I killed a newb yesterday.
I see an Imicus in wspace immediately upon dscanning when entering a new system. I am heading down a chain I scanned earlier, just checking for new wormholes and looking for people to hunt. So, mission accomplished, so far.
Most people use Covert Ops to scan with; the Imicus is a T1 scanning frig. That's a tell: easy meat. More tellingly, in wspace, we scan cloaked. It is possible to scan fairly securely when uncloaked, but it's not easy. You have to move from time to time, and you have to be continually dscanning for combat probes.
I cast around with dscan. The target is at a planet, apparently, with two moons. I warp to the CO. He is here, but moving off at microwarp speed in a direction I cannot get to.
Check the character: he is six days old. Do I try to kill him? Of course I try to kill him. Welcome to wspace. Still, I can't get him where he is.
He warps to another CO, and disappears. I can still see the probes. I guess he cloaked. Well, he will have to uncloak when he warps to a wormhole to look at it. Then, if he is slow, and he may well be, I will have a shot. So, I sit cloaked and watch.
This takes forever. Obviously he is not a very efficient scanner, which is not surprising considering he's six days old. Frankly, I am amazed to find him here at all. I am always impressed by how fearless some players are. Not me, I am Mr. Risk Averse.
I get out the phone and start playing chess. Four games later, about 30 minutes after I pick him up, I finally see him again on scan. He's warping.
He stops at another planet. I warp in to the CO again, and he is there. Again he has headed off in a random direction on microwarp. This time, there is a planet in the approximate right direction, and an anom in the direction of the target's deviation from the first planet. I start to work to construct the intercept, flying back and forth to 100km to get in front of him. I go forth and come back once, but before I can do it a second time, he warps. I don't see him leaving grid, so I don't know where he went immediately. But I can use dscan to look for him. I have the system already scanned, so I can see that he has warped to a wormhole. He disappears from dscan. He has probably jumped into the next system, although dscan cannot tell you that for certain. I give him time to get away from the wormhole, while I warp around the system to make sure he actually did leave. Of course, one cannot know that for certain, but I see no probes and no Imicus on scan. So, high confidence.
I enter the next system, a C4 with a C1 static. Yes, Imicus on scan. A while of messing around with dscan shows that he is very close the entrance wormhole, but off grid. I can't get to him myself, in my Manticore. I need combat probes. Well, that's why I have an alt.
I log in Otto, fly to my tower and switch into my Cheetah. I load combat probes as I hop downchain two jumps, and into the same system. Then I move off the wormhole, fire probes, and quickly throw them out of the system. I fleet up, then it's time for scan the guy. This is easily done in one scan when someone is within a few thousand kilometers of a known point: just put the probes on the planet, drop their range to minimum, and scan. Otto hides his probes again, then fleet-warps Von to the target's location... but when I land, the target is already out of range. Grr, microwarping Imicus. Drat.
I can see his the direction, though, and there is a combat anom positioned about right. I warp Von and Otto there, at 100km so the sleepers won't get them. My new plan is to scan for the target again, then warp in from here at 100km. This will put me out in front of him, assuming he does not deviate, perhaps off at a slight angle, but I can move perpendicular to him to cut off the angle and intercept. I am ready to hit "Scan now", but on a final narrow-beam dscan he drops off. He's moved again! Ugh. I widen: where is he going?
He is going to the C1 wormhole. I warp to 10km. This time, I get there in time. He is also about 10km from the wormhole, and about 15km from me. I head right at him. Then the standard stuff: uncloak, get systems working. He pops before he can escape. Then I lock up his pod.
I hesitate. I have him scrambled, but: newbie! Should I pod him? I finally decide to, and launch one volley of torps. But he is moving, and torps do not hit pods effectively in any case. He escapes through the wormhole.
I pursue. On the other side, no pod and no pod on scan. I assume he is holding cloak, and I hold cloak too. I cannot catch a pod if he just warps off, with or without sebo. But he may not know that, and he may not realize what's happening when his gate cloak ends, which might be enough time to let me get at him. But he does not panic, and jumps back through the wormhole. This time, he warps clear.
OK, good on you Mr. Newb. Actually I am kind of happy he got away.
In spite of the fact that the guy had little or no chance, it was still an amazing hunt for me. I figured out a few nice tricks on the fly. It's sad that I did not succeed in getting to the target with my tricks, but that's life. Next time I will be faster. There's a reason why people can't be safe in wspace with just a microwarpdrive.
Now I proceed to the next stage of the thing: I message the guy. (Grr, CPSA.)
He is a bit hostile to begin with, as is understandable, but we have a nice long chat. I tell him I was hunting him for a while. I tell him to scan cloaked. (Yes, he did have a cloak!) He does not know about wspace levels; I fill him in. How does one know what wspace level a system is? I tell him about wormhol.es (actually now pasta.gg, whatever). I also tell him you can ID wormholes on sight from the other side, and link him to Penny. We discuss how to scan, and I link him to Penny again. He asks about ships, and I direct him towards Covert Ops. We talk data/relic sites: he made 20m that morning. Good! Does he know how to get out? No, he ran into a system and off the wormhole. So I offer to get him out. He has to trust me a little, but on the other hand, he's looking at suiciding his pod, so not really that much. I find him (he's in a C5 off the side of the path I had probed earlier). Then I fleet him up, have him meet me at a planet, and we warp to the wormhole. (He thinks fleet-warp is cool.) I get him to the lowsec exit. I give him 5m ISK to replace the ship, and try to encourage him to keep it up. I tell him to find people to fly with, or at least chat with. He asks about my corp, but we can't really take a newb that raw. But I tell him to stay in touch. Once his skills are up a little, he might be a good fit.
Showing posts with label Newb. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Newb. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 9, 2014
Sunday, November 30, 2014
In a Relic Site
It's Thanksgiving weekend. Lots of people playing EVE, including lots of newbs. I am in wspace as normal, and I've been neglecting things here a bit while I answer questions. Time for a roam.
I set off up into our C5 static, but nothing is doing there. There's no incident wormholes, just its static. So I don't open the far static. Instead, I run small sites, raking in 60m ISK in about a half hour including scanning. Not bad. Now down into C4b.
C4b is also empty, and with no wormholes except its statics, it also seems likely to be zipped. OK, I'll run small sites here, too. I clean out four gas sites and one ore anom, getting lucky on nanoribbons this time for 90m ISK. Then I head back home to get back into my Manticore, and return to C4a to explore its C2 and C5 connections. I try the C2 first, under the general theory that lower in wspace I am more likely to find easy kills. Thanks are due CCP for putting in nullsec data and relic sites into C1/C2/C3. These are great places to look for ganks.
C2a, like the two previous systems, feels disused. My first clue is no towers or ships on dscan. The second clue is the pile of 20 sigs. There are also 10 anoms; not that many given so many sigs. Now I warp around to see an outer planet. No tower or ships: that's my third clue. Also a check of the system in tripwire shows that is has lowsec/C2 statics; not as desirable as a highsec.
I think I have a backwater system here, perhaps untouched for days; that's my strong intuition. More than one of those sigs are going to be data/relic sites that I can solo. So, before doing anything further, I head back home to get my exploration Buzzard. Not only can it run the sites (with both relic and data analyzer IIs), it scans considerably faster too. I scan in C4a and C4b on the way home, and back. No activity. Good.
I return to C2a, fire probes, and start scanning. After some considerable time, I find a fourth clue: this system has piled up a large number of those nullsec data/relic sites. In fact, there are ten of them (!), and also two sleeper data sites. There are also, unfortunately, a large number of wormholes: five of them, plus the one I entered through. So there is some risk in hacking. But I figure it is worth the risk, especially if I cherry-pick. And also if I cache loot. (The remaining sigs are gas sites.)
I head into each site, scanning cans to see what's there. Two of the data sites have an augmented decryptor, so I go ahead and do the better cans there. Many of the relic sites have decent tech II salvage, and I run four of them. Each time I get more than 10m ISK or so, I run out to a safespot I make in the outer system, to dump all the loot in a jetcan. If I get killed, at least I won't lose most of the loot. I don't get killed. And... it's almost dinner time in the real world. So that is enough. I head back home to J213139, 150m ISK worth of salvage and other stuff aboard. Bye EVE, for now.
And... back! Food heated, family fed, things said, time's fled, The Boy abed. Now time for some hunting. I head into C5 just for a look, including popping out into nullsec on the off chance I can find anyone there. I don't. I am eager to head back to C2a... with all those exploration sites. The six I ran will be gone, but the four I passed on should still be there. I've got the stuff I want out of there. Now I want to open it up, get explorers in, and kill them. Time to fly to those five wormholes.
All of the wormholes are outgoing. One is the lowsec static, one is a small wormhole to C2, and the other three are connections to C2. I sense a trend. I guess that just as exploration sites have dead-ended here, so have random wormholes. Interesting pattern.
I head into lowsec first. It's a faction warfare system in Minmatar control, evidently. That's not likely to attract many explorers. Then into C2b, C2c, and C2d. None of them are very promising. Towers in each, nobody home, no probes, and nothing obvious going on. Sigh.
I head back into C2a, and run out of steam. I think I'll just sit here, in the inner system, where I can dscan to all of the sites that are left. And I will join rookie chat and answer questions.
I join rookie chat. 2600+... yeah, I think they may need me. Anyway, I get some good answers in. One guy has a devil of a problem: he has no money to speak of, and he bought PLEX, but he cannot sell them because the taxes are too high. (Evidently, a sale is not permitted if you cannot pay the tax up front? Seems strange to me. But that was his report.) Anyway, I PM him and give him 10m ISK to allow the transaction to work... and it gets strange from there. But that's another story. He eventually gets it done and pays me back. Ah, not scammed by a rookie.
I am occasionally dscanning in C2a, not finding anything.
More than one question of "how do I make ISK fastest"? That's a real good question, one I don't really have a solid answer to. The boilerplate is "mining, running missions, ratting, factional warfare". I have the feeling too many of them are going to go mine, and that's not really what they want to do, but they know how, it's there. I think CCP should have a faction warfare mission in the advanced military sequence, where you have to go to a complex, fight a rat, spin a button for 15 minutes, and get bacon. Maybe have a second more powerful rat warp in on you. That would give newbs a taste of it and enough familiarity to hopefully try it out.
Anyway, the night is getting on. It's 11:15, and I'll be leaving EVE in a half an hour or so for bed. And what to my wondering eyes should appear, in C2a, but probes. Mmm. Well, probes don't necessarily mean anything. But they might. I keep more than half an eye on the dscan. I answer more questions.
Then I see a Probe. It has a character's name on it... hmm, could be a rookie. Should I kill a rookie? Well, yes. I should. I try to find it with dscan, but it is nowhere I can determine. Then it cloaks. The probes are still out there, so: patience. More questions.
Now I see the Probe again. I narrow it down to fifteen degrees on dscan, but it's in no known site. I have the feeling he is in a site, since he is not cloaked for a long time. But it must be a site that spawned since I was scanning. I could warp to the outer planet, launch probes and attempt to scan him down. But, I already know of other sites, and there is a chance that I'll blow it scanning, and he always has his chance to see probes. So, not a good idea. I'll wait. He'll get to another site eventually.
He finishes, then drops off my narrowed dscan. I widen it to full, and he's still uncloaked... probably moving to another site. I once again narrow it down, and this time, he is in a site I scanned earlier. Ha! Go time.
I warp to the site at 10km. It's one with widely-spaced cans, all of which are quite far from the warp-in. The Probe is at a can about 70km from me, hacking it.
I start moving back to get a perch, but that will take too long. Instead, I spin around the view to the opposite direction of the cans. There's a handy planet there in just the right direction, 3 AU from me. Perfect for making a perch. I warp to it at 100km, then back to the data site, again at 100km. Now I end up more than 150km from each of the cans. Perfect. I make a bookmark.
The Probe is approaching the most distant can, 200+ km from me. I can see him scanning it. I am ready to warp as soon as the overview indicates he is hacking it. But... he doesn't hack it. Uh oh. I guess he is being selective, just as I was earlier, and this is a crappy can. OK, I will wait. There will be another can.
He moves off toward another can. Microwarping, from the looks of it. I consider warping to the can to attack as he arrives, but I'd really rather attack him when he has the minigame up. He has several more cans to try, so I will wait.
There is time for me to kill. I check out the character I am stalking to see if he's a newb.
He's not new. In fact he is two years older than I am. Good. No qualms about killing and podding him, then. (What's he doing in a Probe?)
He finally gets to the can he's headed to. Again I see him cargo scan. This can, though, he tries to open.
I warp in at 10km. He is circling the can, and I end up about 13000m from him, but he is heading toward me.
I approach him, then uncloak and start firing. My lock completes. He's pinned! He heads away from me. My torps hit: shields down. He heads away from me, but he cannot microwarp, and apparently does not have an afterburner. The range stays at about 4500m. His ship is little or no faster. A second volley: shields wiped, armor almost down. A third: deep structure. And zoom! He warps.
WHAT? Oh. He must have had warp core stabilizers; that's why he had to cargo scan from so close. A good trick... I might think about it for my Buzzard. I dunno. It's nice to cargo scan from afar, but it's also nice to thwart gankers.
Oh well. Live and learn. Time to go to bed.
I set off up into our C5 static, but nothing is doing there. There's no incident wormholes, just its static. So I don't open the far static. Instead, I run small sites, raking in 60m ISK in about a half hour including scanning. Not bad. Now down into C4b.
C4b is also empty, and with no wormholes except its statics, it also seems likely to be zipped. OK, I'll run small sites here, too. I clean out four gas sites and one ore anom, getting lucky on nanoribbons this time for 90m ISK. Then I head back home to get back into my Manticore, and return to C4a to explore its C2 and C5 connections. I try the C2 first, under the general theory that lower in wspace I am more likely to find easy kills. Thanks are due CCP for putting in nullsec data and relic sites into C1/C2/C3. These are great places to look for ganks.
C2a, like the two previous systems, feels disused. My first clue is no towers or ships on dscan. The second clue is the pile of 20 sigs. There are also 10 anoms; not that many given so many sigs. Now I warp around to see an outer planet. No tower or ships: that's my third clue. Also a check of the system in tripwire shows that is has lowsec/C2 statics; not as desirable as a highsec.
I think I have a backwater system here, perhaps untouched for days; that's my strong intuition. More than one of those sigs are going to be data/relic sites that I can solo. So, before doing anything further, I head back home to get my exploration Buzzard. Not only can it run the sites (with both relic and data analyzer IIs), it scans considerably faster too. I scan in C4a and C4b on the way home, and back. No activity. Good.
I return to C2a, fire probes, and start scanning. After some considerable time, I find a fourth clue: this system has piled up a large number of those nullsec data/relic sites. In fact, there are ten of them (!), and also two sleeper data sites. There are also, unfortunately, a large number of wormholes: five of them, plus the one I entered through. So there is some risk in hacking. But I figure it is worth the risk, especially if I cherry-pick. And also if I cache loot. (The remaining sigs are gas sites.)
I head into each site, scanning cans to see what's there. Two of the data sites have an augmented decryptor, so I go ahead and do the better cans there. Many of the relic sites have decent tech II salvage, and I run four of them. Each time I get more than 10m ISK or so, I run out to a safespot I make in the outer system, to dump all the loot in a jetcan. If I get killed, at least I won't lose most of the loot. I don't get killed. And... it's almost dinner time in the real world. So that is enough. I head back home to J213139, 150m ISK worth of salvage and other stuff aboard. Bye EVE, for now.
And... back! Food heated, family fed, things said, time's fled, The Boy abed. Now time for some hunting. I head into C5 just for a look, including popping out into nullsec on the off chance I can find anyone there. I don't. I am eager to head back to C2a... with all those exploration sites. The six I ran will be gone, but the four I passed on should still be there. I've got the stuff I want out of there. Now I want to open it up, get explorers in, and kill them. Time to fly to those five wormholes.
All of the wormholes are outgoing. One is the lowsec static, one is a small wormhole to C2, and the other three are connections to C2. I sense a trend. I guess that just as exploration sites have dead-ended here, so have random wormholes. Interesting pattern.
I head into lowsec first. It's a faction warfare system in Minmatar control, evidently. That's not likely to attract many explorers. Then into C2b, C2c, and C2d. None of them are very promising. Towers in each, nobody home, no probes, and nothing obvious going on. Sigh.
I head back into C2a, and run out of steam. I think I'll just sit here, in the inner system, where I can dscan to all of the sites that are left. And I will join rookie chat and answer questions.
I join rookie chat. 2600+... yeah, I think they may need me. Anyway, I get some good answers in. One guy has a devil of a problem: he has no money to speak of, and he bought PLEX, but he cannot sell them because the taxes are too high. (Evidently, a sale is not permitted if you cannot pay the tax up front? Seems strange to me. But that was his report.) Anyway, I PM him and give him 10m ISK to allow the transaction to work... and it gets strange from there. But that's another story. He eventually gets it done and pays me back. Ah, not scammed by a rookie.
I am occasionally dscanning in C2a, not finding anything.
More than one question of "how do I make ISK fastest"? That's a real good question, one I don't really have a solid answer to. The boilerplate is "mining, running missions, ratting, factional warfare". I have the feeling too many of them are going to go mine, and that's not really what they want to do, but they know how, it's there. I think CCP should have a faction warfare mission in the advanced military sequence, where you have to go to a complex, fight a rat, spin a button for 15 minutes, and get bacon. Maybe have a second more powerful rat warp in on you. That would give newbs a taste of it and enough familiarity to hopefully try it out.
Anyway, the night is getting on. It's 11:15, and I'll be leaving EVE in a half an hour or so for bed. And what to my wondering eyes should appear, in C2a, but probes. Mmm. Well, probes don't necessarily mean anything. But they might. I keep more than half an eye on the dscan. I answer more questions.
Then I see a Probe. It has a character's name on it... hmm, could be a rookie. Should I kill a rookie? Well, yes. I should. I try to find it with dscan, but it is nowhere I can determine. Then it cloaks. The probes are still out there, so: patience. More questions.
Now I see the Probe again. I narrow it down to fifteen degrees on dscan, but it's in no known site. I have the feeling he is in a site, since he is not cloaked for a long time. But it must be a site that spawned since I was scanning. I could warp to the outer planet, launch probes and attempt to scan him down. But, I already know of other sites, and there is a chance that I'll blow it scanning, and he always has his chance to see probes. So, not a good idea. I'll wait. He'll get to another site eventually.
He finishes, then drops off my narrowed dscan. I widen it to full, and he's still uncloaked... probably moving to another site. I once again narrow it down, and this time, he is in a site I scanned earlier. Ha! Go time.
I warp to the site at 10km. It's one with widely-spaced cans, all of which are quite far from the warp-in. The Probe is at a can about 70km from me, hacking it.
I start moving back to get a perch, but that will take too long. Instead, I spin around the view to the opposite direction of the cans. There's a handy planet there in just the right direction, 3 AU from me. Perfect for making a perch. I warp to it at 100km, then back to the data site, again at 100km. Now I end up more than 150km from each of the cans. Perfect. I make a bookmark.
 |
| At my perch. |
The Probe is approaching the most distant can, 200+ km from me. I can see him scanning it. I am ready to warp as soon as the overview indicates he is hacking it. But... he doesn't hack it. Uh oh. I guess he is being selective, just as I was earlier, and this is a crappy can. OK, I will wait. There will be another can.
He moves off toward another can. Microwarping, from the looks of it. I consider warping to the can to attack as he arrives, but I'd really rather attack him when he has the minigame up. He has several more cans to try, so I will wait.
There is time for me to kill. I check out the character I am stalking to see if he's a newb.
 |
| The target is old. |
He's not new. In fact he is two years older than I am. Good. No qualms about killing and podding him, then. (What's he doing in a Probe?)
He finally gets to the can he's headed to. Again I see him cargo scan. This can, though, he tries to open.
I warp in at 10km. He is circling the can, and I end up about 13000m from him, but he is heading toward me.
 |
| At the can. |
I approach him, then uncloak and start firing. My lock completes. He's pinned! He heads away from me. My torps hit: shields down. He heads away from me, but he cannot microwarp, and apparently does not have an afterburner. The range stays at about 4500m. His ship is little or no faster. A second volley: shields wiped, armor almost down. A third: deep structure. And zoom! He warps.
WHAT? Oh. He must have had warp core stabilizers; that's why he had to cargo scan from so close. A good trick... I might think about it for my Buzzard. I dunno. It's nice to cargo scan from afar, but it's also nice to thwart gankers.
Oh well. Live and learn. Time to go to bed.
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