My Loot, Your Tears

It was late and Paul had just signed off to get some shut-eye. I was considering doing the same, but figured I'd spin the scanning wheel and give it one more chance to provide me with someone foolish enough to open fire.

A Nighthawk and a Drake in the same location was a nice find; the higher the number of mission runners together the more likely they are to feel safe. I arrived in my Vigil to find those two, plus a Cynabal and a Basilisk! Excellent.

In the second room I identify the runners as members of "Miners and Designers" [M-A-D], and the mission owner Fearsome Evil is the CEO. I am therefore completely unsurprised that they lock me up while I pillage and salvage. Finally the Cynabal pilot 'dklife' opens fire. Off I go for the ganky Abbadon.

Meanwhile in local:

psycho drone > hey jackass fuck off
Vergil 577 > Someone salvaging there?
psycho drone > just Khalia nestune
psycho drone > dumb ass stole from us he needs to come back and take his ass whoopin

Good timing, because I warp into the mission space, lock them up and drop this in local:

Khalia Nestune > Here's your wish.

Unfortunately dklife and his Cynabal have left the mission, but I'm feeling good that the Nighthawk and Drake will decide to engage with the Basilisk available for RR. As it turns out, this doesn't happen - but dklife warps back into the mission a few moments later with his Cynabal. I immediately point, web, neut and open fire on him.

It takes a few minutes, as the cruiser-sized target is harder for my large guns to track and I have to switch ammo when he starts to get some range on me. The other pilots open up fire on me. The Cynabal goes down. With three flights of drones on top of me, the Basilisk out of range, and my armor at 50% and falling, it's time to leave. The silly carebears don't have a point among all of them so I just warp off.

Battleclinic is a little out of date on the value of the Cynabal; it's trading for about 235m in Jita, and those faction gyrostabs are about 65m each. That's at least 300m destroyed. Pity I didn't have time to grab the two that dropped.

Some truly wonderful tears come out of this, including threats to kill children and racism (both of which were petitioned as harassment, of course). Some of the locals also get involved - it's a beautiful thing. This is long, but worth the read.

Khalia Nestune > Well that was fun. bye now
Vergil 577 > Can I see the mail
Fearsome Evil > bitch stick around
Khalia Nestune > silly carebears
Xevaria > ohhh, them's fightin' words :P
Vergil 577 > My feelings
Vergil 577 > You hurt them
dklife > Hey dude, nice play, I'll remember you
Khalia Nestune > =)
Khalia Nestune > see yourself soon on ../
Fearsome Evil > too bad you ran off before the party was over

Read more »

So I'm Jerking it up in Ichoriya when I see this in local:

Tebos > anyone want to help me out witha ninja?

Interesting. I should at least see what's up with him. Maybe it's someone I know, or maybe I can turn it into a griefing opportunity. I convo him with my Orca alt.

Semi-Secret Orca Alt > h8 ninjas
Semi-Secret Orca Alt > how can i help
Tebos > have one scramed and he scamed me
Tebos > cant hit his ass
Semi-Secret Orca Alt > lol
Tebos > he is in assult ship
Tebos > took out all my drones
Semi-Secret Orca Alt > is he killing you?
Tebos > he stoped firing
Tebos > im back to 10% dmg
Tebos > think he is waiting for corps mates to finish me off
Semi-Secret Orca Alt > what's his name?
Tebos > Kaript344
Tebos > same one some folks were talking about

So I convo Kaript344 on my main to see if I can help him with the gank:

Paul Clavet > hey
Kaript344 > hey
Paul Clavet > my alt is in convo with your target
Paul Clavet > he thinks I'm helping him
Paul Clavet > but I want to help you with the gank
Paul Clavet > how can I help?
Kaript344 > no, thx)
Kaript344 > that's fun
Kaript344 > :D

So it looks like Kaript doesn't need my help. Oh well. I'm not going to take a chance on his target getting away if I can help it, and maybe I can pull off something even bigger...

A plan falls together that involves a trick I often use to get JerkTengu away from traps, much to my amusement and to the rage of my targets.

Tebos > any chance u can give me a hand?
Semi-Secret Orca Alt > how can I help? I don't have aggro on him
Semi-Secret Orca Alt > what kinda ship are you in?
Tebos > ferox
Semi-Secret Orca Alt > OK, I have an orca
Semi-Secret Orca Alt > here's the plan
Semi-Secret Orca Alt > I will warp to you, you swap the ferox for a shuttle
Semi-Secret Orca Alt > then warp away
Semi-Secret Orca Alt > we meet at station and you get your ferox back
Tebos > really that will work?
Tebos > im game
Semi-Secret Orca Alt > yeah, I do it in lowsec all the time
Tebos > to be done with this dip shit
Semi-Secret Orca Alt > lemme get the orca
Semi-Secret Orca Alt > fleet invite?

He sends me a fleet invite. His corpmate Eulysees Chelt is in the chat as well. I warp my Orca to the station and take all the loot and ships out of the holds so that he can't steal anything from me. I undock the Orca and start the slooooow align to his mission.

Semi-Secret Orca Alt > OK dude here's the deal
Tebos > ok
Semi-Secret Orca Alt > when I land, right click me and access the ship maint array
Semi-Secret Orca Alt > there's a shuttle in there
Semi-Secret Orca Alt > right click it and board it
Semi-Secret Orca Alt > I have to be 2500M away, so I may have to burn to you
Semi-Secret Orca Alt > do you understand?
Semi-Secret Orca Alt > you have to warp away IMMEDIATELY or he will scram the shuttle
Eulysees Chelt > and t's ship ?
Tebos > how long after u warp in?
Semi-Secret Orca Alt > as soon as I'm in range, warping now
Semi-Secret Orca Alt > fly toward me
Semi-Secret Orca Alt > OK, go ahead and right click me
Semi-Secret Orca Alt > open ship maint array
Semi-Secret Orca Alt > you won't be able to board the shuttle until I'm 2k away
Semi-Secret Orca Alt > ok now

The shuttle vanishes, and in its place a Ferox battlecruiser appears. It will turn out to be T1 rigged and T2 fitted. Rule #2 of Eve Griefing: Secure your gains, then try for a little more.

Semi-Secret Orca Alt > warp out
Tebos > k
Semi-Secret Orca Alt > we saved your ship o/
Eulysees Chelt > Semi-Secret Orca Alt........what happens to the ship thats left behind ?
Semi-Secret Orca Alt > don't suppose I get a reward? :-D
Semi-Secret Orca Alt > it didn't get left behind, I've got it in my orca
Semi-Secret Orca Alt > will trade it to you at the station
Eulysees Chelt > ah ok
Eulysees Chelt > nice moves man
Tebos > wow that was cool...and yes u get reward man =)
Semi-Secret Orca Alt > :-D
Semi-Secret Orca Alt > how much do I get? :)
Eulysees Chelt > what you want ?
Tebos > how much u want bro?...u name the price
Eulysees Chelt > realistically
Semi-Secret Orca Alt > figure a ferox is worth 30m? Maybe 10m
Semi-Secret Orca Alt > brb
Tebos > i live with that...
Tebos > im at caldari
Tebos > ok man money transfered

Of course, he doesn't ask for his ship back before he sends the reward. Rule #3 of Eve Griefing: Make sure your victim is fully aware of his loss.

Semi-Secret Orca Alt > thanks man
Semi-Secret Orca Alt > btw
Semi-Secret Orca Alt > thanks for the ferox too
Tebos > bah....
Tebos > awsome
Semi-Secret Orca Alt > heh heh
Semi-Secret Orca Alt > A mite bit too trusting, ain't ya?
Semi-Secret Orca Alt > I'm the alt of Paul Clavet
Tebos > yes i am...but its my nature
Tebos > prob not a good idea in eve
Semi-Secret Orca Alt > right

I've got his money and his ship. Let's implement Rule #2 again and try for more. The plan is to sell him what he thinks is his own ship back at what seems a reasonable price. It's actually going to be an unfitted ship with the same name.

Semi-Secret Orca Alt > I'm open to offers if you wanna buy this thing back
Tebos > well lesson learned i quess
Semi-Secret Orca Alt > I can't fly a ferox anyway
Tebos > any chance u can just give it back? =
Semi-Secret Orca Alt > not really
Semi-Secret Orca Alt > but I'll sell it to you for market price
Semi-Secret Orca Alt > plus a little for fittings... say 22 million?
Tebos > thats an expensive ferox
Semi-Secret Orca Alt > you must have fittings on it
Semi-Secret Orca Alt > that's where you save the money
Tebos > hehe ur a good sales man
Semi-Secret Orca Alt > we have a deal?
Tebos > but i think i will cut my loses =|

Bah. It looks like he's wised up. Most pinatas can only be struck so many times before the candy stops falling out.

His friend Eulysees tries to make a parting threat on his way out of the chat.

Eulysees Chelt > cmon man...you helped he payed what gives ?
Eulysees Chelt > you know you wanna watch your back my friend....one man team an all

A lot of really magical griefing moments can be had simply by keeping one's eyes open for opportunities. If you can keep an open mind and think outside the box, you can leverage your capabilities against the unique situation of your victim to pull off effective but extremely situational capers.

As for Tebos, he learned a valuable and ultimately inexpensive lesson about trust in Eve. There is no such thing as a sure thing when it comes to dealing with people. The closest to total trustworthiness would be someone you know outside of the game who you can get your hands on... but even this is pushing it, since it's not RL illegal to be a jerk to your friend in a video game. Think hard about this next time you're taking a stranger's offer to get you out of a bind, or the next time the new guy in your corp volunteers to do some grunt work that requires hangar access. Tebos and I chatted for a while after these events and he seems like a sincerely nice guy. I hope I've changed his mind a little bit about Eve and his playstyle options. I love tears, but I love it even more when I convert a carebear into a griefer. Maybe there's a future in it for Tebos?

It's been too long since a MLYT post. The following isn't amazingly exciting, but amusing enough that I hope it will keep you satisfied until we get back to full-speed. =)

As usual the location is Dodixie, and I warp into a mission with a Typhoon and a Megathron. It turns out to be some fellows from The Brotherhood of Two Nations - which we had a wardec on a few weeks back. These guys should be a bit pissed off. Sure enough, after a few minutes of salvaging and looting the Megathron piloted by Stockcom warps off - I assume to get a less valuable PvP ship. My neutral eyes are watching the station and he soon undocks in a Thorax.

I bait the Thorax by letting him get into disruptor range and he starts shooting. I burn off to get out of point range - which turns out to be unnecessary as he had a scram, not a disruptor and I was never in range - and warp off for the Gank Abbadon. I'm not too hopeful, but these guys were idiots when we shot them last time. Sure enough he's still there when I get back and even starts to engage me despite being outside my 36km point range! He kindly burns toward me until I can point him, and then I nuke his Thorax from range.

The Typhoon hasn't bothered to help and is apparently still shooting NPCs. Team work? What's that? He warps out a second later, and I decide to hang around and see if they bring anything interesting back. Not the best move for me, as I was feeling a little cocky, and usually the best idea is to leave once they might bring back a real PvP ship. When Stockcom returns in a Domi I figure this isn't going to be that bad - until I notice my capacitor vanishing rapidly. Crap, a neut Domi. We slug it out for what seems like a really long time, as I get just enough capacitor from every cycle of my Cap Booster 800s to fire my lasers a few times, or run the Heavy Neut a cycle. Our drones slag away at each other. He can keep a point on me but I can't keep enough cap to keep him pointed.

Working in my favor is my really large buffer tank. My occasional laser pulses and drones are eating him up faster than he can knock out my armor, and when I get him into hull I assume he's going to warp off. Which he doesn't. At 25% of his hull left I quickly slap on my point with the next booster cycle, overheat my lasers, and my final burst of fire reduces him to ash. I'm at 50% armor and I go to repair, considering myself lucky.

The aggression timers have expired by the time I finish repairing and refitting the Abbadon (with a second cap booster); so I head back with a salvage ship to see if I can start the fun again. Corpmate Zarago is now online and has RR available so I'm more confident about the odds. The Typhoon and the Megathron are working their way through the mission when I return and start salvaging. The Megathron warps off again, for pew I'm sure. I haven't actually looted, but I decide to go grab the Abbadon and see if these guys are dumb enough to fire first and bring a Concordokken.

The Typhoon locks up my Abbadon but doesn't do anything and I spin circles around him. Eventually I get bored and grab a can. The Typhoon still doesn't shoot. After enough minute I'm ready to take off, when he finally points me and opens fire. Stockhom arrives at the same time with an Enyo. I guess they figured he'd keep point while the Typhoon did the damage or something?

I return fire on Arkan Mathal's Typhoon, Zarago warps in and starts repping me, and the Typhoon goes down in a laughably short time. It pretty much just melts. Enyo GTFOs, and I laugh a little bit in local with no response. Can't get tears every time!

Paul and I never claim to actually be GOOD at PvP, just not bad at blowing up mission runners. By all rights, if these guys had a clue, they could have toasted me on the second round with another neut Domi or even if the Typhoon had engaged. I think this is why I like popping mission runners so much - they're even worse than we are!  =)

Just a quick note to our readers: I know it's been about a week since a post, but we haven't gone off the radar. It's the dreaded Real Life.

Khalia moved across the country. Paul has a demanding new job. Charismatic is buried in schoolwork.

But fear not! More tears shall be coming. Thanks for the various emails and chats you've sent to us!

From the evening of 3/30/2010. Note the superb video quality in fullscreen. Also note that YouTube imposes a 10-minute limit on videos, so screw them.

Thanks to Khalia for help on the first two kills and for letting me be in on the very exciting Dramiel fight at the end.

Three Kills, One Night: Hilaway, Tamiden, Firemaster from Paul Clavet on Vimeo.