9 Nov 2011

Can I say, winter is coming!

2 v 1 - surrounded but what a fight!

It was a quiet night; most of the Bastards were out and about or had taken time off from the tricky world of piracy. I decided that, after chatting to a few acquaintances, to stretch the old sea legs for a bit.  Selecting the venerable rifter; I shot out into the blackness of space and started looking for trouble. Local was the usual welcoming sight of pirates, brigands and clueless newbs, so I didn't have to go far. I landed in Todifrauan and missed a cyclone that had left the gate. Holding my cloak, I tried to use the directional scanner to get a better view of him and determined that he had zipped towards planet III. I sent the rifter racing after him. As I arrived, I caught a ghost of his ship and the tell-tale sign of a ship immediately warping out.

I tried again and once again, he slipped away. Fair play to the cyclone pilot who was making me chase him. He then dissappeared from local and I calculated that he was most likely in Arnstur. Pushing the rifter towards the gate I suddenly spotted a pair of new pilots, both from the same corporation. I should have noted the cyclone's affiliation and compared it with the these two new chappies; maybe friends?

The star gate sent me through into Arnstur and the cyclone pilot was in local. I held cloak and tried to determine his location, there was a flash on the stargate as another ship came in after me. An examination of local informed me it was one of the pair of newcomers, one system back. I quickly accelerated off the gate and towards what I assumed to be the most likely location of the cyclone. Pinging the directional scanner ahead of me revealed that the cyclone had already moved. I landed inside the asteroid belt and got into an orbit as I tried to figure out who was around me.


The cyclone was still around in space but a malediction was spotted on my scanner and it was getting nearer. I primed my webber and disruptor and decided that this interceptor would be a good snack. Sure enough, the distinctive shape of the Amarrian interceptor burst into space and I quickly fired off my tackle modules. He landed just a touch outside my web range but I had him pointed. Likewise, so did he. With it's superior speed, the malediction got into a comfortable 23km range. My barrage rounds could reach out to him but did neglible damage. The interceptor pilot was one of the duo who came in and his partner, sure enough appeared - this time in a dramiel.

It now looked a bit worse for me. The dramiel also was outside of my web range. I overloaded my micro warp drive but the use of the disruptor had depleted my capacitor just when the dramiel volleyed me and sent his warrior drone after me. My armour repairer and x3 small armor tri-marks meant that I had significant amount of armour to chew through but I could last for too long.

My rifter died and I was podded too. First pod death this year and fair play to the two pilots; a great job by them they're welcome to the loot.

Of course, one cannot keep a pirate down long and a days later, I led a fleet to go roaming; the usual roll around the neighbourhood. We took down a tempest, stabber, rupture, maelstrom, mammoth a rifter and a hulk but comically, we lost Shizraak (in his rapier) to some pos guns.

Pod killing someone on a gate was the most fun: I was in my arty hurricane and somehow managed to lock the unfortunate pilot of the rifter and ended up popping him. No idea why he didn't jump, he certainly wasn't AFK.

Winter is coming!

It was with some considerable interest that I listened in on a conversation with one of my pirate captains, something about a new battle cruiser hull that could indeed hold battle ship class weapons? Say it ain't so! However it appears to be true, the new tier-3 BCs all can support battle ship class weapons. While The Bastards cannot take any credit for the idea of jamming a weapon system one class above the ship's hull; we certainly have been doing it enough times. It is our infamous 'Oversized clip and carbine' roams, some of which I noted down for prosperity. We've also flew frigates with oversized guns, cruisers with over sized guns but have yet to move onto battle ships with capital ship guns. The latter should be a challenge for sure.



Hulk Smash

I had to include this section, this is lifted from a forum post by one of our more active and most polite pirates: TFS Tibbs. With no further ado, here it is:

So after finding a wormhole to deepest nullsec and landing on a macro-mining operation this happened:


http://the-bastards.com/kb/?a=kill_related&kll_id=22386


and then this spewed out in local...

HCS:damn faggots
TFS:lol - so much for your macros
HCS:you stupid bitches are still here
HCS:get out of our system
TFS:Its now my system - damn macro cheaters
HCS:ahaha, you got lucky, thats all
TFS:macros suck dude - don't use em
HCS:you suck asswipe
HCS:think you know all?
TFS:yes
HCS:why you think you got me
HCS:didnt use macro
HCS:get the fuck out and dont return
HCS:fags
TFS:actually you may be right - a macro would have warped
TFS:so much fascination on being gay - very telling
TFS:anyways - thanks for the stuff - fly safer next time!

Basically, TFS Tibbs was out doing his own thing and had stumbled upon what he thought was a mining op. Quickly changing to his hurricane, he returned and proceeded to exact righteous fury on what he mistakeningly had thought to be a macro operation. It turned out it wasn't but the smack talk was funny.

Plex'ed up Madness or kids with too much moolah? 

Marco Drack is one of our more, outrageous Bastards and has garnered a reputation of 'Balls-to-the-wall' and Leeroy flying. Certainly, when he takes over as fleet commander; there's a collective groan from the pilots. However, many pilots, with grins splitting their faces, still sign up on his fleets. They know *something* fun will happen regardless. However, Marco lately has been attracting all sorts of attention, including a Gung-Ho Dramiel pilot (merely months out of pod school) who decided to tackle his Legion. Crazy kid died and dropped some lovely loot and has threatened to come back with an even bigger and more bling ship after he gets more plexes. Ach, if only people could combine brains with the money eh?