Ironfleet Towing And Salvage

Today has been a frustrating day. I’d blocked it out in my schedule as a day to tend to war matters.

In the morning, AC-ME had no targets in space, so I fitted some ships and tended to other matters.

Later in the day, my internet connection started to get flaky, dropping me offline every forty seconds or so, or worse, at the end of every third warp. That’s a price I pay for living out in the country for part of the year, but usually it’s not this bad. I suspect my ISP of having worse-than-usual weekend internet congestion today, but it’s also my impression that my disconnect problem has gotten much worse since Trinity.

I waited until evening, then tried again. Utter fail, I must have gotten disconnected a dozen or more times before I’d localized AC-ME’s Saturday evening mining operation.

Once I did, though, I felt like a World War II submarine commander looking through the periscope at a fat and juicy North Atlantic convoy:

Mind you, with five visible combat escorts and one known stealth bomber on the grid, I was expecting much the same result as your typical World War II sub commander: a chance to launch a very small number of volleys, take out one non-combatant, and then fight like hell to make it out alive.

Which chance I did not get, because my full-of-fail internet connection chose to fail just as I got within cruise missile range. I was actually trying to decide which non-combatant looked like the faster gank when I got disconnected.

Which means, of course, that from their perspective I uncloaked and warped away. I tried to log back in — even though warping back in uncloaked at that range to an alerted fleet was almost certain suicide — but I got disconnected during my next three login attempts, said several bad words, and started drinking alcohol, instead.

I do want to call special attention to the enemy Manticore pilot who was in space tonight, one Loz Kias. In previous encounters, he’s distinguished himself by his remarkably direct tactic of dialing me up for a private chat and simply asking me where I am. Fair enough — it’s good for a laugh, and I can block him if it gets out of hand, or ignore him if I want to “confirm” his suspicion that I’m AFK.

Tonight, however, he trotted out two new tactics. All’s fair in love and war, I suppose, but didn’t the “spam your intended victim with gang invites and hope he flails his interface while declining them” gain its users something of a reputation for lameness, back when this was a popular tactic in Empire ganking?

After several repetitions I blocked that, so he trotted out what I’m starting to call the “Marvin The Miserable Android Offense”, defined as the attempt to get your opponent to give up by depressing him with the supposed pointlessness and hopelessness of his cause:

Loz Kias > so,
Loz Kias > the notion is,
Loz Kias > where are u?
Marlenus > LOL
Loz Kias > u can loose your ship or…
Loz Kias > stay in isa for a long time
Loz Kias > spending money on the war
Loz Kias > both seem rather pointless to me
Marlenus > I’m sorry my war seems pointless to you …but i’ve documented my reasons in exhaustive detail
Marlenus > This feels like the most public war in the history of EVE
Loz Kias > well…..
Loz Kias > why dont u hand yourself in
Marlenus > Why would I? From where I sit, I’m winning
Loz Kias > no,
Loz Kias > its like, trying to sue microsoft, u my do 5mil worth of dmg to a 12bil corp
Loz Kias > males soo little dif
Marlenus > LOL, do you still think this war is about ISK?
Loz Kias > well isk makes the world go round

“Why dont u hand yourself in?”

I think not.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 5th, 2008 at 7:08 pm and is filed under Name And Shame, Today In Ironfleet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.