This is actually a really exciting prospect. Imagine being literally able to fight a war for your race within EVE, able to kill individuals of the other sides as and when you want to! This expansion is going to be fantastic!
Read more about the EVE-Online expansion called “Empryian Age”…
There I am, mining away in low-security 0.3 space and what warps into the asteroid belt I am mining? An Ishtar. Almost instantly a chat window pops up and it reads…
[13:54:09] IDeena > 60mill now
While I believe she probably would have let me go if I paid, I was able to warp out both my Iteron V and Hulk that were sat in the belt because I had Warp Core Stabalisers fitted – and IDeena was unable to scramble me!
After my escape…
[13:55:00] IDeena > nxt time i see you in here i instant pop you
So, another near-miss for my Hulk, but nevermind I’m still alive to tell the tale. Like I told IDeena when I left the system, I will be back there and I’ll be trying to take her out in an Ishtar too. 
[16:53:56] Dakotha > wanna ransome that baby?
Yes, that was the chat line I saw when fighting a Brutix with my Hulk. I saw the Brutix warp into the asteroid belt and knew I probably couldn’t beat him, but decided to risk my Hulk in a fight until I could get my second character online in order to steal the Ore back. (As the saying goes: “Don’t fly what you can’t afford to lose.”) He flew straight to my can, flipped my Ore to his own can and then went flashy red, which means I can fire on him. (If I fire on him, then he can return fire).
Unfortunately I hadn’t yet updated my alt with the newest patch, so when I patched it, it closed down my main window also (please fix that, CCP). I logged back in with both accounts and my Hulk automatically warped back to the Asteroid belt where Dakotha was still sitting, flashing red. I flew close to my can, checked how much he had moved and then checked his ship stats for his max speed. Seeing that he couldn’t go much faster than me I thought that I could possibly stay inside his minimum gun-range – if I was lucky – by flying at him, while my drones did a little damage. Meanwhile, I undocked my alternate character and set him to warp towards the jettison cans.
As soon as my alt. got into the belt in the Hauler ship I stole my Ore back and set it to dock at the station. Seeing that obviously he was doing a lot of damage, I recalled my drones to the Hulk and set that to also dock at the station. I was hoping he wouldn’t really notice my alt. character taking the Ore back as I really didn’t want to lose a fully rigged Iteron V!
Both my ships were able to dock successfully (my Hulk had to warp around a little bit until the station would accept me docking due to my aggressive acts). I waited a few minutes then sent my alt. character out again to collect the rest of my Ore.
In the meantime I had a little fun with Dakotha, I traded him 10 units of Janitor as a joke and had the following conversation in the system’s chat:
[16:53:56] Dakotha > wanna ransome that baby?
[16:54:33] Alderan Brere > why would i do that?
[16:55:22] Dakotha > Well, I am feeling genouros today
[16:55:40] Alderan Brere > sure
[16:55:59] Dakotha > lot of ore here..hmmm
[16:57:11] Alderan Brere > you asked for a ransom for a ship you hadn’t the capability to warp scramble… you ARE feeling generous….
[16:57:24] Dakotha > took the Scram off…you didn’t need to fight…=)
[16:58:09] Alderan Brere > you were red ‘n’ flashy, sure i do…
[16:58:13] Dakotha > I am a NICE pirate…no need to die for a few rocks
[16:59:00] Alderan Brere > sure there’s need. rocks built this ship, built your ship.
[16:59:54] Dakotha > And the build the Warp Scram I will deploy next time…=)
[17:02:06] Alderan Brere > lol
Here is where I sent him 10 units of Janitor while docked…
[17:02:58] Dakotha > lol…now THATS a sense of humor!!
[17:03:02] Alderan Brere >
[17:03:09] Dakotha > I accept!
[17:03:24] Dakotha > And you and your rocks are safe!
[17:03:50] Alderan Brere > heheh
In order to understand this post, I’ll explain what Macro Mining is…
Macro Mining is a way of cheating in EVE-Online. It’s against the terms of the EULA (End-User License Agreement) and your account can be permanently banned (with no refund) for doing it. Basically what people do is have a program that records every click of their mouse and every touch of the keys while they undock, warp to an asteroid belt, mine, warp to the station they started at, dock and unload the ore. What they then do is create a loop that goes out to the belt and does their mining over and over again…
My usual way of trying to tell if someone is a Macro is to watch them for a while and see if the pattern of mining varies at all. Do they always select the closest asteroid? Do they always warp to the same spot? Do they always seem to come back at around the same time interval?
If the answer to most of those is yes, I then proceed to targetting the asteroid they are mining and trying to pop it (take all it’s ore) – then watching to see if they target another and continue mining (like a human) or sit there for their pre-programmed amount of seconds (like a Macro).
If that doesn’t result in a suitable answer, or I can’t really get a definite answer, I wait for the ship to come back into the asteroid belt and then I target them. Usually the Macro Miner will not remember to disable ‘auto target locking’ and will automatically target me back… What usually happens is that the Macro-controlled ship will sit there, forever, attempting to mine my ship like it’s an asteroid!
I found one just now (well, twenty minutes ago) and he is still sat there attempting to mine me… His final chance was when I asked him in the solar system’s chat room to respond, and he didn’t…
[03:49:53] Alderan Brere > So Scimeron, are you a macro? I ask because I targetted you when you came into the belt to try to see what would happen – because i suspected – and you now appear to have auto targetted me back and are trying to mine my ship…
I usually report these cheats to CCP so they can get banned, I reported Scimeron as soon as I was sure.
Most players won’t feel any change from this patch, but if past patches are any indication – they might do if CCP have messed everything up again and the patch breaks things and causes more bugs than it fixes… Cross yer fingers!
Victim: Keats’ Embryon
Alliance: Roids’Are’Us
Corp: Antiloncker
Destroyed: Taranis
System: Otou
Security: 0.3
Damage Taken: 1673
View Full Kill Information | Battle Summary | EVE-Online Free Trial
A group of friends and I were in Otou checking out the Asteroid Belts for any resident Pirates, when we came upon a group of ships who seemed to want a fight. So, my friends (who were in far better ships that I) fought them, beat them, then they went and got more ships and wanted to go at it again.
We ended up being 5 vs. 5 and with me in a long range drone-carrier fitting I simply warped into the battle last at a range of 80km. I aided the other members of the fleet with whatever they were attacking and the enemies didn’t really notice me until the end. They sent Keats’ Embryon up to take me out. I noticed right away that when in close range contact, his weapons were ineffective, so I simply activated my afterburner and flew towards him, keeping the range low and his weapons useless… I called my drones back and destroyed him quite easily.
Victim: Scorate
Alliance: Roids’Are’Us
Corp: Federation Francaise Des Dragons
Destroyed: Dominix
System: Otou
Security: 0.3
Damage Taken: 43149
View Full Kill Information | Battle Summary | EVE-Online Free Trial
A group of friends and I were in Otou checking out the Asteroid Belts for any resident Pirates, when we came upon a group of ships who seemed to want a fight. So, my friends (who were in far better ships that I) fought them, beat them, then they went and got more ships and wanted to go at it again.
We ended up being 5 vs. 5 and with me in a long range drone-carrier fitting I simply warped into the battle last at a range of 80km. I aided the other members of the fleet with whatever they were attacking and the enemies didn’t really notice me until the end – but by then it was too late.
Victim: dyrnam
Alliance: Roids’Are’Us
Corp: Federation Francaise Des Dragons
Destroyed: Cyclone
System: Otou
Security: 0.3
Damage Taken: 31330
View Full Kill Information | Battle Summary | EVE-Online Free Trial
A group of friends and I were in Otou checking out the Asteroid Belts for any resident Pirates, when we came upon a group of ships who seemed to want a fight. So, my friends (who were in far better ships that I) fought them, beat them, then they went and got more ships and wanted to go at it again.
We ended up being 5 vs. 5 and with me in a long range drone-carrier fitting I simply warped into the battle last at a range of 80km. I aided the other members of the fleet with whatever they were attacking and the enemies didn’t really notice me until the end – but by then it was too late.
Victim: Captain KANET
Alliance: Roids’Are’Us
Corp: Antiloncker
Destroyed: Myrmidon
System: Otou
Security: 0.3
Damage Taken: 17128
View Full Kill Information | Battle Summary | EVE-Online Free Trial
A group of friends and I were in Otou checking out the Asteroid Belts for any resident Pirates, when we came upon a group of ships who seemed to want a fight. So, my friends (who were in far better ships that I) fought them, beat them, then they went and got more ships and wanted to go at it again.
We ended up being 5 vs. 5 and with me in a long range drone-carrier fitting I simply warped into the battle last at a range of 80km. I aided the other members of the fleet with whatever they were attacking and the enemies didn’t really notice me until the end – but by then it was too late.
Victim: TyriM
Alliance: Roids’Are’Us
Corp: Federation Francaise Des Dragons
Destroyed: Dominix
System: Otou
Security: 0.3
Damage Taken: 55871
View Full Kill Information | Battle Summary | EVE-Online Free Trial
A group of friends and I were in Otou checking out the Asteroid Belts for any resident Pirates, when we came upon a group of ships who seemed to want a fight. So, my friends (who were in far better ships that I) fought them, beat them, then they went and got more ships and wanted to go at it again.
We ended up being 5 vs. 5 and with me in a long range drone-carrier fitting I simply warped into the battle last at a range of 80km. I aided the other members of the fleet with whatever they were attacking and the enemies didn’t really notice me until the end – but by then it was too late.