A new blog for my travels

With the new adventures I'm about to embark upon, I've created a new blog for them. You can find it here:

http://blackclawtravels.blogspot.com/

I'll update my travels in that, and I'll continue using this to update about my corp. There may be less frequent posting in this one for a while, until I return from my travels. I don't know how long that'll be though...

I hope you enjoy reading about them.

The journey begins...

The journey to bring justice to the galaxy has begun.

I've decided to start a journey, to travel the galaxy, to visit strange and interesting places, and to kill pirates wherever I find them.

Or die trying. But the journey will continue!

I started the ball rolling today by putting the following post onto the Eve Online forums:

I hate doing missions. I can't stand mining. I think that hauling is boring.

But.... I LOVE HUNTING PIRATES!

I've mined only once, back during the tutorial. I've never mined since. Then I did missions for just over a month, but realised all I'm doing is 'grinding', which is why I originally left World of Warcraft, so I stopped doing missions. I did some trading and hauling for a while, but it wasn't profitable enough to support my 'addiction' to hunting pirates.

Yes, I'm addicted to hunting pirates. I can't think of anything else I'd rather do! The only reason I'd trade and haul stuff was because I didn't have a warship to fly, and I needed to raise the money for it.

Today I have a new idea. Stick to anti-pirating, and nothing but. If the pirates can do it, I'm sure I can do it too, by doing it to them.

I'm going to detail my adventures on a blog, so that everyone can follow what I'm doing. I'll outline my ship setups, my tactics, my losses... and hopefully a few victories too. I'll fund myself from the proceeds I obtain from the pirates themselves. Some loot can go a long way. I hope...

Along the way I hope to find a few friends who'll help out here and there. Together we can make a difference and bring a little justice to this galaxy.

My blog will be listed in my bio, and as I update it, I'll also link to it from here. I hope some of you will join me in this fight, even if it's to watch what I do, where I go, and how I learn.

If you want to help me fight the good fight and you see me in your system, say hello, and maybe we can join up and patrol together.

As I update this blog, I'll also update that particular post, providing links back to this blog. I'll also link to this from my bio in the game.

This is going to be fascinating!

I've always wanted to go visit New Eden, where it all started. That shall be my first destination....

Are pirates losing the plot??

I was sitting at a safe spot in Atlar this morning, watching local and observing the pirates. Every now and again I'd check the scanner, move to another safe spot and check everything again. Just in case anyone's using scan probes, so that I don't get caught by them.

Anyway, I witnessed a conversation happening with a bunch of pirates who had attacked someone at a gate. The bunch of pirates had 2 Machariels, an Armageddon, and a Megathron. Quite a formidable force. Anyway, the non-pirate talked in local about how the pirates had attacked him, and he named them.

One of those that had been named said that they weren't pirates, they were actually anti-pirates. The non-pirate then asked why they attacked him, as he wasn't a pirate. Their response was something like:

Anyone who's not already a pirate is about to become a pirate, therefore we're destroying all pirates before they have a chance to become pirates.

One of the most interesting expressions of idiocy I've ever seen,.

It's been a while....

I know it's been a while since the last update. Let me tell you that the life of a CEO is not an easy one. Every day, this is what I do:

Wake up

• Check the corp forums for new posts, read them, reply to those I can reply to
• Check the forum membership to see if there's any new members signed up since previous day
• Check in-game to see if there's been any evemails from people or new membership applications
• Talk to corp mates currently online and answer any questions before signing out

Go to work

• Check corp forums during day to see if there's any new posts or members
• Check official Eve Online recruitment forums throughout the day to see if there's any new queries on the ads I've placed there for the corp
• Check recruitment queries on the forums to see if there's anyone that might be suitable to join us, in which case I'll leave a message for them

Go home

• Check forums again
• Play in-game for a couple hours, chatting to corp mates, responding to eve mails, checking for pirates or trading, going on security operations.
  

Go to sleep

That's a standard day, with the rest of my daily activities taking place in between all of that. I'm sure you can see this is probably more than the average player spends on the game.

The sacrifices a CEO must make...

It's the security operations which are probably the most exciting part of the game activity, but everything else is exciting to me as well, because it's all helping the corp grow.

I've now got 47 members in the corp. I trained Megacorp Management I last night, allowing me to have up to 100 members (50 members per level). As soon as I get the 51st member, I'll officially be a MEGACORP!!

I think I'll give that person a prize. Yep, that's what I'll do....

The corp ops have been going well. Support and Security have been engaging in active operations, often daily. This has resulted in some good minerals for the corp from the mining ops, and good experiences for the Security teams from.... dying.

Yes, dying. Most of the corp has died when on operations against pirates. In fact, just the other night, three of us died fighting a single pirate who was in a Thorax cruiser. It was quite frustrating, but the way I see it, the more you die, the more you learn about how not to die in future. So it's all helpful.

I used to sit in stations when in-game, and do my corp admin and chatting with others. Nowadays I find myself sitting in a safe spot in lowsec space, chatting with others and watching the pirates passing through.

I can't wait until I have a cloaked ship, then I can sit 200km from a gate and watch the pirates, and gather intel. That'll be fun...

That's the update for now. Business as usual, the corp's growing, everyone's having a good time, and we're moving into an interesting time of being a Megacorp.

I hope to provide future updates a little more frequently than I have done. Thanks for your interest in following the exploits of Black Scorpion Ltd.

Attack of the Vagabond

I'll get onto the Vagabond soon... First, I want to talk about how my corporation has developed over the past couple of weeks. It's been quite spectacular!

In about a month I managed to get it from 4 members to 32 members. That's almost 1 new member per day. Holy crap! That's pretty impressive, if I do say so myself. Apparently the drawcard for my success has been due to a number of friends from Purify and Knights Justicar who have left their recommendations on my recruitment thread. I've been getting the idea that such recommendations are few and far between, so they've added extra weight to the recruitment campaign. Thank you to all of you who have helped my corp grow, I really appreciate your assistance.

Thirty two members. That's pretty amazing, and I'm surprised it's happened so fast. One of my major goals for the corp was to have 30 members by the 1st of November, so I'm already two months ahead of schedule with that. Now to just get the rest of my corp goals achieved quickly too!

I've got some excellent members who have stepped up to the plate to do what they can to help the corp grow and achieve those goals. Kaenon Steel, the Chief of Security. Drunasis Prime, the Security XO. Xing Ye, the Chief of Support, and just recently, Bonesinger, the Support XO. There's also been Tyr Mjolnir, the Chief Mining Officer. All of these people have stepped forward to take leadership roles and not only do what they love doing, but do it for the corp. I can't express how grateful I am at their efforts to help the corp.

Kaenon Steel is, I believe, a major coup for the corp. He is good friends with Vance Avalon, a highly skilled and famous pirate hunter. He has the same knowledge as Vance, and as my Chief of Security, he is invaluable for the corp's Security efforts. Which leads me onto the Vagabond...

Our first real Security Operation, with Kaenon leading us, started off clearing out the Angel cartel ships from asteroid belts in Atlar, a 0.4 system. However, it was pretty hot there, with a few Outlaws hanging around, and because most of us were new to fighting and didn't have the experience or the ships, it was decided we'd move to a system that had less Outlaws in it. We moved to Illamur, the next system along. This was a 0.3 system, but had next to no Outlaws in it at all.

We continued ratting, and while doing so, seemed to be watched by someone on the periphery of the asteroid belt. Their sec status was high-ish, so we didn't think much of it. However, suddenly a Vagabond warped into the belt and immediately attacked us. It was likely that the first guy was scouting for the Vagabond pilot, who had decided that we were probably easy pickings. He also had a high-ish security status of 0.3, but that didn't seem to stop him from engaging in an act of piracy.

As Zyax and his Stabber came under attack from the Vagabond, Kaenon rallied us all together to engage Switchbl4d3, the Vagabond's pilot. Those with EW capability were using it, while the rest were engaging with their weapons. I was one of those with EW.

I was flying the Maulus, a frigate that was completely unlike the Tristan I know and love. Where the Tristan is all about armour tanking and delivering a high rate of explosive firepower with its blasters and rocket launchers, the Maulus was setup up purely as a sensor dampening ship. No armour tanking, and no great onslaught of weaponry. With 3 sensor dampeners, however, it was a deadly support ship against any opponent.

Zyax lost his Stabber as it erupted in a large explosion, but by this time the Vagabond was unable to get an effective lock on anyone else. It was dampened, jammed, scrambled and webbed. It wasn't going anywhere, and it wasn't able to get a lock on anyone. We continued our own onslaught against it, and it was helpless against us! It took a little while to get through its shields, but sitting there, helpless, it was soon another expanding cloud of gas and debris, mixing with the remains of the Stabber.

With great whoops of excitement, our Chief of Security was telling us all what a fantastic kill that was. Apparently Vagabonds are extremely tough to pin down and destroy, and we had done exactly that. If we were veterans, it seems that we would have run in all directions, screaming like little girls with our panties pulled down.

Our experience has shown us that we need never run when we stand united.

We gathered up the loot from the shattered ships and made our way back to HQ, congratulating ourselves on a job well done. Things looked very good indeed for our future as an anti-pirate corporation. But we couldn't have done it without the fantastic leadership of Kaenon Steel, so hats off to him. Thank you, and well done to everyone involved!

I'll have some more updates in future, when more interesting and exciting things occur.

Oh, the embarrassment

A word of advice.  When about to engage in combat with someone, make sure you're targeting them and not your own drone.

*sigh*

Luckily it was a duel, so we started again.  How embarrassing...

I was testing a new Maulus with Electronic Warfare capabilities.  I'm crap at it.  I need to build up a few EW skills to make myself less crap.  Give me time, I'll work it out.  It's good practice for moving forward as a Covert Ops specialist, which is what I'm aiming for eventually. 

Between now and then though, I'm going for a Tech 2 Interceptor.  A Taranis.  I think that's going to be so much fun...

And the corporation grows!

What an incredible few days I've had! In the past week I've exploded from about 4 members to 18 members! That's just amazing.

What I've found is the reason for this explosion is an active recruitment thread, along with recommendations from others. I also have a member who has been busy doing their part to recruit members for the corp. They remind me of me, when I was in Purify... My, it seems so long ago now.

I've promoted XingYe to be my new Head of Security. They were a member for a day. Today Drunasis Prime joined, and within a few minutes of him joining, I promoted him to Head of Security. His history seemed to suggest a man of combat experience. I'll see how he goes at leading others. If he does well, great. If not, I'll find someone better. I let him know that if I do find someone better, then I'll replace him, but it won't be personal. The ongoing success of the corp has to come first.

To that end, I've been discussing the role with someone else, whose name shall remain a secret for the time being. They've got TONS of experience, and regularly engage -10 ranked Outlaws and destroy the hell outta them. I'm hoping they'll join me, as they'll bring their experience and their reputation with them, and help the corp grow in exactly the way that I want.

What do I want? I want us to gain the reputation of being feared pirate hunters. That's what I want. I know I can only do that by getting the best of the best to help take us in that direction.

I ran a combat op this afternoon. There were 5 of us, patrolling Atlar and Illamur. It was a very successful patrol, with a large number of Angel cartel ships destroyed, and a lot of loot being gathered.

I set up a corp hangar in the HQ, and all the loot was brought back to rest in the hangar. It's going to be made available to members who involve themselves in corp ops in future, allowing them free access to stuff that might be of use. Just one of the benefits of membership.

The future is going to be quite interesting. I wanted 30 members by November, and it looks as if I'll have them by the end of this month! Awesome.

Meeting Krist Valentine

I had just returned to Illamur on a hauling mission, and dropped off the delivery in the station. I was chatting with Krist Valentine in the gamersinfo chat room at the same time. Vance Avalon also hangs out in there on occasions, and I've recently contacted him to see if I can learn how to be as good a pirate hunter as he is, and he invited me to that chat room. Other gamersinfo bloggers, including the pirate ones, hang out in there too. So we were chatting away when it turned out that he was in the same system as me, and trying to hunt me down, little realising the pilot he was hunting was the same one he was talking to - me!

So I jumped into my trusty Tristan frigate and went patrolling the planets, seeing if I could find him. I came upon Sebu, who had 0.3 status, and was about to warn him to leave the area as pirates were around. But then Krist warped in and Sebu began a target lock on me. I realised they were probably working together, so while I activated my afterburner and closed in on Sebu, I checked out Krist's ship. It was an Amarrian Elite Frigate, and made me wary.

However, just as I engaged Sebu, Krist warped away. I wondered what that was about, then saw that he'd disappeared from the chat room and local, so he'd obviously got an accidental disconnection. I focused my attention on Sebu, but that was mainly unnecessary.

My two blasters and two rocket launchers had managed to destroy his shields, peel away his armour, and tear great holes in his hull, with my shields only being reduced to about 30%. With a mighty explosion, the Kestrel was destroyed. As the gas cloud disappeared, I could see Sebu's pod sitting there. I'm sure I could see his face through the porthole, looking quite stunned. Krist returned as the pod warped away. I let it go.

Krist and I closed in on each other, and we chatted about our soon-to-be-engaged battle. I suggested a duel, which he was agreeable to. I wanted to see how I would fare against an Elite Frigate, but without actually losing my ship. I hate losing my ship. I suggested 'first to hull', but Krist said 50% of armour would be better. I agreed.

Deciding to be the aggressor for the first time in my career, I engaged him. I wanted to have the slight advantage that attacking first would give me. As it turned out, I was surprised how quickly I was chewing through his shields. He exclaimed in the chat room that he hated rockets! I love my rockets...

It was almost touch and go for a few brief seconds. My armour repairer was doing its best to repair the damage his weapons were causing, but unfortunately, by the time I had reduced him to about 60% armour, he had gotten me to 50% armour. I disengaged, declaring him the winner, and he did the same. The battle of frigate vs elite frigate was over. I was the loser.

Ah well, at least I had found another honourable pirate, who keeps his word. We saluted each other with respect, and went our separate ways. I'm sure we will meet again in the future.

His own blog entry about the battle is here.

Interesting adventures

Well, the past few days have been quite interesting. Here's a few of the events...

I was ratting the asteroid belts in Illamur in my Thorax cruiser, minding my own business. Keeping an eye on the local channel, I was aware that there were a few Outlaws (pirates of -5 or less security status) in the system, but it was only to be expected since I was in a known pirate area! I was trying to be careful though. Luckily, I was on the ball when my Overview started flashing at me. Three of the Outlaws warped into the asteroid belt, all at the same time: Dirk Chivers, Karlemgne, and Mot DeDeux. What was also lucky for me was that they warped in about 60km from me.

I quickly recalled the drones that I was using against the rats, disengaging from the battle. When they returned to the cargo hold, I activated the warp drive, shooting away to a nearby planet before the Outlaws pack could get a lock on me. When I arrived at the planet, I selected one of my instas to get to a nearby gate, which was just as well because Dirk and Mot arrived at the planet just as I began warping away!

"You guys are good," I said in the local channel. "I'm outta here."

"You're not out yet," Mot replied. I arrived at the gate to find the 3rd Outlaw, Karlemgne, arriving at the same time. Luckily for me - again, the luck - I was able to activate the jump gate straight away, thus avoiding Karlemgne who was trying to lock me down.

"Ciao," I said in local, just as the jump gate activated and I left the system for Empire space. On the other side, I took a breather, allowing myself to calm down. The adrenaline of the previous few minutes was racing through my body, and I couldn't believe I'd just escaped a pirate hunter-pack from getting me! They were definitely good, being able to work out where I was flying to, and even cover the potential exit that I might have taken. Without the insta bookmark, I would have been toast. It was also good for me that I kept on the move when they first tried engaging me. Go from one point to another, and then to another.

I then went to another system and continued ratting in an asteroid belt. I was happily doing this, keeping an eye on local, for an hour. However, my vigilance finally failed me, and the 3 Outlaws finally caught up to me. Before I knew it, because I hadn't checked local, the 3 of them were warping in on me, and all within 15km.

I tried to run, but they were able to scramble my warp drive and lock me down before I could get anywhere. The firepower of their 3 Interceptors was then concentrated on my cruiser. I didn't even bother to fight, knowing it was pointless. In the time it took for them to engage and for me to type out "Ransom," my shields were gone and my armour was at 30%. They stopped firing, and we negotiated an amount.

"6 million," Dirk stated.

I looked at my wallet. I had 6.3 million. However, I also knew that pirate ransoms were based on the price of your ship, so I knew it was fair as my ship was worth just over 7 million. It was insured, of course, but I had about 12 million worth of weapons and equipment onboard. I figured that paying 6 million was better than paying 12 million to equip another ship.

I paid, and they left, with me having only 300,000 in my wallet.

Strangely enough, I was happy! How could you be happy, I hear you asking. I was happy because I had evaded their initial attack and escaped, and it took them an hour to track me down. I was happy because I still had my ship. I was happy because I was still waiting for the two Tech 2 ships to sell that I had on the market, and I was waiting for 54 million to come back to me.

So far, however, only one of them has sold, and I'm back to having only 27 million. But then something else happened...

I was again in Illamur, having just finished a trade run. I was talking to a member of Awox Inc, Robert Wells. He was a pirate, just like all the members of Awox Inc, but I do a lot of trade with Awox, the CEO of that corp, so Robert asked me if I wanted to help him hunt down another pirate, someone by the name of Coldt, I think it was. I said I'd give it a go, as I was happy to hunt down pirates given the opportunity!

I didn't know how bad things would get...

I exited the station in my Thorax, and Coldt was there outside of it. He had a Thorax cruiser as well, which gave me a good feeling. I thought that I could easily handle a ship that was the same as me.

I locked him in my targeter, and sat there, hoping that he would initiate combat, which would result in the station's sentry guns taking him out. He didn't. Instead, he warped to the planet where Wells was, and so I warped there too. Wells was in a frigate, and had decided that Coldt's 5 drones were too powerful for him to hang around for. Just as I warped in, he warped away, leaving me to fight Coldt alone.

Cursing the cowardice of pirates, I launched my own drones and engaged with my blasters, with Coldt quickly returning fire. His drones also swarmed around my ship, and before I could say "Holy shite!" my shields were gone. My armour was gone. My hull was gone. I was sitting there, my ears ringing from the explosion of my Thorax, watching the expanding gas cloud and debris of what used to be my favourite cruiser.

Coldt sat there in his Thorax, which looked so much more menacing now, and we looked at each other for a few moments before I regained my wits and decided to leave the area. I returned to the station, nursing a bruised head from where I bumped it during the explosion.

I decided to talk to Coldt and quickly established a comm link with him.

"What the hell were you using?" I asked him. I found out that he had equipped his Tech 1 cruiser with almost Tech 2 everything. My cruiser was able to do about 80 points of damage per second, whereas his was able to do 400 points per second. I shook my head in disbelief. No wonder he'd been able to destroy me so fast!

I thanked him for his time, and then contacted Robert Wells, cursing him for his cowardice and telling him I was never helping him hunt pirates any more. His abandonment of the fight was the epitome of cowardice, but I know I shouldn't expect anything different from pirates. I think this has helped me understand I can never group with a pirate in an attempt to hunt another pirate. A lesson learned.

So with the payment from insurance, I went out and bought another Tristan frigate, spending a few million equipping it. I then continued doing some ratting. Ah, I so love the power of blasters and missiles. It's interesting, but the frigate takes out other frigates and cruisers so much faster than the Thorax, as well as being fast enough to avoid the damage that the Thorax was unable to avoid. I think that I'll continue being a frigate pilot for quite some time....

Except for when I'm an industrial pilot. I received a request for business from someone last night, who wanted me to haul goods for them from Molden Heath to their region, which was 40 jumps away! Based on the time it would take to do that job, I wasn't able to see any worthwhile profit in it for me, based on what they were prepared to pay.

Thinking about it today, I've come to the conclusion that I should re-adjust my hauling charges. If I engage in trading between systems, I can make 600,000 ISK per jump, with a particular trade route I've found. What I've been charging for hauling is 25% of value of goods being hauled, plus 30k per jump. I've realised today that charging 25% of value can be a bit daunting to some, particularly if the value is in the many millions. So if I charge a flat fee of 400k per jump, a rate that's justified by the average of how much I can make if I wasn't hauling and just trading, then I think that will be agreeable to all concerned. Jumping through 40 systems would then cost the client a flate rate of 16 million ISK. But jumping through only 5 systems would cost them 2 million.

This can be cheaper to them than being charged 25% of the value of goods. If I was hauling goods valued at 20 million, then my old charges would be 4 million plus 150k for the jumps. My new charges would be only 2 million, better for them than my old charges, and still providing me with a good profit. Everyone wins.

I'll see how it goes... I think I'll advertise my hauling services on the notice boards.