Learning (the hard way)

Since joining the rabbits with my first pirate toon I have been pleasantly suprised by how active a pirates life can be. I sometimes find myself going on 2 or even 3 roams in a single day accross the timezones. I'd managed to make a respectable job of staying alive for a new pilot during this time, evading gate camps, warping out of bad situations and keeping my losses to a minimum. I've never been one who cared much for the Kill / Death ratios when playing any game, but I'd somehow gotten to 16:1. Not quite as ridiculous as the invincible Bagpuss but I'd certainly suprised myself. "This isn't going to last long" and indeed I'm already starting to get my share of the bad luck. Or is it bad?

A couple of months ago on my first toon I decided to go into low sec on my own to see what I could find. I ended up playing a game of cat and mouse with a Jaguar and decided to use the oppurtunity to hone my GTFO skills. I'd practice warping to celestials at varying ranges, aligning and wapring out when I saw the flashy red Jag appear. The Jaguar pilot lost interest and I decided to warp to a safe spot. Foolishy, I sat there not aligned to anything and not moving. "Who is going to bother probing down a lone rifter?" I thought. "Is probing frigate-sized vessels even possible?" I thought. Wrong. My next mistake was to begin chatting away to my Jaguar friend in local and her corpmates. After about 5 minutes of chit chat whilst eating my dinner I noticed 3 flashy reds suddenly appear in the overview. "I KNEW IT!" I shouted, as I was set apon by the sharpened claws of the Hellcat pirates. But of course, I didn't know it or else I would have avoided it. At the time, I left with my tail between my legs, annoyed at myself for being so careless.

Since then, I jump from safe to safe or at the very least stay aligned to a celestial while checking D-scan for probes and my overall navigation of low security space has improved dramatically. The point obviously being that you learn from your mistakes, however this is a phrase that is thrown around a lot but is only fully appreciated through personal experience.

Recently I found myself thinking back to this. I'd gone out solo in my thrasher and I saw a caracal on scan. I swapped out my ammo for republic fleet EMP and narrowed him down to several times only to find he'd warped out because the belt was empty of rats. I finally found him in one of the belts but the warp in was no good, he was about 40km off and already aligning out. It seemed he was combing through the belts and there werent many of them so I decided to go and sit in one in hope that he would warp in on me by mistake. Sure enough he comes in but to my suprise he instantly aggresses me and jams me up, unleashing a barrage of missiles. I'm getting hit hard and already I was wondering if I'd bit off more than I could chew. Perhaps the hunter had become the hunted? The EVE pvp adrenaline starts pumping and I engage him with everything I've got. I overload my guns and begin laughing as I watch his shield tank being ripped to shreds. About 10 seconds later the guns stop firing. In a panic I clumsily fumbled for the hotkey to turn them back on (not realising at this point they had burnt out) I must have shut off the warp scrambler accidentally and the caracal pilot warps almost instantly to whatever he had been aligned to. "FUCK!" I was bitterly dissapointed. This incident led to me learning a lot more about the intricate mechanics of overheating and inspired me to include Thermodynamics V as part of my skill plan.

So it seems throwing caution to the wind and "getting out there" is a win / win situation for the learning pilot. No matter the outcome, you're guaranteed to learn something useful. This is quite obviously not a highly original conclusion regarding pvp in EVE but what I've come to realise is you dont fully appreciate it until you experience it first hand. In terms of kills and losses the last few days have been a bit wreckless but my faith is immediately restored when I realise something valuable was learned in the process. And as Four2 would agree, it's better to get blown to smitherenes than be sat in the station spinning your ship.

-Mr Kha