Thursday 6 March 2008

Put a little zoom in your life

Ever since the first time I fitted a Microwarp Drive to a Rifter and broke 1km/s I wanted to go fast, faster than anyone else. This has been the driving force behind much of what I have done in the EVE universe up until I turned to the dark side.

I saved and I trained to get the modules and skills needed to break the Interceptor record, held by such pilots as Angelus X and Spartac0 from the Band of Brothers Alliance, I was always in awe at there speed when we encountered them when my old corp was in Huzzah Federation and later the Ascendant Frontier Alliance and it was at this point where I set my first milestone. I had just finished training for Interceptors and had bought a shiny Claw, the Minmatar equivelant of the Roadrunner from those goofy cartoon holoreels. With the help of some corpmates I was lent a Gistii A-type 1MN Microwarp Drive, the top of the line if you absolutely need to go fast as possible Microwarp Drive available. Now my skills weren't very good at the time and I had no implants but a corpmate and very good friend, Soup Spoon, offered his skills in Skirmish Warfare to help boost my speed. Orbiting a Deathstar POS in our home system at over 7km/s was awesome, another corpmate was firing heavy missiles at me and they formed a conga line behind as they struggled to keep up.



I was hooked, I wanted more, it was like a drug.

Every ISK I earned was being set aside to buy implants, pirate implants, Snakes to be more exact. I ratted for many hours and would run security on corp mining ops to earn the isk, spending hours orbiting a gate whilst chatting in corp channels, I also helped corp members with hauling for mining and industry to scrape together what I could. At this time the corp was also saving to build an outpost so a lot of donations went that way and then the First Great War broke out, Band of Brothers invaded ASCN territory with the sole purpose of eradicating us. All ISK making was put aside and I joined my corpmates in battle but as a small corp who wasn't capable of fielding capital ships or many t2 snipers we were asigned with the task of harrasing BoB in Delve, a campaign in which I achieved another milestone, my first solo kill but that's for another time.

ASCN fell and we went looking for a new home and that happened to be in The Great Wildlands, I won't go into how we got there but it was all good until our then CEO went crazy and decided not only to steal everything we had worked towards but to also kick us all from the corp and take away our identity. Instead of collapsing it drew the affected pilots closer together and within 24 hours we were all flying under a new banner. Ars ex Discordia was born and has gone from strength to strength. It was under this banner that I broke my old record, again with Soup Spoon's help, a full set of Snake implants and better skills I achieved a speed just under 24km/s.
This record was set in Rens of all places, a spiritual home for me and a place I was spending a lot of time in, as we were part of Goonswarm and war targets were everywhere, PvP on tap.
My most noteable kill at the time was The CEO of Beyond Divinity's Munnin in my very first outing with the Vagabond heavy assault cruiser.



Shortly after all this I became disillusioned at alliance life and making a hard choice I dropped roles and left ARSED to become a Pirate, I did however stay in touch with many of my old corpmates and this allowed me to break the record again but this time Soup's skills were maxed out, along with my own. Overheating and boosters were also available and all these together were going to make this special.
The ship choice was difficult, I spent long hours comparing the different ships that could be used, the Caldari Crow, light, agile, fast but restricted by only three lowslots for speed modules, the Minmatar Claw, four lowslots but heavier and the Ammar Crusader, same lowslots as the Claw but lighter and more agile making it the ship of choice for this attempt.

The modules were all in place, the addition of a Shaqil's Speed Enhancer implant boosting me even further.

In a secret 0.0 location Soup and I started our attempt, hitting the MWD I accelerated to 28km/s, wow, new personal best, Soup hit his Gang mods, I consumed a Strong X-Instinct booster and overheated the Gistii MWD, I had to blink twice to make sure I wasn't dreaming, but my HUD read 63,762m/s. I had just smashed Spartac0's interceptor record and achieved the second fastest recorded speed in the universe, the fastest being held by Spartac0 in a Vagabond with Officer fittings and oversized MWD but I was happy in the knowledge that in my class I was the fastest and was also combat capable at the same time.
The speed was achieved using the optimal setup and the best possible modules for the job and can only ever be equalled until something new comes out and you can bet ISK on it I will be there to make sure I hold on to this particular record



All the ship class records can be seen here

I'd like to thank Soup Spoon personally for helping me every step of the way, from forcing me to finish my learning skills back in PMV to providing the command bonus needed to push it past the edge.



He's also responsible for me becoming a Pod Pilot, along with Estar Thorongil. So any hatemail in future should be forwarded to them please :D


4 comments:

westyx said...

I made a little graphic regarding eve's learning curve. Meant in a friendly way :)

http://members.arstechnica.com/x/westyx/eve%20cliff.jpg

Sooz Nebulae said...

A very nice history of speed record attempting. Honestly I have not even thought of the subject before so much, since I have a long history of carebearing and my main interest has been maxing out my mining yield:)

Anyways, nice story & congrats for the IC-class record!

Anonymous said...

Nice account. Every since you mentioned about your speed record I was interested in how it was done and the history behind it.

Only equalled, never beaten.

I like that and I tip my hat off to you and your account.

May you always have targets in your sights!

Unknown said...

You need to update with the new speed records!
Congratulations.