Last Thursday INQ-E had its first PvP night, and it went great.

We put together a balanced fleet of BCs and tacklers, and went into some local low-sec systems to see if we could cause some destruction. We started things off in high fashion, scanning down and swarming a T1 frigate. Go us! And then the tacklers podded him, only to discover that podding in low-sec hits your security status HARD. That is likely the last pod we pop in low-sec.

In the next system over, someone scouted down a cyno ship, and when we found out that fit sells for 2m, we quickly popped it, got lucky with the drop, and immediately put it up for sale. As I mentioned in fleet chat, I know at least one person who might be in the market for such an item. (Can’t quickly find the kill-mail for this, sorry)

Our next target was better, a hauler trying to move some semi-expensive stuff. What was interesting about this kill was that I had to go grab my alt and his hauler to clean it up. The target was rather upset with us, and it appeared that she was rallying some help to blow us up. After some quick scouting, we decided not to stick around and engage a quickly forming fleet of Tengus and T2 ships.

I got a quick scare around this time when I jumped back into high-sec. Due to how aggression timers work (or something…), the local Amarr police were not happy with me, and starting shooting. Now local police is different than Concord (who insta-gib you), but it was still odd/scary to have NPCs shooting at me. I warped off the gate to a planet, yet still the cops were on me. They don’t scram you, but they do web you. Odd. I was able to dock up, waited out the timer, and all was well eventually, even though I got the “you are a criminal” text when I undocked.

We ended the night scouting a few systems, but they were either quiet, or too busy, and since we wanted the first night to not end in wrecks, we called it, claiming victory!

The next day, we had a new war-dec against us, from what looked like a merc corp. Was it retaliation from that Indy pilot? Blog-inspired? Random? Who knows.

It was good to see the Corp react better to this war-dec than our last. People for the most part did not panic, we had ships ready, and we were looking forward to the war. Once the 24 hour timer expired, we did some scouting and found our enemies, 7 pilots strong, sitting at a nearby gate in a BC fleet with one support Falcon. As we did not have the number online at this time, we instead went for the moral grind tactic, and parked as many pilots as we could in cloaked ships around various systems.

As I played Shogun 2, LoL, or Skyrim, I would occasionally check in on our enemies, amused to see them still sitting at that gate, waiting. This continued for a good two days, with our Corp waiting for the enemies to log off before going about our business, but otherwise always keeping 7-10 people ‘online’, afk and cloaked.

On the second day, their CEO sent me an in-game mail, complaining that we clearly did not intend to fight them, and that if we just pay them 250m ISK, they will stop the war. He also let us know that they have us on watchlists and use alts to scout. This let me know we are dealing with amateurs rather than experts, and actually had me looking forward to a battle. I fed him some BS about us being busy in WH space etc in my reply, and that we are looking forward to finding them for a fight.

On the third day, we noted that our enemies were not logging on, and when they did, they did not undock (scouts yo). In just three days we had ‘reversed’ the war on them.

To no surprise, the CEO emailed me again, informing me that he is part of a ‘cartel’ and that had I accepted the 250m offer, another member of the cartel would have war-dec’ed us to repeat the cycle. As we had not fallen for the offer, and instead made life difficult for his members, he was cancelling the war. Victory.

And we had just put together some rather nice ships for the war too… Next time.

And in EVE, there is always a next time.

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