For animals, the entire universe has been neatly divided into things to
(a) mate with,
(b) eat,
(c) run away from,and
(d) rocks.
-- (Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites)
My last six kills have had me flying a Daredevil, a Pilgrim, a Rifter, a Harbinger and the Fleet Stabber. Four were destroyed with the assistance of a covops pilot to find the targets, three with the assistance of a command ship pilot in system.
NovaKane and her associates made 106million ISK from the sale of the loot, zero ISK from offered ransoms (150mil was offered for the Maelstrom but the pilot kept shooting)
We found out that RSS Core Scan Probes are fucking expensive and that people don't pay enough attention to their on board scanners.
A fairly successful day, if not the most profitable but it was fun. I almost forgot about the hunt, the best part about being a pirate, whether using the onboard scanner to narrow a target down when hunting the belts, or the tense moments as your covops associate sets up the warp in without losing cloak. Warping in on unsuspecting plex/mission runners as their day gets more interesting is still one of those moments that makes all the training worth it.
Sure ISK is important as a Pirate and lately I've lost sight of the prime motivation of Piracy, I've thrown away too much ISK taking risks, trying to defy the odds and failing. But I've had a lot of fun and it's trying to find that balance between fun and making ISK as a Pirate that I need to focus on.
This brings me to something else I've been dwelling on as of late. Where have all the old Pirates gone? Sard and RANSM are tearing up Molden Heath, my old friend flashfresh and the Bastards are flying with Los Chupa's out of Evati, but I still believe flash should go independent again and come fly out of Gus, much of old school M34N corp have retired, the newer lot content to camp gates in Metro.
Gusandall and surrounds are emptier than they have been for a very long time, there is no dominant corp, which makes it perfect for independent pilots, more so now than ever in its past.
Sure a large organized group could steam roll in and try take control, but this has happened before, it will happen again, through it all, Gusandall has been a beacon for independents, WE WILL RISE AGAIN.
3 comments:
Well, belt piracy is essentially dead with pilots being better about knowing how to make isk, and only those with alts or covops friends can really make lowsec piracy work. It's a difficult business friend, not for the light hearted.
I've always found the term pirate a little odd, the amount of people that are called 'pirates' in lowsec that actually make any money doing it is really low. I know of 2 r1fta guys actually making a profit that way and there's over a 100 of us... Lowsec pvp'er that doesn't mind being flashy is probably the more accurate term.
I'm not qualified to judge if it was ever different but since I became active in PvP (in early '10) I've not met a lot of people who 'make a living' doing piracy.
Personally the profitable bit of PvP for me has always been Ninja work in hi-sec (which has more resemblance to actually historical piracy, you know stealing stuff and killing people that try and resist you and then robbing the corpse too).
I've never managed to make lowsec PvP profitable by itself. I successfully ransomed some pods since crucible but that's it pretty much.
I know most people call anyone that is flashy red in lowsec "Pirates" but tbh most people are just in it for pvp. I couldn't be bothered to ransom someone, too much fun personally just shooting whoever you come upon. I have moved back out to 0.0 for the time being but if I'm in lowsec and a target presents it self then it's a target after all and this is a game.
Zandramus
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