I want to join this group.

3. Do a tour of New Eden

I want to take a picture of all the landmarks in New Eden complete with a kill mail in each. New Eden has many, many landmarks and I remember Kane Rizzel doing a little tour complete with photos. I would have loved to have added a kill at each of these glamourous sites of interest!

List of other participants:

More to follow....