In space, no one can't smell your fear

All,

I think I did the scariest thing I have ever done in Eve, or any game, last night.

I've recently moved all my characters except James and a few shake and bake future cap ship pilots to a corp in 0.0. We operate out of Stain and are over 50 jumps out of Empire. Getting a character there is insanely easy; you just jump clone in Empire, set your clone location and wait two minutes for your pod to pop. After that it's a few jumps to the main station we call home. Getting back to Empire (and those implants you let behind) is even easier. Jump clone back to where ever you left your body and your back to training skills faster. Having Infomorph Psychology at 2 or higher makes things ever better since you could even leave a clone in Jita or anywhere you could get to. I figure I might make a run up to Outer Ring to look for ORE ship BPOs someday.

If getting your character to Stain is heaven, getting your gear there is most definitely hell. Okay, I take that back, it's closer to purgatory, but it's still a pain. We have a jump off point in low sec, and it's only two jumps in, so it's not as bad as going all 50+ jumps.

So last night I had finally collected all my ships, all my gear, and everything I could afford to buy from Jita and Dodixie that I thought I might maybe need in the next few weeks. Excluding the 270,000 m3 or so I'd gotten sent down down earlier I had nearly a freighter full. I think the grand total was around 840,000 m3 exluding the 40k m3 in helium fuel for jumps.

Getting all the stuff together was just an issue of time and deciding what I needed and what should get left behind. I still don't have all my crap in any one place, but I figure I can afk around empire some day and round it all up eventually. I have a feeling that the next time I play James I'll discover I took all his gear with me, but I know I left his ships, so I'll get by.

Anyway, back to the fear. So I have effectively the bulk of my entire wealth and gear sitting in a 0.6 system, and I need to get it to a 0.3 two jumps away. The first system into low sec is a known gate camp and the gate leaving is also watched. The pirates living there know we have to go that way to reach our jump point. Although I could have waited for a scheduled logistics run, I am an impatient person, as my list of lost battleships will attest to. I had a few characters left in high sec that hadn't popped their way down to Stain, so I put them in Ibis and gave them cloaks. One didn't have Science high enough to even consider a cloak, so she got to be the station watch.

Since these three scouts had already left their implants behind, and were going to self pod anyway, I had no worry about throwing them into the breach and holding my breath. Their deaths would have meaning even if they did pad someones Killboard. The first character entered lowsec nudged her ship and immediately cloaked. So far so good. Traveling at an astounding 44 m/s she edged out to 50km from the gate. Scout one in place.

The second to go in was cloakless. She was going to make a run straight through to the jump system and hopefully dock up. My scout confirms enttry gate clear, jump through, warp to zero, and scan for that bubble I know is just waiting in front of the gate on the other end. Come out of warp and its.... empty. Amazed I finally remember to jump. Other side is clear as well. Dock to station and scout two is in place.

Scout three was almost routine. I worry about routine, it's usually when things go bad. Enter low sec to a clear gate and warp to 70km off gate. Still clear. Cloak up and move out of the traffic pattern so I don't get bumped and have my cover blown. All scouts in place.

I'd have liked to have had another scout on the back side of the middle gate, but my scout in station would let me know if there were any hostiles in system, so I'd have to work with that.

So now it was time to risk it all. I had to get my freighter through two low sec systems. I doesn't seem like a long journey, but in the 2 or 3 hours I'd had my scouts out, I'd watched a hostile tank the gate guns and try to take out a corpmates Myrmidon. I didn't have any webbers, or anything with a gun on it, so I had to avoid anything that even looked like it might want to kill a freighter and all its cargo. Before undocking the freighter, I hopped over to the gate to make sure there wasn't anyone waiting to follow a person through. Fully paranoid I was forgetting something, I headed back and undocked the freighter.

Everything went smooth. I got the cargo there and got the freighter back into hi sec. If I smoke, I would have needed a cigarette.

So anyone else have some moments where you knew it was a game but still were nervous as hell?

- Souca -

I was in the Maelstrom alliance for a while living in 0.0 space. I was kind of half playing at the time, as Eve is very conducive to. The alliance ended up getting blown up and when I got around to getting back on my stuff was all in an outpost owned by an alliance I wasnt friendly to. I had gotten rid of most of my stuff before the alliance tanked, but I still had a viator, so I loaded my hulk up and did the long journey home. No jump gates, no scouts, and a 500m (back when they cost that much) hulk in the cargo hold of my 100m ISK ship.

That was pretty nerve wracking for me. Made it safely though. GG.