The Caracal Pickup

So, eventually the contract for the floating Caracal went through, accepted by the original owner. And then, a day later, arrived an email, with a question that he clearly hadn't given much thought to;

"Did you find my ship in wormhole space?"

Given I'd just traded him back the same ship with the same name and the same fitting as he had lost in wormhole space... well. I didn't really think it was a question worth asking, but I guess it was an icebreaker. So I sent him a few hints and tips, and suggested that he Google for Failheap Challenge and look up some fittings there, or ask some corp mates for ship fittings.

The thing is, there were so many questions I wanted to ask. Did he not ask his corpmates about these things anyway? Or did they not talk to him about them off of their own back? Or, heaven forbid, was this actually a fit that had been discussed, agonized over with his friends, and they had decided that this monstrosity was the way to go?

Over the past year in wormhole space we've run into all sorts of different new players with a variety of ship configurations, but this was easily the worst. The others had fits that were at least heading in the right direction, even if vastly underestimating the hostility of wormhole space.

You've got to assume it's a trap - it's EVE

While scouting a wormhole yesterday looking for targets a Caracal appeared on my directional scanner. No cans suggesting Ladar or Grav site running. No wrecks appearing suggesting that it was running a site - I'm not sure I'd want to in a Caracal anyway. I made the call on comms that it was likely abandoned and scanned it down. I moved the probes away rapidly in case it was manned, then got some backup ready, in case it was a trap. I warped at 10km... nothing. In came the pilot who was to fly it off, landed next to it in a pod... nothing. It was boarded, and we returned to base.

Sometimes, even in EVE, even in wormholes in EVE, things are exactly as they seem

The fit was pretty terrible, with two bizzare rigs fitted to a combo mining-and-missiles fit, with nothing in the cargo hold and a tech 1 shield tank. So I flew it back to high sec and contracted it to it's original owner for 500k. We'll see if he comes to pick it up.

The Beginning

I've been mulling over the idea of starting a blog up to talk about my thoughts on wormhole combat and other aspects of EVE Online for a while now, and never have. Today I realised that there was no reason not to, and so here I am, on the interwebs, with a blog about spaceships.