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I watched the
stars dash past my Moa with a new perspective. This could be
the last time I'll ever see this Moa, I thought. I knew that
Lando probably had friends with him, since pirates very rarely
operate alone for long in 0.2 space. I also knew that Trazir's
combat prowess was meager at best. The Great Magnet would have
to be on our side if we were gonna win this one, and so far, I
hadn't been feeling much pull today.
My engines let out their dull, familiar whimper as they
disengaged from hyperdrive mode. Four red crosses appeared
about 20 km away, and my ship started beeping like a NORAD
siren on Defcon 1. And there among them was Lando, cowering in
the middle of their formation like a soldier hiding behind a
field of mines.
"Ok man, cycle your target to Lando, fire your missiles, and
MWD to 15 kilos." As I said this, my own jet-powered
implements of destruction set off from my ship and whisked
through the vacuum of space, gyrating to their dance of death
as they made their way towards Lando. I moved the camera to
Trazir's ship, and aside from his pitifully slow forward
movement, nothing seemed to be happening.
"What the fuck? FIRE YOUR MISSILES."
Silence.
"FIRE YOUR MISSILES MAN, WHY AREN'T YOU FIRING YOUR MISSILES?"
"I uh... I forgot to load the ammo into the missile bays. It's
loading now."
By now, all four pirates had noticed our presence and my
presents to Lando had detonated on his hull and ripped apart
his shields. I pressed the MWD hotkey, but once again, I
received the hellish message.
"Your ship does not have a sufficient amount of energy to use
that."
"GOD DAMN IT." I slammed the phone receiver against the wall;
in order for my lasers to work at their optimum damage level,
I would have to fire them from a precise range of 15
kilometers. Since I was 20 kilos away, they would be doing
about 75% of their maximum potential damage. Since this was a
2v4, since Trazir was out of action until his fucking missiles
were loaded, and since I saw the white streaks of enemy
rockets racing towards my hull, I did what any man in a
cornered position would do.
I went berserk.
I worked my keyboard like a Japanese chef on crack. After
several laser volleys, I could see Lando's engines turn red;
they were on fire, and in a few moments, he would be as well.
My missiles let off a thundrous wave as they paraded and
jigged, rolling towards Lando's cheaply built ship. And then,
they hit. My shields went down almost immediately in a
brilliant glare as 4 enemy rockets erupted against my precious
Moa.
"FUCK," I shouted into Trazir's ear. "DO SOMETHING DAMN IT." I
could almost feel his anxiety emanating through the phone
cord, and an instant later I breathed a sigh of relief as his
ECM ray sucked the energy out of Lando's capacitors. And then,
there was a brief flare as my missile discharged and the body
of his ship broke apart in a million different directions. A
second later, my other missile ignited in the then-empty space
that once contained Lando's ship. However, his pod was only
meters away, and this explosion was sufficient to blow it to
smithereens. I snickered ecstatically, for revenge had been
mine, and I could now die with honor. The lasers burned into
my hull, damaging my engines and slowing my ship down to a
crawl. I cycled through the remaining pirates like a game show
contestant spinning a wheel of chance. The spinner landed on
some prick named Johanesan.
"Okay, focus fire on Johanesan"
I could almost hear war drums in the background as I targeted
him and fired my laser volley. They had been moving towards us
as we moved towards them, and the engagement range was now
close to 17000 meters; my lasers would now do substantially
more damage to the enemy shields. To my delight, Trazir had
actually figured out how to use his armaments, and I watched
in elation as his missiles streamed through the void, going
straight for Johanesan's armor. Another laser volley splashed
against my aegis, and my ship caught fire. I shot off one last
barrage of missiles at Johanesan before I force ejected and
began to take off with my pod.
But I was too late.
The rockets blasted my 35 million credit toy into nothing, and
the resulting conflagration decimated my pod. In my naivety, I
had neglected to purchase good insurance, which set my skill
gains back by about 3 weeks, and I had also neglected to
change the spawn point of my clone if I ever died. As a
result, I reappeared back in the newbie sector of Caldari
space, a place I hadn't seen in months.
"Finish off Johan and get the hell out of there, dude."
"It's already done, those last missiles of yours took him
down. I'm hyperspacing away as we speak."
I made some excuse about having to go eat dinner, and hung up
the phone.
And then, it hit me. My 35 million credit ship was gone
forever. OneEye Willie would build me a new one, I knew this,
but his base was 5 hours away from where I was stationed, and
I sure as hell didn't feel like watching a shitty newbie ship
fly for that long. I logged off Eve in disgust, and read
through the lengthy list of patch notes that morning, looking
for some explanation of why my MWDs didn't work.
"The capacitor requirements for Microwarp Drives have been
substantially increased."
Fuck.
I logged onto the Eve forums, and learned that pirates and
player killers, who comprise a substantial portion of Eve's
population, had been bitching to the game developers that MWDs
allowed industrial ships to get away too easily, and that they
should be nerfed so the pirates could gank an honest trader
trying to make a profit. In response, the genius developers of
Eve put insane energy requirements on MWDs; in order to use
them, you would need to be running a barebones gimp ship,
which meant that if you were flying an industrial ship, you
couldn't have any cargo expanders.
Using an indie without cargo expanders is like running a high
powered train with only one boxcar. Not only is it stupid, and
not only does it look ridiculous, but it is also highly
unprofitable. This was the straw that broke the camel's back.
I had grown tired of trading and mindless profiteering. Not
only was I bored, I was pissed. Pissed at every idiot who
played Eve and thought it was fun to watch pebbles float into
their ships for hours on end. Pissed at the developers for
taking away my MWDs. Pissed at the world.
As I browsed through the various forums, I noticed a fair
number of investment threads; various corporations and
individuals who offered to pool people's money in order to buy
a ship blueprint, which could be copied and passed out to each
investor, so if somebody put money in the pool, he would
receive his own copy of the blueprint. This intrigued me. I
decided to log back in to scroll through the help menus and
see how blueprints worked, but on my way in, I noticed a patch
message.
"We would like to remind the players of Eve Online that game
masters are unable to assist players who have been involved in
any sort of scam. We have taken measures to prevent scamming
by making it easier for corporations to see exactly who has
access to the shipyards and equipment pools, but it is up to
the officers of the corporation themselves to ensure that they
fully trust the individuals they recruit."
I called Trazir again and told him about the things I had just
read. We had a nice long talk, and our planning commenced.
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