Random thoughts from the pit.
Just some random thoughts from a pod pilot wandering the systems of New Eden, the streets of Paragon City, and the islands in the Rogue Isles. Nothing overly exciting, just day-to-day living and loving.

I'm a member of the Repeat Offenders network in COx.  One of the "cardinal rules" is that there is no farming, nor talk of farming.  But, what IS farming?

But, it's ok to advertise to do X task/strike force repeatedly, in order to get a "good" recipe.  It's ok that all you do is one TF over and over and over again. If you log on 4 or 5 times a week (on one of your level 50s), and you do the Imperious Task Force each time you log on, maybe 2 or 3 times, and you go to the Auction House/Black Market afterwards, and that's all you do when you log on - that's not farming.

But, if I have a level 25 toon that is leveling by killing Banished Pantheon mobs in Dark Astoria - THAT is farming.  Even though I'm simply choosing to level in a way that is beneficial (magic salvage); but, I'm actually leveling vs running a task force repeatedly on a level 50 toon in order to get good recipe drops. 

One is considered farming by RO; but, the other is not...

So, what is farming?

I can steal from the grocery store in order to feed starving people, living on the street.  I can do that every day and justify it because I'm helping people to survive.  That does not make me any less a thief.  Even IF, in my mind, I'm not a thief.

New Eden seems to be growing by bits and pieces.  New systems and even regions occasionally being discovered.  The amount of pod pilots also seems to be on the rise over the past few years.  With the various clones available to pod pilots, it's almost as if we're immortals. 

Where we once received a casual nod, or wave of the hand, the great Empires now actively recruit from our numbers for their wars with each other.  So, now, we're the knights, we're the heroes, we're the forces that accomplish the goals of the great Empires?

Out in null sec, it's easy to forget what life in one of the Empires is like.  It's truly a different world out here.  I suppose the same can be said about both high sec and low sec empire space.  We all have our own laws, our own codes, our own rules by which to live.

It's easy to lose touch with the folks living in these other "areas".  It's easy to be out of touch with those just in another alliance, or sometimes corporation.

Constantly, we see new rookie pilots.  Sometimes, the advice we give IS good advice.  But, we're so out of touch with the rookie pilot state of mind, that the advice is just no good for a ROOKIE. 

I wonder if that's from where some of the major alliance collapses spring?  A leadership that became fat and out of touch with the common man.  A leadership accustomed to taking an unfair share of profits.  A leadership out of touch with the constant changes to the fashion in which we, the pilots, wage our wars...

Being out of touch is unavoidable in some circumstances... living in null sec for a long time, it's easy to forget how life was under the thumb of the great Empires.

Being out of touch for the leadership in null sec...  that seems to lead to bloated feelings of self-worth, arrogance, disdain for the very people who support your rule... time and again, being out of touch in this fashion has led to the demise of once-great and once-powerful pod pilot institutions. 

The would-be conquerors of vast regions of space end up being just another foot note, just another soldier in another nameless war that will have no point five minutes after it's ended...

Is being out of touch really a bad thing?

As I continue to be bored, I start flipping thru some old stories which I've saved.  Sometimes, I like to read them and remember "the good old days".

One such story, I've copied below:

DigitalCommunist Obsidian Core	Posted - 2006.08.08 01:41:00 - [338]   This forum thread deserves my applause. I haven't read so much of a corporations forum thread so thoroughly in what seems like an eternity - and its a great reminder that I still care about EVE. To answer the question "where did the Goons go wrong?" by itself is impossible. Go wrong at what? To people like Jasmine/JF, they failed to bring a new angle of thinking to what they deem as an old and jaded community. They are upset the opportunity to do something entirely new was squandered. Instead they fell into the same habits that I see a thousand other corporations making. I'm sure some Goons will disagree, but the simple fact that you are new to EVE and everything is new to YOU does not mean we haven't seen it all before. Your tactics, your leadership, your structure, your loyalty, your approach. None of it is unique, despite believing the contrary, and I think if there was ever an expert on radical thought it would be Jasmine. So the first failure of expectation is innovation. I say expectation, because that is what some people wanted to see. It doesn't mean that GoonSwarm was trying to innovate in the first place or that they should innovate, because after all, the standard and established norms which JF find stagnant are generally the ones that have mass appeal. They simply wanted to provide a stable and friendly environment for newbies to flourish in, and you can't do that with wild ideas which are harder to grasp than the game itself - unless your leader is more charismatic than Jesus and has the intellect of Einstein and the cunning of Sun Tzu. To see 2000+ people running around with radical political viewpoints and unorthodox (non-metagaming) strategies would be quite the sight. In fact, I'd real money to see that just because it would turn EVE on its freaking head. And I'm sure that making public my own personal dissapointment, and having my ideaologies associated with JF will cause me violent fits of vomiting for many nights to come. Sorry Jasmine :) The second reason why people's expectations were let down with GoonSwarm was their inability to capitalize on the tiny foothold they were given into 0.0 politics/warfare (through sheer luck, might I add) in any sort of long term capacity. They sorta had it, and then they didn't. For this, I squarely blame the current leadership - Remedial. He may have the ability to stir up the hive, but you can't expect to have any long term success without the planning, logistics and sheer political cunning to go along with it. The internal drama which was posted on E-O boards between Remedial and his directors perfectly exemplifies his inability to accept that HE ALONE IS NOT GOONSWARM. He may have created it, he may have the powers to destroy it. All corporations go through creation and destruction (eventually) and what matters is what you do in between. Remedial simply doesn't have the patience/stamina for it. The cold hard truth is that he likely created GoonFleet as his own personal shortcut to the success/fame he's been unable to grasp in the last three years on his own.
DigitalCommunist Obsidian Core	Posted - 2006.08.08 01:41:00 - [339]   So did GoonSwarm prove the point that even low skilled characters can wrestle with serious alliances in 0.0? If they wish to believe they did, simply by contesting XZH for two weeks, fine. But I don't believe they did. To prove a point they would have to been able to not only contest but hold that space. To prove that newbie ambition is more powerful than all the isk reserves of D2. To show that skillpoints and dreadnaughts don't matter when you have organization. In the end they lost the space. They didn't have the proper attitude going in, because a lot of it was "its okay if we lose it, we're still new!". If you go into any war with the option of defeat being "acceptable" by a large majority of your membership, that is the only outcome you'll recieve when there is any pressure put upon you. A mistake you are making now with the BoB war. And initially you had the right idea of hiring mercs to do the dreadnaught work, because really.. thats the only recourse you have when you can't fly a dread. But in the end you simply hold onto that concept. So what are we at now? Lack of innovation, and lack of organization. You've dissapointed quite a lot of people right there, but they were unfair expectations to begin with. It would be nice to see an entity come in and blitz the entire cluster in their first couple months, but the sad reality is that you can't do that. EVE has a steep as hell learning curve and the only way you'll be anything more than "NewbFleet" is with time. We all did it, so will you. But I think the even sadder reality is that many people (especially new ones) will misunderstand this and see it as "I can't compete unless I have skillpoints and isk" which is entirely untrue. My largest pet peeve about this community is the overestablished relevance of skillpoints and isk - and I was hoping a non-EVE based community would come in to clearly and definitively prove otherwise. Of course, to blame GoonSwarm of these two "failures" would be pretty silly. 99% of EVE's corporations can be blamed of being newbs when they were newbs, and lacking innovation. No, thats not a worthy topic of discussion. The real question should be "what have the Goons done to deserve being held back / hated / oppressed / insertsomething ?" And boy, am I going to love answering this question. I will say now that any Goon who seriously believes it was done to curb them from being a future threat is simply put: a moron. There IS a certain expectation from BoB when it comes to how other entities treat us. It doesn't require asskissing, or fear, or even general basic compliance to anything we say or do ingame. I'd be lying if I said those weren't nice when they do happen. But I'd also be lying if I said that is exactly what we/I want. No, I want people to think they can beat me. I want them to try, hard. I want them to go to great lengths at showing EVE just exactly how much "BoB sucks". Why? Because its fun fighting people who try. I'm not saying anybody who doesn't try to Jihad us is bending/rolling over, they could simply have similar political and strategic viewpoints (FIX is a good example). Getting that out of the way lets me focus on the core problem. We all know the reprocussions of them. GoonSwarm in its current state will never be allowed to exist in EVE, ever. If you take that as the threat of BoB hounding you ingame for all eternity, good. If I said this extends to the entire EVE community and end up sounding arrogant in your eyes, thats fine too. I do not represent the "EVE community", but BoB is part of it, and I know the people who I personally associate with and the community which we as a group associate with - and it we would simply not be a part of this mythological "EVE community" if it blindly accepted the cancerous filth that resides within GoonSwarm.
DigitalCommunist Obsidian Core	Posted - 2006.08.08 01:42:00 - [340]   If you've read this far and feel insulted at my last statement, don't. You're probably not part of it. I tread lightly for this next part, because I know blanket statements are stupid. But the public perception of the SomethingAwful community (from an outside perspective) is basically this: Its a community that I believe started with an honestly witty and comedic premise, then mutated into something totally different. When you get such a large community based around "comedy", people will naturally get a bit competitive and try to become the funniest one of them all. They then start believing 'any response is a good response' and slowly the truly hilarious stuff got buried under mountains of what I deem trolling. There are hundreds maybe thousands of people in SA who believe comedy lies in insulting or "poking fun at" anything and everything. This gets a response, which may not always be positive. In defense people start saying "its only the Internet man, dont be so serious", which slowly begins to mutate into "nothing should ever be taken seriously on the Internet, because its not real". This one phrase is the catalyst for everything that is wrong with the SA community, and the Internet at large. Its used as a carte blanche to act like a ****** towards other individuals across the Internet. This has continued for long enough to become the prevailing image of SA, which has then resulted in further multiplication of members like that. Now they have majority rule. To feel insulted by "internet jokes" is against the status quo, and the very borders of the SA community itself. Anyone who steps outside of it will be ridiculed into submission of one form or another. Going against it at this point is pretty much impossible. There are no reprocussions of behaving this way because the community pretty much encourages it, and being a jackass doesn't break any known Internet law.. so within the safety net of privately hosted forums, and carte blanche statements, something awful truly exists. Even if lowtax wanted to change the community, which I don't think he would given his fame and phat $, the only way to do it would be by destroying it and removing the communal meeting place of Internet delinquency. Whoa there Digi, thems some mighty fine rhetorics! But what does this gots ta do with EVE????? To put it bluntly, if people wanted to pay real money to be unfunny internet clowns towards each other, they'd be giving it to lowtax and not CCP. People come to EVE because they want to play an internet space game, not troll some forums. Ok? The LARGE majority of GoonSwarm has done this quite well. To argue this would be silly. The EVE community is tight, and thus passionate about making this the best MMO in existance. Some have been around for nearly five years, which is about four years of when it wasn't even a thoroughly "playable" game. We aren't attacking you because we despite newbies, or your internet spaceships might kill our internet spaceships in the far future. The tasteless remarks made about Smoske's tragic death was done by a small group of people within your ranks who are still playing the game as a forum, and not any forum, but your SA forum. They did it to get a reaction and achieved quite well in doing so, as a result they thought they were being the funniest cretins alive.
DigitalCommunist Obsidian Core	Posted - 2006.08.08 01:42:00 - [341]   Where things went really wrong.. ..was when the rest of the Goons defended these people out of some misguided attempt to preserve freedom of speech, and to a larger extent.. out of sheer habit and fear of prosecution (defining borders of your community = dont take it seriously man! its just a game!). That is the exact moment in time where you failed; failed to respect our community, failed to realize there may be consequences for doing so, failed to police yourselves. So now what? Now you're being prosecuted for the actions of a very few people, who unfortunately for GoonSwarm, have a commanding position within the corporation. For it to end, you'll have to learn this isn't SA Clone #2657 the hard way. We will keep teaching you the meaning of consequence for as long as you give us a reason. And you will learn, my God you will learn - either by disassociating yourselves from the trash that started this (which you've begun already) or finding your own path in EVE outside of GS. You can think of BoB as parents, scolding children for unruly behaviour. You can think of the community as Borg, forcing assimilation upon you under penalty of death. Pick and choose they are free metaphors, I really don't care. But what you're fighting against is nothing short of omnipotence itself. Only a cause delivered by the Divine can motivate the most bored and jaded vets of EVE to camp your stupid shuttles 24/7. And thats what this war is, a Holy War. We put a Jihad on you, and you'll find that even the thickest roleplay variations of this war (which I may be spewing now actually!) are quite hurty. You're going to go through days, weeks, and most likely months of ingame pressure and constraint. Until one day, you finally realize its not a place to pew pew and irritate the crap out of everyone who doesn't suckle on lowtax's teats and condemn anyone who even thinks of pulling another stupidly unfunny stunt. Then, and only then will the cancer be gone. /runs off to buy a stock of Uranium and Plutonium charges :D

There's this alliance, you may have heard of them, they're called the Band of Brothers.  One day, they decided that they would control the lives of everyone in null sec.  They decided that BoB would be the ones to control the known universe.

They were beat down and beat upon and forced to run and hide and lose system after system.  It seems they had taken to hiding in stations held by strong pirate factions, rather than being able to actually hold their own stations.

Once, they had an image of being powerful, perhaps even invincible.  Their leaders were haughty and overbearing tyrants.  That much has not changed.  What has changed is that this alliance just doesn't control much space.  They've decided that actually controlling space is beyond their capabilities.

So, they've started a PR-campaign about a bold new endeavour upon which they've embarked.  They call it MAXIMUM DAMAGE (either Max, or Max Age, for short).  Who is this campaign against?  Where will this campaign extend from/to?  What are the goals of this campaign?  No one knows.  It's goals are unknown.

Previously, this alliance called BoB, had grandiose plans of conquering all of null sec, and then moving on to conquer the Four Empires themselves.  Now, this alliance called BoB, has a grandiose plan NAME, and a large fleet.

How the (once thought) invincible have fallen.  The angels began their heavenly chorus the day the oppressed citizens of New Eden took up arms against their evil ant overlords... the ones we call BoB.

Groups such as the russian alliance have shown it does not take huge numbers to accomplish goals.  Groups such as the goonswarm have shown that it does not take a decade of experience to accomplish goals.  Many like-minded groups have shown that years of oppressive megalomania ARE reason enough to band together for the common good.

What got me thinking about all this today?  I drew the short straw and am stuck helping deliver POS fuel.  Whilst engaged in this activity, I was looking thru the local boards and found a bit of news that had made it's way out to us...

I'll try to keep this is brief and neutral as possible:

The buildup -
Most of this was posted at that point. Basicly BoB moves to x-7o, a NPC-station-system in Pure Blind. From there they launch an attack on IRON, and in particular, VFK-. The initial fights are pretty straightforward. BoB throw themselves through the gate, Iron defend it. Main fights are at one gate, but BoB tries to flank and go through another simultaneously. They managed to tackle an Avatar, who DD's their butt and Iron get some quick help by a mix of NC and some 60 RA. Thanks to RA and the titan the fight ends in favour of NC.

Friday passes with no major engagements, BoB building up their base in x-7o and NC mobilizing to support IRON.

Saturday sees some action. NC is camping homeland while reports come of a BoB fleet that approaches from behind/another pipe. NC jump their main fleet towards JU-, where BoB has launched an attack on the cynojammer. Second NC fleet meanwhile prepares to jumpbridge to flank BoB. For some reason they decide to jump to a dead-end system, S-DN, which allows for NC to gather the two fleets again and set up on optimals on the gate. BoB jumps back into JU- and of course get slaughtered. The main part of the NC fleet are not even present, 15min delay on jumps through gates, couple of mins to load grid and a few mins to activate mods. Lag hit both sides bad, but NC had the position and the numbers in this fight.

Sunday has an early/US TZ fight in 2R-, BoB gets repelled here as well. Losses on both sides are pretty equal but NC holds the field.

..later that sunday BoB floods into CCP- and starts to work on the cynojammer. NC has a fleet about the double size compared to the BoB numbers, and when the jammer approaches half armor, NC sends about half fleet into CCP- while the other is trying to flank BoB.

BoB immediately retreats into DO6. NC main fleet follows and starts to clear off all stragglers they can, when 7 (seven) cynos lit up and NC are called back. BoB cyno in at least two titans, a mothership, a bunch of dreads and.. they seem to equip all their pod-pilots with HACs, their fleet goes from BS- to HAC-heavy. While in D06, BoB pops a small, abandoned mining tower. Obviously both sides are reluctant to jump into eachother so.. BoB calls it a day and retreats.

Monday was fairly dead, NC manned their camp while BoB was seen cynoing in/out lots of logistics in x-7o.

Tuesday saw BoB and RA fight over some POS somewhere, reports has it BoB have popped 15 or so RA-towers a bit away but it's nothing anyone bothered to defend as far as I know up until this point. BoB scores a few carrier-kills, while NC is busy killing a carrier/dread of some unknown people somewhere else.

Wednesday had no fight of significance either.
 

All in all:
BoB have been trying different approaches. Throwing ships at the NC to try 'flood' the dam. Obviously without any success. At several occations they've been trying to flank the NC but reports have come well in time to repel those attacks.

Losses:
Both sides lost ships, mostly BoB due to the nature of NC being the defender (and numbers). Regarding infrastructure.. BoB killed one offline small mining POS, and as reports, a handful of RA-POS' somewhere.

Caps:
Only caps really fielded is the NC Avatar the first two days, and some assorted carriers/motherships with fighters. BoB had their hotdrop in d06. In the current situation caps arn't really needed.

RA:
Hardly been involved apart from that first day, they got their own little thing going on with BoB and their POS'.


NC:
Just man the camp, keep scouting BoB and doing their job.

BoB/MAX:
Main thing you see is they are trying to kill POS. It's quite obvious they're trying to kill Sov, cyno gens, etc. Logistics, infrastructure. So far they havn't had any impact at all in that regard, but obviously that's a threat not to neglect. To my knowledge the only POS to die so far is mining POS, and well.. we both know they give quite a nice income. In this regard, BoB purely struck RA so far (and I don't know how big impact that had on RA at this point).

All in all BoB have caused damage - to RA. While they lost isk - to NC. I'm not sure that BoB will be successful of killing sov, but the obvious threat is to mining POS' all over. I count MAX as a potential threat, but mainly to mining POS if anything. They'll have a hard time fighting numbers/cynojammers.

And so far their FC's havn't impressed. A few decisions taken that actually made it easier for NC to beat them.


.I think that's as neutral as I can put it.

Some healthy respect is needed for BoB's capfleet, but their conventional fleets are no major threat at this point. FC's taking odd decisions, easy to predict their moves, and cynojammers + numbers effectively counter them (at this point). Obviously this is all subject for change if need be.

All non-BoB should be looking after their POS' at this point. Their main strength with that cap heavy fleet, and their main goal as it seems, is just to kill every POS they see.

As I said, leave my name/no direct quotes please, but I think that's the best/as neutral as it can get view on the MAX-campaign so far.

Happy hunting, see you in space,
o7


2008.07.17 02:50
..just read through the stuff I mailed to you, the 3rd mail wasn't too clear on d06.

1) Their titans didn't fire off DD's there, NC escaped pretty much unharmed. We lost some stragglers, and people that d/c'ed and logged back in.
2) The abandoned tower in d06 = Fade, not the Deklein region. BoB been doing some chestbeating about 'taking sov3' by killing a tower in there. Well.. tbh noone know the tower existed. :) And noone cared about losing sov there either.
3) I don't think BoB is throwing a diversion, they honestly do try to take down the jammer. The POS war they fight is simultanous with the conventionals. And in the d06-fight they obviously had prepared for a hotdrop. Reports from our spies say SirMolle was FCing their conventional fleet at that point (and Shrike was one of the titans that arrived).

Just thought those were worth adding. I think MAX is just that.. if they fight multiple fronts at the same time, they will destroy something, almost all the time.

I'm flying around, and  there's this cloud/nebula ring circling the gate thru which I had arrived to this system.  It must go on for hundreds of thousands of kilometers or more.  It's set against an eerily green background.  Once arriving at my departure gate, I spy another cloud/nebula formation, equally as huge, encircling the gate, as it were.

Thru every system I travel, I'm noticing all these formations, and no two systems seem to have the same colour-hue to them.  The local star(s) giving each nebula it's own beautiful coloration, I'm noticing a beauty in space that I have taken for granted all these years.

These space stations and jump-gates loom as monuments to humankind's achievements in New Eden.  They are quite majestic and breath-taking, if you take the time to actually look at them.

I don't know the cause of this nostalgia; but, I find myself visiting a variety of planets, moons, even asteroid belts.  The variety in their individual beauty is staggering to the consciousness.

This... This is the reason I first looked to the stars and yearned to be a pod pilot.  We may never fully understand the secrets of those who went before us; but, we can bask in the beauty that must have captivated their hearts and had them create their wonders in these very systems...

Ofttimes I hear rookie and veteran pilots alike, speaking in terms of pod-pilot-experience and/or mastery in various areas.  I hear rookies complain they can never catch up to a vet, and vets explaining to the rookies that the key is to specialize.

So, I'm looking at a little frigate which I occasionally fly, and I mentally take note of the skills which I will use in this, and all, ships which I fly.  I consider only the skills I currently have trained to level 4 or 5 (not including a few I desire to get trained that high).

For any ship I will fly, I am utilizing (to one degree or another of *usefulness*) the following skills:

navigation:  acceleration control, afterburner, evasive maneuvering, fuel conservation, high speed maneuvering, navigation, warp drive operation

science:  cybernetics, thermodynamics

spaceship command:  spaceship command, appropriate racial ship skill(s)

engineering:  5 base skills, plus about another 10 skills for shield tanking

electronics:  7 base skills, plus up to another 7 skills depending on if I'm doing some type of jamming.

mechanic:  3 base skills, plus half a dozen+ if i'm armour tanking, plus applicable rigging skills, a couple more skills if i'm repairing overheated equipment on the fly.

weapons:  this is easily, at least 8 or so skills for the lightest weapons of each category (drones, guns, missiles), up to about twice that much for various weapons.  So at least 8 skills of one weapon type will be added here, depending on what I'm flying.

These ARE skills I've trained up to level 4/5, which ARE used no matter what ship I am flying, be it a frigate, cruiser, battleship, etc.   This does not include 5.376 million SP spent in maxing learning skills and having cybernetics up to lvl 5 (in order to use the best implants).  This I've done to minimize my training time, even when I'm sans implants.

This does not reflect the concept of my ability to use the best items (t2 vs t1) and best ships available.  Whereas a rookie pilot would have to train up a considerable number of skills to at least level 4 in order to avail himself of the same caliber of equipment which I may use.

So, even in a simple rifter frigate, I am easily putting to use 40-50 skills which I've trained to level 4/5.  If every one of these skills was simply Rank 1 and require no prerequisite skills (which all of them are not), and if we shoot the low-end of 20 lvl 4s and 20 lvl 5s, we're looking at 6m SP.  As these skills ARE skills which I use in all ships I fly, I make it a habit to max their training.

From that vantage point, if a rookie (near) maxes his learning skills in at least 9 of the 11 learning skills, and has decent/good implants; then after he's achieved those several million SP of skills -- he only needs about 6 million more SP to be on equal footing with me in a frigate which utilizes a single weapon type.  The learning skills and implants are, of course, optional training; but, the training time increases wildly if he has not educated himself, as it were, skill-wise.

So, as I continue to listen to various pilots' opinions of how even the battleground is, in a single dogfight, and how easily a rookie pilot can specialize and catch up (in training) to a veteran pilot... I can only shrug and smile.

Normally, I find myself partial to a hot piece of pecan pie, sometimes with a side of ice cream.  Today however, I had the fun of running into another kind of "pie" .  This incident occurred while I was running an errand thru low sec space in my battleship, the Silly Rabbit.

As I jumped into the first 0.3 system, I noticed my warp drive was not responding; this, at about the same time I'd realized I was being locked.  There was a rifter jamming me, with two more rifters shortly appearing.

This was odd, to be certain.  The rifters weren't doing much damage to my shields; but, what if they were holding me for some friends?  At any rate, I let loose the hounds (as I call my drones) and, in turn, took each rifter to hull before they'd warp off.

As the third rifter was warping out, and I was able to engage my warp drive, a battle-cruiser warped in, and I noticed the local channel jump from 6 to 20 names.  I had begun my warp as soon as the third rifter was leaving, and so I continued my journey.

The rest of the trip was uneventful; but, I'll always remember the moments I shared with my special friends.

Our corp's public channel crackled to life.

"Hey what's going on today?"  The voice wasn't famiiar; but, it seems that it belonged to an enemy pilot in the system we'd just entered.

"Not much, just busting in to blow up your goodies," I replied.  "Sounds good.  Don't expect us to just let you destroy everything without doing pew pew back at you," this from another unfamiliar voice on our public channel.  "Glad to hear it.  I'm looking forward to some good fights," I said as I flipped on my scanner.

All of a sudden our private channel came alive.  "NO NO NO NO SMACKTALKING.  STOP THE SMACK TALKING," some noob FC was yelling in our ears.

Smacking, eh?  Weird.  "No one else is talking on any channel currently, you must be talking to me," I said.

"Yes I'm talking to you," this green FC continued.  "This is a game for us, it's supposed to be fun.  So NO SMACK TALKING."

"You seem to be confused, el commadante," my scan result came back empty, so i started another scan and continued, "smack talking would be something along the lines of my making remarks about your questionable parentage, followed by a few comments of how I'm amazed you have the intelligence to remember to breath.  All this, WHILE I'm trying to destroy your ship."

"Are you calling me stupid?!?!" my FC barked into the channel.  "I'll have you know i'm FC on this mission,  and you have to..." I didn't hear anything else, about that time I left the fleet channel and was locking this moron.  I switched to the local system channel and proceeded, "Hey mouth breather, this is smacking -- I'm gong to burn your ship into dust and urinate on your frozen corpse, and that of any other clones you bring back within 10 jumps of me."

Immediately the local channel filled with cheers and laughter, from my corpmates.  The chant began, "two men enter, one man leaves," and the term smack talk would soon have a definite meaning that someone would not soon forget. 

I sit here, pretending to stare out into space, when all I'm really doing is double- and triple-checking my instruments, heading, etc.  My mind isn't even on the little wars with which my corporation is engaged.  No, I'm thinking about the empires and their wars; or, more importantly, their militias.

Many a brother and son will face death in the ongoing wars between the four empires.  Why?  What have these brave souls to gain from fighting for "the empires"?

Have I become so jaded, or perhaps mercenary, that I am missing obvious reasons to support the empires? 

They provide a level of safety; but, not really. 

The better resources to be found in an area, the less security the empires provide.  It's as if all the empires want nothing more than slaves out of their citizens -- oppressed peoples living in fear of pirates and murderers. 

What price do these outlaws pay for their evil deeds?  Oh, they're not allowed into the high security areas of space, or they face quick destruction of their ship.  They're not allowed in the areas with the poorest resources, or else the shuttle they travelled in, will be destroyed, pod left intact.

This is justice?  A bounty can be collected by the pirate's own friends.  Yet, we should send our warriors to fight and defend the empires' assets, so they may continue to oppress our people...

What better is this than to be a slave to the Amarr?  I see no differences of note between the four great empires.  Nothing but pain lies ahead for our warriors.  That is, until they throw off the yokes of tyranny and make their way to the so-called lawlessness of null-sec space.  One day, all our brothers will rejoice in the freedom to truly choose their own destinies and live their lives as free-peoples.

No, I remember very well the reasons for my strong distaste of "the empires".  One day all our peoples shall truly be free, that is my dream.

"After 24 hours fighting can legally occur between those involved."

Do you think they read about my hunting expedition the other day and wanted to test my skill?  Since they declared the war against us, is it wrong of me to be consulting my agents for my antagonists' locations?

My radio crackles and I hear different corpmates snickering and giggling.  Of course the entire corp received the war dec, and it seems the entire corp had the same idea as me.

I can't help but remember the last team I led.  My primary call was met with replies like:

"hey, why is my wingman locking me?"

"this mining laser doesn't seem to be damaging them"

"i think i hit self destruct"

"we're shooting all the purples, right?"

"stop shooting me"

"how do I close the star map?"

"how do you make this shield drone work"

All this and more, in local, from my team. 

This was met with quite a few cat-calls from the locals, along the lines of "hahaha noobs". 

Until they realized, too late, that we'd just podded every last one of them.

Never underestimate your opponent, a decisive opening battle can go far in instilling fear in the hearts of your foes.  Unless they have unlimited funds; and then it's just nonstop fun.