Yesterday was a rough, but interesting day for me in Eve Online. It started while pricing out how much it would cost to build a Retriever Mining Barge. I noticed that I could make a tidy 1 million isk profit from a quick ore trade. As I need the money for the aforementioned Retriever, I bought 200,000 units, exhausting my funds.
The route was only about 7 jumps, but it did go through low sec space (.4). I have traveled through .4 space before an never had any trouble. It was also early and not many people on. So I hit the autopilot on my Badger and was on my way. Begin foreboding music.
As I jumped into low sec, I saw flashing red. Uh Oh. As I was in a Badger, there was really no escape, especially versus 3 of them. Before I could do much of anything, my ship was destroyed. A few seconds later, my pod joined it. I awoke in a station not too far away. Luckily my clone was up to date, so no skill point loss.
So what happened? I had met my first gate camp and experienced my first podding. They did not want my cargo or a ransom. We were not at war, so I guess they were just bored. My badger was insured, although not fully. I was not carrying any cargo, so I really did not lose too much. My estimates are about 400k.
As frustrating as this was, it was my fault. I could have avoided this situation without too much trouble if I was not complacent or lazy. Before purchasing the minerals, I should have inspected the route. Using the map, I can display how many ships were destroyed in a system in the last hour.
If I had checked that, I would have seen that something was going on in that system.
So here I am with 250k isk in the bank and 4.4 million isk worth of goods on the other side of the gate camped system. I could wait it out, but I have things I need to do with that money. So I decided to run the blockade so I could go put in a sell order. After running my ideas past the fine folks at Eve University, I had my plan.
Using a shuttle, I should be fast enough to get through the camp. There I sat on the safe side of the gate, pretty nervous for a video game. The key is to use Warp to 0 (zero), rather than the autopilot. It will allow me to get off the gate much quicker.
So I jump. As soon as my ship materializes, I warp to the next gate. I could have only been visible for an instant. There was definitely some activity at the gate, but i did not stick around to watch. I had made it! Phew.
I reached the station where my goods were stored and sold them. Luckily, I only had to take a very slight loss. On my way out, I ran the gate camp again without any trouble. I learned quite a bit, so hopefully I will not repeat those mistakes.
Gaming into the summer
1 day ago
