Why Didn't You Shoot The Pirate?

I receive a lot of questions at work.  "How do I do this?"  "Can I do that?"  "How long will it take you to do xyz?"  The one question I never thought I'd get asked was: "why didn't you shoot the pirate?  I have a co-worker who is interested in Eve Online and he read Monday's post on my adventures making bookmarks this past weekend.  He wanted to know why I just didn't kill the pirate I encountered.

The short answer is that I don't equip guns on my Cheetah.  The Cheetah is a covert ops ship and does sneaky recce stuff very well.  Combat?  Not so well.  The Cheetah has 3 high slots, and after fitting a cloak and a probe launcher, what you have left is just enough to either irritate someone or have them laugh at you if they are in anything tougher than a pod.


Now, what my friend doesn't know is that Eve has another class of cloaky ship I could have flown: the stealth bomber.  But I don't own one yet.  Why?  Because I don't have the spare cash lying around to buy one right now.  I just bought a Maelstrom that I'll unwrap and start flying on Christmas Eve, which is when my skill plan has Rosewalker finishing Minmatar Battleship IV.  I always seem to have more pressing needs that picking up a fun ship like the Hound.


A more important reason is that for making bookmarks, the Cheetah is just a better ship for the task.  Since I like to make close observation points while traveling cloaked, the Cheetah's greater sub-warp speed (a base of 381 m/s compared to the Hound's 284 m/s) lets me create more bookmarks in the same amount of time.  The Cheetah also has a slightly larger cargo hold, which, combined with the fact that I'm not carrying any ammunition, gives me the option to pick up some courier contracts while I'm out and about (I carried out 2 over the weekend).  And the Cheetah's greater warp speed allows me to not only keep ahead of any roaming gangs I may encounter, but allows me to get to the area of operations faster as well as spend less time completing courier missions.

So that's why I didn't shoot the pirate.  Not because I'm a big carebear.  Really.