The Dying of the Light: Preparations

MURDERDEATHKILL

I am MurderDeathKill, Former CEO of Sinister. My experience in New Eden dates back to 2007 and although I in no way consider myself an expert. I have logged over 15,000 hours flight time in New Eden. Empire, Lowsec, Wormhole, Nullsec and Abyssal Pockets. My understanding of game mechanics is pretty solid but my understanding of people and other pilots is better.

In this series I will dive into something that is not a mainstay activity of the alliance, or even something that attracts a lot of interest. Although WRECK does hold a wormhole for member use. This series is about infiltrating other wormholes and the chaos that very small contingent or even a solo pilot can cause.

Cast your imagination back to the summer of 2019 where sales taxes and broker fees were increased, the VNI was slapped hard with the nerf-stick and a monument was placed in C-J6MT to commemorate the colossal battle that took place earlier in the year. I was feeling the pressure of being the CEO and primary active leadership within a corp of 100 pilots and some much earned decompression was needed.

A large Russian native, newbie friendly corporation called CONOCO had assisted on one of the alliance wardecs, they do this sometimes for “content” but I am yet to see them appear in force or try to complete any objectives against us. It is just something they do to provide extra targets for their members in Highsec space. I thought to myself that they are a perfect candidate for me to blow off some steam (and some rounds) into some soft targets and relieve my pvp itch.

I took to my various discord servers and asked around for a ‘Hunting’ Loki. I love the loki, it is by far my favourite cruiser size ship and has everything a marauding hunter could want. Weapons system versatility with the option of recently buffed autocannons, HAM missiles for devastating DPS on similar or larger sized targets or the classic artillery platform, is the #1 reason this ship is a deadly tool for most use cases. The ability to operate a covert-ops cloak and the bonuses that come along with the reconfiguration system is the cherry on top of a very sweet minmatar flavoured pie.

I opted initially for the ‘Coward’ Loki - with a rack of long range 720mm artillery cannons, warp disruptor, range bonused webs and a MicrowarpDrive. Upgraded with some medium-to-high value abyssal modified modules. The extra range on the point and web was important for me to be able to utilise the 720mm artys to their full potential, and to keep me out of harm's way.

So with my ship fitted and my implants plugged in I was ready to cause some chaos. Or was I? The answer is a resounding “no”. The most important thing about any pvp is the preparation. The coward loki specifically is all about picking your target carefully and knowing exactly what the outcome will be. Hunting is not about good fights, or engaging pvp content with a capable adversary for honour or bragging rights. It’s about tracking, destroying and eliminating your target then extracting, all in a low risk manner to ensure you are able to repeat the process. In order to be able to achieve this. Research is required.

I had my targets in mind, the somewhat soft underbelly of the russian speaking community with one of their new player friendly corporations with enough infrastructure to attract large numbers of members to make finding targets easy. First stop ‘Zkill’ on searching for conoco I immediately found out they had members everywhere. Finding a location where more than 1 or 2 of them were present in highsec was impossible, so back to the drawing board. The majority of kills/losses were spread out all around highsec which makes sense for a WH based corp. So how to find their home? I want to use this swiss army knife of a ship and take it to their backyard and hide in the bushes, jumping out on unsuspecting pilots then returning to the darkness.



Enter ‘John’, John is a newbie. He has played lots of MMOs before but never tried eve online. His friend recommended it to him and he was looking for some guidance from an established corp with a record of helping out newbros. Alas the backstory was never needed as CONOCO has extremely relaxed recruitment policies and John (an alternate character) never has or ever will speak with another member of conoco. He has one purpose. To find the entrance to CONOCO Prime.

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