Am I a bully???

A shoutout to Judu Hekki for a comment on one of my other posts for the idea behind this post.  Essentially Judu and his corp killed a Prospect in their hole that they managed to catch mining and subsequently the ganked pilot accused him and his corp of being bullies.  The gankee linked Ganking is Bullying as a kind of rational for that accusation.  Judu was wondering on my take on this, as what I do would fall under the category of  'bullying' according to the gankee in question.  So am I a bully that just kills poor, defenceless ships?

First of all, Ganking in Bullying defines ganking and bullying as essentially the same thing:
Bullying:
Repeated aggressive activity by one person or group of people against another specific person or group or class of people over a period of time, 
With the intention of causing them physical, mental, and/or emotional harm, and
Involving a real or perceived imbalance of power between aggressor and aggressed, in favor of the former.

Ganking:
Repeated aggressive activity by one person or group of people (e.g. gankers) against a specific person or group or class of people (e.g. miners) over a period of time, 
With the intention of causing harm (e.g. loss of in-game assets), and
Involving a real or perceived imbalance of power between aggressor and aggressed, in favor of the former.

And further clarifies that Ganking in their view is not an acceptable form of PvP:
Ganking is PvP in the sense that all active spaceships are valid hostile targets to each other, but it is not PvP in the sense of consensual combat between two willing players. It is the latter sense that is morally relevant to the concept of bullying.

So, it appears that the author over at Ganking is Bullying has an issue with pilots shooting at pilots that don't really want to be shot at.  Furthermore, where there is a real or perceived imbalance of power in favour of the aggressor, this constitutes bullying.  Ok, for a practical example let's take a look at Rooks and Kings engaging in the despicable bullying of a Brave fleet at 2m 15sec in the video below.

That Brave fleet certainly didn't consent to being pipe bombed, and Rooks and Kings had a definite power advantage in the form of a cloaked cyno HIC and smartbombing battleships that wiped the Brave fleet in no time flat.  Totally unacceptable form of PvP that, must be bullying, seems pretty clear cut.

But no, the video is a promotional video (and one of the best made by CCP so far I must say) released by CCP to advertise the game - fleet combat is a cornerstone of how CCP markets the game to the wider public, and to not call that an acceptable form of PvP is a bit of a stretch.  I also take particular issue with the use of 'consensual combat' as a delineation between what is considered to be an 'acceptable' form of PvP.  A definition such as this defines every PvP encounter I've had thus far on this blog as 'unacceptable' because I am usually cloaked and my targets that don't know that I'm there.  I can choose what I engage and usually the engagement proceeds on my terms and therefore there is a real power imbalance in my favour.  But that is just utilising the strengths of the ship I'm flying - covert ops cloak, nil sensor recalibration and high DPS vs larger targets.  Should I not utilise my strengths?  Maybe I should convo the next Noctis I get on grid with and ask permission to engage them, I wonder what response I'll get?

I'm willing to bet that the rationale for Ganking is Bullying is driven by Highsec miner ganking.  But here's the thing -  the moment you undock your ship is the moment you become fair game to each and every other player out there.  A lot people operate on the false assumption that Highsec should be 100% safe.  That's just simply not true, anyone can and should be able to attack anyone at any time, it's just that in highsec Concord will come and kill the aggressor after a set amount of time dependent on the security status of the system.  This mechanic allows for suicide ganking and the associated danger that brings to Highsec - all working as intended.  But CODE is bad, suicide ganking defenceless mining ships, something should be done to stop/limit/counter gankers etc.

And this highlights the issue I have with most opinions that ganking is bad - the lack of responsibility they assume for the victim.  'My yield fit Retriever got ganked by CODE.  Bad CODE.!!!'  Maybe if you actually put a shred of tank on your mining barge and weren't AFK you would have noticed the warp in ship they moved within 2000m of you, and maybe if you had pinged dscan few times you would have seen the Catalyst inbound and been able to warp out in time.  "You killed my Prospect at an Ore site in wormhole space - you shouldn't have done that and you're a bully because you did".  Ah, I'm sorry, missed that dev blog where wormhole space was now a no fire zone.  Perhaps if you had properly scouted out the system you might have realised that the people living there were online and decided that it may not be the best idea to engage in one of the most dangerous activities you can do in wormhole space.  "Havlac is a bully because he ganked my poor defenseless Mammoth in his stealth bomber".

I'd like to take a moment to relate the story of my latest kill that I believe ties nicely into this discussion.  I had found a likely C1 to stalk out as the locals appeared to be relatively active in my time zone, but things were quiet so I went for a bit of a wander down the chain.  I happened upon a C3 and dscan showed some promise with wrecks on scan, but also combat probes.

I couldn't locate an anomaly that the wrecks were located at so I assumed that the site had despawned. While looking around a Legion decloaked not far from the wormhole I was sitting at and dropped combats.

Ok, looks like I was spotted coming into the system.  Thats alright, I'll fully reconnoiter the hole and do some research on the locals.  It turns out it's only a 4 man corp and there are 2 of them currently online.  While I'm doing this the Legion logs off.  I'm beginning to suspect that the online player has eyes on the wormhole I came through, so I'll try going back through the wormhole and jumping back through when I'm not polarised to see if I can't catch something.  The moment I jump out the legion logs back in.  Right, if they want to play silly buggers with me I'll hang around and see if I can't catch them with their pants down.  I jump back into the hole and logoff at a safe for the night.

Next morning I scan the hole out when the locals aren't online.  I get stuck into my play time later that afternoon and poke a C5 frigate hole where I find a Prospect at a gas site.  While I'm trying to get in position to try for the Prospect, a notification chimes - the pilot I suspect was sitting on the hole last night has logged in.  I get a point on the Prospect but he warps off, probably stabbed but I may not have managed range properly.  Oh well, back to the C3.  I warp to the local tower in time to see a Buzzard swapped for a Mammoth.

A quick check of Zkillboard shows this pilot has previously been killed in losec in an untanked Mammoth.  I think I know where she is going, as the single static for this hole is a U210 losec connection.  But then Kottavai throws me a curve ball when she warps off to nothing I have a bookmark for.  Maybe bouncing from a safe to the hole?  I warp to the U210 at 20km and start pinging dscan.  Nothing, nothing - Mammoth.  Reduce to 10AU, she's still coming, 5AU still there, 1AU, she'll be here shortly.  The industrial lands 10km from the hole.  I was going wait for her on the return trip back to the tower but as she's at least 5km from the wormhole activation range this will do. It's a rush job with the screenshot, but I think it looks pretty dramatic.

The Mammoth pops after one volley.  I'm such a bully for killing such a poor defenceless ship, right?

Well no.  As you can see from the fit above, there isn't a single defensive mod or rig on the ship.  It's maxed out for cargo capacity.  I had a quick play with Pyfa and came up with a reasonable setup that would have evaded me due to fitted stabs, has 11K EHP and still has a 13,300m2 cargo capacity.

The Mammoth I killed wasn't defenceless, the pilot flying it made the choice to make it defenceless. Everything from the ship type, fittings and the decision where she flew the ship ultimately contributed to it being killed.  If she had the above setup or something similar, it wouldn't have been ganked.

Not to let the cat out of the bag, but if you reasonably tank your Noctis (ala Judu's 22700 EHP Noctis ) and put out 5 Warrior 1's (yes, a Noctis has a 25 m2 drone bay, which will fit 5 Warrior Is.  I had to look that up because I have never seen a Noctis launch drones), you will kill me in my stealth bomber before I kill you.  If you fit half a rack of autocannons to a salvaging destroyer instead of 8 salvagers and I don't know, maybe fit some kind of tank to your ship, you will kill me before I kill you - that's the funny thing about Destroyers, they're designed to kill frigates.  Prospects need to be locked before they cloak (pay attention and no one will be able to catch you), Ventures need 4 points of warp disruption to be reliably caught and both ORE frigates can sport a couple of drones that can cause a stealth bomber problems plus a reasonable tank vs torpedos.  Explorers can and often do fit stabs & most of the typical exploration frigates can sport drones.  But I'm a bully because I kill players who don't do any of the above.  Yeah, right.

Part of the appeal to me about Eve is that it is a harsh, cruel world.  It doesn't hold your hand and doesn't holds back any punches.  I have once (a long time ago) lost literally everything I owned in game down to my last ISK to a gate camp.  Did I hold a grudge against the campers? Did I whinge about how it wasn't fair?  No, I got pissed off at myself for doing something as stupid as flying a T1 industrial down a pipe to a dead end system without scouting it out first.  My loss, my responsibility.

I play Eve in the style I current do because it's fun.  I enjoy stalking through the winding ways of wormhole space, finding players, targets, watching, thinking, anticipating, acting.  I try to kill other players because it is a challenge, trying to anticipate what the other guy is doing and getting into a position to execute a gank.  Decloaking is exciting, never really knowing if something nasty is going to decloak next to you.  Do I feel bad after a kill?  Rarely - this is a game after all.  I do remember a particular instance where I killed the same explorer in the same relic site half an hour apart.  I convoed him and had a chat about what happened and pointed him in the direction of my old stomping grounds back when I started exploring (a little quieter than the FW system we were in), as well as reimbursing him the cost of his Cheetah.  That's probably the only time I felt bad making a kill.  But overall I have never felt remorse for shooting a ship, because at the end of the day PvP is what Eve is all about - the moment you undock your ship you consent to the risk of non consensual PvP.  What you do and the choices you make determines whether you will survive.

Right place, right time

It's funny that I fly around in a stealth bomber, but I never have a bomb launcher equipped.  Bombs are too situational, take up too much fitting space and in the space I tend to operate in they can't probe down a wormhole exit.  For me it's much more effective to have 3 torpedo launchers, cloak and core probe launcher, but that doesn't mean I'm not willing to try things out and to that end when I last exploded my ship I swapped the standard mobile warp disruptor for a bomb launcher and a concussion bomb.  Bombs are quite large, coming in at 75m2 so I didn't have a lot of room left in my cargo bay, but it was there should the situation arose that a large dumb fire, area of effect weapon was required.

I had wandered around a little looking for some action and happened to jump into a new system with a bunch of ships on dscan but no wrecks and no force field at the moon I narrowed them down to.  I had stumbled into a structure bash with 4 Oracles and a Jackdaw huffing and puffing away trying to pull down the dead defences.  Very interesting, I'll be setting up a perch and watching what happens here.

I did some research while I waited and found out that these same guys had all been killed in the same ships the day before, presumably bashing the same POS.  This could get really interesting, especially when combat and core probes appear on dscan.

I move closer to allow myself to be in range when the expected Sabre drops in, but after a while of nothing happening I conclude that either the prober is really, really, bad at probing or the probes belong to friends of the POS bashers, presumably to act as a deterrent to anyone in system or provide a quasi early warning system that something was on it's way.  That's a shame, but gets me thinking about how I could maximise my damage should these guys receive some unwanted attention, and decide that a bomb into the middle of a fight would be spectacularly fun to do and might get some kills.  Better to be prepared than be caught without the wrong tool, so I move back over a system to get to a safe and refit to the bomb launcher.  It's a bitch to fit, I basically have to offline most of my mid slots to get the thing online, which really sucks.  But whatever, this will be a one shot jaunt anyways.  As I jump back through I check the damage on the bomb launcher - this system is a Red Giant with the associated bonus damage to bombs, so my damage jumps to an impressive looking number.

I might be in with a shot at causing some real damage here.  I should really waiting for if and when these guys get jumped, but the nearly 16 and a half K damage compared with the around 7500 damage these Oracles took when they were killed last night makes me think I might be a chance to kill a couple of them by myself.  Stuff it, I get aligned up, choosing an Oracle that's has another 2 Oracles within the 15km blast radius.  Deep breath, de-cloak.

Tally Ho!!!

I warp off as I release the bomb and land still on grid but a couple of hundred klicks away just as a satisfying explosive shockwave reaches my ears after traversing the emptiness of space in cool defiance of real world mechanics.

In hindsight I probably shouldn't have warped off given the damage I did with the first hit.  If I'd had my target painter online instead of the MWD, stayed on the grid & locked up my target Oracle, the target painter would have increased the damage from the bomb by a bit and one or two volleys of my torpedoes hopefully would have done the trick.  The Jackdaw was probably my biggest threat and he was over 60km away, plus I was already aligned so it wouldn't have taken long to get out of dodge.  Note to self, analyse this stuff before you engage, you might get a better result.

In the end these guys aren't too worried by a lone bomber and all I managed to get from them in terms of a response is they are no longer sitting still.  It turns out I only helped them at their task, getting in on a sensor dampening battery  and a medium pulse laser battery killmail.

I move on, refitting back to the normal setup and trying to find some more targets.  I end up in a C5 and I know there is a bubble at a particular tower, but there isn't any cargo containers, so I warp over and land in amongst all the POS guns.  And then I die to a tower again.  Bloody towers.  I have resolved to ignore towers with bubbles in future, and I'm aiming to make July a "Losing ships to towers free month".  Bloody towers.

The next week or so is a bit of hard work, lots of scanning without much reward.  I eventually find a Vexor Navy doing a data site after working my way 5 holes deep down a particular chain, which is probably the deepest I've scanned out a chain while looking for players to interact with.  The problem is that I haven't scanned this hole out, so I'll need to use dscan to narrow down where this Vexor is and then drop probes hopefully on top of it.  I decide that for something different  I'll use combat probes, so I drop a depot outside of dscan range, refit and position the probes.  I'll be using a tip that Zosius has graciously imparted ,  where I pull the probes as soon as the scan cycle has completed to avoid having the probes visible for too long - if I need to rescan I can warp back out of dscan range of the target, redrop the probes and reposition them as needed, rinse and repeat.  It appears I'm not the best at this as it takes 5 goes to finally get a warpin on the Vexor, but they appear oblivious to my attempts at finding them.

I settle in to wait.  It takes a while, but the site is finally cleared and the Vexor warps home, hopefully for something like a Noctis given they haven't dropped a MTU.  They don't appear to be local, as they are gone for a while before warping back to the site in a.......

WTF?  I can only reason that they were going to try and hack the site, but it despawned while Geniva swapped ships.  The Helios buzzes around looting the field but not salvaging the wrecks.  In frustration I try and nab it on the last wreck, but it's already aligning out & warps out before I can lock it. Very frustrating, Maybe I'm just trying too hard, trying to force things.

For something different one afternoon after work I have a few minutes while the wife heads out to pick one of the kids up from daycare.  I'll login and see what's happening in the system I logged off in last night.  Wrecks on scan along with a Rattlesnake.  Curious, but not really hopeful of getting a kill due to the time frames I have available,  I resolve the anomaly they are at and warp over to have a look.

This shows promise.  He doesn't have a MTU out at this point so I'm liking the chances that there will be a salvager along at some point.  However, he is taking a really, really long time to clear the site.  It's a C4 anomaly & he only halfway through the first wave, with several battleships in waves 2 and 3 - it's going to be a while before he's finished, much longer than I have available.  However, I might be able to make this work.

I leave Eve running and start folding washing.  I'm about halfway through the basket when the wife gets home, and I say hello to the family before putting the clothes away, surreptitiously checking on the Rattler to see how he's progressing.  I also wash the dishes up.  All very good house husbandly things to do.  Eventually I ask the wife, can I pretty please play Eve for 5 minutes?  I remember telling her" You see this guy here, once he's finished killing these red things I'm going to have a chance at killing him".  Eve explained in 25 words or less, very informative and inspirational.  Needless to say, the wife isn't terribly impressed, but says she won't stop me, as long as it's only 5 minutes.  Hooray!!!

As a tradeoff I also let the wife use the computer so she can enrol in her next semester Uni courses.  As she's finishing up with that I check Eve and the Rattler only has a couple of Sleeper cruisers left.  Show time, start the clock.  While I haven't been watching a MTU has been deployed so the wrecks are nicely compressed into a ball.  I warp in at 30km and watch the Rattler warp off to the local tower.  What will he bring back I wonder.

I like Noct... Noctises? Noctii?

It's a little ironic that when I'm not really trying to kill something a Noctis drops in my lap, with a little bit of help from a caring, understanding wife.

I may not get you, but I will get your Alt

I've found a new C2 to hang out in, the reasons for my stay are threefold.  1.  It appears that the locals are reasonably active in my timezone 2. I couldn't be arsed logging off in another system and have to rescan everything and 3.  There is a particular ship buzzing around the system that I hope to have a chance at landing on grid with and hopefully squashing:

I don't have any luck with the Epithal for a couple of days, and the locals don't appear to be doing much else that I can interfere with.  This changes when I have a half hour after work where the rest of the family is out of the house.  I login to have a look around and see if anything new is happening.

Interesting.  I become even more interested when the Procurer warps to an ore anomaly.  I follow and land on grid and set about creating a tactical perch that I can GTFO to if needed.  It takes a little while to work out how I can get close to the Procurer without getting decloaked, but I finally work out if I warp to this particular rock at 30km I should remain cloaked. Done, I'm around 40km to the target with nothing of concern either on dscan or in terms of my approach path to the ship.  However, there is a potential problem.

I don't see any mining lasers active, so we have a miner just warping to an anomaly and just going AFK, or a potential bait ship.  I haven't done any scanning this afternoon so the chances I was spotting when I logged in are pretty slim.  But I'm a bit concerned given a Procurer can sport a pretty heavy tank for a mining barge, so if it is bait I most likely won't be able to kill it before the cloaky(ies) waiting nearby will kill me.  But what the hell, I'll decloak aligned to my perch and if there is a Proteus lurking nearby I'll (hopefully) warp off before they can lock me.  I start moving into position, but my plans are dashed when the family arrives home.  Farewell, potential bait Procurer, I will never know your true nature.

Later that night I have some play time and fully scan out the chain, there isn't a lot doing until I jump back into the hole one system away from my "Home" C2 and notice a Cheetah on scan.  It's probably just dumping probes or transiting a wormhole, it'll soon cloak up.  Or will it?

It's not cloaking up.  Swinging dscan around I quickly determine it's over at the Losec static in this system and warp over to see if it's still hanging around.  I land on grid to find the Cheetah about 115km away from me.  At this point I want to point out how much I love the sensor overlay with the bookmarks showing in space.  It makes aligning things such as bubbles a hell of a lot easier to do and it's a tremendous aid in situations such as I have here, as there is a bookmark hanging in space for the C2 static roughly inline with this Cheetah.  I'll warp to the C2 hole and warp back to the Losec hole at 100km, it will be a thousand times quicker than trying to slowboat towards it and I should land pretty close.  A bit under 10km in fact.

I orbit at 15km, preselect the torps, painters and disruptor, decloak and get everything that needs to be heated.  Pretty straightforward, except there are no Torpedoes streaking to my target.  Speaking of which I don't have a target - I haven't locked him up when I decloaked.  *Sigh*.  I try locking the Cheetah but my delay has given Xrebelion enough time to react, and the ship disappears in a cloud of shimmering hexagons.  I half heartedly light my microwarp drive and steer in the general direction of where the Cheetah was in a vain attempt to decloak him, but he's gone.  The game is up, the locals know I'm here and what I'm flying, it might be time to move on.  I jump back to "Home" (I'm going to call my main stalking site "Kimbo" from now on) and just manage to get cloaked up before Xrebelion and another pilot I didn't get the name of land on the hole in a pair of T3 destroyers.  I can see that my presence is not welcome here, and rapidly warp off to find greener pastures.

I'll poke a highsec connection first, with the aim of finding another wormhole to jump into.  A quick scan reveals the connection I came through is the only wormhole in system.  I'll go poke another known space connection, as I'm not feeling inclined to jump gates and I might find something in the chain as I go from K space connection to K space connection.  Before I leave though, something catches my eye on Dscan and with my interest piqued I get on grid.

So many graves.

I had in fact read up on the Eve Cemetery only earlier that day while looking up trading in corpses (I have a project I'm working on that will require a few frozen corpses, but given my lack of podding lately I'm all out.  And no, I'm not in any way related to those pesky drifters, certainly involved with nothing illegal, but it could be construed as of slightly questionable taste.  I will reveal all at a later date).  The Eve Cemetery is basically a place where you can drop of the corpse of your vanquished foes or your previous clone if you so wish and the owners of the POS will organise a burial & internment in a secure cargo container so the "grave" is on display.  As you can see from the screenshots above there's certainly a lot of graves there.  Feeling slightly humbled, I decide to head back to Kimbo as it's nearly time for bed and I couldn't be bothered getting set up in another hole.

Nothing doing on the way back to Kimbo, but when I do arrive I see a new Confessor with a ship name that I haven't seen before on dscan.  I warp over to one of the local's towers and find my friend Xrebelion the Cheetah pilot now sitting in the Confessor along with a buddy in a Svipul.  As I watch the Svipul is swapped for a Catalyst - these guys sure like their destroyers.  It dawns on me that I should be saying this guy and not the plural given the similarity of the names.

The Confessor warps off to a D382 and I follow, confident that this turn of events might mean I get a chance to redeem my inability to target earlier tonight.  I give it a couple of minutes before I follow the Confessor into the C2 where Dscan confirms I may get my chance.

I set a tactical perch, bookmark the MTU and then get in position inside point range of the MTU in preparation for a salvager.  I can confirm that the Confessor is a boss at C2 anomalies, Xrebelion powers through the site in next to no time, which makes me wince painfully thinking of the half hour it used to take me to do the same site in a Drake.  However, there is what I assume is a Confessor wreck here from the same corporation and with the same tag on the ship name, suggesting that he's had a bit of trouble with this site previously.  No such problems this time though, and a kind of grim certainty settles over me - this Confessor is going to warp off when the site is done taking the MTU and the loot drop with him, Xrebelion's alt in the Catalyst will warp in and salvage most of the wrecks, at which point I will kill it.  I almost feel bad for the guy, but then the Catalyst lands on grid.

The Confessor lingers but for a moment before warping off back to Kimbo.  A final check that this Catalyst isn't packing blasters - Check.

Ok lets get this right this time.

See what happens when you actually target someone you want to shoot at?

I have only the one scare when the Catalyst targets me right back after I lock him up, so I align out and get ready to hit the MWD, but it appears that he may have had auto target back set to yes.  The only way he was going to hurt me with the above setup was if I was flying a Minmatar ship.  Once again the pod gets away - I'm considering swapping a painter for a sebo to try and address that.  While I would have preferred to have nabbed the Cheetah first time round, I'll take killing someone's alt any day.

When it rains it pours

I'm not the biggest fan of C5s.  Once you get caught in one it becomes a rolling highway of C5's with very few connections to lower class space.  This would be ok if those C5's weren't empty and lacking in content, but the majority that I come across don't have much happening.  So my adventure tonight begins with the uneventful login to a deserted C5. I throw probes at the new signatures that are present, hoping to find a C4 or something.  Aha - a EOL frigate hole to null sec - that will do.

I emerge from session change and do the normal things, bookmark the hole, dscan, recloak back up, but no hurry, local is empty but for myself.  A quick look at the system designation has me doing a double take and a quick search to make sure - yes it is the same system.

B-R, where a little over a year and a half ago over 7,000 capsuleers participated in the destruction of over $300,000 USD worth of Internet Spaceships in a battle lasting over 21 hours, all over an unpaid sov bill.  It's just a smidge quieter now, but the presence of the Titan graveyard is awesome and indicative of just how special New Eden is - there is no other game out there that I know of that player actions can have a lasting effect on the game environment in such a way as you can in Eve.

I've discovered that having local makes you lazy.  I mosey about getting my selfie screenshot of the Titan graveyard, refit to my dual painter setup and lazily dump probes to scan down the other signatures, all safe in the knowledge that there isn't anyone sneaking up to gank me.  As luck would have it we have another wormhole so I grab the mobile depot and head over to more dangerous space.  Ok, back to business, I find myself a C3 and a lonesome MTU.  Littering in W space, tsk tsk.  I quickly ensure that the natural order of things is restored.

Feeling slightly less soiled I push on, hoping to find some real content to keep me entertained.  Onwards to another C3 where I find a Gila and Cyanbal sitting in their POS.  I watch for a while before getting probes out and scanning everything down.  I take my time a bit bookmarking all the sites after scanning and the lack of activity after my probes are recalled seems to assure the locals that I'm gone - dscan shows wrecks on scan.  I quickly determine which combat anomaly the residents are running and warp in at 100km to have a look.

What a wonderful sight.

They appear to be having trouble with the two webbing battleships at the end of the anomaly as they keep warping off, but I don't mind all that much as it gives me time to make a nice tactical perch.  The fact they keep coming back reassures me they will also finish the site, and when they do something will be sure to come along for the salvaging and that's when I'll get my shot.  They eventually finish killing sleepers and the Gila warps off to their tower.  The Cynabal stays in the site.  Hmmmnnn, this could mess things up for me.  If he stays in the site I can pretty much guarantee I'll be in a pod if I have a crack at the Thrasher that warps back into the site.  I warp down from my perch 30km out and start moving into position to execute the gank while making sure that the Thrasher is in fact equipped with salvagers and not something nasty like autocannons all the while keeping a close eye on the Cynabal.

My potential headache removes itself when the Cyanbal warps back to it's POS just as the Thrasher starts salvaging.  I orbit the Minnie destroyer and wait until he's on the last wreck before decloaking and letting fly.  He doesn't last long but unfortunately the pod gets clear.

Not bad.  I'll take it.  But the night is still young.  Not really, it is way past my bedtime, but I'll keep going.  There is a Highsec hole in this system, I'll jump to K space to sell my ill gotten loot from the MTU I popped earlier and maybe see if there is another wormhole I can quickly dive into, as the C3 chain I'm in has hit a dead end.  I sell my loot and make a few jumps over before I find another wormhole.  It's a C2 and dscan again lights up my night.

This time we have a Legion and an Eagle running the site, and due to it being a C2 they are completing it with ease.  I don't have much time so I go about setting up my perch while keeping an eye on these guys at work.  I haven't had a chance to scope out the rest of the system as I warped straight to this anomaly so there is a bit of fog of war about what else might be at the outer planets, but I don't really want to move off until I have my perch set.  However, sweeping dscan around while I wait does shows me something intriguing:

Surely they won't will they?  I don't understand why people would use a Noctis when a MTU and cheap dessie will do the job just fine and for a fraction of the co....  ahhh... I retract the previous statement, everyone in wormhole space should ditch their MTU's and just use a Noctis.  They are way more efficient, look much cooler and are definitely NOT a target I would try to gank at every opportunity.

Noctis on grid!!!

Wow, this night just got really exciting.  I move myself into position while the Legion and Eagle warp off to their POS.  I'm setting up for a drive by, starting 20km from the Noctis just inside point range with my bomber aligned to my perch so my trajectory will take me within a couple of kilometers from the Noctis, but keeping me aligned for when he friends come to save him.  By starting at the edge of point range I also give maximum time for the gank to be completed, as my ship will need to cover 40km before my target is back out of point range on the other side.  I wait until the Noctis starts on the final set of wrecks, align to the perch, declock, lock, overload everything and then keep an eye on dscan.

Starting Well

Still no cavalry, nearly there...

So close - just as the cavalry arrives.

The Noctis is deep into structure when the Legion and Eagle finally land on grid and time seems to stretch out while I'm waiting for my next volley of torps to fly.  It seems to take an eternity for the reload cycle to complete, all the while I'm keeping a close eye out for impending doom of my ship via the flashing yellow targeting box.  Yellow boxes on the overview - discretion takes the better part of valour and I warp to my perch.  So, so so close.  I quickly warp back down to my warp in point hoping to decloak, get 1 or 2 volleys off again but the Noctis is aligning out and warps before I can get in position.

The Noctis pilot, Judu Hekki, confirms that it was a tight run thing, with his ship being at 27% structure - that's 864 structure HP.  One more volley probably would have done it, but I was pretty close to being targeted with all the associated squashiness that a targeted bomber experiences.  *Sigh*.  All in all I'm pretty happy with my night's work though, it's been one of the most productive nights so far.  I got a couple of kills, was a lot better in terms of my situational awareness compared with my last tangle with a Noctis even though I still managed to burn out a target painter and my warp disruptor near the end of the fight.  It's at this point though I have to hang my head in shame - I'm a stealth bomber pilot using torpedoes and I have Torpedoes and Warhead Upgrades only at level 4 - training those to 5 would have given me an additional 5% and 2% damage respectively.  I'm pretty sure 7% extra damage over the course of 8 volleys would have given me that extra 864 damage.

Bait or AFK?

Oh the sights I've seen travelling around unknown space, the insights that I've gained into the lives of my fellow capsuleers.  For example, I note that we immortals tend to be a particularly bloodthirsty lot.

I may have chuckled a little.

I've also become acquainted with the fact that different ships in eve warp at different speeds as well, who'd of guessed that.  This was demonstrated vividly to me when I followed a Dominix to an ore anomaly.  A Domi warps at 2 AU a second, while a Manticore does 4.5/second.  I'm guessing that the Dominix warped to the site at 100km just like I did, because we basically landed at the same and the big ol' girl nearly gave me a bump, decloaking me in the process.  The Domi pilot must have been quite bemused watching me scramble back to a safe, and I chose to depart the scene when another pilot at the Domi's POS swapped into a Sabre.  Lesson learnt!

My travels took me to a C4 and on jumping into the system my Dscan nearly exploded.

I eventually scoped out 10 towers in system, but my use of dscan was quite limited due to the sheer number of floating ships that were showing up - 3 scrolls of the mousewheel.  But determined to not let anything obstruct me in my purpose I settled in to find a worthy target.

Eventually I found a couple of things that piqued my interest.  The first was a Crane that was warping all over the system.  At first I thought he might be going to POCOS, but then worked out he was going from tower to tower.  I had eyes on him and was trying to determine which tower he was headed to when I found a new target to keep me occupied.

When I jumped into the system I did a little research on the resident corps and found an old reddit about them where they proudly proclaimed that they mined in wormhole space, and given the lack of signatures and anomalies in system it appears that they like to gobble all their PVE content up.  It was fortunate that they had an Ore anomaly in system, and given I'd seen the Retriever I was hopeful I could say hello.

However, I'd warped straight to the Ore site when I read that they mined on the off chance of catching someone, so of course there were now Sleepers trying to defend their bits of rock. Thankfully one of the locals came by in a Gila and cleaned up my mess.

 After that nothing happened for a while.  I'd lost track of the Retriever while scoping out the Gila, and couldn't find it amongst the mess that is dscan.  I warped back to the towers trying to pick up where it has gone when a narrow band scan back at the Ore site fills my heart with joy.

I warp in to my perch and there is my mark, close to a asteroid.  I warp to a nearby rock at 30 and begin the approach.  However, there is something wrong.  I'm not seeing any mining lasers active.  Is this an elaborate bait?  Are you just happy to see me or is that a gank Proteus in your ore bay?  I don't think I've shown myself since I scanned all the signatures down yesterday, so they shouldn't know I'm here.  Is he just AFK?

Bait or AFK???

Let's find out.  Align to the perch, decloak, target, torps, painter, point and the Retriever pops after 2 or 3 volleys.  I even snag the pod, but instead of launching torps I cloak myself in a gesture of friendship and the pod warps off.  That's what I'm calling it anyway, not at all me hitting the wrong key.

Yield fit.  Definitely not bait.

I get a convo from Sigvard not long after and he was very cool about it all.  We had a little chat about what they were doing and what I was doing, he asked if I was looking for a corp and offered to message me for a spot when they go on a roam.  Although I'm pretty happy with what I'm doing now, the offer was and is greatly appreciated.  Kudos to you Sigvard for being a cool dude.

This situation is a crystal clear example of non consensual PVP bringing people together.  I would never have spoken to Sigvard had I not enacted violence upon his mining barge, nor would Sigvard felt the need to reach out to me.  We ended the conversion with a o7 and a feeling of a thing done right settled over me.  Right, time to go try and kill some of Sigvard's mates.

I finally locate which tower that Crane that has been bugging me is flying to and the reason for all of the warping around becomes clear.

Jack is getting this tower set up with all of it's defences, SMA, corp hangars, etc.  So given this and the fact that he's warping to and from a particular tower means that I can try a drag bubble to catch him in the act.  It would be tight time frame wise, as there isn't much delay in between the trips Jack is making between each tower, but you never know, he may not have bubbles on his overview and if he does warp back before the bubble is up he may not notice it.  You can only be podded for trying.

I slow boat my way out 368km from the tower to get out of range of the defences and wait for Jack to warp off.  Off he goes, drop the warp disruptor and orbit, get cloaked back up.  Even though it would take me nearly a month to train up for them, I'm beginning to see the value in Tech II bubbles as they only have a 1 minute anchoring delay on a small bubble.  If I had one of those I might have got Jack, as he warped back in not long before the anchoring was done.

Will he notice?

And with the worst timing of all the bubble goes up when he is on grid.

After a longish delay Jack warps off.  This is it, has he noticed???

It appears he has, as he is warping back to the tower without being caught.  I test the bubble and it does drag me when I warp from the tower it's aligned with, and further investigation shows Jack is warping from another tower at a different angle that avoids the bubble.  Well played Jack, well played.  I scoop the bubble, finding out in the process that you can de-anchor it while cloaked.  I decide to jump next door and find a system with 20 sigs, no towers.  I try scanning a few down but it's just not working for me.  You know you are too tired to play Eve when you nearly fall asleep in between scan cycles.