Blowed up again!

Got blown up again a couple of weeks ago, and it was awesome.

I was once again flying an Iteron Mark V, a cargo ship with a huge hold but, as I learned a while ago, paper-thin defenses. It's been my workhorse for gathering up money from courier/cargo contracts.

Unfortunately, someone cargo-scanned my ship with one of their character accounts, then used another one of their characters a few jump gates away to pounce on me. Before long, my precious cargo -- and a lot of collateral I put up for it -- went poof. Well, kaboom and then poof.

But here's what's great: the guy who blew me up -- Paranoid Loyd -- sent me an innocuous IM wave: some taunt, some thanks, and mostly "it's business, not personal." I sent him a message back and for about 20 minutes got from him useful tips for hauling in high security space. Some things he pointed out:

• I was flying in a "pipe," a heavily-trafficked route between major trade hubs. I knew the journey between the Dodixie and Jita systems is such a high-traffic route, but not between Hek and Dodixie (my route). No wonder that he and his alt were parked along the way and knew that I'd (almost certainly) pop up further down the route.
• 20 million in cargo value is a frequent threshold for a pirate to attack you: they will lose a relatively cheap frigate or cruiser when the space-police show up to kill you for your aggression, but their other character or compatriot who scoops up the goods will enough booty to offset the loss. And, yeah, I had several times that amount.
• My cargo didn't nearly fill the hold. (This is not often the case, but in this instance it was -- and, then again, maybe it's a blessing I had only a marginally-full hold.) There are better-defended ships with enough cargo space that might've let me get out of that situation if attacked.
• He suggested two ships, one of which I've flown before and liked (the Nereus), as a vessel that can faster align to the next jump gate on a cargo path -- which translates into warping away to safety sooner. It has a smaller cargo hold, potentially reducing income -- but, if I'm losing gobs of money in collateral from lugging too much in a weak vessel, well that's no good, either.
• He gave a couple of suggestions for ship modules to increase survivability, particularly if I venture into low-security space to schlep cargo.

Very instructive; nicest pirate since Jack Sparrow.

There are good folks in New Eden

After Die Hard, Scrooged is my favorite Christmas movie. It starts with a pair of promos for a TV network's rendition of A Christmas Tale: the first from milquetoast execs, the second from the boss, Frank Cross. The latter is meant to make viewers terrified to miss the special, and it sets the tone with a bevy of "similarly" terrifying issues: acid rain, drug addiction, international terrorism, freeway killers.

Ah, freeway killers. Ran into them. Twice.

The first time was kind of a stunner. I had picked up a contract to haul a bunch of stuff from point A to point B in the game's high-security (high-sec) area. High-sec is new-player friendly, a usually pretty safe if boring sandbox to figure things out. Alas, I was suicide ganked, i.e. my ship blown up out from under me, and then someone picked up all the precious cargo from the scraps (I'll explain the suicide part in a bit). I had a browser window open over most of the game and caught a flash of red, heard an explosion, but didn't see it happen. Dang. I did, however, get kill rights on the offender, i.e. I could later fight them without fear of retribution from the in-game cops.

My capsule docked, and I started puttering in the market, shopping for a new cargo ship with my insurance money and trying not to think too much about the now-lost collateral I had to give up to snag the contract. In the midst of this, I got a message from another player who'd been nearby, saw what happened, and followed the offenders. (Yes, offenders: the in-game cops showed up and blew away the guy who killed me, which was predictable, hence the suicide part of suicide ganking; however, he had an alternate account simultaneously logged in or a colleague in the area who scooped up my cargo, which is perfectly legal.) He sent me the location in case I was interested in sweet vengeance, and he also offered to just blow him up if I sold him those kill rights (a cool mechanic). Not being anywhere near my regular crash pad and combat ship, I just gave him the rights and, not too much later, got a notice telling me the attacker had been blown up. Nice!

Around the same time, I also got a message from another player. He offered condolences on my loss and offered me an invitation to join his tiny, four-player corporation. They're more into the player-versus-player (PvP) aspect of the game, which I'm not quite ready to jump into (of my own volition, at least), but it was a nice offer, regardless.

The other time I got destroyed, it was totally my fault: I picked up a contract that would take me into low-security (low-sec) space, where guns are freer to fire without repercussion. Sure enough, I blindly jumped into low-sec just hoping for the best. I was immediately warp-scrambled (i.e. I couldn't escape with my faster-than-light drive) and my poorly-defended ship was blown away in seconds. I completely deserved it.

And, I learned from it, too. I discovered a filter built into the map that lets you see how many pilots have been in a particular area in the last half hour, and also how many kills within a similarly tight window. There are some other useful views, too. This meant that before I picked up my next contract going into low-sec, I checked recent activity and made an informed decision about whether to take the contract. I did, and got in and out unscathed. And I now have, too, a new ship hull to train up for: the game has blockade runners, which can equip extra protections (even a cloaking device) to deal specifically with low-sec space. It's about 20 days of skill-training time, and I might queue up the long ones when I'm next on vacation.