:: first pod ::

How can I go from one post and within minutes follow up with a diatribe on my first pod?

First, allow me to explain what it means to be podded. In EVE Online as a captain of your own space faring vessel you are traveling through a precarious environment where there is potential for danger. Warping between star systems is a daily necessity as you get to places that you need to be. So next we have to understand how security ratings are applied to those systems.

Each solar system has a security rating of 1 down to 0, with 1 being the safest and 0 being lawless. It becomes even more granular as you subtract a tenth of a point with areas of .5 up to 1 being safe and .4 down to 0 being downright inhospitable. Outside the fringes of the law is where space pirates can band together to bully, coerce, and extort something out of you. Hopefully through cooperation you’ll be spared your ship and your life. However if anything occurs to you like they had for me then the best that you could hope for is good insurance and a clone.

As I got back into the game of EVE Online I needed to brush up on some rusty playing skills. So the first activity that I did was head out into a systems asteroid belt hoping for some action. Luckily I found some NPC pirates who were more than adequate to re-familiarize myself with the controls of the game as I deployed my drones to shred through the pirate vessels as I tore massive holes through their cans with my ships guns. What next, I asked myself. What kind of action can I find out there that’ll really get my juices flowing? In an attempt to answer that I pulled up my map of the galaxy and searched for systems where ships had been destroyed. A nearby star called Rancer showed several ships being blown up within the last hour. Rancer has a 0.4 security rating. Ooh, sounds like adventure calling my name. Oh Anjo, come out and play buddy-boy!

A few warp hops later I was at the edge of the final warp station that’ll get me over to the Rancer solar system. Guns fully loaded with ammo? Check! Flux capacitor fluxing? Check! Cancelled the 3-ring circus and secured all animals in the zoo? Check! (okay, those last two checks didn’t really happen, but maybe they should’ve in order to avert a total unmitigated disaster). I warped in. Rancer, here I come!

Upon initial arrival my ship is in a stealth state. Whether that means I’m totally imperceptible or not I’m still not certain. What I did know with utter certainty was that just off my port bow was half-a-dozen pirates. They were real pirates too, as in real people captaining their crates. They were as real as their jolly-roger orange icon indicated and I had just entered a world of hurt.

I heard their first salvo before I felt it, and when I did feel it my ship was rocked with an earth shattering rumble and my shields went instantly red. A second volley of missiles slammed into me as I came about, hoping to warp away. This time, without shields, half my armor was stripped. Not good, not good at all. I imagine my virtual avatar losing his cool. He's frantic as he's flooring his warp accelerator pedal with a lead foot as more shots pepper him with projectiles and beam weapons that slice ‘n dice his crate into bite size little pieces. My jaw drop as I realize that I’m going nowhere, they’ve locked onto me and prevented me from warping away. I’m toast.

I watch as my ship exploded around me. What was left was my little avatar, floating there in a little pod. Although I may have lost my ship at a financial loss, at least I didn’t lose my life. These honorable and noble pirates who follow the code surely won’t destroy my little pod, will they? No such luck. Once again I hear them before I feel them and when those missiles hit I find my character returned to life as a clone. I’ve been podded.

After reviewing the mail that came in I’m seeing notices of reimbursement for losing my ship. Insurance rocks. I also retained all of my skills to that point because the quality of my clone returned all of those points.

Another couple pieces of mail notified me of the involved pirates who destroyed my ship and then destroyed my pod. Those pirates were from a corporation called Kleptomaniacs, and they are as it turned out quite good at what they do. They’ve got a post on their kill site that records their destruction of my ship. Although I do have thirty days to retaliate with kill rights, I won’t do so. Without the strength of a corporation to back me up my efforts would be futile. The only unanswered question that I got is, where do they get those wonderful toys?