Last night, my wife was invited to a retirement dinner for her boss. It was going to be a late night as well, and since I’m not part of the team, I was not invited.
Finally a chance to sit down and log in.
Armed with 4 hot dogs, 2 real dogs and a cold one, I sat at my chair and logged in. Immediately I noticed how our numbers have grown since the last month, when we were only a few who started this whole corp. This, right there, is a recipe for fun.
Sent out a message in the corp channel, following the usual “wazzaaaap” and such, asking who would like to join me in a little level 4 missioning? I figured with all the new players, this would help out a bit and give every participants a chance to not have to go through 3 months of lower-level missions.
Finally hooked up with Alder and Mak. Both of them were on their way to my system, so I logged in my alt and got him ready for some looting. I’d just finished training Salvaging III and Science IV, so a Small Tractor Beam I and Salvager I both were setup on my Iteron mk III, and out he went.
Everybody was there, so I called the mission – a Drone mission. Dammit. I was hoping for some heavy loot mission like Angel Extravaganza, but hey, I took it anyway – this is for the standing and helping out others, right?
So out we went, and after a single jump we were there. I love that feeling of having to go in myself before everybody else, so that I can take the aggro completely and defend the others. With my trusty Megathron, armor-tanked and heavily armed, I went in, and as soon as I saw the 40+_drone ships, I figured I’d call on my fleet to help out a bit. The drones were pretty distant, so we made quick work of all the frigates (I’m equipped with railguns all the way, so I managed to insta-pop several before they were even a threat).
A few ammo boxes later, were done, and my alt moved in to run the cleanup session. Once he was done, the tally was a nice 11M worth of refined mineral – not bad.
Everybody was up for seconds, so we went at it again – this time, real action. Sansha Nation. Once again, we setup the same way — I warpin and aggro everything, then they come in and surprise the hell out of the Sansha. Boom.
We cleaned house in a few measly minutes. Cleanup was again alt-driven, but as everybody was heading out, I looked at my alt’s overview and found a flashing red line.
A pirate.
I even got an eve-mail saying “My Wrecks!!!” Not on my watch. I needed that loot/salvo to pay for the help I got. So I quickly warped out my Mega, and warped back into the first pocket – but saw nothing. Damn – he’s in the second pocket. And I’m in a Megathron. And I have no Afterburner. And 101m/s is my top speed.
Alder, equipped with a MWD, caught up with me in a flash, and just as he was about to jump into the second pocket, the looter escaped.
That led me to think there was probably someone out there checking the pockets – probably cloaked – probably armed. Immediately – right-click/Lvl4Missions Bookmark/DOCK.
Our fleet disbanded soon after I sold the hottest loot and refined the rest… another 4M. Split it up in 2 parts (Mak had already left, even before getting the standing) and I logged out.
Conclusion.
I realize that doing things as a team is really much more interesting than running missions by ourselves. I will definitely setup camp in that system, and run missions as long as I can with anyone interested. I think, from having gone through about 50-odd blog entries from my subs in Google Reader, that I now understand what Kirith and Manasi are saying about teamwork – it’s really the be-all-end-all in Eve.
Fleet is the only way to play Eve.
