Yes, folks, Santa Clause has shit down my chimney:

Worse yet, I probably deserved it. Pride goeth before a fall. I was tempting the gods with my hubris, and picking on the weak at the same time. All the laws of justice cried out for my blood. Which was duly delivered, in a bucket. [Afterthought edit: A bucket with little paper umbrella decorations and naked lady swizzle sticks.]

I came upon a Catalyst destroyer, mining in a belt. A newbie, we might assume. But all veldspar spends the same.

The newbie, DanceofDeath, is a member of Astrodynamic Innovations [ADIN], which doesn’t mean anything to me. He’s been a member less than a day, so I figure, probably one of the little corps that — like Ironfleet, so I don’t mean anything bad by this — infest high sec. No worries, guys like that never seem to get the backup they need.

Irate note to self: There’s no damn hurry. There’s always time to check local to see how much potential backup the miners have. ALWAYS. You dumb arrogant fuck.

Ore. Not very much. My cargo hold. Align for departure. He’s flying a mining drone, does this guy even have a gun?

Er, yes. I can tell because he’s shooting an asteroid now.

That’s always comedy gold, in large part because I can remember doing that myself once in a fit of newbie panic.

This I’ve never seen before: now he’s shooting a DIFFERENT asteroid. I’m laughing now.

Finally he targets me, and starts shooting me. Not so funny now; I lock him up and lock him down and begin introducing him to the concept of the heavy missile.

Which goes quickly and smoothly. He goes boom, I open his wreck and loot the components, it’s time to go…

Ouch. There’s a Harbinger battle cruiser standing on my head and shooting at me with very ugly lasers. I never saw him arrive. Was he cloaked? Or, more likely, was I too intent on my easy kill?

Boy, he sure got here fast. It only goes to prove, even newbies can have big brothers.

And this guy’s big brother has got my head in the toilet and his foot on the back of my head. I’m webbed, I’m warp scrambled, and I’m melting so fast I don’t think my speed (such as it is, under the web) is going to save me. Does this swirly even come with a flush?

It doesn’t:

2008.12.25 03:52:00

Victim: Marlenus
Corp: Ironfleet Towing And Salvage
Alliance: Tear Extraction And Reclamation Service
Faction: NONE
Destroyed: Prowler
System: [redacted]
Security: 0.7
Damage Taken: 5914

Involved parties:

Name: Deadzero (laid the final blow)
Security: 5.0
Corp: Astrodynamic Innovations
Alliance: Strength in Numbers.
Faction: NONE
Ship: Harbinger
Weapon: Heavy Pulse Laser II
Damage Done: 4946

Name: DanceofDeath
Security: 0.1
Corp: Astrodynamic Innovations
Alliance: Strength in Numbers.
Faction: NONE
Ship: Capsule
Weapon: Light Ion Blaster I
Damage Done: 968

Destroyed items:

Ballistic Control System II
Nanomechanical CPU Enhancer I (Cargo)
Capacitor Control Circuit I, Qty: 2
Plutonium Charge S, Qty: 703 (Cargo)
Caldari Navy Thunderbolt Heavy Missile (Cargo)
Medium Shield Booster II
Concentrated Veldspar, Qty: 1200 (Cargo)
Havoc Fury Heavy Missile, Qty: 200 (Cargo)
‘Smokescreen’ Covert Ops Cloaking Device II
Veldspar, Qty: 2838 (Cargo)
Havoc Precision Heavy Missile, Qty: 200 (Cargo)

Dropped items:

Ballistic Control System II
Heavy Missile Launcher II
Small Shield Booster I (Cargo)
Thunderbolt Fury Heavy Missile, Qty: 200 (Cargo)
Y-S8 Hydrocarbon I Afterburners
Nanomechanical CPU Enhancer I (Cargo)
Caldari Navy Havoc Heavy Missile, Qty: 31
Caldari Navy Havoc Heavy Missile, Qty: 153 (Cargo)
Plutonium Charge S, Qty: 69 (Cargo)
EP-S Gaussian I Excavation Pulse (Cargo)
Caldari Navy Thunderbolt Heavy Missile, Qty: 176 (Cargo)
Depleted Uranium S, Qty: 962 (Cargo)
Faint Warp Disruptor I
Thunderbolt Precision Heavy Missile, Qty: 200 (Cargo)
Veldspar, Qty: 5012 (Cargo)
Tungsten Charge S, Qty: 100 (Cargo)

Yes, boys and girls, that IS my shiny new ‘Smokescreen’ Covert Ops Cloaking Device II you see there on the destroyed items list. Thanks for asking.

I don’t think my most expensive ship hull, with rigs, cost as much as that one module. Maybe my Cerberus, at the price I paid for it back in the day, if I’d bought the rigs on the open market; certainly, nothing else I own even comes close.

I had that cloak for five hours and forty-six minutes. Hmm, let’s see, that’s what work out to? 434,000 ISK per minute, give or take? A little over seven thousand ISK a second?

Hookers and blow would have been a bloody BARGAIN by comparison.

Moving on. I can, if I want to, afford half a dozen more ships just like that one; it met the definition of “can afford to fly it.” But still, ouchies. The last time I lost a blockade runner, it was a Crane, to a guy named Girin, in a Cyclone, and it was before I started this blog, way back on January 12, 2007. Of course, I’d have lived this time (maybe) if the blockade runners still had two points of warp strength; much though I love the cloaking, I paid for it tonight. This is only the third Blockade Runner I’ve lost in my EVE career — so wouldn’t you know I’d lose it five hours after fitting a module that could buy four more with enough left over for TII fittings all around?

That’s what makes EVE so strange and wonderful and terrible.

Just for giggles, here’s the entire combat log after the Harbinger arrived, so you can enjoy the extreme brevity of the face-melting I endured:

(combat) Deadzero [ADIN] (Harbinger) hits you, doing 520.8 damage.
(combat) Deadzero [ADIN] (Harbinger) hits you, doing 869.8 damage.
(combat) Deadzero [ADIN] (Harbinger) hits you, doing 670.5 damage.
(combat) Deadzero [ADIN] (Harbinger) hits you, doing 493.3 damage.
(notify) Warping to Stargate ([redacted])
(notify) External factors are preventing your warp drive from responding to this command.
(combat) Deadzero [ADIN] (Harbinger) aims well at you, inflicting 859.3 damage.
(combat) Deadzero [ADIN] (Harbinger) hits you, doing 1533.1 damage.
(notify) Ship is out of control

It’s still an hour short of Christmas, in my time zone; I think I’ll go to Jita and buy myself another present.

12 Responses to “Christmas Has Been Canceled”

  1. Mynxee says:

    Dude, I am sorry for your loss but I think this is the funniest account of losing a ship I have EVER read. :) Hope it’s not to painful to recover…that did hafta hurt.

  2. Marlenus says:

    Heh, it helps to hear that somebody enjoyed the blog post. You have got to know the temptation was strong not to mention this one. That said, once I decided to ‘fess up, I tried to see the humor.

    The loss was painful — I’d be a liar if I said otherwise — but I was flying something I can afford to lose, so there’s no real effort to “recover”. I had one very good speculation (in armor plates, back when they had no purpose in rig-making and were selling for 100 ISK each) that made me a couple of billion ISK, and even though I spent ISK like a drunken Gurista during faction warfare, I could replace last night’s ship and still have more than a billion ISK in the corporate wallet.

    The only expensive thing in EVE that I badly want right now is an Orca (still a month or two away, training wise) and I can still afford one, so I’ve got no cause to whine.

  3. Solomon Drake says:

    This was a great blog. Thanks for passing it on to Deadzero. Great writing, I will say the entire ADIN corporation enjoyed it. Just a note, we do support our miners. Matter of fact we combat pilots live for the occasional ore hijacking in high sec. But I have to say again this was an absolute joy to read. I have bookmarked the page and will be back to keep up with whats coming next. And as one more note, as far as ORCAS go, ADIN makes those, so let us know. Until we meet again.

    Solomon

  4. Marlenus says:

    Hey, glad you guys enjoyed the blog. Normally when folks say “we support our miners” I’m skeptical (I almost never see timely support) but in your case, I’m a reluctant believer.

    I don’t get WTFPWNT very often, but last night, Deadzero did a #1 finest-kind job of it. All due props.

  5. Haka Aragon says:

    Was nice to read the blog you posted.

    I am the administrator of the ADIN (SiN) killboards which are run from http://www.evekb.co.uk.

    ADIN’s Board: http://adin.evekb.co.uk
    SiN’s Board: http://kb.eve-sin.com

    If you are interested in a board drop me a line, pretty sure we can set one up for Ironfleet without any problem.

    Sorry on the loss of your Cloaking device btw (I have one of them on my Widow.)

  6. Michan Yu says:

    Dude that was pretty funny… its almost one of those sad stories you hear about the guy who looses everything at xmas.. and in this case you got shat on! haha

    Either way still your blog has been an interesting read. Id be keen to find out more about salvaging if you guys do do any of that at all..

    Have a good xmas!

  7. Marlenus says:

    Michan, it would probably be a lot more sad if I weren’t trying to beat up a destroyer for lunch money when it happened. ;-)

    As for salvaging, it’s fun, but a lot of the fun is a sort of zen mindlessness, of zipping about a wreck field at maximum speed, locking and salvaging and looting with a minimum of overshot wrecks and wasted time. Like playing Minesweeper or Tetris, fun to do but boring to recount.

    Last night I dropped ten probes in a busy mission system, which gave me enough wrecks to salvage for two hours straight. I got nine armor plates out of the first mission, and probably five hundred salvage parts plus loot worth several millions in mineral alone, plus half a dozen nice high-meta named modules I’ll use in future fittings. Not as profitable as mission running, but more fun for me — plus I got the joy of watching a Golem blow up about forty of his own wrecks. Another guy in a Raven warped out of the last pocket of Gurista Extravaganza in an attempt to get my salvage boat killed by the rats — he failed, and earned himself the joy of a lot of laborious battleship travel to get back to his mission.

    That’s a typical salvage session.

  8. Burgers says:

    O boy..
    That’s not the first loss you have from ADIN see your own blog :-)

    http://www.ironfleet.com/2008/04/24/salvage-fleet-losses/

    But you have a very nice style ..have fun out there

  9. Marlenus says:

    I’m not sure I’d credit that loss to ADIN, per se, but as I’m not entirely sure what went wrong in that mission pocket, I can’t deny it’s a possibility. In any case, thanks for making the connection; I missed it.

  10. Michan Yu says:

    I have to say.. although ninja is very profitable.. You can also make good salvage from building strong relationships with the corps and people who run missions..

    Today i’ve made over 30 mil in loot plus a whole lot more in salvage (holding onto this). from two guys i work with in missions.. makes sence to do this as well me thinks ;)

  11. Marlenus says:

    Michan, you’re absolutely right. There are a ton of mission runners out there who don’t bother with looting or salvaging; in fact, for a year I a had a real world friend who always had me loot his missions, and all he asked for were the 425 Prototype battleship guns.

    However, Ironfleet is founded on a couple of bedrock roleplay concepts, and one of those is that asking for salvage rights is like asking for breathing rights. We don’t do it, ever, as a matter of principle, because to a dedicated salvager, there’s just something fundamentally wrong with the idea.

    Also, there’s a fun factor involved. Although I’m not motivated by “carebear tears” the way many in my alliance are, it remains the case that salvaging missions without permission offers moments of drama and excitement not available when salvaging by arrangement. Some of those moments are priceless.

    It should be clear by now that I don’t salvage (uninvited missions or jettisoned ore) for the profit alone. Those are good, but there are easier ways to get more of both.

  12. Michan Yu says:

    I agree with you completely.. Where agreements offer guaranteed wrecks, it does lack the element of fun you describe..

    I guess it really depends on what you are after at the end of the day..

    And at the end of the day, everyone makes their own fun ;)

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