So, you remember The Bantam Of Doom?

Well, it’s Christmas. My alliance doesn’t have a lot going on. So I got in the Bantam of Doom and went patrolling the belts.

Found a guy (it felt like one guy) flying two Retriever mining barges and a Hoarder hauler. All characters in NPC corps, so they could not help each other. Mining into jet cans.

There’s no story. Just, I flipped some ore into an Ironfleet can. I waited. After about five minutes, the hauler guy took my ore and went flashy red. It was the last thing he ever did:

2011.12.25 22:52

Victim: Claire Ronuken
Corp: Pator Tech School
Alliance: None
Faction: None
Destroyed: Hoarder
System: Hageken
Security: 0.6
Damage Taken: 1503

Involved parties:

Name: Jim Bridger (laid the final blow)
Security: 4.6
Corp: Steel Fleet
Alliance: Important Internet Spaceship League
Faction: None
Ship: Bantam
Weapon: 200mm AutoCannon II
Damage Done: 1503

Destroyed items:

Expanded Cargohold I, Qty: 2
Small Tractor Beam I
Civilian Shield Booster I
10MN Afterburner I

Dropped items:

Expanded Cargohold I
Small Shield Extender I
Azure Plagioclase, Qty: 7889 (Cargo)

However, one of the Retriever pilots, fellow name of Ceenara, called me a “bitcch”.

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.

Probably no hope of getting a rise out of this guy, but he had several rat wrecks out, so I started my standard “clueless looter” routine.

After I cleared the first wreck, he pulled in his drones. That’s not a good sign of agression, darn it!

As I chundle toward the next wreck, he opens a convo. For a change of pace, I took it. This is what he had to say as I finished looting his wrecks. Note especially the dire threat he opens with, followed by his meek and timorous words when I called his bluff:

[20:16:46] Arclightuk > Fuck off or i will bring all levels of hell down on you
[20:16:52] Marlenus > You go boy
[20:17:00] Arclightuk > lol i like yiouyr spirit
[20:17:12] Marlenus > So scared of hulk pilots, I am
[20:17:25] Arclightuk > have you watched the pvp hulk on you tube?
[20:17:35] Marlenus > Yeah. You gonna do that to me?
[20:17:43] Arclightuk > ha ha you are in a badger!
[20:17:47] Arclightuk > type thing
[20:17:51] Marlenus > Take your best shot, big boy
[20:18:24] Arclightuk > you are ok, im not bothered if you loot
[20:18:37] Arclightuk > im too busy watching californication
[20:18:39] Marlenus > LOL, than why all the threats of hell and damnation?
[20:18:54] Arclightuk > i thought it sounded scarey
[20:19:04] Arclightuk > us care bears like that sort of thing
[20:19:10] Marlenus > Heh. One last chance, you want to shoot at the helpless badger before I warp out?
[20:19:24] Arclightuk > no your good. loot all you want buddy
[20:19:34] Marlenus > ciao
[20:19:40] Arclightuk > cheers

He huffed and he puffed, but he didn’t blow my house down! {sadface}

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.

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!

After his recent battle Mammoth fun, I thought about setting up a classic BattleBadger. But, truth to tell, I don’t have Jim’s skill in small weapons. So I decided to stick with one of my old trusty combat Cranes.

Out to the belts. Second belt I checked, there’s a Retriever and an Osprey mining into a cluster of Giant Secure Cans. And by cluster, I mean six of them … a tight cluster, without the minimum 5 kilometer separation needed for anchoring.

Sadly, ever since they redesigned the graphics for the cans, my broken color vision makes it impossible for me to see whether a Giant Secure Can is anchored or not. There used to be a red nav light on anchored cans and a green one on unanchored ones, hard to see but distinguisable. In the redesign, they took this off, or made the shading more subtle, I’m not sure which … but now, the only way I can tell if a can is scoopable is to see it too near another can.

This cluster: too obvious to miss.

So, back I went for the big rigged bustard. Warp to the cluster of cans, silently scoop them. As my old friends in Suddenly Ninjas would have said: YOINK!

There was no sign that anybody noticed, so I docked.

Judging by the names, four of the cans “belonged” to the Retriever pilot, two of them “belonged” to the Osprey pilot. Between the six cans, there were four full cans-worth of Azure Plagioclase.

Then I went to lunch. When I came back, I had the following Notification in my mailbox:

Your contact level has been modified
From: Goa’ul Ra
Sent: 2010.06.22 17:57

Goa’ul Ra has changed your contact level to Terrible Standing

u mother f***ker i will get u

Charmed, I’m sure.

Remember, boys and girls, a Giant Secure Can is only secure when it has been anchored. That is all!

Still, I like it here. And there’s not really a lot of extra resources in Greater Mars to share with tourists. Which means, I tend to treat tourists as just one more salvageable resource. And if they aren’t quite ready for salvaging, well… that’s what heavy missiles are for, right?

2009.04.16 19:29:00

Victim: Devon Cys
Corp: Stone Shadow Syndicate
Alliance: Sylph Alliance
Faction: NONE
Destroyed: Imicus
System: J235321
Security: 0.0
Damage Taken: 573

Involved parties:

Name: Marlenus (laid the final blow)
Security: 1.2
Corp: Ironfleet Towing And Salvage
Alliance: Tear Extraction And Reclamation Service
Faction: NONE
Ship: Caracal
Weapon: Scourge Heavy Missile
Damage Done: 573

Destroyed items:

Core Scanner Probe I, Qty: 4
Core Scanner Probe I, Qty: 3 (Cargo)

Dropped items:

Core Probe Launcher I
Core Scanner Probe I, Qty: 154 (Cargo)
Deep Space Scanner Probe I, Qty: 3 (Cargo)

Today’s pilgrim showed up a planet while I was testing the new scanning features. He stayed there while I:

1) I scanned him down to 100%;
2) Warped to him to observe him;
3) Bookmarked him;
4) Returned to the POS operated by the Empress of Greater Mars;
5) Swapped into a combat ship;
6) Warped back;
7) Locked him with a cruiser;
8) Blew him to hell.

I realize it’s tough to keep moving while you scan when you’re in a non-cloaking astrometrics frigate, but jeebers, this ain’t Empire! It’s not safe to park at a planet.

Update: I didn’t notice until later, but after Devon warped away in his pod, he wrote one word in local: “ass”. Of course, I couldn’t say whether he was describing himself or trying to smack-talk me.

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.

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!