The Thrill of the Hunt

“There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter." - Ernest Hemingway

I love the hunt in Eve.  It's unlike any other game I've played.  Sure I love to play Call of Duty or Counterstrike but those games are fast paced frantic things.  Someone runs in front of you, you kill them.  Then someone shoots you from behind.  You respawn and immediately die again.  It's fun but slightly mindless.

Eve is different. 

My favorite tactic is to zip my cloaky alt from system to system looking for targets.  Yesterday I had a very fun engagement.  I was in one of my favorite systems when I saw a Hurricane and a Cyclone on scan.  Probes were dropped and it was obvious that they were together.  I was in a Hurricane and was not sure if I could take both.  I warped my cloaked alt in and watched as they ran a plex.  

Well they were newer pilots and I was pretty sure they wouldn't be fitting a point if things went south.  So I warped my main in and landed right on the Cyclone.  In hindsight I should have targeted the cane first but I targeted the closest shipt first.

It didn't take long before I popped him  but I noticed the cane had moved a good distance away.  Then BOOM! Artillery from the cane started taking chunks out of me.  I was already in half shield from the fight with the cyclone and this first volly from the cane took me down to less than 25%.  I tried to close the gap but another volly took me into armor.  Since I was shield tanked, this was not a good thing and I still needed to close the distance.

I decided to cut and run in epic pirate fashion.  I felt pretty good about taking on 2 BCs, killing one, and living to tell about it.  It's not some epic uber rifter v drake kill but it was great fun and I felt a sense of satisfaction that I never get from other pvp games.

Money money money

So I've made it clear that I don't mission and I don't mine.  Heck I still can't do any missions above level 2s.  So how do I make the iskies?  I used to do a lot ninja salvage.  This had a double benefit.  It made me money and it really pissed off the mission runners! The problem was it was a lot of work and my probing skills sucked back then.  I would spend forever scanning mission runners down only to show up and find them gone.  Bah.

I got tired of barely scraping together enough to fit a couple of rifters so I did what any motivated player would do.  I cheated.  Well not really.  I just bought a couple of GTCs and sold them.  Every time I do it, I feel like I just entered a cheat code.

I seemed to be spending a lot of money on GTCs (curse you lack of PVP skills!) so I decided to try the market. I made an initial investment of a few GTCs and rolled a trader alt.  I trained this guy up on the necessary trading skills and seeded all my little extra account alts in the different trade hubs.  Then I spent a week or so doing price comparisons between all the major systems (Dodixie, Rens, Hek, Amarr, Jita and a few others).  I found that 90% of the items are cheaper in Jita.  On the other side, about 75% of things are most expensive either in Rens or Hek.  Dodixe (my trading base) was right in the middle of the price range.

Once every couple of weeks I send my minions out to the hubs and do price comparisons of dozens of items. These range from faction ammo to modules to rigs.  I can typically find price differences that can at least double or triple my profits.  Once I have the items I identified, I take my main trader toon to Jita, load up and dodge the gank squads as I travel to the appropriate systems.  I have not been ganked yet (knocks on wood) but now that I am able to fly a prowler, I feel pretty confident.  My mammoth did have some shaky moments though.

I try to keep most of my sell orders in Dodixie since that is where I base my trader/hauler alt.  Dodixie is fairly close to the Tusker HQ in Hevrice so I need quick access to there whenever I lose a ship that needs replacing.  If all the sell orders are in one place, it makes it easy for me to quickly log on and play the .01 game with sell orders.  I hate the .01 isk game.

This system works pretty well and I am now have a couple of billion isk in the bank.  This is cool because it lets me not worry about loot and ransoms so much.  I would much rather have the killmail.

Buck's ships

So what do I fly?  Well I started off with the Caldari ships like Merlin, Caracal, and Drake.  I can even fly a badly fit Raven for ratting purposes. However since I never mission, and rarely rat, Caldari didn't seem right for me.  I read that Gallente had pretty good PVP ships so I tried out the Vexor and Thorax.  While they were good ships, I hated the short range and need to micromanage large drone bays.  I wanted something simple and effective.  

Then I found an earlier version of this guide. 

Minmatar sounded perfect for what I was looking for.  Simple armor tank, effective guns, and good ship types.  You have the option of orbiting at 500k and raping face or using barrage and keeping some distance.  So I went Minmatar and that's where I stay.

I fly Jags if I want something quick for chasing ratters.  I fly Canes when I want to be able to engage most targets or fight on a gate.  I use the cheap yet awesome Rupture when I think I will probably die.  When I'm feeling pimp, I fly the amazing Dramiel.  I was going to train for Minmatar interceptors but the Dram makes that ship class obsolete IMO.

I can fly the Vagabond but I have no business doing so.  Me in a Vagabond is the same as giving a 16 yr old boy the keys to a Ferrari.  It's irresponsible, expensive, dangerous, and no good will come of it.  If you check my KB, you will see some pretty pathetic Vagabond losses.

However I am getting the urge to buy another one and have a go.  I practiced in a Stabber and still sucked so it's probably not a good idea.  

I'm probably still gonna do it.  Stay tuned.

Where I'm from and where I'm going

I started Eve with no idea of what I was getting into.  I first started considering it when I read about The Guiding Hand Social Club and one of their master operations.  When I was younger my favorite PC game was Starflight and Starflight II. I loved the open universe and have always been on the lookout for something similar. After I read the GHSC article, I knew I had found it.  Then I looked up the Butterfly Effect video and I signed up that day.

Like most Eve players, I didn't really know what I wanted to do in the game.  I joined up with a mission running corp but I didn't really enjoy it.  I tried another mission runner/mining corp and had the same problem.  After scanning the recruitment threads, I located the Somali Coastguard Authority.  That was a fun griefer corp.  I learned a lot about high sec PVP (and talking smack) from them.  Unfortunately I was too new at the time and could only really fly a pathetically fit rifter or merlin.  I decided to move on with the intention of rejoining once I learned more about the game.  Unfortunately internal politics popped up and the corp fell apart soon after I left.

I signed up with a 0.0 corp that was part of Tactical Narcotics Team.  The ratting was excellent but the fights were very few and far between.  We were allied with TCU and everyone seemed pretty content to stay in their little area of space.  I wasn't learning very much about 0.0 but then I saw an advertisment for a a new training corp called Open University of Celestial Hardship (OUCH).  I joined that crew and started learning about surviving in null sec.  I went on a lot of roams and even FCed a few.  Some were successful and some weren't .  We are all pretty new and we died a lot.  It was great to finally be improving my skills with no pressure about the killboard.

I was really enjoying OUCH and planned on staying with them for a long time.  Then it all few apart.  One of our other corps in the alliance, White Talon Enterprises (WTE) had begun recruiting some of the more talented PVPers from OUCH with the intention of being the PVP arm of the New Bastion alliance.  The idea was as people progressed in OUCH, they would move into WTE and continue their association.  Great idea but the CEO of WTE, Calculon, decided he wanted to move the alliance from the Berta region to another part of New Eden.  The OUCH CEO, Black Claw, didn't agree.  What followed was a painful rift in the alliance and some (IMHO) pretty bad leadership decisions on the part of Black Claw.

I got invited to join WTE and since most the guys I roamed with had gone over, I did too.  In hindsight, I probably should have just stayed with OUCH.  We moved to another region on the edge of low sec and 0.0.  What followed was some great roams.  We got into some wars and started making a name for ourselves. Then it all fell apart.  Our CEO just disappeared without a word.  Several weeks went by before we got word that he had been given the ban hammer by his wife and just dropped Eve like a bad habit.  We tried to recover by making another corp, Semper Liber, but we could never recover our momentum or sense of direction and the corp went inactive.  It's kinda tragic because I really thought WTE was going places.

So then it was time to figure out where to go from there...  Where did I have the most fun?  Was it 0.0?  High Sec wars?  Or Low Sec piracy?

Yep.  Piracy!!

I looked at all the major pirate corps, Python, Bastards, United, Black Rabbits, ect, ect...  Then I came across The Tuskers.  They had a great reputation.  They don't act like jerkwads in local.  They honor ransoms.  Most importantly, they seemed very stable.  I put in my app.  They screwed up and accepted me and the rest is history.  \o/

Stay tuned for daring tales of yarr and epic failures!!

So who am I and why should you care?

My name's Buck.  Buck Flintrock.  I've been roaming New Eden for over a year now.  I'm a Caldari who only flies Minmatar ships.  I hate missions and mining but I love to yarr. I'm a Tusker.  My sec status is -10.  I suck at Eve but I keep coming back for more. These are my stories.