Enjoying the Hole

The past few days have been at best interesting. I certainly am enjoying my time with the new alliance and certainly learning a great deal about life in a wormhole. The corp I joined I've come to realize are fairly new. Not that it makes any sort of difference to me. If anything, it makes it more enjoyable as we learn to survive this isolated existence together. It also helps that apparently many of our alliance mates are quite familiar with wormhole life.

Since being here though I've had numerous opportunities to join in on some of the PVE and have to say I was honestly a tad surprised how simple it was. This is to say contrary to the impressions I originally had. To be honest, I had this impression that sleepers were an incredibly difficult race to clear but reality is that it's only very mild differences from a level 4 mission in high sec or belt rats in null. Either way, with the combined efforts of 3 or 4 tengus, we can clear sites with amazing speed.

I guess I should also mention the tech 3 ships, in general, are really rather new to me. Yes, I did go solo roaming for 2 weeks in one but never saw any combat against other pod pilots, sleepers, or any pirate factions. Since I've joined this group, that's all changed and my impressions of the T3 ships is, for lack of better term, awesome. Why didn't I get into one before?!

The Tengu is a phenomenal ship. Capable of tanking like a battleship but killing faster. The Proteus is a machine. At close range, it chews other ships to pieces while nearly ignoring the almost useless responses of its enemies. I'm feeling eager now to try out the Loki and the Legion.

But first things first, need to continue my long training towards finally flying my first carrier! It's something I've long to do and now that I can fly and t2 fit nearly every subcap, I'd say it's definitely time!

Terrible Pilot

Yep. That would be me. Not just due to my lack of actually utilizing this journal but also due to my lack of activity within the universe that is Eve. I had a rough time there for a bit trying to get back into it. I renewed my pilot's license only to move my gear to null and then go idle. And eventually, I let my license lapse again. And now, here I am attempting to make another go. This time however, things are MUCH different.

Returning to the pod life, it was no surprise to find myself in an NPC corp with half my gear stuck in numerous stations around the north. Fortunately, this time, I still had clones installed within those stations as they still belonged to the same owners as when I'd left. My first thought was to rejoin the corp I'd been removed from for lack of activity, as the offer had been made. However, I knew that would just be condemning myself to failure and boredom once again. Null is stagnate, at least in the north, and just the idea alone of playing thunder dome bored me. No, this time I knew I had to find something entirely new.

I've been following, even during my time away from the capsule, a very entertaining blog by a pilot known as Penny. (not even going to attempt the last name) If you've never read her blog, you should. I have given, and will do so again, her props for making even an uneventful evening interesting. Even if you've never piloted a ship in Eve, you just may be interested in giving it a try after reading her journal entries.

How she writes though isn't what this is about. It's what she writes about. Or more specifically, the area of Eve she resides in. Wormholes.

I've always held some interest in wormholes ever since they first started appearing. The idea of a new frontier is certainly appealing when most of known space is occupied. I can't imagine anything better than an area constantly being in a state of flux, that from one day to the next you never know where you may be connected to, or who could be watching you... So exciting!

So I did it. I made the leap. I put all my ships that I couldn't retrieve up on contracts, extra gear on the market, and bought a T3 Proteus. Immediately, I scanned down a wormhole and for 2 to 3 weeks, allowed myself to be "lost" in wormhole space. This allowed me the opportunity to get comfortable with no longer having an intel channel and force myself to become familiar with properly bookmarking important aspects, such as the wormholes themselves, take notes of my routes (in the event I needed to make a hasty retreat) and quickly identify and locate towers within the various systems. Unfortunately, I never had the opportunity to catch any targets of opportunity but that was mostly due to me ignorantly bringing core scanner probes rather than combat probes, a lesson in and of itself.

Since then, I found myself a very active corp, part of the Ushra'Khan alliance. I didn't even realize Ushra'Khan had left null-sec until I'd come across this group. Either way, both my corp and the alliance have been absolutely awesome since I'd joined their ranks. They have been very patient with me as I learn more about life in wormholes and they've certainly been very helpful filling in those knowledge gaps where I'm not clear.

I've also managed to get my first kill with them since my return to pod life. Surprisingly, it wasn't in W-space, but rather in low sec. I was returning from an earlier day's roam through a mix of w-space and lowsec, where I had to unexpectedly dock and log off due to an out-of-pod responsibility. An alliance mate was wanting to get an orca through a few lowsec systems to a high sec island, where we had an entrance to our home system. Since I was already headed that way in my Proteus, I offered to provide webbing escort. He got through the second gate ahead of me and was immediately warp scrambled by a lone battlecruiser. I arrived on scene just in time to assist the gate guns in killing the battlecruiser before he was able to take out the orca. What happened next I'm not sure whether to consider fortunate for me or unfortunate for the both of us.

After killing the battlecruiser, I was still flagged as criminal from webbing the alliance Orca (something that I think is in need of a fix) and quickly made a break to a nearby planet, not realizing the Orca was warping to the next gate. He jumped on contact....only to be facing a small fleet of local pirates associated with the previous battlecruiser pilot. At first, it was a Loki and a Drake, of which I'd considered engaging in perhaps another attempt to save the Orca, but just as I activated the gate to jump, the alliance mate notified me of more hostile ships arriving on scene. So I did the only thing I could think to do.

I cloaked up and ran.

There was nothing I could do. With so many ships warping in to get in on the kill, attempting any sort of assist would've only resulted in just adding my own ship hull to the wreckage. In retrospect, we both knew it was a very dangerous game we were attempting. The chance to kill a tech 3 ship escorting an Orca? It's like a pirate's wet dream. But for me, if anything came from it, I was at least able to show prove my willingness to be involved in alliance affairs early on.

Settling In

So my gear is staged, my clones relocated, and my desire for blood and war ready to be satiated. Now I just need to find willing combatants...

So far with this new bunch, I've seen quite a large share of operations take place. Unfortunately, most of em I observed while working to get my gear moved to the proper staging locations. However, in the two days since my gear has been relocated to these stations, I've been able to get in on two fleets. Both fleets were really quite entertaining to fly with. Unfortunately, I have not been able to get in on any real kills other than a couple of SBUs (Sovereignty Blockade Units) that were dropped in ally space but I've gotten a chance to see how their fleets operate and am impressed. Fleet comms at times did get a bit messy from time to time, but when work needed to be done, the level of professionalism by the fleet commander and the fleet members themselves seemed top notch. Only once did I observe a single individual out of the 500 in the first fleet and about 250 in the second get out of line (apparently went afk while holding on the frontlines...). There was also a moment where some fleet members took a slightly different route than the main contingent, but was due to instructions to reach destination at best pace and their autopilot navigation differed for one reason or other.

We did see one fleet engagement. I was not able to get in on any of the kills given a disagreement my ship had with a POS shield and thus arrived on the battlefield too late to get in on the action before the enemy disengaged and warped off. However, it gave me a chance to observe their handling of target calling and such and again, I was impressed.

So although my own desire for blood has not be fulfilled, I am certainly looking forward to the many days to come flying with these new brethren of mine.