Diary of a Pod Pilot

When the announcement came that planetside industry would at last be opened up to capsuleers I immediately locked myself in my office and started to consume every bit of information available and developing a plan on how I could make this work for me. And when the first command centers left the assembly lines I invested in no less than five, lowering them on planets in and near Goinard and establishing an industrial network that is still undergoing rigorous tweaking to maximize output and minimize facility downtime.

I’ve always enjoyed the creation part of being a “demi-god”, perhaps even more than I enjoy the destruction part. Although, when doing export and import routines yesterday, the two came together as a Condor and Coercer appeared on scan in Goinard. With Morwen off scanning down a Badger Mark II I had spotted earlier, and receiving intel from her that these were beginning outlaws, I decided to reship and take this chance for some combat practice. When one complains about difficulties of finding prey, one should not pass up when the prey presents itself on ones doorstep, no? Especially not if it sits waiting in the system’s top belt with the intention to also hone their combat skills.

Balancing my chances to catch them with enough survivability I had my pod transferred to the Mercutio, an Arbitrator class cruiser. The fight itself was nothing spectacular, landing on top of them, pinning down the Coercer which received the firepower of a full flight of Hammerhead II’s while tracking disruption crippled his offensive capabilities. I directed my rocket launcher and autocannons at the Condor, and took down his shields and half his armor while he got out of distance. Might have even had him had I been quick enough to set the statis webifier on him. “Good fight”, the Coercer pilot hailed in the local channel as he warped his pod to safety. “Good fight”, I returned. We spoke a little more and he detailed how his wingmate had been surprised by the damage the rockets did to his little vessel, and how they will try to learn from this skirmish to improve upon themselves.

Warping off with all the loot in my cargo hold, but forgetting my drones clearly shows I’ve room for improvement as well. Solo combat still makes me jittery from the adrenaline. I’ll have to take the opportunity to take the lessons offered to me by a few other Veto pilots earlier that day to become a “solo hero” as well. Although with finalizing the plans for my next business venture, which will be a corporate project if I can gauge enough interest for it — and initial polling for interest does make it appear so — the solo combat training will get pushed further down on the agenda again. If all goes well though the earnings will be spectacular and I can buy me enough frigates to last me a lifetime, ignoring the pseudo-immortality of our kind.

Rixx Javix, author of Eveoganda, asked in one of his posts “What is in your hangar?”. Here is my list:

• Apotheosis “Apotheosis”: Never got around naming it, but proud to be the owner of one. If only we could have more Jove ships!
• Minmatar Shuttle “Duct Tape”: For blitzing into highsec and picking up skill books, or whenever that extra layer around your pod isn’t such a bad idea. Name should be rather obvious.
• Zephyr “Soar”: Another collectible, which I did get around naming.
• Punisher “Sparrowhawk”: Got several of these actually, for when I go out by myself, or there are frigate roams. Great fun to terrorize FW with. When thinking of a name for this one, I looked outside and saw said bird sitting in a nearby tree.
• Griffin “Ugly Duckling”: Support for frigate gangs, also known as pocket ECM. Can jam destroyers and even cruisers. Named after its looks.
• Rifter “Sandstorm”: For an upcoming themed op. Never flown this before, and as it seems this will be a suicide op it is decked out in tech I. Have the skills for a full tech II fit, so might be flying this more in the future if I like it. Ah, the joys of cross-training! Name was the first word that popped into my head when thinking of the high dps and speed it is known for, and the lovely rusty brown color.
• Cormorant “Crossfire”: Destroyer ops, another fun thing to fly into FW plexes. Inspired by this piraty track.
• Harpy “Facepuncher”: Blaster fit, name seemed fitting. For when something heavier than a regular frigate is required.
• Crow “Flatline”: Refers to the heartbeat signal of a dead person, because the sensor booster heightens the chance of catching pods and cracking them open.
• Anathema “Big brother”: It is watching you… Sees use in both exploration, finding players and small courier jobs.
• Manticore “Avalance”: DPS support for cloaky gangs. Named after the sudden impact of a lot of damage (when firing at the intended target).
• Purifier “Purgatory”: Once upon a time I had this great idea of ninja-ratting Sansha. Never got around it, and trading successes don’t make it needed right now either. Keeping the pair I have for when the Manticore would perish. Or when I do feel the need to purge some space zombies.
• Arbitrator “Mercutio”: T1 cruiser solo or gang roams. Got named after a ship from the Warhammer 40k novel Faith & Fire. Also have the “Mercutio Redux” exploration variant.
• Blackbird “Medusa”: ECM support for T1 cruiser roams. Its gaze will paralyze you on the spot!
• Pilgrim “Rabisu”: One of my favorite ships. Saw some work in the recent Operation Longshot as a mission prober. Just like the Arbitrator it can work with a variety of setups and be fitted according to taste. Kept the name Sahaquiel Faust had given to it before he gave it to Vincent who then together with the rest of the corp chipped in to present it fully fitted to me as a one year corp anniversary gift. The name comes from an Akkadian demon.
• Sacrilege “Sacrosanct”: Hasn’t seen much use so far, mainly because T2 cruisers cost an arm and a leg these days. Shame, because the sturdy tank and HAM launchers are something I really like. Name is a bit of a pun.
• Guardian “Medic”: Has seen all kinds of uses, from pvp to wormhole ops. Tends to keep people alive, if I am not too busy killmail whoring with the warrior II’s! *pilots screaming Medic are heard in the background”
• Onyx “Lodestone”: Bought this from Aria when she left us, and kept the name she had given to it.
• Badger “Corp Mascot”: Hangar decoration and a reminder of good times. Gets undocked once in a blue moon when lots of loot needs to be scooped up or for comedy relief.
• Drake “Valliant”: My other favorite ship at this moment. HAM setup, deals a nasty bit of damage, and has the advantage of not getting primaried all that often. Or had, after this post. Time to refit to classic bait drake stupid!
• Raven “Majesty”: POS bashing or home defense, depending on how I fit it. Have a level 4 mission variant floating around in Curse as well. Once upon a time the king piece of my hangar.
• Dominix “Aesuga”: Trained with the sole purpose of WH ops in mind. Spider-tanks Sleepers while melting them with Sentries. Kinda like a flying ISK machine. Named after a legendary weapon from another game.
• Machariel “Mont’ka”: Another ship with a story, in reality a gift from Verone from my 1th year in corp birthday, and kept its original name. Still in the process of fitting it and training for it. Until then it is the most sexy station-spinning ship ever!
• Archon “Raziel’s Paragon”: Given to me when Vaden Khale quit EVE. Kept the original name, all his ships followed the same naming scheme of D&D deities and spells / abilities.
• Revelation “Cyric’s Immolation”: Another gift from Vaden Khale. Coined the phrase “Revelation Driveby” and inspiration for the medal “Born in East-Side New Eden” which is awarded upon the opportunity to bring their capital weaponry to bear on frigate sized target and destroy them. Ah, good times!

Phew, long list, and there’s a few things missing, like a Falcon I’d like to get again, maybe a Curse at some point, and some armor-tanking BC / BS wouldn’t be bad to have either. Also promised Vaden Khale an in character blog post about his capital ships, which I plan to write either soon, or when I finish training for them.

What better way to celebrate your new alliance than with a little roaming? And it gets even better if you take your favorite alliance along. Enter Sunday’s destroyer op.

I must admit I have always looked down on destroyers. When I was still working for Apex my trusty Cormorant was set up with four tractor beams, four salvages, propulsion and capacitor modules. Even when I switched corporations I continued to use it when doing agent work for the Thukker. In my eyes destroyers were a failed concept that made a good salvager due to its many high slots. Well, I am glad I got corrected there. Noticing their popularity amongst Factional Warfare pilots, who gladly use the frigate-killers’ ability to activate small acceleration gates, we gathered a nearly exclusive fleet of them and set off to see what we could stir up in The Bleaklands and surroundings.

Things started out really well for me. Killing blow on an Arbitrator, killing blow on a Rupture (who did manage to take Vendrin’s ship out), slowing down a Trasher that tried to run from us on an acceleration gate… Ah, that damned acceleration gate! No sooner had the Trasher gone down or massive reinforcements were reported and we were ordered to enter the complex. Having drifted out the furthest I was unable to initiate warp in time and watched my ship getting torn apart. And then my pod. And while I awoke in a clone vat, I missed the rest of the fight. To see the full picture, you need to have a look at Veto’s records of the battle as well.

In the end, it was us that held the field. And more losses were on Heretic Army’s side than on ours. MirrorGod getting podded made me smile a little. It seemed just, a CEO on each side ending up in a new body.

—

OOC: Links may break as ghostfestival.net is currently switching hosts. Apologies, working hard on getting that killboard back up!

More OOC: Now running Intense Debate for comments. Leave a comment if you like the new commenting.

It is a shame that many capsuleers only ever board their ships through the pod. Recently I’ve visited two of the Ghosts on board of their homes as well as taken up a semi-nomadic lifestyle, which brought me some new insights.

The first visit was to Inara who lives on board of her carrier Echidna’s Daughter. As the stargates were malfunctioning for several days back then and boredom was running rampart she had made me the offer of paying a visit which I was all too glad to take her up on. And what a stunning piece of Caldari design the Chimera is. I had seen carriers before in space through the eyes of my camera drones and knew how big they were, but it was a truly humbling experience to see one docked and board it. While the tour has yet to be finished as I was called back to my office abruptly I did get to take a look at the fighter bay. No crew were active at the time but perhaps on a next visit I can witness one in action.

Then yesterday I went to visit Mortis on board of the Eternity’s Shroud, a Navy Megathron he had obtained in a profitable deal with Izo Azlion of Veto. Not quite as large a vessel as a carrier but an impressive sight none the less. The interior was just as beautiful as the exterior, very sleek bordering on organic due to the shaping and hues of green. I was led through the corridors by a crew member and met Mortis at the heart of the ship in his living quarters, which were just how I’d have expected them to be. While the furnishing didn’t appear to have changed the background music gave it a distinct Amarrian touch. Being offered a glass of a certain Jin-Mei vintage I was shown the room Mortis claimed to spend far too much time in, called the screen room. A rather obvious name for a room with tons of screens mounted on the wall all displaying different data feeds. He explained me a little about his research and mentioned he had a lab as well and after showing me some examples of how this particular room worked we went to the observation deck. While being educated on the various features of the ship that were visible from up there and continuing our conversation a combat call cut the visit short and I hurried back out to let him get linked in. Sadly that would be the last time the battleship would undock as she was lost in combat. I wonder what ship will become Mortis’ next home.

Myself I have been living on and off in my quarters on board of the Mercutio Redux. The Arbitrator class is set up as an exploration vessel which I have been using to comb through various ruins and communication facilities in search for valuables. I’ve been feeling a great deal of nostalgia while doing this, reminded of how I once did the very same in a Drake while still working for Apex and during my early days with Ghost Festival. Aria is partially to blame for this sudden renewed interest in “treasure hunting”. Her departure to take on the role of co-founder in The Synerose Accord awoke that old desire to pursue a scientific and archaeological path of my own. And what better way to fill up a small lull in operations before things kick off again? Perhaps out there alone in the void, while probing and pillaging, I will be able to find that peace of mind I so much need right now.

I’m sitting here in my office with a big smile on my face. Despite having lost a blackbird, and nearly losing an harpy as well I’m glad to see that Bold Harvest is now fully started. While we had a planned operation this weekend it wasn’t until yesterday I got to put a dedicated ECM ship to the test.

Earlier yesterday things had gone a bit sour when Zukko, Yishal and me decided to match up three assault frigates versus a Myrmidon. Little did we know the ship was fitted to counter frigates and we soon found ourselves missing a Vengeance. Draining the last bits of capacitor I managed to get out suffering only minor shield damage. I am ever so glad I took the time to perfect control of this vital part of the ship. Any less capable and it would have taken too long for it to recharge meaning I wouldn’t have been able to reactivate the MWD.

Returning to base we shrugged off the defeat and planned our next move. More and more pilots were tuning into the Neocom – resulting in a peak number in activity not witnessed since our roster was still double it’s current size! – and we formed up a new fleet with those that were combat ready consisting of several assorted frigate and cruiser hulls. And for once we did not have to look for targets as they came to us instead. A fleet of The Wings of Maak had occupied a site in our home system and we were going to crash their party.

Pretty classic scenario to start off with here. Our fleet drops out of warp and their pilots hightail it. Unlike most pilots we meet however they had the guts to come back and put up a fight. The Claw and Tristan sent in however did not stand a chance against the firepower we took along and the rest managed to get out. Celebrating our victory a little too early and having a hearty laugh about the fact Yishal had given me ECM bursts rather than multispectral jammers to be fitted on the Blackbird we failed to notice that The Wings of Maak had now matched up our fleet. As we noticed several Ruptures, a Blackbird and several frigate size hulls appear on the overview we braced ourselves but upon the quick loss of Yishal’s Arbitrator and my Blackbird alternate FC Vincent Pryce made the wise decision to retreat. During the struggle we did make them part with a Thorax. A rather enjoyable skirmish and the Gistii MWD found intact in the Claw’s wreckage covered some of the costs.

Guilty confession? I like ECM ships. Despite their fragility having the ability to render an opponent unable to fight back has a strange kind of allure towards it. As much as I like to be there up close with my fleet members the lessened need to micro-manage and keeping the oversight of the battle have their advantages. Even more so when filling in the role of FC. Who knows…perhaps I will find myself in a Falcon someday. The irony of proving Athas right would be terrible however.

But enough writing for now. There is work left to be done and I much long to find myself out there in the void again before this day ends.