So Friday I came home from work with an utterly empty weekend in front of me; Ninja-time! Opened up Dotlan looked for promising spots of activity, Kaunokka looked promising around 35K npc kills in the last 24 hours, level 4 agents and 0.5 security, should be full of missioners right? Set off in my ninja fitted Orca and headed down there.Three Caldari Navy Issue Ravens and a Golem later al staring intently at a ‘damaged heron’ in the ship’s crew mission not moving all. My original assumption is confirmed, plenty of mission runners here, all bots, fucking disheartening.

After the bot disaster on Friday, I move the operation to the Dodixie area (living out of an Orca is awesome for moving around). Nobody bloody shoots all day. Saturday evening I dock the Orca in dodixie sell of my carefully stolen meta 3 & 4 loot + dogtags which still adds up to 78 million, so not a total loss but no kill-mails and no tears 🙁 .

Sunday I decide I’ll move to space I know really well I want some kill-mails now. While I won’t get rich in the level 3 hub I’m heading for pilots there are younger and most have never seen a Ninja looter before. I point my Orca towards Genesis and head out. I pick Bherdasopt as the target system. Not the most obvious choice for a Ninja system kills per 24 hours hardly ever goes over 15.000 here. Bherdasopt has a few ‘perks’ however that I’ll get into in a minute. It also helps I know the Area extremely well as I lived there for six months and I roam lowsec around the area as Keada quite often.

Now about those ‘perks’; The system has no stations and I find that people are far more likely to shoot in such systems as it appears less likely you can swap ships. Many younger pilots are totally oblivious to what an Orca can do and think it’s just a mining ship of some sort, which suits my purposes just fine. Furthermore the system is quite big and the mission agents live next door in dead-end Simela, from the Simela gate to Bherdasopt star is a 60 AU flight. The system has two other gates one into Gonditsa which a nearly perma-camped lowsec gate and one into Malma the way out to civilisation and the rest of New Eden. Now most missions for reasons unknown to me always seem to spawn within a 20AU bubble around the star (if somebody knows do enlighten me). Now the last perk is less certain -because it’s human behaviour- but mission runners (nearly) always run back to their mission station when they warp off after shooting at my me, in this case Simela, through the gate into a dead-end system… Guess offgrid from which gate I park my Orca? Indeed.

Anyway I parked the Orca and got to work scanning. I got the first shooter within 20 minutes. A a little over a month old Thorax shot at my vigil and stayed in his mission. It died in seconds to my Cynabal but after two days of nothing even this pretty worthless kill still felt like finding water in the desert [mail].

After down time I scan down another young character this time in a Caracal, he shoots and as I warp back to my Orca to grab the Cynabal I notice him staying on dscan most of the 48 AU warp. He’s heading for the gate. I warp the Cynabal strait down to the gate he jumps through, I follow, he de-cloaks 10 km away from me, I tackle it and kill it, cheap kill again I admit it freely [mail].

Then I scan down a Megathron, finally something actually worth shooting at, that is if it shoots me of course. Which initially it doesn’t. He warps out of his mission to dump aggro on my vigil so I warp out and point dscan at his mission from a nearby moon and wait for him to return. When he does I re-enter and target him, this time not using the passive targeter I normally use for getting a ship scan. Bingo! He has auto-lockback on and he shoots me 😀 He types some Russian in local which I later found out meant ‘sorry’ thank you Google Translate, and yes he’s about to be really sorry. I again grab the Cynabal and tackle him in his mission. I orbit him tight making his railguns useless and while it takes some work to break his tank (I’m an idiot and shot the wrong damage type) it eventually does. Dead Megathorn and a mail notifying me I’ve been set to terrible standing, gleeeeeeeeeee <(^_^)> [mail]

Later I scan down a Drake after giving up on a Raven that warped out of his mission seven times already right after I entered it he still has a timer on me though…

The Drake locks me up right away shoots the second I go red to him, like the Caracal earlier he warps to gate after I warp out. When I land in the Cynabal he’s still on the Bherda side of the gate and, engages me despite having now seen the Cynabal so I promptly tackle him and go to work. And then; *FUCK* Raven on the gate, the one with the timer on me and he promptly locks me up, so I’m getting a little worried here… But to my amazement he just sits there and watches me kill the Drake. As the Drake enters armour I wonder if maybe he’ll shoot me after? Some people have a weird sense of honour after al, but he doesn’t and thus I leave content with the Drake kill. [mail]

Four mails in one day to save my weekend, that’ll do me. Till next time, fly smart everyone!