Salt

As both of my readers know, I don’t play EVE to actively upset or annoy other players.  The practice of doing so, deliberately harvesting tears (aka salt) as it is known is abhorrent to me.  The discussion about this is as old as the game itself and I am not going into it.  I said it before, I love EVE for the fact that you can choose to be a total asshole while not being one is also a choice.  Other games simply don’t have the game mechanic to really negatively impact another player.  Please, CCP, never dial that back.

So, whats this all about?  The other day I logged into the game ready for some interaction with my corp mates and look for trouble.  The (really) nice thing about NOMEX is that there are nearly always people online even if not hunting all the time.  Which means if I do what I do best (scout / tackle), I can have the cavalry called in within a few minutes.  And so I go out scouting down a C1 connection, not even bothering bringing my other character as rear guard.  If I find something with my Proteus, I’ll tackle it and my fleet mates will bail me out.

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Friends with benefits

As both of my remaining two readers may remember, I live in Wormhole Space, more specifically, a C4 with a static C5 and a static C3.  Just in case you don’t know what that is, this means that we have two connections at any given time plus whatever other holes spawn into us.  But it also means that every day we have new neighbors and since neighbors in Wormhole space are generally armed to the teeth we tend to fly with the assumption that everyone is out there to kills us.  And vice versa, of course.  But we do like our C3 connections since it is generally our supply line to empire space where fuel and sundries are brought in and PI and gas products are shipped out.  And thus, the other night we open a new connection and commence a little scouting before we commit the haulers when our scout reports a second set of Sisters probes and a T1 Imicus on D-scan. That generally indicates that a brand new player just had come in from High Security space and is looking for hacking sites which arguably are by far the most money a an Alpha clone can make / hour.

Restoring my reputation

A word about my fellow corp (Z3R0 Return Mining) and Alliance (Illusion of Solitude) mates.  I have been (in jest, surely!) heckled about my pacifist tendencies and my total inability to send ammunition at anyone inexperienced, poor, helpless, dumb or in any other way disadvantaged.  My corpmates query the wisdom of sending me out on scouting parties since I more likely to bring back helpless kittens than killmails.  Since we are a stone-cold (if slightly anarchic) killer outfit, my attitudes are seen with amusement.  “Oh no, Epigene is out scouting.  Will he rescue a mining fleet again?”.