For the better part of a decade since I last played Eve Online, one of my pilots lay in cryosleep aboard a Hel supercarrier where she had logged off at a POS in a norther region of space called Deklein. I would occasionally read an article about Eve and remember that I had significant assets in the game. A couple times I even tried to pick it up again, but found that my alliance was in another region and if the learning curve of Eve is steep, the relearning curve is almost as steep. I never dared to log in that Hel, now in enemy occupied space.
Then Eve Echos was released and I tried it out. “Wow, this is essentially the same game on a mobile device.” This got me interested in reaching out to my old corp in Eve Online, and I learned that the alliance was under siege and they encouraged me to come back. I was between games, it is covid-times and so I was looking for more social interaction, so I decided, “What the Hell!”
My strategy for returning was to try to relearn the game flying subcaps, and not worry about all capitals I had strewn about the map in asset safety or logged out in space. I invested a few bucks in plex and settled into our besieged home in Delve. This is where I encountered a bunch of problems.
The first problem was the interface. I was so disappointed. It hadn’t changed much in a decade, by 2020 it was an extremely dated, eclectic and non-intuitive text based nightmare compared to the modern games I have played in recent years. Also, being nearly 50 my eyes just couldn’t make out the tiny text on my large high res display. I quickly got lost on the first few fleets I joined. “What the hell is an ansiblex?” But slowly things came back to me as my alliance conducted 101 training classes for bitter retvets answering the Horn of Goondor.
The second problem was my pilot skills. Back in 2012 it was a fairly normal thing to train straight racial skills. In fact, it was more efficient. Doctrine fleets (did we have doctrines back then?) allowed you to fly pretty much whatever matched from your race. But now the doctrines were a mishmash for me. I had to be able to fly ships of one race with weapons of another. Each doctrine had something different and there were so many doctrines being flown. I was looking at months to get up to speed so I could even participate with subcaps. So I analysed the fleet doctrines used my first two weeks and ordered the doctrines by frequency of use. Then I developed a skill plan that would let me participate as quickly as possible, and popped a few more plex and skill injectors. This was starting to get expensive. But now I was able to participate in fleets and I wasn’t getting lost as much. Things were coming back and it was fun!
The third problem for the first few weeks was my fellow pilots. If you got lost in fleet and asked for help they would make some comment about “spais” or “Go read the doctrine” or something equally unhelpful. A couple times I nearly said “fuck it, let these kids lose their space in this dated game.” But then Mittens sounded the horn of Goondor, and along with that he made it very clear that retvets would have a lot of questions and that those who were unhelpful should fuck off. It actually worked. I wasn’t the only one asking questions anymore, and the snide comments stopped for the most part. The FC’s started becoming really helpful and responsive to questions. Things were looking up, and I was able to start answering retvet questions myself.
After about a month back into the game, I got myself a rusty new Dreadnought so I could join capital fleets. Learning and relearning the jump drive mechanics, I started thinking more about that Hel in Deklein. I asked around about getting extraction help. A few corp mates offered cynos, but looking at the map it was at least 13 jumps across vast regions of New Eden. I felt uncomfortable asking them to do this, and felt for sure I would fuck it up and be an embarrassment. CCP was unwilling to move the ship for me because it “sports a jumpdrive.” Never mind that players have been able to dock their supers at upwell structures for years. Never mind that CCP had changed the bay configurations and skills for the ship and fighters and I could no longer launch fighters I could before. Also, there was a good chance my ship would blow up if I got out of it to rejoin my corp. I tried to explain these things to the GMs who responded to my requests, but they clearly had no knowledge of how the changes over the years affected my situation. Nor did they care. Mostly I wanted the pilot back so perhaps I could buy a new super at home, so I considered logging in and self destructing.
But then I read a story about a Titan pilot who successfully got his titan home from Deklein said “fuck it.” The loss mail would be out of alliance, and you only live once. I knew I had logged off at a friendly POS, and figured there would likely now be an enemy POS. My first step was to log on to Singularity and see what structures were at the moon where I was logged off. There was nothing. “Wow, this might be possible,” I thought and it gave me the motivation to take the next steps.
CCP had also changed the jump cyno skills and requirements, so my next step was to inject one of my characters with the skills to fly a force recon. I also enlisted another character to act as eyes. This meant triple boxing a game with a UI I had felt lost in just a few weeks before. Once I got eyes in the system, I found that there were certain times at night when it was empty. I logged in my hel pilot and took account of the fit and fuel supply. I blessed my former self so many years ago for having 100K isotopes and lots of liquid ozone onboard. There was even a hauler there. On the other hand, drones could not be launched, and I no longer had the skills for the fighters onboard. My only weapons would be a smartbomb, ECM, and neuts. My tank would be only a third of current doctrine fits.
Over the next couple days I watched the system, and planned my route. I got my Recon ship with cyno into position in Pure Blind. I had never solo traveled in a capital before, and I made a checklist of things to do and the order. Form fleet, wait for both systems to be empty. Log in the Hel, form fleet, double check local, decloak, light cyno, jump, warp fleet to bookmark, pray. My hands shook so I could barely right click and select the cyno beacon! I wiped them on my trousers. Just do it! And I did it. And my super made it into warp and cloaked. I watched with relief but some trepidation as my cyno finally reached 5 minutes…. and then cycled again. I almost laughed. If this was the worst mistake of the day, I would call it good.
A night or two later I prepared to make my second jump into Black Rise. I had changed my cloaky ship name to a Russian phrase meaning “Minding my own business”. It didn’t stop lots of conversation and complaints in Russian about how I was preventing them from doing their own business as I extracted from Deklein. This time I wanted to fit webs on my recon to help the Hel get into warp faster, and ended up getting camped into an NPC station. I had waited 8 years, so these guys had no idea the depths of my patience.
I made the second jump and webbed the Hel into warp. Just as I did so a neutral jumped into system and posted “?” into local and warped to my cyno. They engaged with their drones and I watched with amazement how I was nearly tanking them. It would take a long time to die. I waited until my cyno was a few seconds from ending and then target locked the hostile and tried to launch my ECM drones. “You do not have the required skills for this item.” I had fitted the ship according to doctrine but had forgotten about the drone skills when I injected the pilot. Amazingly the hostile pilot unlocked me and warped off with a “cya” in local. I was so relieved that I would not have to fly god knows where to sort out a new recon that I sent the pilot probably way too much isk for karma and logged off happy.
I had 102% of the fuel required to make it home if I was able to make every optimal jump laid out in Garpa. I knew that wasn’t going to happen, and so on my next jump I decided to sort out refueling. I was glad I scouted the route to a lowsec station with overpriced isotopes because the route was blocked by a triglavian invasion. I found another station that wasn’t, and scouted my hauler filled with fuel without incident. I also picked up a few skill books so my Hel pilot could start learning the new skills. I relearned the mechanics of accessing the various bays and transferring items while trying to stay cloaked whenever a local came into the system. They had Chinese names here so I changed my ship names to Chinese glyphs meaning “Explorer” and “Peaceful Night”.
For my third jump I got eyes in the system but it never seemed to empty out. Low sec people are strange. They just stay in the belts in mining ships with neutrals in the system. By this time I was getting really good at scanning people down. This one guy seemed to not be a threat, but you never know what friends they have. He was in a corporation with almost a hundred members. Finally he complained about me being in his system. I told him that I was working on a data collection project for a new utility application. He asked why I didn’t just use the API and I told him some things weren’t available on the API, for example storms, and that I needed to scan for data when there were no “player ships” on scan. I apologized for the inconvenience, and told him I would not resort to violence to clear the system for at least a couple days. At this point he left the system and when he didn’t return for an hour or two I made my jump. And the next.
Soon I was in Syndicate and the war had taken a turn. Querious was increasingly hostile and it looked like I had chosen an unfortunate route. Also, a fellow retvet was also extracting a super from Deklein and he was going through Fountain. I plotted a new course and found that I could make the jump from Solitude to Fountain and join up with him. More eyes, more cynos, better chance of success.
“I think I’m being hunted,” my friend said as I jumped to him, abandoning my neutral support pilots in Solitude. I brought my main pilot up from Delve to provide another set of eyes. Sure enough, we were being trailed. While my friend plotted an alternate route, I flew my main pilot in a circuitous route in southern Fountain to confuse the scouts. Around and around I flew, while my friend suggested my Hel take a couple gates to avoid an extra jump. Sure, its friendly territory but my super pilot is neutral. I felt my balls shrivel confronted with this prospect and shamefully decline. My friend is a skymarshal, and I am inadequate. We spend the extra hour and make it to our destination. Our alliance has supposedly added our pilots to the access list, and my friend warps to a structure too small to dock, but hoping to get a tether. “Let me go first, if I live you can follow” he says. Sure enough, we make tether and safe logoff. We will have to take a jumpgate to make it back to Delve, and that can wait for another day.
That night I dreamt of warp tunnels and interdictor bubbles. After work the next day my friend posts, “Log in to character screen.” I have never taken a capital through a stargate, let alone a supercarrier. I reply, “Comms?” “Just chill, join the ops channel, I have a fleet” I listen as the fleet heads home from their mission and the FC calls out, “Whoever wants to help out a retvet hero, stay in fleet.” They aren’t talking about me, but I do remember the cap fleets I led bashing structures a decade ago. “Log in to character screen” comes the command. “Login, align, warp, jump, jump, dock!” My hands don’t shake as they did that first jump on the other side of New Eden, and for the first time since starting this game in 2008 I see my Hel docked in a keepstar.
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