Ombeve

I opened an eye, mustering what willpower I had left and gazed balefully at the chrono on the table next to my bed. I had been asleep for about 20 minutes. Dammit. Every pore of my body ached, even thinking hurt. The ever-present headache was….well, still present, my nose was still alternating between being bunged up and leaking like a holed pod and I was getting really fed up at feeling so miserable.

My berth was a mess, drinking glasses everywhere, the floor by the bed littered with used tissues where I hadn’t had the strength to find the bin after blowing my nose for the millionth time. This was the eighth day now that I had suffered with this damn flu.

On day three I’d called one of the station’s docs to come and have a look at me. Initially he hadn’t wanted to do house calls, insisting that I come to his surgery on level 53, but after I dropped into the conversation that I would be a very grateful capsuleer, he soon changed his mind (I don’t like using bribery for stuff like this, it makes me feel dirty, but I was in serious pain).

When he arrived, I saw he was an immaculately turned out Sebiestor. Wasting no time with pleasantries, he took one look at me, made a hmmm noise, and got out a lightpen. Shining it into one eye and then the other, he said “Yep, you’ve got the Kaklam Flu. It creates distinctive marks on the cornea, but we don’t know why. The good news is that isn’t fatal, the bad news is that once you have it, you just have to ride it out. I can prescribe you some painkillers, but that’s really it. Drink plenty of fluid, take vitamin supplements, especially Vit C and get rest.”

Aw crap. I accepted the painkillers and thanked him, crediting his account with a handsome fee.

Day four, I lost my voice. Not a problem you’d think as I was on my own, but I realised quickly that the voice activated functions of my berth didn’t work very well with whispers. Feeling very sorry for myself, I now had to drag myself out of bed to perform basic options like change the channel on the viewscreen (very quaint), and change the light level. One part of my mind wondered how people who were mute managed with this.

You’d have thought after eight days there’d be some kind of improvement, but no. Somewhere in a delirium filled dream, one part of my mind that was still sharp came up with the words ‘jump clone’. Of course!! Jump to new clone, hey presto no illness. The appeal of this momentarily slowed my mind, but then I realised that I’d still have to deal with this illness when I jumped back into the clone… and I would have to. Crap. There was no doubt some law about infected pilots jump cloning anyway, the clone vat fluid is delicate stuff and mucus probably doesn’t help it much.

I was keeping an eye on U’K’s activities during this time, and was flying with them in spirit. They were doing very well for themselves, as Catch was hotting up. Morsus Mihi, Tau Ceti, BoB, EXE, Goonswarm and now KIA were all in and around, and we have them all set to red. That may well change, as we are blue to Against ALL Authorities (-A-) who own a large portion of Catch, and are on the side of Bob/ EXE

Just to let you know I am in the grip of RL, and haven’t been able to play Eve for any appreciable time since Xmas Eve Hopefully it’ll blow over soon and I can get back to zooming around Curse, Catch and Provi. In the meantime, take care and fly safe o/

A few days ago, surprised scouts started reporting that the new Alliance inhabiting the buffer between Curse and Sylph’s part of Catch, ‘System Shock Initiative’ (SSI), had put up a Minmatar Outpost in KW-I6T.

Effectively a red rag to a bull, U’K pilots have taken it up themselves to make life as annoying as possible for SSI, given they are allies of Sylph and CVA. Added to us harassing them is -A- (triple A), who own most of ‘Southern’ Catch.

The SSI pilots haven’t been having an easy time of it, getting picked off in their ones and twos all over the place. Indeed, yesterday I was having some downtime in a deep safespot in KW, the ship was offline, the crew was relaxing also. After a couple of hours, I power up the ship to hear jubilant chatter over comms, and see the local channel was full of U’K. A quick enquiry later, and it turns out we had downed a hapless SSI Thanatos class carrier, who had exited warp at the station and been pulled past the station by a well placed small mobile bubble. Read a report of the battle by Wotlankor, Wolf pilot and corpmate, here.

Somewhat annoyed by missing the action, I warped to the station at range to see what was going on there. Got into a fleet with Wotlankor, Conlin and a few of the others. The same small bubble’s irrestible call to my warp computer put me at the edge of it, some 50km away from the station. Wot hung around and shared his off station warp bookmarks with the rest of the fleet, some 5 of us left. One of them was about 300km away from the station, and as I was bookmarking it, I noticed a Drake, neutral Brutix and Arbitrator undock and start locking up Conlin’s Ishtar.

We fully expected them to station hug, but the Arbi drifted off the station, and Conlin engaged. I warped to Conlin, a very short hop indeed and got in a volley on the Amarrian cruiser before it crumpled and exploded. It’s comrades had done nothing to help other than redock. I warped to another spot 300km away from the station, when a Drake undocked and started attacking Conlin. We suspected this would be bait for a SSI fleet undock, but again I warped to Conlin and engaged, struggling to keep my ship orbitting but avoid clipping the station. The Drake’s shields failed quite quickly, and it was then over in seconds. The CONCORD log showed he had no shield extenders on at all, opting for shield resistance modules instead.

As the Drake was about to die, the neutral Brutix undocked and it too engaged us. Maybe making up for the inaction over the Arbitrator. Like the Drake, it went down very quickly, and it also had no kind of tank, just resistance mods. Must be something in the water.

SSI were deciding undocking wasn’t for them, apart from a plucky Iteron III pilot who undocked and got out of the system while we were warping away from the station. However, the Itty came back to the system, and we were waiting. His single stab couldn’t save him. Not a great time to move that stuff.

And finally, a scout reported another Arbitrator, this one neutral, jumping through to us. We had a dictor and webber, and the rest is history.

After that, I stood down. SSI had taken quite a beating that day and weren’t coming out to play.

You know, recently I think I’ve been getting way too attached to my ships. When I was in KIA, losing ships was a regular occurrence, no big deal. Large fleets meant lots of fights against other large fleets.

But since I’ve been in U’K, being wily and smart about who to attack and when to flee means ships tend to be around for longer. After being in many battles and getting through the other side, sometimes by the skin of my teeth, has led me to grow attached to the Vagabond designated simply as “One”. I have a backup Vaga ready to go at a moment’s notice, called “Two”. Cunning names, eh?

I should add at this point, before I forget, that Wotlankor, my friend and all-round nice-guy has followed me to  Mirkur Draug’Tyr/ U’K, and it’s great to have him aboard. A couple of days ago I lit a cyno so he could jump in his carrier, stuffed to the brim with ships. His journey from Venal in the North had been a long and arduous one.

So, last night, we were on an ad-hoc patrol in Northern Catch, saw ratters on scan, but they were being smart and safespotting immediately. One Maelstrom left his Warrior II drones in a belt in a hurry to get out, so we scooped them and destroyed some jetcans he had full of Veldspar (presumably dropped from pirate haulers he got the jump on).

Entering a dead-end constellation, we turned around and came back out, but we’d seen an Arazu briefly follow us into the dead-end, and was cloaked in the system as we came out. I should’ve pulled up short and scouted ahead, but I didn’t think Sylph or CVA would respond quite so quickly. Stupid me. Wotlankor in his Wolf and I jump in.

As we appear in the next system, my heart sinks. Two interdictors, a Drake and a Rapier are there. Had it not been for the Rapier, I’d have told Wotlankor to engage the dictors then bug out. However, the Rapier made all the difference. I see I’m almost on the edge of their bubble, so I decide running and warping will be better than going for the gate. My second mistake, in hindsight.

We both decloak at the same time, and Wot makes it out. We could’ve primaried the Rapier, but he was only AB equipped and would’ve been webbed and popped quickly. I get locked almost immediately, and I’m not warping anywhere- webbed and scrammbed. One of the dictors, a Sabre, bumps into me, so I decide to teach him a lesson. Lock him and unleash the full intensity of my Vulcans, as well as some T1 drones (i lost my T2 drones somewhere and all I had was T1 replacements. My third and final mistake).

I am taking some serious volley damage from the Drake as I keep trying to engage warp, but I’m not going anywhere. The Sabre is smashed down to armour, then into structure, but he’s fleeing from me, and my autocannons are reaching out to 15, 20, 25km to keep pounding him. I am praying I hold out long enough for my drones to finish him as I am out of range now, but my luck was out today. I actually hear my ship’s superstructure groaning as it breaks up, then the reactor breaches and my pod emerges from the massive explosion. My pod is caught in the dictor bubble and as I am locked and fired upon, I have enough time to feel a faint tickle at the base of my skull where my implants are. They have detected pod breach and uploaded my ‘being’.

The next wave of missiles are closing rapidly from the Drake. “Oh shi-”

Silence. Blackness. Nothingness.

I feel a sharp sting in my neck, then hands underneath my supine body, lifting me to a sitting position. I opened my eyes and momentarily panicked when I couldn’t see anything… oh my god… wha-

“Relax sir, you’re safe in a cloning station in Hemin” As I heard this voice, a cloth (towel?) was rubbed over my eyes to wipe away whatever was obscuring my vision. Everything rushed back to me as my brain started to work properly and when I opened my eyes, I could see fine. I was sat in a large cloning vat, up to my chest in cloning fluid, with a male technician looking at me with an appraising gaze. I must’ve been OK, as he smiled.

“Welcome back sir. Tough day?” he chattered amiably
“Yeah, something like that” I muttered, not feeling that chatty, hauling myself out of the vat and into a gown he was holding out.
“What ship did ya lose?” Persistent little bugger. Take a hint dammit.
I thought of a crap ship just to shut him up. “A Burst”. It was a (very) little used Minmatar Frigate.

His eyes glazed over as he struggled to place the ship. I took that as my opportunity to mutter a “thanks” and wandered off to find the showers. “Are you serious? Out here?” I heard him call after me. He’d obviously remembered the ship.

All,

I just had a concerned email from Jinko Jar of Badass In Space blog fame, telling me he received this from some person trying to promote or sell a service:

Dear xxxx,

I represent a few clients who might be interested in being associated with Ombeve. My clients have been closely associated with Eve-Online and other MMORPG. The partnerships my clients are interested in are:

1. Affiliates for my clients (CPA Model)

2. Banner Ads (CPC Model) (Please tell us the ad-specs/formats supported and ad rates for the same)

3. Link Exchange

Given the association of my clients with the game and publisher, this partnership would be beneficial for you as well (from your brand perspective). Your early response (Stating your intent/interest) will help me greatly in making recommendations to my clients. I would be obliged to address any clarifications you seek.

Regards,

Murali Dendukuri

Outer Join Inc.

Regular readers of my journal may have noticed that I’ve been mentioning overheating more. Well, this is because it’s so damn useful.

I’d learned the very basics some time ago, as soon as it’d become common practice for capsuleers to overheat their systems to get better performance, albeit for a limited time. To be truthful, I’m no scientist. Having to learn Thermodynamics via my implant was, in truth, a drag. I could be spending the time improving some other part of my piloting abilities.

So, while I was in KIA, I had just the basics and never used it really, save to spite an opponent by mercilessly overheating everything I could if i knew I was going to die, to try to deny the victors any usable loot. Basically, as we always flew in large fleets, there was very little point in overheating anything as the difference it’d make to the overall outcome was very small.

However, a few days ago, I started to use this forgotten aspect of piloting, and damn, it was good. My MWD would boost me to approximately 50% faster velocity, my warp disruptor would reach another 3 km, and my Vulcan Autocannons would increase their firing velocity and therefore inflict about 15% more damage. I quickly knuckled down and brushed up on my Thermodynamics, and brought myself up to a better understanding of how it worked,  so I could lessen the damage overheating did.

Of course, when you’re in small fleets, it makes a huge difference; between your target warping off or dying, between him making it back to the gate in structure, or dying. Now, once you rack up the heat and the damage, you need to repair it- but a station isn’t always available to you, especially given the hit and runs we do in enemy sovereign space. In comes Nanite Repair Paste. I had no idea how to use it, and just instructed crates of the stuff to be put into my cargo hold, with a vague notion of dealing with it when I had to.

Well, that was last night. We’d just had a fight with a seven man gang, which included two Faction Battleships (don’t see many of those around, especially not in 0.0), and emerged succesful. However, I had overheated my MWD  significantly, and the massive heat had affected my shield modules as well which were housed nearby. Time for the repair paste! Erm. I called up the Captain.

“Yes sir?” his head and shoulders appeared on my HUD. He looked a bit breathless, but so was I - combat does that to you.

“Ah, Captain Wright. I assume you know we’ve got heat damage on the MWD and shield extenders?” I enquired, hoping he’d take the hint

“Yes sir, but I see on the manifest  you brought several cases of Repair Past. Would you like us to commence repairs?” he asked. Well, that was easy.

“Yes, very good Captain, please see to the MWD first. Carry on.” I cut the connection. Hmm, that was easy then.

I quickly called up the market database on my Neocom interface, and …. yep, sure enough, there were two implant skills to be had, one was Nanite Interfacing, the other Nanite Operation. I needed to get hold of them, and pronto. Once I knew more about them, I could effect repairs faster, and apparently, more efficiently.

As I watched, the damage indicators on the MWD, and then shield extenders, turned from mainly red to all green. Wonderful stuff, this nanite repair paste. I made a mental note to get more of it, and soon.

There’s a blog tag game going on that I’ve been unaware of….I’ve been tagged by the lovely Mynxee;  this basically means I have to write some facts about myself, then tag 7 other bloggers.

The Rules:

• Link to the original tagger(s), and list these rules on your blog.
• Share 7 facts about myself in the post - some random, some weird.
• Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
• Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs and/or Twitter.

7 facts about me (oh god)

1. Nothing very exciting happened on my day of birth in any year! Awesome!
2. The most exciting person I share a birthday with is Denice Pearson of Five Star fame (you have to be of a mid to late- 30s age and British to know who the fork they are)
3. I have a problem with chocolate corn-flakes… I can’t stop eating them. If they are in the house, they soon won’t be.
4. The town I live in, despite being insignificant, was bombed in WW2 as it had an aircraft factory there.
5. Once did a 12,000 feet parachute jump over a beach near Cairns. Awesome experience.
6. Although I am very fit in the spring/ summer months, I lapse into malaise as soon as the clocks change and can’t bring myself to train.
7. On that note, I have run two half marathons, Bristol and Cardiff, finishing at 1hr 56mins average

And now onto the torpedo’ing, I mean tagging of 7 other bloggers:

1. Wotlankor
2. Flashfresh
3. Eve’s Weekend Warrior
4. A Mule In Eve
5. 1Man1Ship
6. Wensley
7. Eve Broadside

Now to go and linkify them!

UARM logo

I was pleased to see that Universal Army (UARM), with it’s contingent of 117 pilots have joined Ushra’Khan to take up the good fight. Their numbers will indeed be welcome and will enable us to conduct larger operations against our enemies.

Welcome!

Since I first joined U’K, I have noticed an increase in the amount of U’K capsuleers who are no longer content with letting our home system of CL-85V be some kind of free zone for hostile roamers. This could be that I joined in a lull (and I am told that I had), but also a lot of our pilots have returned from making life for Sylph ratters an expensive one, and are fighting closer to home.

Of course, fighting on your home turf always hand you the advantage- local knowledge, pre-made bookmarks and if you lose your ship you warp to your station, pick up a new ship and get back out to the fight.

As CL is on a pipe, it is a high traffic system, and we used to see a lot of Rebellion Alliance come through, but recently they are busy fighting for or against BoB, I can’t remember which. So now it’s mainly Red Alliance, and then randoms.

Yesterday night was a good night. We had a small skirmish early on where a small Red Alliance (RA) gang  came to CL and killed a Sacrilege after a ‘bait and jump in’ trap. In return, he killed their CovOps ship, a Cyno fitted Cheetah. Within minutes, we had assembled a gang, and a Drake warped into the K-Q gate where they were tarrying, to act as bait. They were obviously high on the Sac kill, and engaged the Drake. We all warped in. I had hopped in my trusty Tempest that had served me so well in KIA, but hadn’t been used since I joined U’K, and warped in at snipe range. I hadn’t had time to refit it, so it wasn’t optimally fitted for sniping, but it was good enough.

To my amusement, we had a 6 man gang, and 4 battleships- something you don’t see often as we like smaller ships. Anyway, I warped in at 90km, and locked onto the Rapier who was called primary. Who likes being webbed? Exactly. The Rapier didn’t last very long, and then we turned to the Drake. By now another couple of U’K ships had turned up, including another battleship, and the Drake had no chance. A Pilgrim, Manticore and Stiletto bugged out, deciding that they didn’t want to stick around.

Afterward, as we looked at the CONCORD kill confirmation, we saw that the ship that did the most damage to the Rapier was his own gangmate in a Drake. And the Drake’s kill confirmation showed it had been webbed by the Rapier!! ‘Auto target back’ maybe?

Later we went for a roam around, ended up back in CL as we heard a Stain Empire (SE) gang were in the area (U’K has a excellent intel channels- everyone reports everything consistently, so we get a very good idea of what’s going on and where). Taanu in his Broadsword goes the to K-Q gate, and we hold off while he engages an SE Ishtar and gets the Ishtar to commit to the fight. Due to a miscommunication, I and another warp to the gate, so I retreat to the 350km spot off the gate until the Ishtar has committed to the fight and is unable to jump through the gate. The Ishtar escapes.

We have 2 Falcons cloaked, waiting to engage, but Falcons are able to completely turn the tide of a battle and are usually a reason for a Falcon-less gang not to engage another gang with a Falcon. So they wait patiently. Sure enough, SE feed in some more ships and I warp to the gate. Their ships are a 100km away from the gate, so I burn out toward them as I have the fastest heavy tackler in the gang. Sure enough, they light me up, the Cerberus is lobbing Caldari Navy Scourge missiles at me and the Ishtar’s sentry drones are firing (and missing). I engage a Zealot, but point my ship back toward the gate to draw them back there as they are now committed and I am not far enough away for my gang to warp to me. Unbeknown to me, Major Vincent is already in warp to my position.

I pass within a few hundred metres of their Falcon (which we didn’t know they had) and decloak it. All hell breaks loose. I get back to the gate after overheating my MWD and turn it off, orbitting the gate. The SE gang hasn’t come in too close, but as Major lands in the middle of their gang and immediately becomes the focus of their fire, we have take the fight to them. Munitions, stabs of laser fire and drones fill the space between us as the Cerberus is called primary. I overheated my MWD again to get me quickly with scramble and autocannon range, and then turned it off as my Vulcan’s span their vicious little barrels at amazing speeds, lobbing huge Barrage rounds at the Cerb.

At the same time, their Crow was lobbing missiles and orbitting, so I sic’d my Warrior drones on him as we had enough damage to take the Cerb down. The little drones shot over to Crow in a heartbeat, and as expected the Crow fled, MWD flaring as it sought to shake off the little pests, their explosive rounds peppering his shield. I kept an eye on the interceptors range so I could recall the drones if he went too far. The Cerb went down, once again my Vaga was judged to have dealt the most damage and we turned to the Ishtar. The stubby cruiser didn’t have much of a shield tank and it’s shields flared and died quickly, armour buckling and then the blue flash we all love. At about the same time, the Crow died.

All that was left on field was a Lachesis… a dampening ship? <implant, ID: ‘Lachesis’><Lachesis, Gallente Combat Recon, Hull: Celestis, Developer: Roden Shipyards; built to represent the last word in electronic warfare, combat recon ships have onboard facilities designed to maximize the effectiveness of electronic warfare..> ok, I got it. Dampening Recon ship, don’t see many of them around. He was 50km away and again I overheated my long suffering MWD to get me into scram range, and overheated my Scrams so I could reach out to 28km and tie him down.

Once I was into 20km orbit, I turned off the overheat (there’d be repairs to do when I docked, but nothing critical), and concentrated on this last kill. He had a sturdy tank, but once his shields went, that was that. The kill log showed he wasn’t actually fitted with any damps, preferring more shield modules. Fair enough.

Awesome fight, very exciting. Once the proverbial smoke cleared, we got busy with looting and noticed that some of The Firm had joined us for the Celestis kill. With friendlies filtered out of the overview it wasn’t always obvious how many friendlies were on the field!

I docked up and got the techs to attend to the overheated mods, and I took a break before heading out again. A pilot’s work is never done!