For being a hardcore, impact, PvP, NOT easy to play, sandbox kinda MMO, EVE Online has such a great community that the occasional pirate can’t break the mood.
Here’s the thing. After delivering two loads of Kernite to Old Man Star, a 0.3 and hence open PvP system, without any trouble, I was kinda thinking that maybe all the PvPers were living even deeper in low security, in 0.0 space, and I wouldn’t really have to worry much about them.
I was buying a new skill – Surveying – yesterday, and most of the stations selling it were five or more jumps away. This one station was only two jumps away, and had it for a great price. So I buy it, and being a new player, I had to go to the system to actually retrieve it.
I punched the station into the autopilot and it warned me that the system was in low security, a 0.4 system. Well, thought I, if I can warp into a 0.3 system with a so-slow-it’s-nearly-stationary Iteron and make it back out alive – TWICE – then 0.4 in a speedy Tristan shouldn’t be any trouble at all.
I warp in, nobody at the gate, great. Set course for the station, and as I maneuver for docking, see two pirates zooming at me at top speed. The station docks me before they get a shot off…. Suspecting they will be waiting for me, I wait a few minutes, then leave the ship and duck outside in my capsule.
Barraged with lasers, I wait out the clock while the station decides whether or not to let me back in, and finally they do, and there I am, hovering in the hangar in my pathetic looking capsule, wondering how I’m going to get out alive.
My Tristan is really fast, fast enough perhaps to outrun their guns and warp disruptors and make it to the gate alive, but I didn’t want to take that chance. I tuned into the Local channel, said hello to the pirates, and wondered if there was anyone else at the station who wouldn’t mind undocking and chasing them away so I could escape? Apologizing for coming into lowsec space unprepared, of course.
Immediately a bunch of people said they would, and I guess my lamb-with-a-broken-leg bleats for help had drawn all the other pirates in the system to my station as well, because when I undocked, the space in front of the station was red with battle, ships large and small everywhere. A guy in a capital ship told me he’d snared the pirates, and to leave ASAP.
I left. ASAP.
So that was exciting, reminded me that yes, lowsec space is dangerous, but also: there are friends wherever you turn in EVE Online.
Saylah and Sister Julie and I met up a little later to run some Level 1 missions in high security space. Not that we couldn’t have handled any of them solo, but it’s good to have an easy night to work out voice chatting, how to run missions with more than one person, etc. By the end of the night things were humming, much like the humming Saylah kept hearing in the background whenever I’d speak.
“It’s like a scratching noise,” she said. I made scratching noises. “No, maybe… is the mike too near your mouth?” No, my mike was closer to my nose. I made nose-breathing noises. “Maybe,” I suggested, “it’s because I’m watching American Idol on the other computer?” Yeah. Maybe. I turned off AI but had to take teasing about it for the rest of the night :P
So I missed Kris Allen win American Idol season 8 in a stunning upset. But I’m not bitter.
I find what you really need in EVE Online is discipline. I want my Battle Cruiser! But my Brutix seems to be winging away from me at warp speed.
First there was Salvaging – a very good and lucrative skill, the starting point for many, many ways of earning my keep in New Eden. So that’s about a day to finish. Then there’s my Retriever mining barge. My buy order for one was filled nearly immediately, but it’s just sitting in the hangar and there it will sit until I have the skills to fly it and the skills to fit it. So that’s nine more days for the necessary skills for a very basic platform. Saylah, who has a hangar full of so many ships I hear Jay Leno is envious, offered me a Vexor cruiser as an intermediate step to the Brutix, and of course I accepted! The skills for that and a basic loadout from Battleclinic? Another couple of weeks. Is there any chance the battle cruiser won’t get bumped back by yet another priority?
Oh yes, Tracker Wolf invited me along for some … piracy! OMG! And he transferred enough ISK to my account to fit out a really nice tackler ship. So add in the skills for tackling and build a new Tristan or better for that… and Uber NK (NK_?) offered to build any Gallenite frigates I might need, so I’ll probably buy a Tristan or two from him.
Anyway, off to work :) See you in New Eden!