Yes I was mad, bro.

I had a BAD day at work yesterday. Very bad. I got home in an absolute foul mood. I could have kicked the cat!*

I usually get home well before the wife, so I made my own sandwich and went to the "Computer Room". I then had a choice - XBox to shoot some people in the head to relieve my frustration or Eve Online. Now, I've had a bit of a problem with Eve this week....

Last weekend I noticed I had two thousand, four hundred and something real kills (those are total kills excluding Noob ships, shuttles and pods). 2,500 looked a nice milestone to hit.... but some cosmic force had been stopping me hitting it since I discovered how close I was.

By mid-week I was at 2,496 and couldn't get passed it. Whenever a corpie said they had a ship tackled I would land and it would explode before I could lock it. I was always 5 seconds late in warping, a few thousand metres out of being in lock range and being able to whore on the kill. I'd be soloing someone and his mates would turn up and pop me as he was in structure. It was like someone didn't want me to hit 2,500.

Notwithstanding the above, Eve won, and I logged in. Apparently the Squids (Caldari Militia) had Kedama 99.9% contested, which is right nextdoor to our home system. They were running the final factional war major complex (plex) that they needed to make the system vulnerable so they could shoot the iHub. By the time we got a fleet sorted, we were too late. They had captured the plex and Kedama was vulnerable. However, we did have a nice BC fleet sat on the Kedama gate. Surely they'd all go reship into high DPS boats as iHubs have a lot of hitpoints.

No. No, they didn't.

They warped to zero and started firing on the iHub in frigate hulls and destroyers. The mind indeed boggles. How long would it take for them to take down the iHub with a dozen small ships like that?

Anyway I saw the opportunity to get over my 2,500 kill barrier. Whilst S810 jr watched from cloaky eye's, I warped my Hurricane back to station and swapped for a Disco Domi. There was a bit of an argument in fleet whether you could activate smart-bombs on a iHub so I undocked, warped to the Nisuwa iHub and tested. BOOM BOOM BOOM! Yes, yes you can!

So I warped back to the fleet and jumped through. S810 told me to bounce to the sun which I did. I aligned and waited, and S8 told me when to warp as they were orbitting at close range.

Now I'm no l33t PvP'r. BUT, if I was them (and I wouldn't be, as I'd never try to take down a iHub in a frigate) I'd be hitting DScan as war targets entered system. The iHub is very close to the sun so was very much in scan range. So even only hitting DScan one in 30 seconds would have shown a Dominix on scan. Surely anyone with half a PvP brain should think "Mmmmm Dominix, and here we are in a fleet of small ships. Surely that will be a Disco Domi?".

But they didn't.

My fat ass Domi landed slightly late and there were only two ships in range. The rest of our fleet was jumping as I landed so I fired the full rack of smart bombs anyway. BOOM BOOM BOOM. Then something truly magical happened. They started burning..... at me!

We quickly dispatched them and went back to plexing. I went back to Nisuwa to swap my Disco Domi and missed out on a Abbadon kill as some stupid squid thought it would be a great idea to solo the iHub on his own, in a system full of hostiles.

Finally the squids abandoned "Operation Lemming", stopped warping one at a time into us and actually put a fleet together. They had a a couple of DPS battleships, including the lemming we'd just killed who was now in an Armageddon, with BC support enter Kedama. So we popped nextdoor to reship to armour BS. I jumped in my Armageddon Navy Issue and we went to fight on the bunker. The Squids fought, I got primaried, a cyno was lit and a friendly carrier appeared. Hot, sweet carrier reps FTW!

The squids died, we suffered no loses, and Kedama was saved (for the time being). 41 kills (2.4bn ISK) for no loses.

http://www.sotfkb.com/index.php/kill_related/643454/

So in the space of one hour my mood had been completely reversed. I was now on 2512 kills, we'd saved Kedama and had some good fights.

However, it's all a bit worrying. These squids died horribly. They were no matched for our organised fleet. Looking at the battle report I see very few names, corps or alliances (other than the NPC militia corp) that I recognise. The Caldari militia is being over-run by LP farmers. Pre-Inferno it was full of mission runners in cloaky ships, post-Inferno it's full of LP farmers with no real clue about PvP.

Will we see them become organised and bring the fight? Or will it remain small groups of small ships farming LP's in plex's until we turn up and stamp on them? Time will tell.



*In fact, I didn't kick the cat, she shared some of my chicken sandwich! Om nom nom nom nom nom!