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Tracker Wolf has taken it upon himself to teach this noob the basics of PvP in EVE Online. The game is pretty complicated to begin with, but PvP is like lifting up the control panel for Boeing 747 and finding the controls for the space shuttle underneath.
Hanging in a safe spot deep within lowsec, narrowing in on lone pilots using half intuitive, half trial and error pings from the system scanner? Done that. Bringing up information about the pilot and their ship, length of play, corporation and so forth to see how likely they are to put up a fight? Done that.
Swooped in like an angel of death, warp scrambler pinning them in place while drones and missiles slam into their hull again and again?
Done that.
I’m not really a killer, and mostly (when Tracker Wolf asked after) I just felt kinda bad for the guy. He’d just killed a couple of rats, was in a destroyer but clearly damaged, and then WE swoop in like vultures and rip him apart. I didn’t want to pod him, because everyone loses ships, but podding someone is just being mean.
But hanging motionless in deadspace in the Tin Empress (my PvP Tristan), using an imperfect tool like the system scanner to place someone in the vastness of the system — now THAT’S cool. Like being the submarine person who has to listen for the tell-tale cavitation of the propellers of enemy ships to guess if they are the hunters or the hunted. In lowsec, you are both.
Fate had its way with me later on, as a sudden swarm of NPCs tore my Catalyst, Corner Time Out, apart on a mission. I’d refit my salvager as a mission runner/salvager so that I wouldn’t have to always be swapping ships, and it had been working out fine until I met the Morgun. I wasn’t prepared for how quickly they could take apart my shields — and plus, I was webbed. I went back with my PvE Tristan, Isis’ Dark Laughter, but just barely escaped before that ship was also blown away.
So tonight I will just lie low, I think, and let the last skill I need before I can fly my Retriever mining barge finish training. Sunday starts the training for the Vexor, but before I get that, I need to fit another mission Catalyst — one that can tank a little better. Tracker Wolf sent me a couple PvP Tristan builds, so the Empress will likely be getting an upgrade as well.
Now that you have tasted the dark side will you really be able to go back to the humdrum of mining?
GANKER!
Did you lose those ships on a Sisters of EVE mission? I think I lost three ships on one of those earlier this week because I did not realize they were disrupting my warp drive. First time I saw an NPC (drone) do that. Oh well.
Sounds like I need to learn that scanner properly…
Oh no, Tipa is now a 13yr old mouthbreather with social issues living in his (no girls on the intranetz) mom’s basement, slowly making all the sheep quit and ruining another MMO!
Word of the day: cavitation!
Been reading Tom Clancy or do sub hunting terms just come naturally when in the proximity of Groton?
One of the SOE missions almost tore me a new one too. I was all chillin’ and talking to my sister on the phone when I warped into the area. Within seconds my shield was gone and my armor was fading fast. I kept banging on the “warp the F outta here” command which felt sluggish. Damage was into my hull before I ricocheted out of there. It was a lesson of not being in a Vexor doing the missions and assuming I can still sleep-walk thru them. I was also in a Catalyst.
@mbp I’m not taking up mining because I want to. I’m taking up mining to make vast sums of ISK.
@Ryker yes, I lost the Catalyst in Saving the Queen pt 3, I think.
@Syncaine now, I never said that about Darkfall players 😛
@wilhelm no, from the Phish song “Wolfman’s Brother” — “the high pitched cavitation of propellers from afar.” But it’s probably more impressive to say I was reading Clancy 🙂
@Saylah I am getting the impression Catalysts are not the best tankers in the sky….
@Tipa — Level 4 mission running makes more ISK than mining, though it can be a little “feast or famine” at times. Mining is steady income, but (imo) boringly so. If you’re looking for passive ISK gain, research is something you may want to look at. It won’t make you “rich” per se, but you can make ~50-60 million isk per month with it for just a couple of minutes daily maintenance on your research agents. Add that to mission running/ratting/mining and it adds up.
And /agree on Catalysts not being the best tanks. They just don’t have the slots for it. A Cormorant actually can put a 2-slot shield tank on, but the other 3 dessies more or less have to “speedtank” and fly manually to maximise transversal vs the enemy shots. You’re quite new so you can’t fully fit a destroyer yet either — that doesn’t help. Still… a dessie will serve you better than a frigate in PVE in most cases due to the ability to 1-shot a lot of stuff with that 7 or 8-gun volley.