Sunday, January 20, 2013

Absolut Mandarin Saved My Dreadnought!

Thursdays are the end of the week here and all us hard working expats meet down the bar after we finish work for a well deserved drink or two.... or three.... or many.

Fast forward 8 hours, and I get home in a taxi for a mahoosive cheesey chip sandwich, a slurred convo with the wife and a quick log into Eve. This is even though I know its a bad idea given the state I was in! Aura had been bitching at me throughout the day that one of the alts skill queues was low so I thought I'd just queue up another skill just in case I slept in the next morning. Then I just had to log on Drackarn as Eve was already running.

"Everyone get in your dreads!"
Huh? Wut? Oh..... erm..... where the hell am I? Oh right. Nikkischema. Need a schhip to burn scheven jumpsch to Nischuwa. That'll do. Undock! Warp! Jump!
"Make sure you have an empty head. You have a high chance of dying."
Schmeg! This clone is not cheap.
"OK we'll be leaving very soon!"
Ballsch, 6 jumpsch and need to change clonesch!
"You'll need a lot of fuel, about X much."
Bollocksch. What do I do? Other QCatsch are heading to the meet up! Do I try for it or just give up?

(Although I cannot remember, the wife assures me, or should that me 'asschuresch me' I was slurring pretty badly!)

*Poof*

"Oh not you two again!"


Brunette - "There are cap kills to be had Drackarn. Run! Run to Nisuwa, get in your dread and make some enemy cap pilot cry as you tear his ship to pieces with your massive blasters of doom."

Blonde - "Look Drackarn. Your face is two inches from the monitor as you cannot focus. You are in the wrong expensive clone, your Moros is not ready and you are still six jumps out and they are leaving now. Forget it. Dock up in this system, there's a station here, and go to bed. Its late, and you are in no state to fight."

For only the second time ever I ignored the brunette and went with the blonde. Somewhere around 60 seconds later I was fast asleep.

Next morning I get up. Thankfully when I've been on the vodka the hangovers are always managable. First thing I do is look why the mobile phone is flashing. It was an e-mail from Twitter informing I have been mentioned in some Tweets. One of which is from @baghi informing me that a DnD dreadnought fleet got whelped the night before.


Apparently the opperation was to drop 30 Goon carriers that were camping a 0.0 station. The Goons asked (screamed) for help and suddenly.... super capitals! A few titan doomsdays later followed by a mother-load of fighter bombers and 50bn ISK of scrap metal was floating around the station. The plan of "Jump in, one cycle of seige to kill as many carriers as possible and deagress and dock up before the supers come" did not work as planned. Goon supers were on the field rather quickly. As a 'D' I tend to get primaried early so I can be pretty much assured if I'd been there, I would have died. The Goons were streaming their camping.  Fast forward the video below to 1h 25m to hear the FC "calmly" ask for help as a fleet of pirate dreadnoughts cyno'd on top of his carrier fleet!


So no carrier kills for me. But then again no multi-billion ISK loses either. I did get some nice PvP though over the weekend.

Friday was a busy day in real-life so only got one kill. I was sat in a small plex when I got a Enyo on short scan. I quickly loaded the guns with Republic Fleet Fussion, stuck some T2 Nova rockets in the rocket launcher and set the top rack to pre-overheat. He came in and died in short order.

Saturday was much better death-dealing wise.

First up was some Cock-bag Thrasher fun with the rest of the QCats. Someone found a Mymidon on a gate and we met up on the otherside. He pushed him through to us. Now Cock-bags and gate guns don't mix. But a BC kill for a Destroyer loss is an acceptable trade in my book. So I went for hero tackle. Got point and failed to warp off quickly enough as the gate guns minced my un-tanked Thrasher. The Mymidon died to the rest of the QCats.

A little later I undocked alone to find a Harpy on the undock. He agressed but my Thrasher had fusion ammo loaded and I wasn't going to sit there for 10 seconds being shot at whilst I swapped ammo types. So I docked back up, changed to EMP and undocked. he was still there so I engaged. Suddenly a Condor undocks and now its 2v1 against me. The Harpy assplodes and I turn my attention to the Condor. As he's going down as a Thrasher appears. A staggered 3v1! The Condor assplodes but I'm in low armour at that time so the Thrasher takes me down easily. An AF and a T1 frigate kill for a Destroyer loss. That is acceptable especially when you have the excitement of a 3v1.

They leave so I swap to a Vexor and go and camp a medium faction war plex. About 15 minutes later a couple of Caldari appear in system. I get a Stabber and a Caracal on short range and start debating whether its worth trying to stay and take them on. A heavily tanked Vexor verses a Stabber and a Caracal? On paper I should probably run. I keep hitting scan and another Caracal turns up. 3v1 is definitely not worth sticking around for so I warp to station posting in local 3v1 is too much. A fellow member of the Quantum Cats Syndicate see's this and offers his Ishtar as support. Ishtar and Vexor vs Stabber and two Caracals? Worth a try! I jump on comms and we warp to the medium plex together and warp in. One of the Caracals has left so I grab the Stabber and Kibayasu grabs the Caracal. The Stabber is not very tanked with only a LSE and DC. He dies quickly. As we're hitting the Caracal the second Caracal comes back to help his mates. We snag him too and they die in short order. Good fight!

Later than night I logged in to find three squids in system so I undocked. They were in Thrashers running a small plex. With no back-up there is no way I could solo them. So I jump in a Flabber and head to a medium plex. As soon as the small plex vanishes from overview I get them on short scan. They are on the acceleration gate to my plex. Will they enter? After 3 or 4 minutes I get the hint they won't, they are just sitting there. I suppose thats the right call. Three destroyers verses a faction cruiser would probably go my way. There is a stargate only 0.5 AU from the plex so I decide to bounce and see if I can catch them on the acceleration gate. As I land back on the acceleration gate I see the last Thrasher warping into the plex. I activate the gate and manage to catch one Thrasher as I land as his mates run.

So whilst not the most amazing weekend of PvP I've ever had, I enjoyed those fights. But something else happened at the weekend. I went shopping with the wife.....


It's amazing what you can get away with on your birthday.

Wife - "So why do you need a PS3 when you have an XBox?"
Me - "DUST514 is only availible on the PS3."
Wife - "Your spending a grand [local currency] for one game?"
Me - "It's my birthday!"
Wife - "So?"
Me - "Well I either get that PS3 for DUST514 or you give me the birthday present I asked for."
Wife - "NO!"
Me - "So PS3 then!"
Wife - "OK."

Unfortunatly I spend the next 26 hours screaming at the black box of frustration  Whilst the XBox360 is the slut of the wi-fi world, it'll partner-up with anyone, the PS3 is more picky. In the end I had to set the laptop up to serve as a internet server which itself causes all sorts of issues with the PS3. Thankfully the "Unknown Network" problem with Windows 7 and the PS3 is well documented and there are guides on what to do. However, once I had got the damn thing online the Playstation Network was down for maintenance so I couldn't download DUST514 or register. And that downtime was extended, and then extended and then extended. I finally got to play DUST514 on late Saturday afternoon. It's still NDA'd (hoping that'll drop on Tuesday when it goes open Beta) so all I say is that if you're use to an XBox controller, you're going to spend a LOT of time trying to get used to the PS3 controller.

NO I DIDN'T WANT TO CHANGE WEAPONS! I WANTED TO FIRE!

If you were playing DUST514 yesterday and wondered why, when a member of the other team had you clearly in his sights, he suddenly put his rifle away and pulled out a pistol, that may have been me!



3 comments:

  1. Mouse and Keyboard for Dust mate. Also - your Dread may have been ok, IIRC the Supers were working from Z-A

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  2. Hello! I also live in the Middle East, Dubai to be precise. I have been considering DUST514 since my EVE activity has mostly been updating the skill queue. How was the lag?

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    Replies
    1. No real issues with lag. I was surprised and I'm not far from Dubia so you should be fine.

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