And we're back!

To my dearest readers whom i know do not exist. Apologies for not posting updates. I was simply too busy or burnt out to put anything here. But now you can escape from your 'korenav blog' withdrawal and shoot up on some nonsense.

First off, lots of changes going on in the corporation and Alpha project all together. They are for the better, but APCOM will cerntainly be in empire for a short while. We have made it our goal to be interactive and helpful to the corp as much as we can while we are about.

I felt out of the loop with them being so hands off with them before, all the fleets and pos to manage, but its nice to step back down on their level and see people where we were at one point. Good old times and days.

Anyhow, as with any training corp in eve (or how they should be) one must be taught the evil things eve will do to you. I say we expose it to them in a controlled environment! Yes, exactly. We kill them.

Don't fret now. We didn't MURDER them. Honestly they knew what was up. I got my shiny new Absolution and as always, i have to test it out, often on fellow corp mates. Other APCOM members joined in, offering isk if they could steal cans from them before getting blown up, some of which succeeded. I lost track of how many corpies i have killed, but I'm sure its double digits by now. Got to love that Absolution, it melts their poor little ships very quickly and takes a good beating before it notices any real damage. I have an urge to go get it blow up in some epic crusade into low sec but i guess killing OOTAPians will have to do for now....*sigh*

Lately we have been doing 'ride along' ops for OOTAP. The basic idea started out durring a practice fleet where it was OOTAP verus OOTAP, where we noticed they had nothing really to base how a fleet works other than what we tell them. It simply must be expereinced. Even with all the time i spent in OOTAP, i never really knew how a fleet really functioned with its roles and placement until i had lived in null sec for a while and had to observe real fleets at work. Some things simply cant be told but experienced.

So Rasp threw in an idea that has been quiet successful, and even though it didnt exactly happen as we originally thought, it effectively caused a chain reaction that led to lots of opportunities for the OOTAPians. Im sure you all understand what a 'ride along' is. The idea was to let them listen in on us when we did out fleets and killings so they could see how we worked, and occasionally invite some with us.

Our first time trying this we got two or so (can remember or be bothered to get the chat logs) came along. It was nice and easy to manage, pretty nicely paced and many listened in to hear how we worked. It was unfortunate though as hours went by and we netted nothing. Just when we thought of going back, i decided to stop being lazy with my scanner and flung my bait ship about while scanning everything. I thought i found where a rifter was on scan, and considering my intense hatred for my ships well being (a fat maller with crap tons of plates and itty bitty little guns) and lack of kills, i threw myself into the belt in question.

Lo and behold, i was rewarded with a rifter killing a battleship rat. I locked on and immediatly disrupted him. Checking his speed as i called in for my fleet i expected the rifter to simply stare at me, unimpressed, and fly out of my range and warp away. Fortunately it did not. And my little pea shooter guns on my fail bait ship chipped away at the smaller ship, effectively tracking its high speed. It initially did not return fire, keeping its guns on the rat battleship, but when our 'backup' arrived to save me from my relentless attacker, he began to focus on us. It was a big surprise how long he lasted, his speed making all our battle cruisers miss most the time. I was dumbfounded that i got most damage dealt.....almost. The rat beat me by 19 points but fortunately Battle clinic doesn't show such abominations that concern carebears. =P

Oh, and funny enough, the pilot we killed was interested in learning more about PVP and convoed us. Was very polite and willing to learn. To me, to get over the fact someone killed you and want to learn from it i find to be a very good way to learn eve and learn it fast, at least in PVP anyway. I chatted with the guy and i'm glad to have him aboard with us in OOTAP now.

Two nights later we set out again and welcomed OOTAP members in. If you ask me, we got a little too much attention as the fleet was full at 12. Honestly last time we took so many OOTAP people with us out it was a disaster that probably killed peoples interest. And several of them were brand new to the corp, and some of us in APCOM weren't too sure if they all even knew enough to be in the fleet. I almost felt to ask a few leave the fleet, but the one running the fleet has that call and I'm not one to cut their crowd. Director or not.

Our FCs did very fine jobs despite the slow start and unsure questions of new members. The second low sec system we jumped into we nearly ram smack into the middle of a well armed and ready RR Battleship fleet with a command ship and links for support (so we assume, but what moron would bring a command ship to a BS gang if the didn't intend to use links? Maybe he just got a new shiny ship like me and had too much to drink. =/). After seeing that we quickly decided to go elsewhere with only a few incidents with accidental jumps. I was impressed that all the OOTAPians were doing so well. Apparently they were being far more effective and self sufficient in training than i had guessed.

Eventually we came to a system called Mara and it was our gold mine. Either we were lucky or it was loaded to total and completely incompetent morons! I think a little of both, but mostly skill =P.

Our first engagement we found some bait running around (i think...probably not bait, but if little Timmy falls into a well, someone has to go save him), so what was the logical thing to do? Get snagged by it of course! So we let our scout sink its teath into the poor thing and backup came in the form of a hurricane and purifier. It was all good fun. Rasp made sure to secure a point on the Hound before calling in OOTAP fleet members only. OOTAP was plenty enough firepower for such a weak ship, and any help the ship called for would think it more than easy to pick off the OOTAP members in their ships. Fortunately when help did come, APCOM moved in with its battle cruisers and melted the cane and purifier. Glad we got everyone in on the cane kill.

We only took one loss, but it was a very smooth move for the fleet to pull that off. I dont know how we could have done it better. We moved around the system some more and ran into a vexor and rupture that we dispatched upon finding.

Oddly, we were convoed by some angry russian nutter and he screamed jibberish at us.

[ 2010.02.11 02:55:36 ] Rasputain > not russian
[ 2010.02.11 02:55:47 ] j1000015 > уроды
[ 2010.02.11 02:55:57 ] Korenav > Ruskie?
[ 2010.02.11 02:56:07 ] j1000015 > русский все знать должны
[ 2010.02.11 02:56:30 ] Cendrillion > Никакой русский
[ 2010.02.11 02:56:36 ] Korenav > Im sorry, the call cannot be completed as dialed
[ 2010.02.11 02:56:39 ] j1000015 > а
[ 2010.02.11 02:56:40 ] Korenav > please hang up and try again
[ 2010.02.11 02:57:39 ] j1000015 > хотел поиграть
[ 2010.02.11 02:57:54 ] Korenav > I speak words, you speak intergers
[ 2010.02.11 02:58:02 ] j1000015 > рылом не вышел?
[ 2010.02.11 02:58:09 ] Cendrillion > j100000015 > Wished to play
[ 2010.02.11 02:58:14 ] Korenav > No really, i dont understand you
[ 2010.02.11 02:58:24 ] Korenav > gf
[ 2010.02.11 02:58:30 ] Cendrillion > j10000005 > Snout has not left?
[ 2010.02.11 02:58:45 ] Cendrillion > o/


Odd fellow, and nice translations Cend. I can only hope his snout does not try to run from him again.

Anyhow after that we called it quits and decided to move back home and end the fleet after we killed at least half of everyone in local. On the way out though, one of the stealth bomber pilots was waiting with a few friends in hi sec and cashed in on his kill rights, taking out another one of our fleet members. A falcon, two stealth bombers, and a Brutix if i recall right. The stealth bomber opened up on me next since i was the only other one there at the gate. I quickly fired back and nearly melted his crappy tank but he got away. I charged after the brutix and bumped him, pushing him away from the gate fruther and waited for him to aggress. At this point i had enough luck that i wouldn't mind a fight to the death with them. Though after the brutix pilot threw several barbaric insults at me about fighting i soon realized he didnt have kill rights on me. Later on i wondered how he was able to attack us in the first place but oh well. I grew bored of his 'i'm tough because i'm safe in hi sec' blabber and warped away. Before we left local we gave him a invitation to war if he was so inclined. He didn't follow up.

All in all, it was an awesome night. Good kills, and new members got some hard core experience down. Cant wait to do more.