Ramblings of a Bastard

Rules of Engagement

2008-12-12T03:48:00.000-08:00

Diplomacy is not for us...

Kulmid had been leading a small battlegroup out on a low sec roam. I was busy administering the corp with the help of Proph as some much delayed business required our attention.

Kulmid's gang had barely jumped the Todifrauan gate when an opposing blue gang landed in unision. The Bastards had a few trialists with them on the op and as per such, were not blue to Mean Coalition. The FC of their fleet whose intellect stretches as far as cracking two stones together in a rythmic fashion begins to open fire upon a friendly Rapier.

It had not crossed his mind that the Rapier may be affliated, being it sat calmly upon a gate, surrouned by Battleships armed to the teeth.

"Stop firing at the Rapier, you retard!" Kulmid so eloquently placed in local.

"Why should I?" The caveman responded

"Because I said stop firing!"

"Why did you call him a Retard?" A Mean lacky responded

"Because he is, I mean look at him" yet another diplomatic response from Kulmid.

As an excuse to reset standings, this was a pretty shallow one. Nonetheless, with the cool headed dogzbody at the helm, Mean Coalition were happy to oblige by his somewhat clouded orders and opened fire upon our fleet once again. Euan8's MANBrutix an unfortunate victim. (Yes ladies and gents, not some pussy shield rigged Brutix thing that Mr. Frog likes to call a MANBrutix, a full on Mag Stab tanked damage whore and quite obviously the only way to fly the ship.)

Ard promptly took the decision to reset standings, giving us little choice but to set them red.

One Epic Day...

So there we are, 5 of us on a roam in RR Battleships into 0.0. After a quiet trip back to Intrepid Crossing, we decided to head back out through AD- to find some targets. A friendly covert hauler alt scouted for us to avoid suspicion.

"Kronos on scan, looks to be towards a POS. Going to check it out"

The scout arrived to find all of the POS mods offline and many unanchored. The Kronos sat inside the field, watching over the deconstruction. Utilising the subtle changes made to the Viator, our scout piloted close to a faction web battery, uncloaked and ninja'd off with an easy 30million ISK.

The Kronos became rather pissy with this and proceeded out of the field. We sprung a trap but alas, he managed to get back inside the field prior to any lasting damage being applied.

Several minutes went by before the Kronos began to move towards the edge of the field. Suddenly, he emerged and opened fire. Naturally, we returned the favour as local began to fill with his buddies. Our 2 Geddons and 2 Dominix had been totally underestimated and rapidly stripped the Tech 2 Battleship of armour and hull. Most certainly 1-0 to us.

The enemy fleet landed at the POS and a Sabre immediately bubbled us. Kulmid sighed knowing he would be off to Jita to buy more Slaves in the near future.

The enemy fleet was heavy with ECM. We fought through it to kill off a Thorax and an Armageddon before the Geddon's popped. Lex and z0de then pulled off some borderline ridiculous maneuvers to escape the bubble, ECM drone the scrambling ships and escape.

We lol'd heavily at their failure. Especially the loss of a 5 Billion ISK Kronos, the Geddon and the Rax. In return, two mighty Geddons fell for us.

Happy with the engagement we were, content with the outcomes we were not. Clones were updated, Euan joined in the fun as Lex departed and two more Geddons set off for Warp To Desktop space.

Take Two...

We landed on the Eurgrana gate. z0de was engaged the other side by a hefty sized gang. Naturally, Kulmid, Euan and I jumped in bringing the fleet back up to 2 Geddons and 2 Dominix.

First on the list was a Zealot, attempting to lay down some thick damage but got on the wrong end of 14 Mega Pulse Laser II's spewing Amarr Navy Purple at him. Euan and z0de furiously fired off the remote reps on Kulmid who had been primaried. His armour teetering at 25%.

The WTD Falcon warped in at 40km. Kulmid and I had prepared for it this time, both fielding two active ECCM mods. We overloaded both of them and proceeded to lock up the Falcon. Once again, Amarr Navy Purple judged the unworthy.

A Rapier then decided to spar with my Geddon as I slowboated to the gate. Under fire from sentries we now were (did that sound too much like Yoda?!). The Rapier was obviously oblvious to the judgement that is Amarr Navy Purple and proceeded to follow his Falcon and Zealot buddy down shit creek.

Meanwhile, Kulmid had started to beat on an Absolution which was laying on the DPS thick and hard. Expecting a heavy buffer tank we were, but alas a juicy dual rep tank was not going to save his expensive ship from kicking the bucket.

The Zealot pilot returned in the counterpart Amarr Heavy Assault Ship. Again, the intellectual genes were not on show. He expected to be able to tank the two Geddons and two Dominix with ease. How wrong he was. With the blink of an eye, Multifreaky was loaded.

Kulmid exclaimed "He's tanking pretty well..no wait, oh, there he goes LOL"

Another one bites the dust.

A few more little ships were violenced towards the end of the engagement too. The Manticore especially funny as we relied on a perfect wrecking hit to kill him as he was out of falloff range. Naturally Eve obliged by providing Kulmid with two in a row and end its life rapidly.

By now, some of the WTD members had lost 2 to 3 different ships. A couple decided to roll out a pair of Thanatos. The fighter swarm was too much for Kulmid's Geddon. A quite hilarious engagement to look at. Grats to all involved. Other than one WTD tard who may have only just hit puberty, the conversation in local was cordial and fun afterwards.

Take Three...

The biggest RR gang the Bastards have ever formed embarked on a roam towards our new enemies, Mean Coalition.

After some initial sparring, Mean went back to Katugurmur to aid the fight with a couple of Carriers. Nonetheless, we didnt let this put us off. The RR's worked furiously to keep us alive as we ate through Astarte after Astarte....after Astarte. Cap ran low between the fleet and ironically Jed was primaried. 171k damage was tanked but alas, my poor Geddon finally gave in.

Jed went back to fetch the Vodka Shark as it seemed we could get lucky.

The guys had been racking up more kills while I was gone. Hilariously, the 'Village Idiot' general dogzbody sat 177km away in his Tempest, doing absolutely nothing but also not wishing to get his ship even remotely involved with the pissfest that was being handed out on station.

Then, the key error occured on Mean's part. Annapolis returned from his instawarp to the station so he could remain in dock range, only to be bumped by Mr. Vodka's Thanatos which was undocking. Shae immediately revved up the MWD on here gigantic Space Whale - Butt Plug thing.

Simultaneously, the cyno was dropped and the Vodka Shark entered the fray, immediately entering Siege and locking up the now off station Archon.

Shae rumbled in and bowled into the side of the Archon, sending it further off station. Annapolis went on to shout 'desync' in local once the bump occurred, something we get quite often with our enemies.

The Archon capped out at 50% armour and rapidly degenerated into hull. With the 20k volleys coming out of the Revelation and the inability for the Archon to switch on its Damge Control, it succumbed to the immense firepower and popped an embarassing distance from dock range.

Grats to all involved once again. A truly epic engagement. Mean had pretty much decided to piss ISK down the sink by bringing out command ship after command ship which certainly did not bother us.

All in all, probably one of the most epic days in Eve despite a podding and 2 Geddon losses. Hopefully there are many more days to come similar to this. I simply do not have time to write about the mid point engagement in Hagilur where we first tested the RR gang, taking no losses and removing several more ships from existence.

Alliance Time...

The Bastards. has been formed in regards to the upcoming alliance tournament in January. Nonetheless, we have the privelage of the Hellcats flying under the same flag now. This can only spell doom for our enemies. Not only do we have more guns, we have angry angry women out for blood.

Nonetheless, with the Cats now prowling around our forums. Our RL faces have nowhere to hide! >.<

There Can Only Be One

2008-12-03T11:53:00.000-08:00

Sale of a Legend

Well...in a sentimental and teary eyed fashion, I waved goodbye to the control of San today. Shocked many of you may be at the sale, alas it was coming.

With the lack of income, several accounts has become a squeeze. Two PvP accounts had also started to become a burden, rather than an advantage. I would lose ships on both accounts because my attention was divided between the two screens.

The tough decision was made, the quantity of ships that San could fly over the quality of Jed's extremely focused skill set. In the end, it was a no brainer to me.

Best of luck to the new owner of San however, Jed will continue the wonderful tales from Metropolis without a stutter!

More Violent Fail in Gultratren...

Jorge and Prophet hit the guys up on comm's:

'Guys, we have a Nidhoggur sitting outside a station in Gult...'

Sarvic and Myself had been on a sortie in our dreads. Without further a do we replied:

'Ok, lets give this a go.'

z0de proceeded to Gultratren in a Myrmidon fitted with a cynosural field generator, enabling our gargantuan damage whores to lock on and jump to. Snaptz was already in system with Proph and Jorge on an alt. He had been playing docking games with the Carrier pilot, ensuring he kept his attention. Shouting lines such as 'Awww, you angry I popped your Cyno alt?' and such certainly helped to keep the pilot in local.

The sub capital support waited upon the Gult gate in Arnstur. Snaptz undocked once again and the Nidhoggur pulled out it's Templar fighters and began to aggress him. In jumped the support, clouded by the hundreds of macro haulers in local. Simultaneously, z0de warped to 0 of the now aggressed Carrier and immediately dropped the field.

"Go, Go, Go!" he shouted. Seconds later, the murky dusk of space lit up with the roaring sound of the Naglfar and Revelation jumping in. Immediately we hit Siege mode, the Artillery on the Naglfar retracting to the back of the ship to compensate for the extraordinary recoil of them firing. The Revelation's Dual Giga Pulse extended from the sides on the characteristic storks as both dreads scrambled to get a lock upon the Carrier again.

Both opened up in unision upon the stricken Nidhoggur. We still thought it was a tight one to take it down in time...

The Revelation began to take holes out of the shields. We expected to soon hit a hefty armour tank which would see it through the next 40 seconds to dock. Shockingly, Sarvic and I fired together as it entered armour to see the Nidhoggur drop 50% of it in one salvo.

Ronin exclaimed 'Holy fuck, it' shield tanked, we could pull this off boys. Overload them guns'

Naturally we obliged as the Nid rapidly fell through structure and proceeded to embarassingly explode within docking range. Jed had snared the final blow and had the privelage of posting up what has to be one of the most ridiculous setups we have ever seen fielded on a Carrier. In fact, if it wasn't for the Drone Control Unit sitting in the loot can, you would swear we just killed a Raven.

Grats to all involved and another surgically precise removal of another confused pilot within the Eve world who somehow found himself in the capital graveyard that is Gultratren. I see us as exacting the Darwin Awards upon the world of Eve, slowly wittling down those who are simply not up for the intellectual challenges of Eve.

A short but informative post today. Hope not all of you will disown me now I have sold what most of you know as my main character. Nonetheless, Jed is going nowehere :)

Escalating Engagements and the Lost Carrier

2008-11-27T02:55:00.000-08:00

How I am treating you today! Two posts you say...

Revelations...

The time had come. The ships channel had an interesting offer within it. A character was attempting to create some liquid ISK by selling off his assets. I inquired further to the location of some of them.

The one I was interested in was in a perfect location. Within jumping distance of home and I managed to whittle him down to a very reasonable price. Not an hour later, The 'Vodka Shark' was in the hands of Jedziah and getting fit up at HQ.

She had in all set me back a decent chunk of ISK but it was worth it for such a wonderful ship and fulfilling one of my ambitions in Eve. Not 20 minutes later, she was able to get her maiden combat sortie.

A local group called the DrunK GanG rolled up to our station. We had no intentions of playing fair as they tend to bring along 1-4 Falcons for every engagement we tend to have. Kulmid and I undocked the big guns once they had engaged. Ronin and Jorge webbed down a Megathron and painted it up. As the Falcon's uncloaked, I dropped the Shark into siege mode. The Dual Giga Pulse extending from the side of the ship.

As I began to re-lock the Megathron, Kulmid's evil Ogre II's from the Moros were tearing it up. The Mega was hitting around 1/5th Armour when I regained a firing solution. The Dual Giga Pulse lasers fired in unison, smashing the Megathron for over 9000 damage and securing the final blow.

The remainder of their gang decided now would be a provident time to 'get the fuck out' and proceeded to do so. The fight lasted just long enough for the Revelation to drop Siege and retract its gargantuan firepower.

Escalating Engagements...

Spectre got on the blower:

'Guys I'm in Aset being engaged by an Astarte. My Ishkur is doing pretty well, what size drone bay does this thing have?'

Kulmid replied from the seat of his Pilgrim:

'Same as a Brutix, you kill those Hammers and he's all out'

By now I had turned my Vengeance Assault Ship round and made best speed for Aset, only 3 jumps away from my current position.

Kulmid and I landed simultaneously. Burning the 30km+ off gate to the battle. Spectre was doing well, the Astarte unable to track his sleek Ishkur. Kulmid engaged his cap redistrubtion subroutines and drained the command ship dry. The Dual Armour Repairer fit was suddenly unable to function. The nanobots died in space, as did the Command ship.

Desperate to seek vengeance, Two Drakes and a Thorax warp in while we loot the wrecks. Mr. Frog had now arrived on the scene in his trusty Arbitrator. We immediately got to work on the light drones spewing out of the Drakes that could swing the fight in their favour.

The Thorax then warped out after burning out of range. We started to pound upon the Drakes with the anti-frigate drones now dispatched. The primary Drake began to buckle under the sustained fire and entered armour. Without a trusty Damage Control, the Armour and Structure disappeared rapidly.

Viginiti and Bandy soon arrived in their Frigate support. The Second Drake began to melt under the fire and with Kulmid switching the shield hardeners off, the EM hole was a wet dream for myself and Vig who tore the ship apart.

As the Drake dropped into structure, a Megathron and Falcon dropped in on the battle. The Falcon a sultry 60km away. I looked at the crew in my new assault ship, they already knew what to do.

With the afterburner overloaded, The Vengeance cut the distance down in just a few seconds. Viginti and Spectre instinctively did the same, knowing full well we were the quickest ships and the best equpped to deal with the Falcon.

To our surprise, the Falcon began to armour rep as we piled on the damage. Mr. Frog, Kulmid, Ronin and Bandy did a sterling job of keeping the Megathron pointed and killing off it's wave of Ogre drones.

After some intricate bumping to prevent the Falcon's escape when he jammed us, we finally reduced it to structure, removing its raspberry jam from the equation. Definitely what we would call a pioneering and expensive fitting.

The Falcon removal squad returned to the fight in time to aid in the destruction of the Megathron, now stranded 60km from the gate out. With the combined firepower, it dropped into structure rapidly and died in the face.

The pod was locked up and the fun continued. We held him there for over 10 minutes. Kulmid knocked up a hilarious thread upon Eve-O, attempting to sell the momentous occasion to someone out there. The pod had a monstrous 1mil ISK bounty. Someone obliged and popped the pod in their Manticore, grats to them.

Overall, this engagement lasted nearly 20 minutes. We had for the most part, taken all of them down in frigates and a force recon. The fight and lols were epic and once again we could pull out the much coveted Running Man and Axe Swing Dances.

The Lost Carrier

Not an hour after one of the funniest things I have ever seen happen in Eve did this occur. But let me explain the funnies.

Our elite squad had pinned down a Megathron in its mission. As per standard etiquette, we began a ransom. The pilot had posted a message in local regarding how much he would need to pay to be released.

For the 30 second period we gave the pilot to transfer funds, he remained silent in our ransom channel. For this reason, we repainted his ship in order to learn him.

Once he was podded and sent back home on the clone bus, a red in local shouted a LOL. We naturally asked what he was so happy about.

It turns out that he had started a private convo with the chap and presented the ransom demands of 300million ISK for his ship. Despite this person being the opposite of affiliated with us, the guy without question handed 300mil ISK over to the chap and then was bemused when we re-opened fire and made him explodificate. We had even got an Iteron V to pod the missioner, making the whole thing just too funny.

An absolute genius play by the pilot, but alas, Karma would come back round to bite him in the arse.

Snaptz was on the Todi-Evati gate. Pinned on it by a red Jaguar. He proceeded to jump through to the other side where a Maelstrom had been waiting for him. We scrambled at best pace to help out. With the combined firepower of Ronin, Khaled and Jorge the Maelstrom's tank began to buckle.

It then dropped a Cynosural Field...

'Cyno, Cyno! shouted Bandy as he jumped into system'

In came a Thanatos Class Carrier. Immediately repping the Maelstrom, preventing us from killing it. We disengaged and pulled off. The Carrier warping away to a station.

As soon as it moved away, we jumped back in to finish the lampooned Maelstrom. Luckily doing so before the Thanatos could help. To our disbelief, it then returned to the gate and was immediately pointed by our crew. Each in turn took turns to point the carrier, then warp off when the fighters began to tear our ships apart.

Shae had rumbled in with the big guns hot in her gigantic Hyperion Battleship. I had been furiously attempting to gather fuel to jump in the Vodka Shark and aid the battle but alas, Helium Isotopes were hard to find.

San ended up coming back in a Sentinel. The Jaguar was still running around and preventing people from warping. I arrived just in time to chase the Jag off and allow Jorge to warp out his Harbinger on 5% structure. While I continued the dogfight 80km away. M34N had been informed and dropped in some more Battleship support.

By now, the Thanatos was running out of Cap. The combined efforts of the Dominix that were draining cap through their Heavy Energy Neutralisers had made the entire situation overwhelming for the Carrier pilot.

After chasing the Jaguar away, I returned in to the battle to help suck a little cap and finally tip the Thanatos into structure. Seconds later, the mighty warship exploded upon the gate. Filfthy Scum will no doubt be asking serious questions of the tactics employed by their pilots but nonethless a bold move which we certainly did not see coming. The lack of smartbombs, point and scram on the Thanatos which these days are essential led to it's demise but hell, we certainly didn't care.

A good week overall. The Bastards are now just 2bil away from breaking 100billion ISK damage done as a corporation. We are hoping to surpass it as a Christmas objective.

That's all for now anyway. We did a crap frigate op too and I killed a Stabber in a Bantam. But you know, it just didnt seem to compare in story telling procedures.

Blog Banter #2: The Tempting Mistress

2008-11-27T02:13:00.000-08:00

Two years ago, pretty much to the day, I was working in the offices of the company responsible for RuneScape; Jagex Ltd.

My good friend Tony, (jungleburger in Eve) was spouting out his generally hard to understand scouse phrases. For about a month, he had been going on about Eve Online and it just so happened that our unit leader, Jez (Invictor in game) also had been a long time Eve enthuistiast.

We had just come off of a strenuous 4 month night shift. During this time, the only salvation, though little it may be was WoW. Another friend had got me to play it and the foul bastard game suddenly became a second job after getting home from work at 10am.

Tony had a new wallpaper up on his work computer. It depicted a Phoenix Dreadnought with numerous Caldari ships flying through space. As an avid Sci-Fi fan, (you can find me watching Star Wars, Firefly etc etc on many occasions) my immediate thoughts were 'wow! those ships are cool'.

Tony then brought up the Eve Online ships scale picture. To which I was astonished. The best use of scale in a space game I had seen was in FreeSpace 2 back in the day. It did not even get close to this. The Phoenix dread was hundreds of times the size of its escort. At this point, Jez walked over, pointed at the screen and said 'my alliance has just built me one of those.'

I knew by now I had to give the game a go.

That night I downloaded the trial. I made a Minmatar, high charisma, special ops, mining character...

The character was called Jedziah (Most of you know I have since replaced her with one that's a it better). Jedziah lasted a week or two before I realised how much of a mistake I had made with the starting stats. Soon after, Artem was made with a decent stat setup to boot and immediately started on the path to a mining barge.

My initial thoughts were to sustain myself with ISK in order to build one of thos gargantuan Dreadnoughts for myself. Now Eve was so different back then. Jungleburger appeared in the belt I was ratting in in his 70 Million ISK Jaguar Assault Ship. With fittings it had cost well over 100. Crazy in comparison to the inflated market we see today.

2 Months down the line San was born. It was out of a lust to get involved with the PvP and piracy going on in New Justice. With the guidance of JB, she went on a learning plan to help her train skills a bit faster. Initially, San flew around in a Kestrel and a Comorant not soon after. I'd occasionally drop into Metropolis low sec and wonder what on earth the ship scramming and webbing me was doing.

By the time San had become PvP aware, JB had set up a splinter corp for which I spent over a year with. We had a lot of fun times, experienced 0.0 for the first, second and third times and unfortunately then broke apart due to some extremely spongeant members sapping the life from the directors.

It was during this time with TRPLA, that we first met The Bastards and formed a coalition. Our pirating ventures were similar to the ones we had today. Our main enemies at the time being Black-Flag and M34N Corp. In fact, FlashFresh and Jubes are on too many of my loss mails to count.

It was after TRPLA collapsed that Eve started to move from my life. I had tested a number of corps over a short period and could not find the connection we all had in TRPLA. After a number of tries, I had lost the love for the game and took an extended break from Eve. I honestly didn;t know if it was temporary or a permanent one.

RnProphet, who had followed us from The Bastards to enjoy a bit of fun in Syndicate had rejoined them. I had been playing a number of other games with him, namely the likes of Supreme Commander and such. He had gone to rejoin The Bastards.

I had remembered how much fun I had during my time there. In fact, no other time in the game had produced as much fun on a regular basis as the time I had spent flying with them. I decided to give Eve one last go and rejoin with them.

By now, San had flourished into a 30 million skill point character with the ability to fly a myriad of different ships. My other alt Jed, had been focused solely on battleships and had pretty much maxed out any skill she could to make them awesome. Soon, I realised that I was back in the place I should have come back to a long time ago.

The moral of this story is quite simple. Eve becomes that alluring mistress due to the ties we make with others. It is the company that you fly with that makes this game so different to the other MMO's out there. The 'Pub Like' atmosphere on the Bastards Vent is something that other corps have found hard to replicate. Everyone is a friend of everyone and there are no outsiders in the corp, despite its astronomical growth in recent months.

It is the one corp I have found where everyone is pulling for the same thing and making sure we have nothing short of epic fun whilst we do.

The temptations of Eve are strong on so many levels. Hours can be lost literally doing nothing on the game but sitting in the station and using the chat as an expensive MSN. Nontheless, CCP have to be given credit for providing us with such an excellent game, free expansions and generally exciting us all with what is to come.

Mynxee Said She'd Touch Me

2008-11-25T02:29:00.000-08:00

...If I blogged it up

Without further explanation needed, the blogging begins again.

I've been having an interesting time of late in Eve, hence the bottleneck of blog posting. I've lost more ships of recent than I think I can ever recall. Sadly there has been at least 2 ECM ships on every one of my losses which further angers me.

It is an aspect of the game that I have come to greatly dislike. First and foremost, San used to primarily fly Falcons and Rooks so I understand both the mechanics of them and to be perfectly honest, how much of a c-c-c-c-c-c-c-combo breaker they are.

Now I can understand if your gang of 2-5 small ships wishes to mix it up with the bigger boys and girls. I have however been the victim of 10+ ship blobs versus just myself and they yet feel obliged to jam with umpteen ECM ships.

For all those Caldari pilots shouting 'but we have nothing else to fly', quite simply shut up. You now have a myriad of some of the best ships in the game. Get out of the ECM ships and have some fun. ECM is quite simply as boring as mining too. All of these fights that I have had would have been even a little bit fun without the retarded amounts of ECM, especially as much of it did not make the killmail in many cases.

Enough of my pointless rants anyway. On to the violence.

Violence

Our good competitors from the German alliance Sternhagel had followed us back from Egmar to our home system. They had a fleet consisting of 2 Muninns, 1 Cerberus, 1 Deimos and a Sleipnir. We had lured them back with Vagabond and Curse and they happily obliged to roll to the planet of which Tibberg parked his Tech 2 assortment of toilet roll tubes and duct tape at.

Many an AU off of scan sat both of my alts, San in an Eagle and Jed in the trusty and most deadly Apocalypse. Cloaked next to Tibberg happened to be our two Piranhas, Viginiti and Kulmid waiting in their Pilgrim Recon Ships, renowned for sucking more capacitance away from a ship than a hooker could suck a golf ball through a hosepipe.

As they all began to land, Vig uncloaked burning to gain point upon a target. Tibberg burned for an artillery fit Muninn, taking fire as he did. As he gained point upon the Minmatar sniper, Jedziah and San had levelled their oversized weaponry from afar. 8 Tachyon Beam Laser II's erupted Amarr Navy Red into the hull of the Muninn. The Railguns of the Eagle began to furiously pop away beside it, chewing away at the armour. Tibberg had to bug out of point range allowing the Muninn to escape on less than 15% structure. Not even forcing the Tachyons to overload could get enough out of them to fire again before the heavy assault cruiser warped away.

Fearing the same fate, the other Muninn promptly turned away, made like a tree and fucked off, in fear of Tachyon love about to come his way.

Sternhagel began a full retreat, however Viginti was chasing down the Sleipnir to keep it from warping. The Sleipnir was quick; renowned for it's speed, it began to chuckle as it burned away from the Recon Ship. Alas, it was not his day, the path of his ship took him straight into the uncloaking Kulmid who promptly switched off his Microwarpdrive with a Scrambler and redistributed his capacitor.

The Sleip was now dead in the water. Jed once again gained a firing solution upon the Command Ship. The Tachyons levelled, began their notorious charging sound and sent a searing scream across local space. The Aurora crystals were volleying quarter chunks of his shield per shot. The combined fire reduced the ship to minus hull points.

San ordered the Elite Eagle crew to load up the scan resolution scripts into the boosters. As the Sleipnir went out of control and the escape pod ejected, it was locked instantly and railed from 170km away.

Once again, the Germans delivering epic fights and always bringing one. I salute all of you.

More Violence

Once again, Ronin had plans afoot for yet another winning operation. This time it would involve T2 fit, tech 1 frigates.

With San's good friend a few jumps away in the trade hub, I got on the blower to bring in some ships. After much deliberation, I chose the one and only Kestrel. How it has served me well over the years when I was a little whippersnapper.

After the over confident Mr. Frog said how his little Incursus could have sex with my ship without it's permission, I proceeded to show him why the Kestrel is win and had him to structure before his drone managed to fire at my ship once. Comy 2, in seeing the wonders of it rushed off to join the revolution.

With some new recruits in our gang such as Sanjaya in a trusty Griffin, we had formed a mixed fleet with some of the biggest names in the pirate community in the ranks.

2 time Rifter MVP and system clearing specialist Kane Rizzel dropped out of warp in his quintessential Rifter.

Local scan picked up the infamous 'Stinger' ship name penned to the IFF of a Rifter. It was none other than the insatiable Mynxee.

Undocking from the home station was the globally adored FlashFresh, ready once again to deny any links to him being an Nvidia employee seen on a recent Fanfest video.

The elite fleet of win moved off from Evati. After several quiet jumps, Antonio Banderas on one of his last flights with The Bastards for a while called a point upon a ratting Harbinger. The ship itself worth more than our entire fleet several times over.

Bandy made an uncharacteristic Croatian schoolboy error and dropped his transversal velocity to the victim. The focused medium beams upon the Harbinger tore the Rifter in half. Fortunately, Euan had dropped warp and had engaged his warp disruptor. Not far behind came the gang. The Thundercats swooped in laying on the damage thick and fast. In fact, the uncharacteristically unplated Amarr Battlecruiser was rapidly re-distributed to the bloodthirsty pirate gods.

While Global Criminal wore off, we split up around the belts. A Hurricane pilot not too interested in looking at the lop-sided local count proceeded to clean up the Angel rats in system. The gang gladly obliged to protect the endangered Angel Impaler and made best speed to his belt. With Kane Rizzel now in system, there was quite simply no other who would be getting the final blow. His Rifter capable of punching a Hurricane through a star.

On a nice little party piece, we all held the stricken pod in position while FlashFresh used his small smartbomb to slowly break the Kinder Egg apart. Sadly there was no toy inside.

After global countdowns dropped. We rolled on up to Oddelulf . After laying into a criminal Abaddon pilot. The locals began docking games which we were not interested in.

Once again we split up. The locals tried to gain some easy kills, warping several Destroyers and an Assault Ship to the Ice field.

Jorge who had caught us up decided to end the Catalyst in record timing. I had personally landed near the Jaguar and proceeded to spin up the Kestrel's rapid fire rocket launchers. Soon, the Navy Thorn rockets had torn the Assault ship into bits of toilet roll and scaffolding.

The Thrasher pilot had the unfortunate demise of becoming Kane Rizzel's primary. A rather expensive and rigged Thraser at that. A Cormorant had also fell under the fire but we have yet to locate who got the final blow.

So we had a number of epic lols in our little monsters. Tibberg had turned up in a perma smartbombing Rifter. It scared all of us so Frog killed it. Then we killed Frog for good measures.

We did the Ewok, Axe Swing and Running Man dances in unision for a bit before heading back home to Evati.

Loth was unfortunately busy last night so the fearless Cow in a Can did not make a warranted appearence to debrief us on our operations, give us all key pointers and allow us all to further our PvP exploits. If it wasn't for the terrible back problems the Cow suffers, he would surely join us in his combat ships rather than having to do with making sandwiches and pouring Quafe Ultra from the sidelines.

Nonetheless, we all respect the experience and knowledge he so happily shares with us.

On a final note. Donate ISKs to me for the capitals I require. It's not an option. I don't have sugar daddy's giving me Rattlesnakes for free like Spectre.

That's all for this post. Hopefully it was long enough to get a sneaky touch of Mynxee's sideboob. Who knows...

Let's be AF'n You

2008-11-13T04:59:00.000-08:00

End of an Era

So the era of the nanoship comes to an end. A topsy turvy time it has been for us all both in them and victims of them. My Ishtar took it's final voyage on Saturday, heading up to the edge of Syndicate space. After some nice kills, Huzzah decided to 'Vindicate' my ship in the correct manner. A battleship that was going faster than my poor little HAC was a sight to see. Alas, grats to Huzzah for picking up a nice MWD from my wreck.

Quantum Rise

The Assault Frig for the past year has been nothing more than a stepping stone for most. In many cases it becomes the 'Mercy Kill' for a stricken victim.

Damage Control - 'Sir! we simply cannot take this level of beating, the ship can hold out for maybe 30 seconds more!'

Captain - 'Jenkins! find me a suitable target that cannot defend itself'

Jenkins - 'Captain, there is a Wolf class Assault Ship in close proximity to our hull. Targeting the ship, web and torpedoes are ready'

Captain - 'Fire Jenkins! Make sure this scamp won't be getting any insurance back!'

It was an occasion that happened far too frequently to warrant the 10-15mil outlay for the ship hull.

Now...how things have changed.

Our little AF's are nurtured little DPS spewing muderbeasts that have a signature radius equal to that of a crouton in your soup.

'What does that mean Jones!' I hear you all ask. Well it's pretty simple. Cruiser weapon systems and up, which in part are designed to be fired at similar sized vessels are now almost obsolete when fired against something with a small signature radius.

A mixture of their afterburner speed and their miniscule sig radius now means that they can operate in kissing distance of the enemy without fear of LOLWTFBBQ11111ELEVEN.

Not 30 minutes after the patch had gone live, our Assault Frigates were whirring up and looking for targets. A cock sure Harbinger warps in on euan8, a new recruit from Python. Euan's ab Thorax kept the chap interested as we poured in several AF's consisting of two sub 300dps Harpy's, a drone spewing Ishkur, a well rounded Jaguar and Viginiti in his quintessential Sentinel.

The Harbinger locked up Kulmid who had landed right on top of him. Levelling the Focused Medium Pulse lasers in line with the Harpy. Despite being webbed, the Harpy still managed over 300m/s allowing it to stay well ahead of the tracking of the turrets in such a tight orbit. The Harbinger opened up with its Amarr Navy Crystals yet could only catch the vacuum of space.

Kulmid then decided to return the favour, opening up his Neutron blasters onto the thick armour plating of the Battlecruiser. The blasters able to fire like machine guns with the increased magnetic field stabilisation.

Soon, the others in the wolfpack were opening up. The oversized DPS from the Assault Frigs was simply too much for the stricken Battelcruiser to handle. The gang had focused their fire on the rupturing armour plates and quickly tore into the bulkheads, reducing the Harbinger to floaty bits of rolled tungsten.

Unbalanced I hear you cry!

Never...

We have been losing a lot of these AF's trying to get the setups right. As we are using afterburners, it gives us a lot more grid to play with.

One particular fight we got into in a local 0.0 entry point ended up pretty bad. With our quintessential Hellcat support of the 'Maneater' Mynxee and the 'Scrumptuous' Shae Tiann, we had engaged a Rokh which uncloaked and was promptly tackled by my trusty DrillHawk. As we closed range, licking our lips at what was to come, the Rokh engaged 8 Smartbombs, reducing ships and pods alike to space blubber in mere seconds. We all laughed, cried, did the Ewok dance and listened to the Cow in a can give out tremendous life changing philosophical quotes.

As you are all confused, soon there will be many lols as the Cow in a can FC's one of our ops. The Cow is a big part of our lives in The Bastards, his wise words drive us all forward in the hope that one day, we could aspire to his greatness.

A shorter one for this broadcast. To be honest we are all to busy trying to get the best kill we can in an Assault Frig. I hope to be able to bring you a carrier kill or something in the coming weeks!

Much <3

San

Space Quidditch

2008-11-06T03:12:00.000-08:00

It's been a busy time on the recruitment front in The Bastards. With an exremely sizeable chunk of Python heading to the darker side, we had effectively gained pilots ranging in the double figures in the space of one to two weeks.

The Bastards are a corp based upon our brotherly (and sisterly) loves. We all fly as a rowdy bunch of mates who cannot hope to be controlled in an orderly manner. Gaining such a large bunch of new guys was going to require something a bit different to help them integrate into the elite ranks us fools.

RnProphet and myself decided to scheme one afternoon about a way to have a lot of fun and get the new guys involved. What we came up with was an evil hybrid between Capture the Flag and Quidditch. Prophet penned the 'Space Quidditch' name but I thought it was bit homosexual, even for his open closet tastes and just stuck with Eve CTF for now.

We lead 14 individuals in their pods to a designated system. Each of them completely unaware of what lay ahead. The first point on the agenda was picking teams. Ronin and Lord Sara were penned in as captains and proceeded to choose their team-mates. We ensured that the Pythons got a good mixture on to both teams by picking them first and the Bastards last.

Now the fun began.

Prophet and I had arranged ships into numbered Station Containers that came equipped with some vanilla T1 mods for which to fit them with. Teammates could swap mods to realise their dreams.

Players took it in turns to pick a number and receive a can. Ronin and Sara then had to pick from two more cans which had a support ship (Destroyer) and their team flagship (Cruiser) within them.

While these picks were happening, San had made a quick safespot for which she sat in a Maller class cruiser. Any team capable of probing it out and finding it would be able to use it in their fleet.

The teams in a Scrapheap Challenge/Junkyard Wars style began to optimise their fleets for capture the flag. Their were no warp disruptors involved in this game intially. Teams were however allowed to rat to find new mods.

During the setup phase. Teams were allowed to undock, probe and find the bases. Red team took full advantage of this and managed to probe out the Maller. San promptly ejected from the ship. After a short conversation, red team realised that none of them could fly the cruiser and hence decided that it was better if they blew the ship up rather than allow the enemies to secure a clear advantage.

In an even more devious scheme, red team then proceeded to their anchored can for which their own flag was sitting and jettisoned several cans, naming them all 'red base'.

The rules to win were simple:-

First to 500 points

- Succesful Flag Capture - 100 Points

- Kill a Frigate/Noobship - 25 Points

- Kill a Destroyer - 50 Points

- Kill a Flagship - 200 Points

All of the players were now ready and the game got underway. Both teams essentially swapped places to one another's base. Red team scooped the blue flag and proceeded to return.

Blue team were in a state of confusion. They landed to find 10+ cans on their overview and began to lose control of their profanity filters. Red team waltzed back to their base, capturing the flag without a shot being fired.

Blue team realised their mistake and reconfigured their overviews so the same mistake would not happen again.

Red led by 100 as the flags were reset.

The battle began again. Blue team had this time left their Augoror flagship at their own flag with an ample frigate escort.

The mighty Augoror is generally known as a pretty rubbish ship. Atheist Peace had turned this little beast into real flagship. Its dual medium rep tank and extended armour points made it a fearsome command ship.

The red team scout, Khaled landed near the blue flag. The Flagship and its escort proceeded to bear guns down upon the reaper noobship. Before it could turn about, the purple sheers of the flagship had reduced the scout to a molten heap.

Faster ships began to arrive at the blue base. This time a successful swoop managed to snatch the flag from the container. Meanwhile, at the red base, Fenneck's deadly Thrasher and the red command ship, an Osprey were acting as sentry gunners to fend off Ronin's attempts to snatch the flag. Each time Ronin managed to slip away with mere structure points left in his Rifter.

The Osprey is again not noted for it's PvP prowess. This flagship however was fielding a serious tank in the capable hands of Comy. It's extended shields and multiple invulns made it a serious tough nut to crack. It also had some serious anti speed tank weaponry in its myriad of heavy missile launchers.

Once again, the red team dwindled back to their base to capture the flag for another 100 points. In resetting the flag however, they decided to shoot the iteron games master and proceeded to gain a rapid 50 point deduction.

The flags were reset again and the passwords were changed. San was now in a Buzzard for which the password would be the name of the ship. She remained cloaked while battles unfolded.

Skirmishes had broken out at both bases. A blue Kestrel succumbed to the firepower of the flagship and destroyer combo. This time, the Blue Team managed to score closing the score to 100 blue 175 Red.

The fun continued for several more rounds. Both red and blue scoring and taking some losses upon the way. The score was close at 350 Red 375 Blue. We decided to settle this the correct way as it was getting late.

Planet V was designated the showdown area. It was a team deathmatch, last man standing scenario. Whoever was left, would win.

The initial bulk of the blue fleet landed upon the planet, remaining in tight orbit to their Augoror flagship. Red team began to drop warp 50km away with their irreplaceable Osprey command ship at the centre of the fray.

After a little dance between the two teams, the fighting got under way. Loth went for a characteristic Leeroy upon Ronin's Rifter. In an attempt to web the Rifter down, Loth rapidly lost his ship under the combined firepower of the Augoror and Cormorant.

The remainder of red team swooped in. Engaging away at the enemy frigates. The Osprey command ship began tearing into an enemy Imicus, attempting to speed tank the command ship. The heavy missiles quickly getting the better of it. Atheist beared the guns down upon his Augoror and opened fire on another Kestrel. With Ronin and Shaders help, the Kestrel ruptured and promptly caught fire.

Ard called Ronin primary for the red team. Fenneck's Thrasher levelled the artlillery and made some sizeable holes in the Rifter. It was soon over for Ronin. Fenneck's Thrasher finally succumbed to the remaning firepower but not before aiding in the demise of the Cormorant.

Red now had a sizeable advantage over blue. The Blue flagship Augoror plundered into range. Red began to open fire. The Augoror began to soak up the damage from the combined red attack. Its dual rep armour tank was able to see through all of the damage that was lashing the armour plates. Alas the Augoror was not friendly on it's capacitor. After a sustained several minute period of which it held out against the onslaught, the batteries ran dry and the nanobots died.

With the Osprey now bearing its missiles on the Augoror too, the mighty ship had its days numbered. Atheist proudly saluted his flagship as it finally entered hull and proceeded to decorate local space with bits or chared armour plating.

A mighty battle which finally swayed to red team. Congratulations to all that were involved both winners and losers. It was great to get the new guys involved in some harmless mudering of corp mates.

I felt that this brought up a point about Eve which we pretty much take for granted. The Augoror and Osprey in the context of this engagement may as well have been an Aeon and a Wyvern. They had superior tanks that could near enough soak up all of the damage coming from the enemy fleet. The firepower they brought was superior and it generally led to them becoming feared opponents upon this particular battlefield.

It was almost a replica of a capital fight in subcapital ships without watching the entire battle in Microsoft Powerpoint mode. In a real Lord of the Flies scenario. We had converted two of the worst cruisers in the game into these godlike supercapital ships.

This was a whole barrell of fun for all of us involved. Even Prophet and myself who GM'd the whole event. We got to phantom on Ventrilo so we could listen to both fleets at once which was extremely entertaining how the FC's differed their tactics and primary calling.

We will most certainly have to do this again, refining the rules a little more and expanding the size of the teams involved. I hope all of our new members enjoyed it as much as our current one's did and we can't wait to have you guys on board, full time.

Pimpin' Aint Easy

2008-11-03T02:27:00.000-08:00

Exciting Times...

For your friendly neighbourhood Bastards. As Spectre has begun to cover in his blog, the ragtag fugitives of the Python Cartel have turned our way in force, looking to join up with our motley crew.

Over the past several months, some of the largest pirating forces in Metropolis have merged with the Bastards. First it was the mighty members of Black Flag for which we owe so many good fights and now we see the core of another corp swindling into our vagabond ranks.

It certainly is an exciting time with The Bastards gaining new friends and a lot of new members. Congrats must go to some of our newer members who are beginning to become full members such as Hallan and Viginiti. You guys have been awesome.

The Ho' Train has Arrived

In respect to our countless mission runner victims, we decided that the least we should do is provide some novelty to your killmail if you refuse to pay our extremely reasonable ransom demands (well a pirate has

to eat).

To achieve this, many members have decided that we should add a twinge of win t

o the mission busting ranks and pimp out some faction cruisers. Mr. Frog for example has opted for a full on face melter 900dps Navy Issue Vexor, whilst I kept in line with Mynxee's yearning for things that are long and black with a sexy 750dps Vigilant. Others you may see include Phantasms, Gilas and probably a few Fleet Issue Stabbers.

Their of course could be many other additions to the pimp mission busting squad, only time will tell what monstrosities will be seen in your missions.

Many would argue 'Yeah, but they don't exactly do much more damage over a T1 variant for the increase in price? why bother?' Well to be honest...look at the state of that Vexor! It could hide in a tree and be all like Surprise! bitches. The Vigilant is all like dark camoflauge and green lights. It's just hiding in space ready to eat your face off. The Phantasm could damage your ship just by bumping into it. I mean come on, who doesn't want to fly a ship that comes with a full set of steak knives?

Isk is not really a problem either with the whole 2 Machariels, Faction Scorpion, Rorqual and full freighter amongst the zillions of kills in between. The Bastards thought that it was only right we gave something back to our loyal mission runner fanbase.

Stimulus Here To Rock The House

Last night toodled along like many of recent. The new guys were performing mass logistics in moving their stuff from Avenod down to Evati. Our hauler alts were frantically bringing in new toys from the nearby trade hubs.

I had decided it was time for a new Heavy Interdictor. San had a lot of experience flying both the Onyx and Devoter. Whilst I cannot argue with their abilities in 0.0 space, both kind of lacked the maneuverability and versatility to be uber effective in low sec too. I had decided now with Gallente Cruiser V under her belt, that San should try out the Phobos.

It was set up in a manner different to many Phobos you would see but my new ship named 'Axe Swing Dance' in order to bring it uber MC Hammer luck. For those not in with the phenomenon please watch this video and check the dance for yourselves at 1 Minute 35 Seconds. It will change your life to know the wonders of the Axe Swing Dance.

Our fleet of gank battlecruisers, a Phobos, Ard's insatiable Rapier goodness and Sarge in a Vexor for unkown reasons headed up towards the Python Cartel's old home. In hitting Klogori, Spectre who was catching us up informed us of a Battleship heavy gang tailing us.

We decided to wait at a planet and see what they would do...

Local began to fill. A single Hurricane came into the planet's orbit. We proceeded to tackle and take the bait down immediately. Not seconds after the Hurricane ruptured it's hull, their fleet dropped. Initially 2 Armageddons, a Megathron, Falcon and Drake.

The Falcon had warped in 70km away. Ronin made the call that fast tackle whir up the engines and rush the pilot. Hallan's eyes lit up in his unrivalled gung-ho rifter skills and burned full pace for the ECM specialist along with Maltrox donning the same. Ard seamlessly tranistioned from cloaked subspace and engage his MicroWarp Drive, Sarge turned his Vexor about and I also gave the order to overheat the propulsion.

The Falcon was pointed by Hallan, an excellent tackle. With the pilot too busy trying to jam out the gank DPS of our Battlecruisers, he had few modules left for the rush that had hit him. His missiles managed to take down Maltrox's Rifter but alas it was in vain. By now the Axe Swing Dance had the infinite point on from 28km away while the Vexor and Rapier repainted the outside of the Recon ship with Republic Fleet EMP.

The remainder of their gang were remote armour reparing one another. By now, they had dispatched with several of our Battlecruisers including Frog's Man Brutix and Spectre's Girl Brutix. A lesson to all that tanking a Brutix simply ends in the same manner as an untanked one. Difference is that Frog was pumping nearly 1000dps into the enemy before succumbing to them.

The Megathron pilot was getting worked over now. We had removed the majority of the remote repair drones on show and began to eat up at the armour. Shader's Brutix fell under the fire as the Megathron ran out of Hull Points.

By now, my Phobos had burned back into the fray. Taking primary fire from the Drake and a single Geddon. The armour resists held well on her, taking minimal damage. I pointed and webbed down the Armageddon as the remainder of our gang gained a firing solution upon it. Down the Amarr behemoth went but taking Ronin's monster Hurricane with it.

By now. our forces were scattered, ensuring that they both escaped in low armour/hull to repair and return. I tanked them for long enough

before leaving in low armour.

The initial engagement had lasted well over 5 minutes. We were unhappy with them holding the field however. Kulmid logged on just at the right time. His Abaddon had moved into position upon the Orfrold gate and jumped in. Ard had made the man a warp in next to a new Tempest class battleship.

I dropped warp the same time as the mighty Abaddon which beared all fire down upon the Tempest. Not long after landing, Stimulus replied with a fast paced group of Heavy Assault Ships. With two Battleships, a Zealot and Cerberus along with the Drake, our Abaddon had no chance of tanking the damage.

I turned my Phobos about, saluted to the brave crew of Kulmid's ship and overloaded my MWD to escape the clutches of the Zealot. Round 2 most certainly went to them.

Again, The Bastards are not happy when we can't hold the field at the end of the engagement. With our HQ only a few jumps away, we decided to show our amicable enemy a real remote repair gang returning with some big guns including several Dominix, a Typhoon and a Megathron.

Stimulus were still looting the remnants of ours and their lost brothers when Mr. Frog, Flashfresh and Sarge landed. The blasters or Frog and the combined torpedo bombardment of Sarge and Ronin alpha volleyed through any chance that the Tempest and Armageddon had to remote repair.

Another Falcon had appeared, attempting to change the engagement in favour of Stimulus. Once again Hallan fired up his Leeroy Jenkins drive in a new Rifter followed by a contingent of Bastards and Python fast tackle. Thinking better of it this time, the Falcon pilot jammed out the local threat and managed to cloak and warp.

At this point I was duelling with the Zealot pilot. He made an uncharacteristic error and became webbed for a matter of seconds. This was enough time for Kulmid to open up with his distinctive 'Amarr Navy Purple' reducing the Zealot to low armour in seconds. However, the superior speed of the Heavy Assault Ship escaped my web through Inertia and he burned out of Mega Pulse Laser range. The Cerberus thinking better of the engagement decided now was a good time to cheese it.

All that remained was the lowly Drake which escaped the first fight going into armour. On this occasion, there it was an inevitable face melting from the firepower now on show.

The battlefield was then cleared of the remnants whilst pleasantries were exchanged in local. This was undoubtedly one of the best set of engagements that we had taken part in in a very long time. The fights lasted in excess of 5-10 minutes at a time. People actually began to run out of ammunition as we would by standard take maybe 1 or 2 reloads to a fight.

To all the guys in Stimulus, what a great evening and we hope to replicate the fun again soon. It's hard to get such good fights these days but you 100% delivered on that one.

I leave you all with my bored musings whilst we waited for a gang to form. I will probably make some more in the near future but here is a one off Bastards Wallpaper for you all!

Picture Link

Dangerous

2008-10-24T08:34:00.000-07:00

eBay Lives in Metro

The Bastards returned to their normal selves this week. Adding more winning kills to the board that says it all. Another Machariel for which I held point on the gate in an untanked Arazu, leaving in low low structure. I Always thought the one ship rave machine of Eve needs to look on fire to fit in with it's persona. (If you don't know what I am talking about, it has pulsating flashlights on the front). In fact I find myself chucking shapes and singing 'Ebeneezer Good' each time I make a successful mission bust.

Alas, this Machariel had possibly the worst fitting we have seen for a good long time for such an expensive ship. Worse still, the pilot could at have best been running a level 2 mission within it, something which a destroyer could amply devour for 799 million ISK less than the speedy Angel battleship.

In other awesome kills, a Fenrir dropped once again in Arnstur and actually dropped stuff! Albeit the Maelstrom and Huggin going bang, the drop was nonetheless acceptable.

A number of squatting POS runners were also made to pay their rental fees. (and damn right they should for our outrageously sexy company!) One POS which did no

t pay up took a bashing and dropped some nice loots into a number of cans. We are slowly whittling down our long list of squatters in Metropolis. As you can see, my Ishtar was more than happy with the haul...

Seriously, look at that grin. How can you not love the little bastard!

Welcome back Ray

On a most excellently fantastic note, my good friend Raynor Etrin made an unexpected return to Eve last night. (If you ever meet the chap I would suggest remaining a 70km barge pole away from his blasters which end people sideways). Ray had inexplicably left the game on a sudden note and I could not reach him out of game. Made me very sad.

It turns out he had escaped a real life podding by the cream of the custard in a high speed car accident. Nonetheless, I am both over the moon that he is back and in full working order. His dry and limitless humour on vent normally ends with many aching stomachs throughout the night.

Expect to see some top damage dealing going to his monstrously over dps'd rapemode ships and probably some hilarious 'doh!' losses to balance out the karma.

Flash and E-On

Our most legendary blog specialist and corp mate Flashfresh has been given the go ahead for a new article in the ever popular E-On magazine. Very exciting indeed and I certainly cannot wait to read what he has to ramble on about this time. (Speaking of that, please read his excellent write up of yet another freighter killing)

On other blogularly notes, please have a gander at Shae's blog to read the wonders of Eve meeting real life and please indulge yourself on Mynxee's ramblings of her experiences at being a fully fledged corporate leader.

If however, you are tired of being beaten up girls then you should definitely go and check out Spectre's latest adventures as a self confessed Eve Newbie. I wonder what that scamp has been up to today!

Anyways, that's all for now have an epic weekend all of you lovely people and please do bring your faction battleships to Metro because we want your fittings.

You Spin Me Right Round...

2008-10-20T02:49:00.000-07:00

The Bastards have had a pretty average week on the killboard. Nothing reaching the eclectic highs of an eBay fitted Machariel or George Michael laying waste to Metropolis. Nonetheless, it was still a most excellent turnover of ships including a very well fitted Damnation that was self confessed by the pilot as 'The Best Level 2 Mission Running Ship He Ever Had' - Made me Chuckle.

The quiet week has seen the return of some great faces to our ranks. z0de has finally returned from an Eve break which saw him turn into the biggest troll you have ever seen. In fact not even Goumindog from goons could even envisage the troll levels that z0de had been pulling out on The Bastard's ever active forums.

For any of you thinking about joining up with the B's in metro, access to that forum would be another excellent reason. It is an untold fountain of knowledge to new and old pilots alike.

Spun Around

This is a subject that sends many an EFT Warrior (or a 'Praxis' to The Bastards named aptly after a previous corpy EFT Warrior) to an early grave.

Most people will break the profanity filters in regards to fitting a ship that does not adhere to its pre allocated bonuses. I am a big believer of thinking outside the box.

Examples of good ships that move away from their standard fittings would be the passive shield tanked Myrmidon (actually holding the record for a passive shield setup) which can easily hold its own against several ships. Anything from AC's upon an

Ishtar to a shield tanking Dominix, they all get bad press until someone proves how useful one cold be. (OK the shield tanking Dominix not so much)

One example which produced untold success was the IonClones we took out on Sisi for a laugh. (Something I seriously wish to do on Tranquility soon)

The Cyclone is generally considered one of the worser of the Battlecruisers, especially with its big brother, the Hurricane performing such a pivotal role in pirating for many alike. Nonetheless, the Clone has such untapped potential.

We in fact tried a gang of 5 Ion fitted cyclones, adopting an ample shield buffer to each and inviting a single scimitar along with us. The results were indeed staggering. Before the final Cyclone was nailed in its coffin, we had worked our way through a Paladin,

2 Golems, 2 Ravens, 2 Maelstroms, an Abaddon and 3 Megathrons.

Of course with this being Sisi, we take it with a pinch of salt and can only hope to partially replicate the success of the gang on tranquility. However in contrast, many of the pilots would have been fielding the pirate implants to increase their tank due to the open availabilty of them on Singularity. Ion Clone 1 - Eve Public 0.

I guess the point I am trying to get across in a poor way is that pioneering something new in game will not get you much support, until you show people what you can do with it.

Why are you flying that...

The words of many for whence they see a fellow corp member step into the lowly Ferox. A ship many would agree is simply a complete waste of space next to something like the Brutix which can damage you a lot faster and at the

same price.

Determined to prove everyone wrong, I will be trying to notch up some kills in one over the course of the next few months. After seeing Aston Gulliver and SK Rooster use them so effectively back in our Notoriety days, I know the ship has potential to be more than everyone gives it credit for. Results are only measured by success however, I will endeavour to populate The Bastard's Killboard with some.

So not the normally fun packed post, I will endeavour to locate some idiot flying a commander fit Rattlesnake for next week and kill him in a Bantam.

The Felines who Shine...

2008-10-16T04:37:00.000-07:00

After the resounding success of the Wham! gank squad two nights back, The Bastards had attracted followers from all over New Eden.

Earlier in the day, MOLOTOV Coalition decided to grace us with their presence in Evati, bringing a similar setup to which we had but with a vodka twist. After engaging upon a station in Evati, we noticed they fielded a mixture of ECM and Remote Repair drones that worked furiously to keep the cruiser hulls alive from the Battleships bearing guns down upon them.

This is an age old tactic applied to a smaller ship hull which works excllently, regarding you are not a big flashy red criminal. Those of us who are have to put up with gaining sentry gun fire for simply remote repping a corp mate...just because they pod before they think.

The Molotov gang was well set up and the disengage was called as soon as the drones were seen. The Bastards both did not have enough ships to successfully counter the gang, nor did we have the sustanance to remain under both sentry fire and fleet fire. The result was the loss of Frog's Dominix and Proph's Rupture.

Props to Molotov for using such a well thought out gang. The smack in local was a little unwarranted and it was also a little sad to see the once 'premium' pirate alliance in Eve fielding all of their pilots well above the line of outlaw. Everyone plays the game differently though, we will not grace them with such easy kills in future.

Feline Affinity...

We decided to open up the Wham! squad doors to friends from the pirate community. Top of the list being the self confessed yarrring vixens of the Eve community Mynxee and Shae from the women only corporation, The Hellcats.

Along with another of the independence cartel Jaxxon Voers, our gang of uber dps rape buckets was formed once again to tear up the locals. Ronin had the fleet move out to Molden Heath this time, the area still recovering from the gargantuan Beyond Divinty pirate corp moving to Citadel. The area was still sparse for the majority of the roam, however our joint operations Wham! squad did not pass on any opportunity to redecorate a ship.

Most fights we had left the opposition running away in nano ships or having a point missed on them by mere nanoseconds. There was however a lucky winner in their Ishtar.

For two nights in a row, AntonioBanderas arrived at a planet, enaged his microwarp drive and played chicken with the opposition. Much like the Fleet Issue Stabber, Bandy's 'Lovemachine' scythed through the vaccuums of space to latch onto the expensive Gallentean Heavy Assault Ship. As the stasis webifier engaged, you could hear the bellows of George Michael ripple the fabric of the system as Thorax and Rupture alike collapsed their warp bubbles.

In seconds, the close ranged bullet spewers were shredding the stricken vessel apart. The friends of the Ishtar could but watch from a distance as their fleet mate was rapidly left floating in his escape pod.

Next in line for execution was the Harbinger that simply chose the wrong gate to jump through. This time, the Emporesses' battlecruiser uncloaked and recalibrated its sensors for warp 33km from my Thorax.

I shouted to the helmsman to overheat the mircrowarp drive at 130% and the same to the tactical officer running the warp disruption subroutines. Soon I was at 28km and the disruptor activated. You could feel the hearts sink on board the Harbinger from miles away. If you looked closely you could also see my Thorax, WakeMeUpB4UGoGo glowing like a lightbulb from the levels of overheating taking place.

Much like in Star Trek where every console has a ridiculous spark generator which spews out randoms bits of hot pain every time something goes a bit tits up, the bridge of my Thorax started to resemble a steel cutting factory.

Inertia saved my ship as the Microwarp Drive shut down for good and I coasted into web range of the ship. By now, Mynxee, Ronin and Prophet had their Ruptures whirring towards the target at top speed, 425mm cannons gaining an optimal firing solution. Shae followed in behind my centrally heated Thorax followed by Klymaxx's which had just dropped out of warp.

The Harbinger noted that the gigantic glowing fireball coming towards him was the one which had scrambled his warp. His pulse lasers began bearing down upon my now lampooned vessel with a broken propulsion mod.

Alas, his efforts to break free of my George Foreman griling machine were in vain. The 425mm cannons upon Mynxee, Ronin and Prophet spun up in unison, releasing a myriad of emp rounds into the armour of the battlecruiser. Shae and Klymaxx then unleashed their antimatter rounds from the oversized neutron blaster cannons, smashing into the resistant plating.

As my pocket blowtorch began to enter armour, the Harbinger's resistant plates had worn through from the copious punishment lashed upon them. With just a damage control computer between the crew and cold of space, they ran for the escape pods and promptly left system.

Also to be noted that not only did we dispatch of the Harbinger in such a ruthless fashion, we did it in style too, separating a Rupture with a Thorax for each of the highest damage dealers. You simply cannot find this dedication elsewhere.

Not as successful as the previous night many would argue. There was the potential for a myriad of kills which simply slipped through our fingers. Many of the reasons for which full nano ships have their days ticking down. The ability to commit to a fight in knowledge that you can escape at any time doesn't really fit in with the foundation of Eve.

All in all, a fun night had by all. Especially on Vent for which we had hopefully entertained our guests with lout mouthed antics, generally poor behaviour but yet mixing it all into a concoction of the stylish, rutheless and uncontrollably sexy murdering of New Eden pod pilots.

We certainly hope to fly with you again!

Wham! Bam! I am..Your Man...

2008-10-15T03:42:00.000-07:00

George Michael you say....

No, we had not all turned gay. We just required a naming convention for the 'Gank Tank' cruiser op. We decided that all the ships should be named after famous Wham! songs. In the event that we all died on a gate, it would look like a Wham! discography catastrophe.

The rules for the cruisers were simple. The only type of tank you was allowed was a damage control. The only reason to not use a damage mod in a low slot was to fit a PG mod in order to field bigger guns. Essentially, we were required to squeeze as much damage out of the T1 hull as possible.

This sort of gang suits everyone in The Bastards. The older players such as Ronin, Klymaxx and Frog could easily reach near max damage on said ships. The younger players also don't feel out of place in fielding the same ships. Loth for example flew a Rupture class cruiser alongside 2 Time MVP and childhood hero VB Sarge in the very same ship. Maybe a world apart in total damage output, but still a part of the very same gang.

So many of you may ask, what is the validity of T1 Cruisers? After all, most of you can fly the T2 Heavy Assault Ships anyway? Well let me chuck some figures at you...

The T2 Heavy Assault Ship known as the Deimos will cost you upwards of 100 million for a suitable fitting and the ship hull. You can expect a well rounded pilot to output anything from 750-800 damage per second from it.

The T1 Sibling to it, the Thorax costs a meager 5-6million for the hull and maybe 15 with decent fittings. A well skilled pilot can output 650-700dps from the ship. So in retrospect, we could afford to lose 5 Thorax's for every Deimos and only lose a maximum of 100dps per ship.

The same very much rings true for the Muninn/Rupture too. Omen/Zealot and Caracal/Cerberus are a little different due to fitting problems on the T1 counterparts but can still provide an ample amount of gank for the price.

So the gang was formed...consisting of 5 Ruptures averaging 480dps and 4 Thorax's averaging 530dps. So we are talking of 4500 dps from a gang of ships costing less than 100mil ISK.

In order to test the damage levels, Mr. Frog undocked his plated Dominix battleship which could soak up hundreds of thousands of damage before even worrying about disengaging.

It was a shocking moment, the brick like space cow was reduced to structure in under 15 seconds. The gang was outputting somewhat insane damage.

The gang was then reformed with Mr. Frog jumping back into his Thorax ready to go arrange some nearby havoc in Metropolis. With my Thorax raring to go, amply named WakeMeUpB4UGoGo (Released 1984 on the 'Make It Big' LP) I was ready to break some hearts like I did Last Christmas...okay bad joke. But Last Christmas was being flown by Loth (Released December 1984 on the re-released 'Make it Big' LP)

This is how the Wham! based scanner would look to our enemies! Minus me of course.

Our first port of call after the Dominix slowly regained its armour was to knock on Python's door. After sneaking into their pipe unnoticed, Klymaxx and Sara began to carelessly leave themselves at celestial bodies in Ardar. Low and behold, a roaming Python gang tugged at the line.

The gang jumped in from nearby Floseswyn and proceeded to primary the Hurricane attacking Klymaxx. The remainder of the Python support had warped in at range, providing fewer targets to engage. We were unfortunately too late to save The Edge of Heaven (Released 1986 on the 'Music from the Edge of Heaven' LP), however Kylmaxx's tackle on the Hurricane allowed us to melt it in no less than 5-7 seconds.

After failing to hunt down any of the other ships, (missing a point on the Myrmidon by under 1km) we moved back to Evati. Not 3 minutes after our arrival, a fight was starting upon the Todifraun gate. We had replaced Klymaxx's 'Edge of Heaven' with Flashfresh's more survivable rupture named 'Freedom', yet another epic Wham! hit.

We decided to invite ourselves to the on gate party that was under way. First turning our guns to a Myrmidon which simply disintegrated under the fire. Next a far juicier target. Sitting 4km from the Thorax's was a Sacrilege Heavy Assault Ship with aggro from attacking the same Myrmidon.

Without a second thought, our relentless gang opened up on the 120mil+ investment prior to him being able to jump away to safety. His eyes looked on with a frown at the traffic controller at the gate, shrugging back at him in a 'What Can I do?' sense. 'You engaged the Myrmidon and hence must see out the aggression sir'

Without another heartbeat missed, Wham! squad opened fire, reducing the ship that would cost more than our entire fleet to dust in seconds.

Whilst this skirmish was taking place, a Stabber Fleet Issue ship had been demonstrating its superior design for speed in accelerating away from our gang upon the gate. With an average optimal range of around 2km from our blaster and autocannon fitted muderbeasts, the 80km orbit he pulled was a tad out of our firing range.

The stabber then appeared to warp off to a personal safe spot to the untrained eye. To the trained and shrewd analysis from RnProphet, it was in fact the nearby planet to which the stargate was in orbit.

In a standard gung-ho and 'balls deep' fashion, the man with the voice of God, AntonioBanderas followed for a tackle. (You would need to hear the man on Ventrilo, he could melt granite)

Not a minute later, Point! and Web! was called. Bandy's fearsome Rupture had caught the Stabber with his pants down. The gang slowly trickled in laying down some serious damage. Bandy came out of the fight deep into structure with his Rupture hull on fire. Yet not even the now dead Stabber could breach the insatiable 'LoveMachine (Released in 1983 on the 'Fantastic' LP)'

Many of us now were under global criminal from the nifty Stabber kill. RoninData in his 520dps face melter, 'Careless Whisper' (Released 1984, on the 'Make It Big' LP) sat at the Minmatar Control bunker anchored near the Star. Low and behold, the wooshing sound of uncloaking ships could be heard. Two Pilgrim class force recon ships spewed out their drones and began to eat into Ronin's ship.

Like lightning, Wham! squad was in warp. The primary Pilgrim soon becoming webbed, scrammed and without hull hit points. The other Pilgrim had full on cheesed it as the first of us dropped warp, leaving his acquaintance to die a rapid death. Ronin had barely entered armour in his bullet spewing galleon before the fight was over. Real men gank tank.

In a 2 hour period, we had lost 1 Thorax for around a 7mil loss. In return we had killed a Hurricane, Myrmidon, Sacrilege, Fleet Issue Stabber and A Pilgrim totalling upwards of 600million ISK.

Props to Python Cartel for being the only one's to inflict damage on George Michael's career. We all thought Edge of Heaven was a rubbish song anyway...

Quiet Weekends...

2008-10-12T11:57:00.000-07:00

Generally a quiet weekend for all in The Bastards...

Thought I would allow you guys to catch up with some goings on.

- Loth has created a Bastards themed comic strip over on strip generator. His talents can be seen over on the stripgenerator page.

- VB Sarge has created an extremely philosophical blog on the wonders of Eve and quite obviously how it has affected all of us in some way or another. I personally believe copious amounts of alcohol and/or drugs were included in the writing of it!

Welcome the Python Cartel...

So the blog specialist and all round good read from Spectre has posted on how his corp has moved on from their previous home of Aurohunen. Their new home takes them a mere downstream sail towards the edge of Metropolis, an area that was once infested with the BEES (Mutually Assured Distraction) prior to the Empyrean Age. The Python gang fielded Saturday was a little too heavy for a poor little Abaddon to take on alone...even for the most gung-ho of pilots. However I endeavored to let them give me a pretty light show from a T2 Harbinger, Armageddon and Spectre's very own Vexor. Hopefully after the slow weekend we are having, we can go give them a good show in the near future as a proper constellation warming party.

The Smiley Face of Death

I was always a hater of how the Ishtar functioned as a PvP vessel. Gank battlecruiser damage fitted upon a nano hull.

Of course that changed once I finally stepped into my first. The ship not only appears to take no talent to fly, (hence appealing to my skills) but it comes with the epic smiley face of death. This further drives fear into our victims such as this quite amicably fitted Astarte. That fight for the record involved the pressing of several buttons to drop the drones, initiate an orbit and then go make a cup of tea. Unsure it's totally for me but nonetheless, we lolled much on comms.

Hopefully the weekend will pick up...If not then bring on Bastards Friday!

Welcome to Metropolis, Please Check Commander Modules at the Door

2008-10-11T04:18:00.000-07:00

Well ladies and gentlemen I must introduce myself... My character in the most seductive of mistresses that is Eve Online goes by the name of San Rintu. I have generally walked most forms of life within Eve but alas, I have always been allured by the wonders of Metropolis and the life of a pirate.

Going from -10 security status back to -1.9 is a tough task that requires hours of time put into murdering the countless families of the NPC pirates in game. This time, after a short break from Eve, I have decided that San will be staying as an honourable flashy red member of Eve society (albeit many pondering whether pirating is still alive or there even being a place for us vagabonds within Eve.)

With the insatiable Flashfresh now joining our ragtag group of ruffians, I felt almost obliged to write alongside one of the greats of Metropolis. I have been on both ends of his AutoCannons and can categorically say that I salute those who fall to them. While your ship presents Flash with an amicable fireworks party, he is laughing at you.

The Powers of eBay...

"Wait..Wait...Mizuro's What?"

'Bastards Friday' as it now has been penned, is a glorious time in which we somehow magnetise those in Eve who maybe are not quite understanding of the fundamental game mechanics. The most notable example written so eloquently in Flash's last blog.

This Friday, we simply could never have comprehended...

The corp was fairly busy, adding some minor kills the to killboard. Also having some poorer luck with station undock mechanics which led to an unfortunate loss. Props to tanking them for several minutes mere metres from docking range.

A gang of light cruiser support with some pricey heavy assault ships mixed in had been roaming just a jump or two away. Scouts had reported them moving our way so we decide to interdict on their maneuvers and set up a little bait.

My alt in an Abaddon jumped into the system from which they had last been spotted. We expected them to engage the juicy Battleship target but alas we later found they had eyes ahead of them in Evati. With them knowing we had a contingent of pew pew types on, it was probably in their best minds to seek a pint at their local station's bar.

The Bastards were split apart through a number of surrounding systems as some of us began traversing the stargates back to Evati. As a little bit 'gung-ho' at times, I ended up scouting in my Abaddon which for all intensive purposes, a potato could align faster. Some would say it's a foolish move, I just prefer a little excitement.

As the lumbering Battleship appeared in Evati, two battleship sized vessels appeared upon the gate. I breathed a sigh as I fully expected several more to appear and for my shiny Battleship to gain a new paint job.

Alas I looked closer at my overview...a Scorpion class battleship, renowned for laying on Jam thicker than Mr. Kipling and reducing maximum damage ships to ornaments through it's myriad of electronic countermeasures. The second ship...again a battleship class appeared on scan as a Machariel. The Machariel being an extremely rare battleship originating from the Angel Cartel of pirates. Such a ship costs more than 6 times that of the Abaddon of which I was flying.

After a period of speechless shock, I put the words together on comms and informed the rest of the guys that they would have some beyond juicy targets jumping to them shortly. Surprisingly, the two pilots ignored my flashy red bullet magnet and proceeded to jump into the remnants of our gang.

10km from the gate now, I slowly rumbled back towards it hoping to hear the good news. In the current state of Eve, the Machariel can be fitted to possess unrivaled speeds which even some interceptor pilots aspire to reaching. It makes catching on of these devils all the harder.

Today was Bastards Friday however...we don't mess around. Flash announces most proudly upon comms 'POINT!' followed by the gleeful bellows of the specialists in gang; Proph and Ard webbing the target down to a stop in their specialist stasis webification recon ships.

We had him...

As I jumped back through the gate, the Machariel was already deep into it's tank. My Scorch crystals were loaded and merely helped the stricken ship onwards to its grave.

Our quick locking Recons snag the pod too. It promptly is popped.

The Scorpion then inexplicably uncloaks and attempts to initiate warp. With the Battleships taking the brunt of the gate fire, our Recons again have no problem in preventing such an occurrence. The Scorpion is quickly dispatched with such heavy support on show and the wreck is quickly parked beside the expensive counterpart.

Being the indomitable centre of the party and self confessed loot whore, Prophet approaches the faction battleship wreck ignoring the resounding gate fire bouncing off of his shields. We expected maybe a faction module or two in line with the price of the ship's hull.

"Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee...."

Proph lets out a sound which cannot be defined or compared. With good reason however. The Machariel was fielding several modules that would total the loss at over 5 Billion ISK.

The Scorpion not too shabby either in dropping several faction items weighing in a 60mil hull in at 600mil with its overly expensive fitting.

In perspective, that sort of ISK could field anything from 5 Carriers to a Wolf Class Assault Ship for everyone online in Jita.

After a well guarded loot gathering session, the ridiculously priced modules were moved into safekeeping. We all took a step back, sat down, opened up a cold alcoholic beverage and took a well earned rest.

Props to all of those involved, you know who you are. For those who say pirating does not pay, eBay begs to differ with you.

In Other News:

- Several members of the Bastards are considering a comeback tour. The likes of General Coochie and apirates taught a lot to the fellow Bastard members and it will be nice to have some of the family back.

- Our Rorqual with such a hilarious history sold on Bastards Friday too. It made us all a little bit richer and the ISK will no doubt be invested into making people explode more often...even if it may be us.

So that's all for now folks. Has been a fun week and hopefully I will have more for you soon!

-San