Friday, January 28, 2011

Forget Hulkageddon - Try Bumpageddon

I've suicided a few things in my day, and I've even had Skye blow some unsuspecting frigates from the sky using a gank destroyer, but really my heart isn't in this 'sport' due to the general lack of skill involved. And I'm sure there are other people out there who want to take part in the general harrassing of bots but maybe don't want to mess up their perfect security status.

So, may I suggest Bumpageddon - use very fast ships to bump Mining Barges away from the rocks they're mining, and maybe if you're lucky, away from the jetcan they're sitting on. If you work with a friend it's nice to be able to warp a hauler in on top of their ore can and just steal their stuff, but don't go killing them, that's slipping from Bumpageddon territory into Hulkageddon. Some of the bots are really dumb and if you hit them right after warping into belt they'll fly off, come to a stop and then just sit there mining nothing for 15 minutes before warping back to the station. You'll be helping 'fix' Eve's mineral oversupply without getting your hands dirty.

Bumpageddon is also great for EFT warriors who can try to find the best way to fit a 100mn MWD on a cruiser hull and balance maximum speed with enough cap generation to get it up to top speed, there's some fun theorycrafting that can get cruisers speeds well above 10km/sec - depending on how much you want to spend on faction hulls, implants and friends providing cap transfer and ganglinks. There's also something of a real thrill in seeing your speed crawl past the magic 10km/s mark (and if you like that then I'll tell you that it's theoretically possible to get a dramiel up past 20km/s).

And of course it's not just miners, you can sit on a hi-sec gate along one of the main trade routes and watch slow, lumbering freighters land 15km off the gate and slowly make their way in only for you to bump them off before they get there. With a bit of practice you can 'juggle' multiple ships until you get bored, so far my record is 4 charons which were kept from approaching the Jita gate in Perimiter. Freighter juggling is more of a delaying tactic though, you're not really affecting anyone's bottom line if you're delaying their arrival, they're on automatic pilot and it'll never get bored. If you're bumping people to annoy them it's better to hit freighters that you know have active pilots in them, get them when they're aligning for warp, or when they're undocking.

Anyway, Hulkageddon is coming, if you're a miner I suggest staying out of the main belts and mining in a mission site, and give up some of those mining laser upgrades for a damage control. The damage control will get you more buffer than anything else you can fit on a Hulk, but many miners refuse to fit them because they would have to give up either a Mining upgrade or a cargo expander. And, if someone does come along and bump you off your rock the best defence is to just go elsewhere and not complain in local, complaints will just encourage more griefing.

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