New ship = new fun

Part of the appeal of Eve for me is rolling out a new ship. All of the planning, the futzing in EFT and EVEMON, the time spent researching fits and considering how to best incorporate a new shiny into your game play culminates when you undock and go for a spin.

Most times, the first few flights are uneventful. A few times, there can be excitement!

I've been working on a 6 week program to get my second character into an Eos with mining gang modules. Looking at all that extra mining capability makes me smile (and Sabre cry that I would 'misuse' a command ship that way!). Monday night, with our 'war' over, it was time to roll out Mom's Little Helper. The results were.... well, let's just say that it's no accident that there were a couple of missing belts when our little gang finished up. :)

Last night was different.

I was pulling missions next door, really after a mission 'roid spawn where I could get a feel for how the Eos would impact my solo work. Couple of students in local who were also mining, along with our most recent can flipper pest. I set the Eos up with an eye toward being effective as anti-can flipper, so it had full tackle, plus an assortment of damage, web and ECM drones. Our frigate-flying Can Flipper struck once as we were organizing the fleet and then left the belt to wait out his timer.

I warped the Eos to the belt and saw a couple of Can Flipper's wrecks and cans sitting around. A few more students joined our little party and a couple of us re-flipped the cans, flagging us to our little pest.

He warps to the belt a couple of times. Each time I lock him up with the Eos and he immediately leaves. Then, just as my timer is about to expire, he warps in, moves to 1500 meters from the Eos while I'm locking him and flips a can!

Scram, web, neut, guns, launch mixed flight of drones. Pop!

No idea what this guy was thinking, but it didn't work out for him. He made several more trips to the belt in his pod. Against policy, one of the students podkilled him, bringing a Concord swarm and leaving behind a frozen corpse. The student said that the sec status hit was worth it to get rid of the gnat. I just laughed.

So, boys & girls, today's lesson is: Don't flip cans in front of a command ship, m'kay?