Trapped!

The worst part about losing ships is moving replacement hulls to my home station. It is such a logistical burden to have to find cheap ships and to get them to where I can fit them.

And thanks to all the upcoming expansion changes and player-events, ship prices are increasing steadily. CCP's constant fight against botters has reduced some mineral supply. They are removing drone alloy drops from NPC drone pirates, and removing meta0 item drops from all other pirate wrecks--both significant, if not the majority, sources of some minerals. The Goon's Burn Jita victory celebration is in a few weeks, and they are coinciding it with Hulkaggedon V (participants suicide gank as many Hulk mining exhumers as they can in order to win prizes). The mineral supply is already shrinking, and speculators are snatching up stockpiles in order to profit.

I definitely think the drop changes are good, as it allows mining and other income activities to compete with Incursions. Nevertheless, it hurts my immediate bottom line.

The Alliance stocks popular hulls and modules, reselling them to us for only a slight mark-up. I wanted two Hurricanes, and asked for a price: 92 million. Yikes. A quick glance at the Syndicate market shows two Hurricanes 6 jumps away for 34 million each. All I gotta do is move them to 5-F.

I enlist a corpmate, who excitedly brings a cloaky Tengu to scout for me. I'm traveling in just my pod and will be flying the 'canes back "naked".

First Hurricane rests neatly in my hangar. Our first trip saw no problems.

However, our second journey seems to have caught the attention of the locals. The battlecruisers were at the GRNJ-3 station, a dead-end system in a dead-end constellation. When we jump into EF-F36, we find two Harbinger battlecruisers and a Malediction interceptor watching our out-gate into P-NUWP.

The gate between the red circled systems is camped.

If I had guns, we maybe could beat them up (even though Harbingers hurt). But I don't have any modules, and our Tengu has covert ops offensive subsystem, so he isn't bringing any big punches. There is no way I'd be able to jump through the gate and not get tackled by the Malediction.

I amuse myself while we try to find some more pilots. I am warping around to bookmarks in EF while the enemies try to scan me down. I narrow my directional scanner to about 6 AU. When I see scan probes, I warp to a different bookmark. ::smirk::

We muster up a Manticore stealth bomber and a tank-n-gank Proteus T3 cruiser. I catch sight of an enemy Tengu on dscan, so they are bringing a bit more firepower. Once our fleet is on the P-N side of the gate, I warp to 0 and plan to jump immediately, baiting the 2 battlecruisers and whatever else they have.

Unfortunately they seem to have gotten bored or scared, because by the time I land on the gate, they've all warped off. The guys are upset that they didn't get a fight, but my rescue is a success!

Now I have a few more Hurricanes to blow up >:)

Journey to Null

The nice thing about EVE is that something as trivial as travel can be noteworthy.

My new Alliance and her friends are moving to Curse to (eventually) take a piece of the Russian pie. I had hoped to pod jump there with a medical clone, but the CEO has been away and hasn't set up an office. I decide to make the trek.

I fit a Vigil with some speed mods, a prototype cloaking device, and some salvagers, and I plot the 31-jump route, 11 of which are through null sec.

I am fairly comfortable with low-sec, using the Star Map for activity statistics and celestials for gate observation. As I traverse the systems, I create tactical bookmarks with my speedy Vigil in case I'm ever here again.

A friend of mine in the alliance, Squrriel, wants to come scout for me. I assure him the route is pretty quiet and that I'm in a cheap ship with a fresh clone--no need to risk his Stealth Bomber. He insists, and by the time I've made my last low-sec bookmark on the gate to null, he catches up.

We avoid jumping from gate to gate to evade any drag bubbles. While in an empty system, he warps to the out-gate, and warns me that there are NPCs camping. "No worry," I tell him. "I'm not concerned with rats." I warp to 100 km since I'm making bookmarks at 200, and I'm startled as the NPC cruiser begins to lock me. Impressed with its range, but ultimately dismissive, I turn on my MWD, and do a 180.

In a blink of an eye my shields are gone. Frozen in disbelief, I watch 2 more shots destroy my tiny frigate.

Shocked, my pod lingers as my friend frantically searches for a station. "Forget it. Let's just run it," I demand. He jumps through the gate as I bounce off a planet and back. The path is clear, and within another two jumps, I dock in a station and grab a rookie ship to at least buffer one blow, should the situation arise.

We land in a system with 11 in local, the most we've seen since low-sec. He cloaks his Anathema and warps to the out-gate, 70 AU away. Not wanting to be on the gate when my jump cloak wears, I warp to a planet.

"F*ck, a bubble!" He's pulled out of warp, but we both know he is cloaked. Unfortunately the little spider littered cargo cans all over his web, and Squrriel is bumped out of warp. "I'm dead. Pod and all." He wakes up back in high-sec. After consoling him, I resolve to make the final 6 jumps alone, and I warp off to the gate.

I land in a bubble 90 km from the gate! Surprised that I'm not a horrible ball of fire, I make my way to the edge, noticing that there are two bubble traps in front of this gate. I'm not sure if there were only one guy manning both bubbles, if he took pity on my rookie ship, or if he went AFK after eating a juicy Stealth Bomber, but by some miracle I escape to a planet.

I open the System map to take a look at the layout, and my out-gate is well above the ecliptic plane. The system itself is pretty small, and most celestials are bunched up. The two bubbles are angled well enough to catch not only people coming from the in-gate, but also smarter pilots who bounce to a planet first.

I warp to a moon as far away from the other gate as possible, hoping to squeeze past the trap. I align and enter what is possibly the longest warp I've ever experienced. I land at 0 on the gate with a giant grin, jump through, and exhale.

The remaining six systems are empty, and just as cresting a mountain to gaze upon a bountiful valley, I enter my destination system to see local filled with blues.

There is a bit of confusion as to where the cloning vats are, and it would be hilarious to die while searching for them, but I eventually dock up and install a medical clone.

Now to fit a ship.