The Push I Needed

I don't remember how it happened, but I recently discovered Paul Clavet's blog. I remember the first time I heard of a friend losing his mission ship to a ninja looter, and I've always wanted to try it. But for years it was simply an idea laying dormant in the back of my mind. Reading the adventures of Paul Clavet and Khalia Nestune was the push I finally needed.

First I needed to reconcile in my own mind how I would go about this. I'll be frank: I have no interest in "carebear tears", and I personally find griefing for tears to be... well, it's not my thing. I have no interest in being a jerk just to piss off other players. On the other hand, mission runners (MRs) have shiny ships/mods, I have PVP experience, and EVE is a sandbox with game mechanics but no rules. What if I volunteered my time to offer unsolicited personal classes on PVP mechanics to the MRs? Yeah, that sounded good.

I'm familiar with missioning in Caldari space, so I knew some likely locations. My first stop was Ruvas. I prepped an expendable Heron and had a PVP Drake on standby. If you're not familiar with the mechanics involved, it works as follows:

1. Scan down likely mission runners (e.g. battleships, Marauders, etc);
2. Steal from the wrecks inside their missions, thereby allowing them to shoot you if they desire;
3. Flee any aggression and return in a PVP ship, pummeling them into submission.

I was astounded when, within minutes of arriving on the ninja scene, I had cruise missiles heading at me from a Raven Navy Issue! It was a quick matter of warping out, exchanging the Heron for the Drake, and returning to the mission. He was two gates in, shooting his last BS rat, when my Drake landed on him, locked him up, and quickly chewed through his shields. He opened convo as he entered armor...

[ 2011.03.12 20:53:09 ] Namiene > Ill pay
[ 2011.03.12 20:53:19 ] Guyde > 500 mil
[ 2011.03.12 20:53:20 ] Namiene > 1 plex
[ 2011.03.12 20:53:43 ] Guyde > pull your drones, stop shooting
[ 2011.03.12 20:53:53 ] Namiene > i need to warp ill give plex
[ 2011.03.12 20:54:01 ] Guyde > sorry, no dice
[ 2011.03.12 20:54:16 ] Guyde > contract it + 200 mil
[ 2011.03.12 20:55:09 ] Namiene > Msg Rain1989 its my alt
[ 2011.03.12 20:55:21 ] Namiene > I have a plex at Jita i can trade
[ 2011.03.12 20:55:45 ] Guyde > sorry, this doesn't work if you log
[ 2011.03.12 20:55:56 ] Namiene > I wont log i just need to go to the station
[ 2011.03.12 20:56:14 ] Namiene > U get jack if this NPC pops me
[ 2011.03.12 20:56:22 ] Guyde > sorry bud

A final volley of HAMs sealed the deal.

I set about looting (and killing the last NPC for an extra million or so) and he logged off. I sent him a message with a reminder that he had gained valuable knowledge in exchange for his ship, an explanation of the mechanics I'd used, and an invitation to convo me if he wanted to chat PVP. We did chat later about it, and he was pretty amicable for a guy who had just lost over a billion ISK.

All in all, it went pretty well for my first attempt at highsec ninja PVP educational PVP.