Ironfleet Towing And Salvage

My re-entry into EVE has been a quiet one. Although I’m in the game several days a week, for some weeks I wasn’t doing very much except poking around and trying to figure out my new niche in EVE for making ISK (and trouble) when by myself. My illustrious careers in can flipping and aggressive salvaging seem to be pretty much history now, post Crimewatch; these professions have not become impossible, but they are much more difficult and much less profitable than formerly. Worse yet, the proliferation of tools for safer mining and easier salvage have vastly reduced the numbers of EVE players who mine and salvage in unsafe ways. So it’s become a longer search for a more dangerous fight.

I’m not whining; I’m just looking for the next niche of equivalent fun-potential. At least there have been minor joys, like finding and grabbing a couple of nice ships while searching for abandoned POS pinatas. But a new avocation hasn’t yet presented itself. In time, it will.

Meanwhile, I came across this YouTube video about the joys of flying with NPSI (Not Purple, Shoot It) fleets. So I decided to do a bit of that to get my fingers retrained for combat. In the end I found a mellow black-ops hot-dropping operation with good hunter-killers and so I’ve been spending several hours at the end of the day chillin’ in a stealth bomber (or sometimes a Falcon) and occassionally dropping in to remind people that EVE is not best played solo. Although our HKs are catholic in their methods for finding prey, it amuses me that a frequent tactic is to look helpless or clueless, and then grab the would-be predators who swoop in. There’s no fun quite like turning the tables on some aggressive boyo who thought he was killing a helpless victim. The biter, bitten!

Last night I was lucky enough to get the final blow on a Hurricane pilot who was fit for PvP and (correctly) thought he’d found some, but who failed to anticipate the true nature of the PvP he had discovered:

2014.11.19 06:37:00
Victim: NetheranE
Corp: Collapsed Out
Alliance: Overload Everything
Faction: Unknown
Destroyed: Hurricane
System: Ostingele
Security: 0.2
Damage Taken: 16192

Destroyed items:

Medium Auxiliary Nano Pump I
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
Navy Cap Booster 800, Qty: 12 (Cargo)
Medium Projectile Metastasis Adjuster I
220mm Vulcan AutoCannon II
Hobgoblin II (Drone Bay)
Faint Epsilon Warp Scrambler I
Synth Exile Booster (Cargo)
Medium Electrochemical Capacitor Booster I
Barrage M, Qty: 1000 (Cargo)
Fleeting Propulsion Inhibitor I
220mm Vulcan AutoCannon II
Republic Fleet Fusion M, Qty: 1040 (Cargo)
Republic Fleet Fusion M, Qty: 157
Republic Fleet Fusion M, Qty: 157
Nanite Repair Paste, Qty: 200 (Cargo)
Medium Auxiliary Nano Pump I
Medium Armor Repairer II
220mm Vulcan AutoCannon II
220mm Vulcan AutoCannon II
Gyrostabilizer II
Hail M, Qty: 1000 (Cargo)
Nanite Repair Paste, Qty: 32

Dropped items:

Medium Ancillary Armor Repairer
Navy Cap Booster 800 (Cargo)
Navy Cap Booster 800
Republic Fleet Fusion M, Qty: 157
Medium Unstable Power Fluctuator I
220mm Vulcan AutoCannon II
Reactive Armor Hardener
Republic Fleet Phased Plasma M, Qty: 2000 (Cargo)
Synth Drop Booster (Cargo)
Republic Fleet Fusion M, Qty: 157
Experimental 10MN Microwarpdrive I
Republic Fleet Fusion M, Qty: 157
Republic Fleet Fusion M, Qty: 157
Damage Control II
Republic Fleet EMP M, Qty: 1960 (Cargo)
220mm Vulcan AutoCannon II

And then I was stunned to discover that there are still people in EVE who haven’t learned that spilling butthurt tears is just a way to compound and deepen their loss:

[ 06:37:17 ] NetheranE > gooood
[ 06:37:27 ] NetheranE > #deathofsolopvp
[ 06:37:36 ] ColdHeart Hunter > Lolz bombers
[ 06:37:41 ] darkone040 > gf
[ 06:37:45 ] RiotRick > gf
[ 06:37:46 ] Khro Nology > gf
[ 06:37:49 ] Lexical Pedantry > gf
[ 06:37:49 ] Vanya Virpio > gf
[ 06:37:49 ] Leoric el Rey > gf
[ 06:37:50 ] NetheranE > “good faggotry”
[ 06:37:51 ] Adrian Trazani > gf
[ 06:37:51 ] Rafe Hollister > gf
[ 06:37:57 ] Marlenus > gf
[ 06:37:59 ] Leoric el Rey > thats rude
[ 06:38:02 ] Leoric el Rey > retorted
[ 06:38:09 ] NetheranE > retorted?
[ 06:38:11 ] NetheranE > alrighty then
[ 06:38:14 ] Marlenus > learn to spell
[ 06:38:16 ] NetheranE > keep being a douche bro
[ 06:38:26 ] Leoric el Rey > rude
[ 06:38:41 ] NetheranE > so you’re thin skinned and a bitch
[ 06:38:45 ] NetheranE > what else is new

I’m told that he went on in that butthurt way for quite some time after most of us had left local. I don’t have the logs, but it’s no loss, as NetheranE’s invective was distinctly weary and second-rate.

A final word about NPSI fleet action: if you haven’t tried it, it’s rather a lot of fun. If you are unclear what it’s all about, watch the video I linked above. I am quite enjoying Spectre Fleet (join the channel and mailing list of the same name in game for more info) but they are not the only NPSI operation out there. I’m finding that being in several NPSI channels is like being in a good alliance if you enjoy PvP roams and small-to-medium subcap fleet operations. At any given time when you log in, you can see what’s planned for the next couple of days, and pick from a buffet of options, fitting a good ship for whatever fleet sounds good and showing up at the appointed time in the appointed place for some no-nonsense fun. And yet it’s better than any alliance I’ve ever heard of, because it’s entirely free of pressure to participate and there’s no bullshit politics, at least not at the level visible to the grunts who X up every day.

Alternative post title: Fuck Me Asshat

Sometimes jet-can miners lose ore. As readers of this blog know, that can be painful, especially if they have poor impulse control or an anger management problem.

One very old-fashioned and somewhat inefficient solution to this problem is to anchor giant secure containers in the belts, and mine into those. (It’s inefficient because they are expensive, small in volume, and difficult to anchor in numbers due to minimum spacing requirements.)

The steps involved in doing this correctly are:

1) Anchor the can or cans.

2) Set a password on the can or cans.

3) Mine into the can or cans.

Fail any of these steps, and you may lose stuff. For example, fail at step 1 and I’ll scoop your cans.

Failing step two is rare, but it does happen. Interestingly, taking ore from an anchored can with no password does not appear to trigger a criminal flag. It can, however, trigger smacky emails from members of Iron Society [IRONS]:

…
From: Murthrox
Sent: 2011.11.25 18:31
To: Marlenus,

Fuck you asshat

While Murthrox was mailing me in anger, I was busy hauling ore. The ore I couldn’t fit in my Crane stayed there in an Ironfleet can.

I had some important stuff to do (like catching up on my Jester) so I watched the Ironfleet can for awhile in my stealth bomber. Murthrox docked his Retriever and came back in a Vagabond, then went from can to can setting passwords. (I checked, later. Good boy, you can learn from experience!)

The the Vagabond went away again. I was still catching up on blogs, so I watched for quite a long while. Finally, Murthrox came back in the Retriever. Sadly, he went to another part of his canstellation and resumed mining without showing any interest in the Ironfleet can. So, then and only then, I went back to get the rest of the ore.

So I landed on zero in a belt next to a Badger II. He had a cargo can about 20km away. We raced.

He lost.

He commenced to whine in local. Amaya is a Hulk pilot who saw the race:

[18:31:52] Timeless eQuinox > fucking
[18:31:53] Timeless eQuinox > jew
[18:31:56] Timeless eQuinox > just took all my
[18:31:57] Timeless eQuinox > ore
[18:32:02] Marlenus > Oh, how lovely, a racist
[18:32:08] Timeless eQuinox > eat a dick
[18:32:10] Timeless eQuinox > bitch
[18:32:13] joydivisionn > racist…
[18:32:47] Marlenus > a racist misogynist no less
[18:32:49] joydivisionn > ban hammer…
[18:33:51] Amaya Mizumaki > he isn’t racist he is mocking you for religous beleifs not genetics
[18:34:09] joydivisionn > lol
[18:34:12] Amaya Mizumaki > and besides last i checked we were all humans so we are all one race
[18:34:29] joydivisionn > fucking jew is racist
[18:34:35] joydivisionn > he will be reported
[18:34:38] Timeless eQuinox > cool
[18:34:43] Timeless eQuinox > hes a fucking nigger also
[18:34:50] Marlenus > Thanks Joy, saves me the trouble
[18:34:54] Amaya Mizumaki > /emote shakes her head
[18:35:08] Amaya Mizumaki > your all idiots
[18:35:30] joydivisionn > hahaha
[18:36:07] joydivisionn > timeless is the idiot here
[18:36:34] Amaya Mizumaki > sorry ill stick with “your all”
[18:36:37] Timeless eQuinox > i rather be an idiot then a nigger/jew
[18:36:47] joydivisionn > see….
[18:36:48] Amaya Mizumaki > timeless stop
[18:36:54] Timeless eQuinox > like the Marlenus faggot
[18:37:02] joydivisionn > he proves his own idiotcy
[18:37:05] Marlenus > Racist and a homophobe, lol
[18:37:05] Amaya Mizumaki > /emote sighs
[18:37:20] Timeless eQuinox > whatever fuck this

And just like that, he logged.

So, has nobody sent the numpties in empire a memo about can flippers? Is this honored art forgotten? Because man, today it’s been like shooting fish in a rain barrel.

For starters, I found Ddykarn. He made the classic mistake. He was jet-can mining in a Retriever with one T1 combat drone out. I picked up his small quantum of ore, and aligned for home. To him it must have looked like the helpless hauler was running away. His drone nibbled me. I blew him up.

2010.06.24 21:23:00

Victim: ddykarn
Corp: Caldari Provisions
Alliance: Unknown
Faction: Unknown
Destroyed: Retriever
System: [redacted]
Security: 0.7
Damage Taken: 1700

Involved parties:

Name: Marlenus (laid the final blow)
Security: 1.3
Corp: Ironfleet Towing And Salvage
Alliance: NONE
Faction: NONE
Ship: Crane
Weapon: Thunderbolt Fury Heavy Missile
Damage Done: 1700

Destroyed items:

Strip Miner I
Expanded Cargohold II, Qty: 2
Survey Scanner II

Dropped items:

Strip Miner I
Small Nosferatu I (Cargo)

Less than nine minutes later, I find another Retriever doing the same thing, only this one has mining drones out. His jet-can is almost full, so I flipped it, taking what I could carry. Again, align for home. Again, he locked me up, and launches one combat drone. Then, he simultaneously attacks me and flips the can back. This guy wanted a fight.

He got it. Note the small armor repper, which he was using heavily, for all the good it did him:

2010.06.24 21:32:00

Victim: Wolf Loner4
Corp: State Protectorate
Alliance: Unknown
Faction: Caldari State
Destroyed: Retriever
System: [redacted]
Security: 0.7
Damage Taken: 2506

Involved parties:

Name: Marlenus (laid the final blow)
Security: 1.3
Corp: Ironfleet Towing And Salvage
Alliance: NONE
Faction: NONE
Ship: Crane
Weapon: Thunderbolt Fury Heavy Missile
Damage Done: 2506

Destroyed items:

Warrior I (Drone Bay)
Small Armor Repairer I
Mining Drone I (Drone Bay)
Concentrated Veldspar, Qty: 2 (Cargo)
Viscous Pyroxeres, Qty: 6666 (Cargo)
Strip Miner I

Dropped items:

Mining Drone I, Qty: 3 (Drone Bay)
Strip Miner I

This guy was not a good sport. He wanted a fight, but not letting him win apparently makes me a bad person. I got an EveMail:

Subject: asshole
From: Wolf Loner4
Sent: 2010.06.24 21:41
To: Marlenus,

you mother fucker i hope you go to fuckin hell you stupid ass im going to hunt your sorry ass down

Getting mail like that always makes me feel better about blowing up the young and inexperienced.

So, after blowing him up, I looted his strip miner, flipped the ore back into my can (what I couldn’t carry), and docked up. Did some other errands, noticed his timer had run out, was thinking about going back to pick up the ore. When suddenly, his icon went all ragey-skull in local. My, my, did he just flip the ore back a second time? Some people need more than one exposure to life’s important lessons.

This time, I undocked in a bomber. Warped to 20. My can is gone, but there’s a flashy red Wreathe, just sitting there.

Uncloak, lock, paint, torps away!

And lo, there was an earthshattering kaboom, just as the scripture promised:

2010.06.24 21:53:00

Victim: Wolf Loner4
Corp: State Protectorate
Alliance: Unknown
Faction: Caldari State
Destroyed: Wreathe
System: [redacted]
Security: 0.7
Damage Taken: 1286

Involved parties:

Name: Marlenus (laid the final blow)
Security: 1.3
Corp: Ironfleet Towing And Salvage
Alliance: NONE
Faction: NONE
Ship: Manticore
Weapon: Caldari Navy Juggernaut Torpedo
Damage Done: 1286

Destroyed items:

Basic Expanded Cargohold, Qty: 2
Scordite, Qty: 5000 (Cargo)
10MN Afterburner I

Dropped items:

Scordite, Qty: 9193 (Cargo)

It’s possible that three torps was overkill. But, he cursed at me!

Most of the people in TEARS are also in Suddenly Ninjas. And they are a good buncha boys. Even this guy I’m about to distance myself from, usually.

But.

TEARS is all about salvaging in other people’s missions. We are — for better or worse — strongly affected by the new probing system.

Me, I’m a huge enthusiast of the new system. It’s harder, but better. I have more control. I can find things that previously were not worth the trouble. And it’s nineteen times less boring and more fun. (Yes, nineteen. I measured.)

Unfortunately, some people don’t like change. And, when you force change upon them, they become disgruntled. And they whine.

But still. TEARS. Tears Extraction And Relocation Service. We are supposed to thrive upon the tears of our victims, not contribute tears to the pool. Crying is beneath us.

Which is why this post by Dotard of Suddenly Ninjas makes me (and it’s a new feeling I don’t like very much) feel ashamed to be in the same alliance:

Title: new probing system
OP:

Sucks monkeyballs. Whoever came up with this idea needs to be shot, quartered, deficated upon and shot again.

(ingame)

That is all.

Yuck. Eww. Icky. Lame.

Unworthy of a Ninja. Unworthy of a TEARS member.

Doesn’t help that he can’t spell defecated. (Son, don’t write dirty words on walls, if you can’t spell.)

But worse — much worse — is that cowardly forum meme of wishing real-world harm on someone and then (in the lamest of lame attempts to pretend otherwise to avoid a warning or ban for breaking forum rules) adding the “ingame” qualifier.

Unworthy. Dotard, you can do better. You should do better.

I’ve been spending some time on the Singularity test server, checking out the new probing system coming with the March 10 Apocrypha expansion. It’s still horribly buggy, but looks promising; more player skill to use, less randomness, less endless waiting. It looks like it will be easier to find specific ships (especially in deadspaces) than at present, to the dismay of low sec mission runners; but on the converse, the “salvager buffet” in busy mission running systems is going away. Instead of getting many warpable hits in single scan, all nicely identified by ship type, possible mission runners will need to be checked out one-by-one, with probe repositioning between efforts. All in all, I’m quite happy about the proposed changes, but mission salvage will be very different in a few weeks.

So, I decided to have one more taste of it, and dropped some probes. Found, fairly quickly, a bunch of small and medium Blood wrecks at an acceleration gate. The directional scanner indicated large wrecks through the gate, so through the gate I went.

It was a small wreck field, with only about five large wrecks and perhaps twenty mediums and smalls; so I decided to cherry pick the larges in my covert ops ship, rather than going back for a dedicated salvager. Good thing I did, too; because about the time I finished salvaging the large wrecks, three mission runner types showed up and began hoovering their wrecks at a great rate of speed. I had ten armor plates and thirty burned logic circuits, so I was happy; I salvaged another half-dozen mediums while they worked, and we were done.

Note I said I was happy. Them? Not so much.

Shortly after they arrived, I got a convo invite. Jarmada, apparently as much a stranger to punctuation as he is to courtesy and spelling, got right to the point:

Jarmada > fuck off
Jarmada > is this you mission
Marlenus > Would you like a petition for bad language?
Jarmada > do iyt
Jarmada > this is not your missiopn
Marlenus > Never said it was
Jarmada > so get out
Marlenus > Why?

Apparently he was stymied by the rhetorical force of my inquiry, because he ended the conversation.

Perhaps unhappy with the outcome, he sent me a somewhat incoherent EVEmail:

to piss poor to do your own missions : so u steal from other pple : your a scum bag of the lowest form

At this point, I looked up his info. He’s the CEO and founder of a two-member corp confusingly called The Australian Alliance. Don’t they speak English in Australia? Or have some form of literacy education in primary school?

I replied with a cheerful version of the Ironfleet form letter:

Just a salvager, actually; salvaging wrecks is what I do for a living. It’s not theft — salvage is not owned.

Have a look at the Ironfleet Towing And Salvage blog (ironfleet.com) if you’re curious about the profession. While you are there, check out the “GMs On Salvage” article, to learn why it’s not theft as you seem to think.

Cheerio —

Marlenus, CEO
Ironfleet Towing and Salvage

This earned me a more coherent, if still unusually punctuated as well as unreceptive, response, urging me to play the game his way instead of mine:

salvage is theft : this is my mission : i did the kills : i dont use probes to find other pples salvage : go to a belt and salvage the wrecks there if ya want the salvage that bad

Pish, tush, my good man! If I did that, I wouldn’t have gotten all these lovely Armor Plates!

Somewhere in all this, he decided to do some Ironfleet advertising in local, which is always appreciated:

Jarmada > watch your missions guys : thers a prick in here mission jumping and salvaging your loot : name is “Marlenus” :
Ianmizu > just salvaging, or looting too?
Jarmada > just salvaging : so u cant shoot the asswipe
Ianmizu > ah :(
Jarmada > i not going to help the prick : not doin missions in this system
Jarmada > cya’s
Ianmizu > o/
Marlenus > Just another one of the many spaceways cleaning services Ironfleet Towing And Salvage is happy to provide!

A long time ago, in the time of The Great INDY War, I had a random war dec from a guy named Duckeye who never showed up. It was right after the INDY alliance called off AC-ME’s dog Chebri, and there were anonymous commenters in this post who suggested a Duckeye / Chebri connection, but it was never confirmed.

I did later confirm that Duckeye is a shared account, because I station camped him for awhile during factional warfare (he was flying for the Gallente scum) and we had a cordial chat during which he utterly failed to remember ever having declared war on Ironfleet, blaming his “little brother” who “played the account for a couple of weeks”. Yeah, that’s pretty obvious nonsense, but it’s the sort of nonsense you’ll get from account sharers who don’t want to be too open about it.

Anyway, about ten days ago the Duckeye / Chebri connection was confirmed in a fairly humorous way. Duckeye apparently got drunk and started inviting everybody in his address book into the “Duckeye’s Bathtub” chat channel; and *surprise* Chebri was there and acting like a resident of the channel. There was mass confusion as a great many people wanted to know “why am I here” so I was in the channel for almost twenty minutes, until Duckeye finally remembered who I was and kick/banned me. Here are a few of the funnier bits, it’s a very long chat file so these are highly condensed highlights. The first snip is for flavor and show the Duckeye/Chebri connection — they sound like friends or closer, but probably not the same person I’d say:

—————————————————————
Channel ID: 2137386827
Channel Name: Duckeye’s Bathtub
Listener: Marlenus
Session started: 2009.01.05 05:40:05
—————————————————————

EVE System > Channel MOTD: Welcome to my bathtub, GET DIRTY!!

{snip}

[ 05:40:58 ] Chebri > /emote dances around in the water singing ‘splish splash I was takin a bath’
[ 05:41:12 ] Duckeye > rubber ducky, your the one, you make bathtime lots of fun
[ 05:41:13 ] The Kovenant > /emote plays with bubbles
[ 05:41:14 ] AdamVan Dutchman > weeee
[ 05:41:23 ] Auk Monnan > mmm, tribe will eat good this weak
[ 05:41:27 ] mayito > u a real gal chebri?
[ 05:41:32 ] Motre > What the hell are you doing to that rubber duckie…
[ 05:41:32 ] Duckeye > don’t touch her
[ 05:41:33 ] Chebri > ya
[ 05:41:34 ] mayito > i got a bone if u r
[ 05:41:34 ] AdamVan Dutchman > hey leave that duck alone
[ 05:41:37 ] mayito > boner*
[ 05:41:39 ] Chebri > LOL
[ 05:41:39 ] Motre > OH GOD! THAT DOES NOT GO THERE!
[ 05:41:41 ] mayito > oh shit
[ 05:41:42 ] AdamVan Dutchman > that’s gross
[ 05:41:44 ] Duckeye > /emote slices off mayito’s hands
[ 05:41:48 ] BAD CHICK > eh how did i get here
[ 05:41:48 ] mayito > im confused now
[ 05:41:53 ] Duckeye > SHE’S MINE
[ 05:41:56 ] Duckeye > hit on bad chick
[ 05:42:00 ] mayito > its bad chick!!!!!!!!!!
[ 05:42:11 ] mayito > bad chick
[ 05:42:13 ] Auk Monnan > and you may ask yourself…
[ 05:42:14 ] Duckeye > good boy
[ 05:42:16 ] mayito > im bad boy
[ 05:42:19 ] Chebri > 0o0o0o
[ 05:42:23 ] mayito > wana make bad kids?
[ 05:42:24 ] Chebri > /emote hugs Duckey
[ 05:42:26 ] BAD CHICK > i am just missunderstood
[ 05:42:29 ] Duckeye > hehe
[ 05:42:37 ] BAD CHICK > i am lesbian .
[ 05:42:40 ] hermerdoo > what up
[ 05:42:41 ] mayito > so
[ 05:42:44 ] GROUPA > can i help you guys
[ 05:42:45 ] Chebri > *\o/*
[ 05:42:45 ] AdamVan Dutchman > yay
[ 05:42:47 ] mayito > i love lesbians
[ 05:42:54 ] Entarii > what the hell is going on here

{snip}

[ 05:45:26 ] Chebri > \\o
[ 05:45:30 ] Chebri > o//
[ 05:45:35 ] mayito > uh oh
[ 05:45:39 ] mayito > shes dancing
[ 05:45:43 ] Motre > WOOOO! TAKE OT OFF
[ 05:45:45 ] Chebri > weeee
[ 05:45:50 ] mayito > take it off..take it offf!!
[ 05:45:53 ] Chebri > there’s nothing on! it’s a bathtub
[ 05:45:58 ] AdamVan Dutchman > nakedness woo
[ 05:45:59 ] Chebri > ( * Y * )
[ 05:46:11 ] mayito > /emote faints in the water
[ 05:46:13 ] AdamVan Dutchman > your wearing nothing but a bath tub
[ 05:46:18 ] mayito > XP
[ 05:46:20 ] Chebri > exactly…and bubbles

{snip}

[ 05:47:38 ] Frank Doth > can we know whats goign on?
[ 05:47:45 ] Duckeye > CAN you? sure thing
[ 05:47:59 ] Father Yarrr > why did we get invited here
[ 05:48:14 ] Father Yarrr > im busy killin stuff
[ 05:48:14 ] jorunbrigita > umm how do you know it’s a toe?
[ 05:48:20 ] BobSmith BobSmith > ?
[ 05:48:26 ] BobSmith BobSmith > hello
[ 05:48:32 ] BobSmith BobSmith > whats up?
[ 05:48:35 ] Chebri > LOL
[ 05:48:39 ] Khysanth > wow i dont know any of you
[ 05:48:44 ] Khysanth > why was i invited here?
[ 05:48:46 ] Duckeye > I know YOU
[ 05:48:49 ] Duckeye > I’ve been watching you…
[ 05:48:52 ] Khysanth > i’ll bet you do
[ 05:48:54 ] Duckeye > I like your underwear…
[ 05:49:06 ] Duckeye > and your tatoo of eddie murphy on your left shin
[ 05:49:06 ] Marlenus > It looks like Duckey got drunk and invited everybody in his address book into a chatroom

{snip}

[ 05:49:24 ] Chebri > ack!
[ 05:49:28 ] Chebri > Ore thief!!!
[ 05:49:29 ] Duckeye > I WANT YOU, CUZ I’M MR. VAIN
[ 05:49:33 ] Animenick > any clue what this chat is for?
[ 05:49:37 ] Duckeye > for fun
[ 05:49:40 ] Marlenus > LOL at Chebri, I wuz invited
[ 05:49:45 ] ar2ro > yo. what is the channel?
[ 05:49:46 ] AdamVan Dutchman > we are having a buble bath and blow
[ 05:49:56 ] Chebri > ya I know..we’re doing random invites
[ 05:50:05 ] Chebri > pitty the poor soul in local that spams something for sale =D
[ 05:50:07 ] Duckeye > nothin but love!
[ 05:50:09 ] BobSmith BobSmith > ok
[ 05:50:12 ] Chebri > \o/
[ 05:50:15 ] BobSmith BobSmith > sounds fun
[ 05:50:19 ] Chebri > /emote wants more bubbles

{snip}

[ 05:51:41 ] Bjorn Stahle > was that Marlenus?!?
[ 05:51:49 ] ar2ro > Random invitation is sux)
[ 05:51:50 ] Chebri > ya
[ 05:51:53 ] Chebri > >.< [ 05:51:57 ] Duckeye > this will be our theme song
[ 05:51:58 ] Duckeye > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KX-de_SH3KQ
[ 05:52:01 ] Bjorn Stahle > That Bastard referred to me as that Battle cruiser guy!
[ 05:52:05 ] Marlenus > Bjjorn that was, but I don’t know you
[ 05:52:10 ] Marlenus > LOL
[ 05:52:23 ] Chebri > \\o
[ 05:53:09 ] Bjorn Stahle > Heya Marlenus :)

{snip}

[ 05:55:42 ] Marlenus > Bjorn Stahle which battlecruiser guy are you? ;-)
[ 05:55:43 ] Hildale > random invites?
[ 05:55:50 ] Duckeye > na, tactical invites
[ 05:56:00 ] Jonny Hawks > Dis da Bath Tub rev’o’LUTION MON!
[ 05:56:00 ] Bjorn Stahle > ummm it was like a year ago lol
[ 05:56:01 ] Duckeye > if your name begins with a letter, then I invite you
[ 05:56:15 ] Marlenus > So much was
[ 05:56:38 ] Bjorn Stahle > which reminds me I upgraded my computer 6 months ago and lost your web page url, Marlenus
[ 05:56:42 ] Gzafer > WHO DID THIS
[ 05:56:52 ] Duckeye > someones hacking your computer Gzafer!
[ 05:56:57 ] Gzafer > WHAT
[ 05:56:57 ] Duckeye > quick, press Ctrl+Q!
[ 05:56:59 ] Bjorn Stahle > But it was INDY war dec
[ 05:57:03 ] Marlenus > Ironfleet.com, Bjorn — both of the hosts of this channel have mentions
[ 05:57:15 ] Marlenus > Ahy, the INDY war, I remember it fondly
[ 05:57:21 ] Duckeye > ah shit
[ 05:57:58 ] Bjorn Stahle > damn you for making an easy url, Marlenus!
[ 05:58:03 ] Marlenus > ;-)
[ 05:58:04 ] Bjorn Stahle > /emote shakes fist
[ 05:58:04 ] Jonny Hawks > >>>>This be the “Hey EVE can be FUN Channel”<<<< [ 05:58:10 ] AdamVan Dutchman > this is definately not anything to do with fun
[ 05:58:17 ] Duckeye > I’m havin fun
[ 05:58:18 ] Gzafer > I DONT UNDERSTAND
[ 05:58:25 ] Marlenus > Bjorn you could have knocked me over with a feather when I saw that URL still available
[ 05:58:32 ] dolphin Jim > does anyone?
[ 05:58:35 ] Bjorn Stahle > lol
[ 05:59:01 ] Marlenus > dolphin Jim, some folks got drunk and started inviting everybody in their address book, looks like
[ 05:59:14 ] dolphin Jim > hehe

And right there I got kicked and banned. I think that last “ah shit” from Duckeye is probably when he finally realized who he’d invited. Aw, Duckeye, I didn’t know you still cared!

P.S. Remember AC-ME, Chebri’s former corp in INDY? It still exists and it’s still an alliance member, but there’s only one person left in the corporation.

Having espied a Hulk mining into a jet can, I came rumbling out of warp only to find the Hulk newly accompanied by an Orca — the first I’ve spied so far.

OK, so the jetcan is gonna be empty. But hey, what’s my downside? I’d pay good money to put a missile into a flashy red Orca, even though it would be completely futile.

1 unit of Veldspar, as expected.

I took it, just on general principles and to see whether any entertainment might ensue.

Nope, nothing. I went on my merry way.

Then, in local, the Hulk pilot, one Chani Ewans: “Tough luck, shithead.”

I’ve long believed that he who curses first, loses. Did I really “win” by salvaging one unit of Veldspar?

I’ve always considered myself a bit of a “carebear with teeth”, so the “carebear tears” allusion in the title of my new alliance is a slightly uncomfortable fit. But I have long enjoyed collecting good smacktalk from people who have strange ideas about the way peace and harmony ought to rule in EVE — even though it manifestly doesn’t.

So, tonight I was on a routine sweep of my belts when I encountered something I haven’t seen in a long time — a new character mining in a Navitas mining frigate. Normally I’d leave such minnows alone, but this one (Deter Javan) had an annoying corp name (Shoal of the Intrepid Righteousness) and — oddly for a two-week-old character — an alliance tag for an outfit called Integrity Respect Selflessness. Worse yet, he had named his ore jet can something like “Property of the Shoal Of The Intrepid”.

My Suddenly Ninja allies would die of shame if I left this cub unmolested. Besides, he’s well connected, he might have valuable stuff on board and he might decide to “teach the helpless hauler a lesson”. (He is, after all, flying one combat drone.)

So, in I swept in my slightly crunchy blockade runner transport. Click-foom, his can is gone and I’m about 20k units of Scordite the wealthier. All in a day’s work.

What’s this? He wants to talk?

Sure enough, the first miner smacktalk I’ve enjoyed in months:

Deter Javan > was that honestly necessary
Marlenus > Necessary?
Deter Javan > yes
Deter Javan > was it
Marlenus > I dunno, it’s what I do. Is the game necessary?
Deter Javan > no, but you know I pay for it and I’d like to not have my stuff stolen if you don’t mind
Marlenus > Stolen? I’m just salvaging jettisoned ore. I pay too you know.
Deter Javan > it was mine and you know it
Marlenus > It’s mine now, thank you.
Deter Javan > I tagged it and everything
Deter Javan > you’re a fucking dick dude
Marlenus > And I put it in my cargo hold.
Marlenus > No, I’m a *salvager*
Marlenus > And I pick up stuff that others throw overboard
Marlenus > It’s what I do
Marlenus > There are a lot of us, we have an alliance and everything

Unfortunately I lost connection at that point, I’m sure there would have been more.

If there were a “Smacktalk Bingo” drinking game, this player would have scored at least three chugs.

First: “I pay for this game” as a reason why the player should be immune from the activities of other players. Who among us does not pay?

Second: “I tagged it and everything” — the precious idea that putting his name on the can should have caused other players to leave it alone. Is he aware what kind of game EVE is?

Third: Rank profanity. Enough said about that. He who swears first, loses.

No guilt about taking candy from babies this time — because babies don’t have potty mouths.

Apologies dear readers if this grows tedious for you. I use this blog sometimes as an aid to memory, and so I tend to include stuff that happens all in a rush even when it doesn’t make a lot of dramatic sense to blog about it. If you’re just now joining us, there’s a rush of incoming love notes from Vampire Zim. If you prefer sequential chronology to this reverse-bloggy stuff, start with Love Letters From VampireZim, then read But Wait, There’s More! and then come back to here.

For those just joining us, in a previous post I called VampireZIM a liar for claiming he was “making every effort to right this issue.” Last night just as I was logging off, he responded:

Obviously I meant that I was making every effort to right this issue without losing face. If I back down after the wrong you have done me, then I look bad. So that being known, unless we find another way to right this, and I think I have taken a big step in calling for this cease fire, that you have declined, then I dont see this ever ending.

Losing face? You’d think the guy in his ninth fruitless war would have started to notice he’s not exactly saving face by declaring and maintaining them. But, maybe that’s just me.

Just before I logged out for the night, I wrote back:

Do you honestly think anybody but you thinks that some POS modules you lost two years ago are a matter of honor? It’s like the first caracal I ever lost to a pirate, I’m the only one who cares. It’s EVE, sometimes you lose shit.

I suppose that wasn’t nice, but it’s how I see things. Readers, tell me — does anybody here have a low opinion of VampireZIM that stems from his failure to avenge some laboratory modules lost in 2006, which low opinion will be revised upwards if he successfully blows up some Ironfleet ships and pods?

Anybody? Bueller? Bueller?

Anyway, this morning I woke up to more love letters. I tell you, things don’t look good for the forces of detante. Where’s Jimmy Carter when we need him?

Responding to the last two paragraphs of my last blog post, VampireZim writes:

First, of all I dont need permission from an FC to pursue you into low sec, if that was my intention, it would have already happend, like the first two times i asked for fleet, I knew you were entering tama, why didnt i set up my camp on the other side waiting for your arrival.

Second, I offered this cease fire for the benefit of the fleet, I very much want to kill you, but I am not going to cause problems in a fleet where I am expected to watch my “brothers” backs.

Zim’s trouble here is that he’s got a credibility gap. Why didn’t he set up camp on the Nourv gate in Tama? Because he lacks the forces required. That gate is usually too hot for two pilots (which is what he had in Nourv yesterday) to sit on. It would be a waste of his Ishtar and Max Threat’s Onyx, and he knows it.

The pious “for the benefit of the fleet” would cut more onions if he’d ever previously volunteered for this or any other of the fleets leaving Nourv at that time of day. (There are time slots when I’m rarely online, I can’t speak for what fleets he joins at those times.) Bluntly put, I don’t believe that he is “not going to cause problems in a fleet” that he joined for the express purpose of finding and killing me. It’s simply not credible.

His next EVEmail, responding to the one above that I sent just before logging off last night, the one in which I asked if he seriously thought anybody else in the game cared about his two-years-gone POS modules:

No, that is the difference, you lost a ship because you were stupid and entered low sec, my POS was my home, it was supposed to be safe in high sec, but you exploited a bug that allowed you to attack it without concord agression. Thats why it was telling you that you were committing an offence against concord, but they didnt show up, you knew you were doing something wrong and you did it anyway.

In addition, it doesnt matter what others think, I think its a matter of honor and thats all I need.

I am fascinated and astonished that VampireZIM thinks I “exploited a bug” when I attacked his off-line POS (apparently home maintenance is not a vampiric strength). At the time, in 2006, there was no Concord response to such attacks. I searched the forums to find out whether Concord ought to be responding, and found nothing but a few conflicting opinions; nobody seemed to know. I didn’t know squat about “the rules” for high sec POS warfare, so I figured hey, shoot first and ask questions later, that’s what everybody else in this game seems to do.

Moving on: Does anybody else see a conflict between the statement “If I back down after the wrong you have done me, I look bad” and the statement “it doesnt matter what others think, I think its a matter of honor and thats all I need”? If it doesn’t matter what others think, why care about looking bad? How can someone fret about “losing face” who doesn’t care “what others think”? Somebody needs to quietly re-examine their inner motives.

And then — the fun never stops! — two more emails in the queue:

I have always warned you, out of sight out of mind, since you joined militia, you have been in sight alot, that is why you are perma dec’d. It was easy to forget you and move on, but now you are always where I am, that is the problem.

I will not cancel this war until we are back to that point, you on one side of Caldari Space, me on the other side.

You make alot of assumptions, I join fleets all the time, you dont seem to notice, I play eve 16 hours a day and I have 3 accounts, just because you dont notice the times I am in fleet, doesnt mean i never do. When I am in fleet, i have a job to do, i dont give a fuck about you, im not going to sacrifice my position in fleet and make myself look bad just to kill your “fully insured T1 replaceable ships”.

But while you are flying around stealing peoples shit, blowing up thier POS modules or whatever the hell you CLAIM to be doing with your time, I will fuckin hunt you till i pass out.

Thirty six minutes later:

In addition and I really think you would be doing the few people that read your blog justice by adressing this. You keep coming back to this SMOKING GUN, that I promised not to attack you if you stopped blowing up my shit, and then afterwards war dec’d you.

Lets put it like this, an evil man breaks into your home, while you, your wife and 5 children sleep, you wake and confront him, he stars shooting one child at a time. You in an act of desperation, tell him you will open the safe and give him all your money if he just leaves, he agrees, then you pull a gun out of the safe and shoot him. In your twisted little mind, are you a dis-honest person or justified in taking revenge on your attacker, someone who has done you harm?

You were blowing up my fucking shit, I negotiated with you to get you to stop blowing up my shit, you are NOT the rightious party in this situation, so get the fuck over yourself already!

The first email speaks, I think, for itself. The second one, since he asked me to address it here, I shall address.

VampireZIM entirely misconstrues and misunderstands the significance of his broken promise to me the night he first encountered Ironfleet. Although I am enormously entertained by the comparison of Ironfleet’s mighty Caracal fleet to an evil child-murdering home invader, I have no problem with the essential mechanics of the analogy. This is called situational ethics, and it’s highly pragmatic — the idea for people like VampireZIM is that you make the promises you need to make in order to get what you want, and then you break them as soon as you’ve gotten what you want.

Situational ethics are pragmatic, but they are not “honor” in any normal sense. Someone with situational ethics cannot be trusted, because they will break a promise whenever it is convenient. And that is why I “keep coming back” to my first encounter with VampireZIM. He speaks of honor, but he doesn’t practice it. And then he wonders why he cannot negotiate with Ironfleet. I think he’s genuinely confused about that part. Because he’s full of his own sense of self-justification, he doesn’t see that he’s forever destroyed his capacity to be believed.

Now, as it happens, I think “honor” tends to be pretty silly in an internet spaceship game. These modern-day would-be samurai who smack-talk anybody who won’t “come out and fight” are figures of derision for me; I see EVE as a very modern war of all against all. Picking your fights and arranging for uneven fights, avoiding the ones you aren’t sure to win, strikes me as the very essence of enlightened self-interest, and EVE is a game that rewards self-interest.

What is not silly, despite all pointless notions of honor, is a reputation for keeping your word and doing what you’ll say you’ll do. Even pirates, the good ones, try to develop a reputation for honoring their ransoms. In a game where many fun and interesting activities require trust, a reputation for situational ethics — for giving your word lightly and breaking it just as lightly — is a bad thing to have. And that’s the reputation VampireZIM has earned with Ironfleet. It makes negotiations between VampireZIM and Ironfleet virtually impossible — a fact he does not seem to grasp or comprehend.

I have never claimed to be the “righteous party” in Ironfleet’s dispute with VampireZIM. On the contrary, I’ve freely admitted that we did him an injury in the hope of financial gain. That’s what Ironfleet does, unless we’ve given our word not to. (I defy anybody to name an instance where Ironfleet has given a promise and not kept it, though. The closest case I can think of was when I accidentally podded Aktala at a time when she thought, wrongly but with good reason for thinking, that we had a no-podding agreement; and I resolved that by paying her the price she named for her implants.)

Nope, the only reason I keep mentioning VampireZIM’s infamous lie (and his repeated statements that he doesn’t feel bound by his promises to Ironfleet) is because he keeps going on about his honor. What he needs, and does not have, and now cannot get because of his repeated denunciations of the very idea, is a reputation for keeping his word.