Running Around Before Inferno

Over the course of playing Eve, I've developed 3 criteria I look for in the ships I want to fly.

1.  Can it fit a Covert Ops Cloaking Device II?
2.  Can it use jump gates?
3.  Does it have duct tape holding it together?

If the ship meets 2 of the 3 criteria I would like to fly the ship.  Over the weekend I finished learning the the last skill needed to fly the Panther, the Minmatar Black Ops battleship that was the only remaining ship I couldn't fly that met all three criteria.

Of course just because I have the skills to fly ships doesn't mean I actually own the ships.  That requires money.  So I had to leave my Prowlers in station and fly something with a bit more cargo capacity to do some planetary interaction work. For Rosewalker the ship was a Mammoth.  I was in a hurry so I flew an unusual Mammoth.  The Mammoth was carrying a web, point and scram in the mids and a Damage Control I in the lows.  And no weapons.  If someone ganked me I would make a funny kill mail, but I was in a hurry and just wanted something that could carry a decent amount of product.

As fortune would have it, as I was fiddling around the last customs office I visited, a probe showed up 11 km away.  And sure enough, a Thrasher showed up shortly after.  I think he was a bit surprised that I actually was running my damage control unit.  My ship was lolfit, but I'm not stupid, especially with Hulkageddon still running.  So before the Thrasher pilot could do anything, I warped off to another planet.

Well, maybe I am stupid.  I remembered that I hadn't picked up any cargo from the customs office, so I warped back to a place where a nice Thrasher was sitting.  Now, I think I startled the Thrasher pilot.  I didn't notice him target me, but I did see him moving away from me.  So I quickly picked up my cargo and warped to the gate just in case he decided to change his mind and started blasting away.

On the way back to my home station, I saw a very unusual sight.  A Hyena.  That's right, one of those rare electronic attack frigates sitting at a gate.  I'm not sure exactly what was going on, but I turned on my trusty damage control unit to discourage people and went on my merry way.

When I had gathered everything from all my colonies, I put it in Wandering Rose's Mastodon and made the rounds to Rens and Hek to sell my products.  The Mastodon gives me a nice warm fuzzy feeling flying it for two reasons.  First, the built-in warp core stabilizers and added tank gives me a greater sense of security.  The second is that the ship is red in color.  How cool is that?

That sense of security came in handy when making the run between Rens and Hek.  When I jumped into Onga I saw the Incursion graphics indicating that the Sansha had invaded the Erada system.  I started to worry until I saw I was alone on the gate.  With all the problems I heard the incursion fleets had keeping the Sansha repressed I expected to take incoming fire but a closer look at the influence bar showed Sansha influence was at 0%.  The Mastodon is a good ship to take into that type of situation, but I think I need to work on getting a faster align time just in case I'm not so lucky next time.  The one thing I was proud of myself for was that I was able to evaluate the situation before my cloak dropped.  I'm getting better at this game.

The one thing I didn't do Sunday was finish fitting my Typhoon and Breacher.  I don't do a lot of security missions and when I do I usually use gunships like Maelstroms and Hurricanes.  But with the new missile launcher graphics coming out with Inferno I really want to take a couple of missile boats into missions and see them first hand.  One of the reasons I chose Minmatar is that they can do so many things.  Of course, that means spending a lot more time in training, but now all that training is going to pay off on something besides preparing to fly Caldari ships.