Unarmed Battleships

@Lady Dragon

EVE Online expansions are free, like Jagex' updates. All you have to do is update your client to get the new content. Trial accounts play on the main server with everyone else, but with some skills, ships and features unavailable, but not far behind everyone else.


The character creator is out and it is very, very good. I'm not posting my character's portrait because he looks like I ass and I'm gonna petition for a do-over.

Thankfully, a number of players got the bright idea of messing around with the character creator to do fun stuff. My favourite is Barack Hussein Obama.


I took 2 days off to run some missions and boost my income a bit, as well as to get away from the mines. It's a lot like Runescape in space, clicking on rocks and waiting for your containers to fill up.

I also got scammed and then killed.

In EVE Online, anything within game mechanics is permitted, with very few exceptions. This includes scamming and exploiting game mechanics to make a profit.

For instance, many miners use a method called jetcan mining. Jetcan mining occurs because a ship's cargohold may be too small to make taking minutes off to warp to the station and come back. When jetcan mining, you jettison a load of ore into space in a cargo container. This container has 27000m3 of space, far more than most ship cargoholds. The can floats next to you for an hour whilst you continue mining and depositing into the can. When the asteroids are mined out, you return with an Industrial ship which has plenty of cargo space and pick up the ore.

The problem with jetcans is that they're not locked. Anybody can steal from a can, but this is registered as stealing in the game and the victim and his corporation will have 15 minutes during which he may kill the thief without intervention. More than that, they often deposit an item of their own into the can, thereby making the can and all contents their own.

This means they're stealing from generally unarmed miners, costing them cans full of ore and are able to avoid intervention simply by docking and waiting out the timer.

Now, I get can flipped whilst I was turning in a load of ore. When I came back, the can was no longer mine, but the belt was empty and I was alone, so I moved in and stole everything back. This counted as stealing on my part and gave the thieves kill rights. At that point, they both decloaked within the asteroid and shot my ass off.

Moral of the story? Let the angry men keep your stuff, in exchange for your life.

I took a couple of days to run some missions and wait for the can flippers to get bored and leave my home system, during which I racked up another 50 million and bought an upgraded version of the ship I lost. Now, I'm back to mining and little over half way to my goal at 1.19 million out of 2.30 million. I'll also be able to (finally) equip actual weapons on my battleship tomorrow when the skills are done training, but I will leave at least another week or two of training while other battleship skills pick up. No use flying a ship and then losing it because of poor skills.

Regards, IVIilitarus