EVE – Where was the kaboom?

It had to happen sooner or later, but I kinda thought it would be much later considering my general chickenitude and reluctance to go below 0.7 sec space if I can help it.

I got podded yesterday.

{{ EDIT — Ah, so I guess HULKAGEDDON is still going on. I thought it was just a weekend thing. That probably explains a lot, although it doesn’t explain the guy’s disingenuity. If you’re going to gank me at least have the grace to admit to it, no? Why play innocent after the fact?  }}

For normal people, that’s where your crunchy outer shell (the ship) gets blown away, leaving you in this teeny little space-raft. Said raft can also be destroyed, incidentally, giving rise to the term “pod-killed” — and if that happens to you, you lose a bunch of implants (stat and skill boosts) and possibly some skill points if you haven’t kept your clone data up to date. It happens a lot, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it or seek it out.

Actually, to be fair and admit my pettiness, I podded myself — I chose to self-destruct my ship before someone else could do it for me, then I scrambled like mad to get my pod the hell out of there and back to a station (which worked).

On the bright side, all I lost was a ship I’d forgotten I had until 2 or 3 days ago: a Celestis, which so far reminds me of nothing so much as a train engine missing some wagons and which has all the grace of a drunk hippo. Well, and the modules on said ship but they were just a few miners and cargo expanders, nothing un-expendable.

Which is why Rule of EVEisition #1 is: don’t fly anything you can’t afford to lose.

I didn’t. I got a million back on the insurance, so that wasn’t bad, and I didn’t like that ship anyway.

Now here’s the weird part. The guy shows up in this 0.8 security asteroid belt, in an fairly busy system — for non-EVE folk, space goes from 1.0 (yay!) to 0.0 (eek!) so 0.8 is pretty safe, more like Times Square at 7pm rather than… well, somewhere really dangerous that I wouldn’t know where it is because I’m a chicken. He’s red, which — when I look it up — tells me he’s an outlaw. And indeed, his security rating is -2.0, so he’s not all sunshine and roses.

To be quite honest though *cough* I’m not sure who fired first. My finger might have slipped on the missile launcher button right after he launched a jetcan named “YOU” in my general vicinity and target-locked me. From where I stand, target-locking isn’t a friendly clap on the shoulder, but maybe I’m behind on EVE social etiquette.

At that point I got warp scrambled, which also didn’t seem like the actions of someone who simply wanted to visit with me and have tea and scones. Then he started shooting and I started squawking and dithering and wondering what buttons I should be mashing. All I had was the missile launcher, which was only on there to deal with the NPC pirates that show up now and then in asteroid belts.

So yeah… I self-destructed before he could do it for me, sitting duck that I was. (Warp Core Stabilisers are now my new best friends!) Also, I didn’t want to lose my implants and I could read where this was going. I’m pretty sure he’d have podkilled me and got the hell out in the 30 seconds one has before CONCORD (the NPC cavalry) shows up to ineffectually slap you on the wrist.

Oh and in the meantime I did get Yseult away in her worse-than-drunk-hippo Iteron, and she was the one carrying all the swag loot ore that we’d mined.

Now here’s the interesting part. I get back to the station, put on some new clothes (ship), and mention casually on local chat that miners might want to watch their backs. I name names. At which point said Named Name goes all self-righteous, claims he was only “working on faction” (WTF, that still works?), and that he’d never done anything aggressive to me at all.

Yeah, cuz shooting out my shields then my armour and chewing on my ship’s hull points is a sign of deep affection. And cuz negative security ratings just sort of happen by themselves.

There follows a long private conversation where he keeps assuring me there was absolutely no aggressive intent on his part, blah, blah, blah.

Riiiiiight.

A quick perusal of this guy’s info also reveals that his corporation is something-something Goon and was once part of the GoonSwarm Alliance. If you know GoonSquad, you’ll know why I was skeptical.

So I don’t buy it, even though I’m probably THE most gullible person in the EVE universe or in this one. When he told me he wasn’t aggroing me, I actually bought it — at least in part — because, well, I tend to believe what people tell me even after they stop me from running away and start firing at me. I also rather expected him to go “HA! HA! I KILLED YOU! L2P NUB!” and other such mustachio-twirling tauntery, rather than acting all wounded.

Seriously. There’s no way that was some sort of accident, unless a whole load of fingers slipped on a whole load of buttons — my side and his — entirely without anyone’s conscious control. Uh huh.

Anyway, I thought I would be crushed, irate, and madly upset. Instead I’m mildly amused, both at my own gullibility and at the fact that, even if he did defeat me, I blew up my shit and he got bubkes. That pleases me.

As does the big fat bounty I placed on his head.

If he’d only read my in-game bio, he might have seen that he could have ransomed me instead and actually made some money out of the “kill”. Instead, I can wait and see when my money gets paid out, and be pettily pleased I got the last laugh. Money > guns, bucko.

~

Oh, and Vive la République! to anyone else out there who might celebrate today. I don’t really, but I’m never as patriotic as when I’m 3000 miles away from my birth country.