Back in the saddle

YEEEE-HAAAWWWWW.... I mean YAAAHHHRRR!!!

Well it's been a while, so I thought I'd jump in my Rifter and poke around, you know, see what I can see. To be honest, I really didn't expect to get any kills. Indeed, I expected to get myself blown up by a Navitas. But, as it turns out, EVE is like riding a bike, and the spaceship gods were smiling on me by giving me all sorts of practice targets before throwing me into a good fight right before downtime.

It all started when I undocked in Hevrice. On less than three minutes and already I

Above: Ship spinning rookie learning the basics

spot a silly little mining op. In true space-cowboy fashion, I managed to bag all three of them before they even had a chance to take a shot. As I write this, it occurs to me that this is very good advice - always attempt to kill your target before he shoots back (you might wanna write that down). In any case, I murdered them all and, to my supprise, the only mistake I seemed to make was failing to lock the two pods that stuck around to watch the rest of the fight.

So, with a shiny new GCC, I set about remembering how to properly ship spin in space (I feel that ship spinning in stations is really a no-brainer. Ship spinning in space, however is a true skill very few pilots ever master). It seemed to me that ship spinning may have gotten a little attention in the last patch as everything seemed more responsive. In fact, I read the

patch notes months ago, and I'm pretty sure I had already decided this was the ship spinning patch officially... can't remember where I got that impression...

OH! My story... so yeah, I was puttering around in Hevrice and lo' and behold, a catalyst pops up and parks himself neatly at one of those faction warfare bunker things... what the hell do those things do anyways? Well, whatever he was doing there, it was real important because he stayed there in spite of being shot at by me. Again I was able to vanquish my foe without recieving any return fire. Upon locking his pod, and innitiating a ransom, something occured to me - ransoms must be really funny. The reason I say this is that most of my ransom conversations go as follows:

• Me > Howdy, I have your pod, 10 mil and I will release it.
• Them> LOL

Now I couldn't tell you right off what is so funny about ransoms, but I really wish I got the joke...

Encouraged by my successful bullying in Hevrice, I moved out in search of something a bit more challenging. With a bit of hunting, I scanned down a missioning Vexor. Now this was what I was looking for! This was a challenge worthy of my massive skillz! Right? Right? ... nah. But it was fun to murder him. Again I managed to get a hold of his pod, and as I locked it down I noticed another Rifter in local, "get to him later" I thought. I tried, once again to offer a ransom, and yet again was met with laughter. I asked him if he would let me in on the joke, but then he just started swearing at me. So then I asked him if he'd at least mind paying me for entertaining him a bit... but he just kept swearing. So I shot him, collected my third corpse and bounced off in search of that Rifter in local. I chased him through a few belts, and finally caught up to him we struggled back and forth and had not one, but TWO very good fights. He had me webbed and kitted, and I had him... well I had him dead at the end so I guess it doesn't really matter how awesome his web was, does it? I will say that it was a tricky fight, and he had me dead to rights on range. I'm proud of my ability to navigate out of his web, then burn in close, chip away at him, and repeat until he was dead. Whatever concerns I had had about being rusty exploded with his Rifter, and the thrill of the fight left me desperate for more.

So yet AGAIN I lock down his pod, but this time... something different. "DONT SHOOT MY POD!!!" he says, in local and I think to myself, "I don't think that he understands that ransoms are funny...". And they're not folks! That is the moral of this story! Ransoms are not funny. Period. Ransoms are serious business and somewhat somber and should never... well, actually there was that time that we ransomed that guy and made him mine for us for about 20 minutes... that was REAL funny. But that's the only one!

So where was I? Oh yeah, ransoms. So he paid me 20 mil after some haggling, and I scooped some decent loot, along with some rebuilt confidence and quite a fun evening. And in the end what did I learn?

1. It is always best to kill someone before they have a chance to shoot back - just in case.
2. If someone shoots at you, you should probably shoot back - just in case.
3. RANSOMS ARE NOT FUNNY most of the time.
4. If you think a ransom is funny, you might want to start looking at new pods and implants on the market.