Good Morning, Good Afternoon, Good Evening.

As I find myself learning new things in EVE, when to spam the warp button, that the fight is never over - only paused, what fittings can be easily swapped out for a great difference... I still don't know why people are so bitter about losing a ship. I can understand being a bit annoyed, even angry, but I can't see why they fail to note that it's possible they set themselves up to lose it.

I mean, I know losing a ship is a bad thing, time, money and effort have gone into saving up, buying and fitting the ship. And to have someone blow it up for fun is probably frustrating. But surely people can acknowledge that maybe they shouldn't have taken it ratting in low sec, or that maybe they should have put a stasis web on instead of the extra cap booster. Every time a ship is lost, there is a lesson to be learnt, sometimes it isn't obvious but it's always there.

For example, earlier today I logged on, performed routine checks and saw 2 new players in local. Asides from me they were the only ones in the system. So I called in my crew, jumped into my pod and put it in my Punisher, the latest in a long line of lost frigates. I started undocking procedures and moments later I was looking at the golden clouds in space surrounding the system. But there were more important things to do than admire the view, so up came the system scanner, set to maximum range at 360°.

*Ping* 2 contacts on scan. Instead of trying to refine I jumped straight to the 5° scanning range and pointed it at the first cluster of belts. *Ping* Still showing on scan. I checked what they were piloting, a Coercer and a Cormorant. Now I do like being wreckless, jumping into fights where the chance of survival was small, and the potential gain was mediocre, and if I win all i'd gain is a document with the pilot's name and a damage report. But this was maybe a bit too much, i'm all for taking anything up to Cruisers if they're on their own, but 2 destroyers, I had visions of 1 gaining range and picking me off while I was busy with the other.

Well, I wasn't about to let them stroll in and start ratting, so I brought up the comms menu and had a look for any friendlies nearby. There was 1 friendly that was able to help a few jumps out. I told him where the prey was and what I knew about the pilots and he told me he was on the way.

Waiting. Patience is a pirate's best friend, but when I know where the enemy is, I start to get an itchy trigger finger. Too long to wait, I told the backup I was going for it reguardless, hell, I figured if I lost my Punisher I had 4 more fully fitted waiting for me at the station, and it's not like they're expensive. I set my Punisher aligning with the belt. "Ship is Aligned" I heard through my implants. The shipmaster was anxious I could tell. He knew his life was expendible to me, but I got him because he's borderline insane, and very good at his job. He applied for the position solely for these moments.

I saw the asteroids before the Destroyers, as the Punisher was coming out of warp. The tunnel stopped, i'd come out of warp a mere 8km from one of the Destroyers, and just as the other started to fall apart from the guns of a Sansha Lord. I was in luck! I immediately targetted the pod ejecting from the broken Destroyer and had him pinned down, seconds later the pod was history and I could focus my efforts on the remaining Destroyer.

I turned and began to get into scrambler range when it disappeared. There was a moment's silence while I replayed the events, how could I let it escape me! I was so close to blocking it's escape! But escape it did, or so I thought, 10 seconds later it reappeared on top of me. Alarms were going off in my head, I was targetted! The idiot came back! I primed my focused lasers, equipped Multifrequency charges and set a fast, close up orbit. Scrambler was in full effect and I started tearing into his shield with the lasers while taking down his capacitor with my small nosferatu.

What seemed like seconds later his shield was down and I was starting through his armour, the Sansha Lord had just targetted me and while I was moving too fast for him to cause too much damage my pulse started racing that little bit faster. Seemingly out of nowhere came the friendly in a stealth bomber and started tearing into the armor with me. Not before long all that was left was the charred remains of the Destroyer. I looked around trying to find the pod, there it was! Lock target! Locking... Locking... Locked! And scrambled! The pilot hadn't been quick enough to warp away, and now he was paying for his error! Moments later my lasers screamed through his pod tearing it apart like it was made out of paper, now all that was left was the Sansha Lord, no point in leaving anything behind.

So we quickly killed the Sansha Lord without too much trouble.

Now during that whole thing not a word was spoke with the 2 doomed pilots, no ransom was offered as I deemed it to be pointless, no ISK was offered to stop me killing the ships. But right at the end as I locked the second pod, I got a nice "Thanks, newb" in local chat.

This brings me right back to my point at the top of this post. He knew the risks of coming into low-sec space, there's a big warning before he jumps telling him things like this can happen. If he didn't want to run the risk, there is literally thousands of missions that he can take that keep him in high-sec space. Ok he might be new, but when I was new and I saw that message for the first time warning me of the danger, I stopped, turned around and found somewhere else to go, I only risked it a bit later when I figured i'll end up going through at some point anyway so why wait?

I can honestly understand him being a bit miffed at losing his ship, but if it was insured then he's just lost time, if his clone is backed up properly, as is taught in the tutorial these days he'll just be in a different location, and if he didn't want to get blown up and podded, he should have stayed in high sec space, or fit his ship differently just in case. It is possible to rat in a PVP fitted ship, it might be a bit different, but it is easily possible, and then when someone turns up to kill you, you will have a fighting chance to stop them.

I don't know, just my thoughts on the whole "But why did you kill me" thing. I killed you for 1 simple reason. "Because I can".

All in all though this has been quite a good day for me and my corp. In total i've got around 8 kills to my name, around 3 of which are solo in my trusty punisher, best day for kills i've had so far, and none of them were war targets either... Though now i'm confined to low sec space for a while, my sec status didn't like today at all, but hey, i'm a pirate! Savvy?

Fly safe

- Noir Avlaa.