Almost got my first PvP kill last night.

Myself and another corp buddy had been mining for a few hours. This typically involves watching a movie IRL while you keep an eye on corp chat and local chat. Especially since another corporation had declared war on us and has bribed CONCORD (the in-game NPC police force) to look the other way when they attack us in high-security space. The biggest risks normally are NPC pirates that attack you every so often (a.k.a. "rats" to distinguish them from player pirates) and dying of boredom.

(Yes, mining is boring. But it's a fairly steady and sure income stream so it works well when you don't want something stressful and have something to watch on TV. I've watched all sorts of things this week that I'd been putting off watching.)

So, we're sitting there loading our ore into containers that are floating beside us in space. This is known as "jetcan" mining where you put the ore in a larger insecure container rather then keeping it inside your cargo holds. It allows you to build up a larger pile of ore before we start shuttling it back to the station using an industrial hauler ship. Now, when you're jetcan mining, you usually don't move so it often looks like you're AFK.

In a PVP game like Eve... that looks like an invitation to any potential troublemakers. Also known as "ore thieves". What they can do is slide up within 1500m of your jettisoned cannister, open it up and swipe part of the contents. This, however, gives you the right to chase them down and kill them for the next 15 minutes.

So... cue stage left. A potential troublemaker in a Bantam (small frigate class ship w/ decent cargo capacity for its size and usually used for mining). He starts nosing around about 10-15km away in another part of the ore belt. Looks like a miner, so my corpmate and I don't pay him no mind. This isn't low-sec space, we don't have an exclusive claim on the system, and as long as he doesn't bother us we won't bother him.

Nonetheless, we still keep a close eye on him as we have jetcans full of ore near us.

After a few minutes of mining (long enough to fill a tiny Bantam's holds), he jets off. Probably to dump his ore at the local station. Then he comes back. Unfortunately, now he's got a mistaken idea in his head.

You see, just like any other MMOG, there are "farmers" and "macroers". The first are people who play solely to accrue wealth that can be sold for real life money. The latter are players who use automated programs (against the EULA of the game) to accrue wealth without personal effort.

It seems that he's under the mistaken idea that my corpmate and I are macrominers. He heads straight in from 10-15km out and intentionally bumps into my corpmate's ship (a slightly larger Osprey cruiser). Either to provoke a reaction or move my corpmate's ship away from the jetcan so that he can't transfer ore from his holds to the jetcan without moving back into position.

Since he didn't bump hard enough and we're a peaceable folk, we didn't respond. After the second bump, however, both of us locked weapons on his Bantam. This is generally a warning signal that you're ticking off the other player and once they have weapons lock, it's only a keypress to open fire. Now, either he stole some ore or he decided to bug out again. But he left.

Being the professional paranoid... I zip off and dock my Bantam so that I can return with my heavier frigate that is loaded for small game. I get to return to an absolute scene of chaos.

It seems that as soon as I warped away, we had (3) rats spawn about 20-30km out. They then head in and start attacking any players in the asteroid field. In this case, my corpmate in the Osprey cruiser and the troublemaker in the Bantam. I return to a screen with (3) rats, but I *also* notice that our little friend now has a red icon w/ white skull on him and he's bright read in my Overview window.

Lucky (for me)!

Apparently, when my corpmate sent his drones out to deal with the (3) incoming rats, the thief decided that it was a good time to swipe some ore. As my corpmate probably didn't have any weapons to spare on the thief. A good plan... but rotten timing on his part.

Because I had just arrived back, 15km out (well within range of my weapons), and immediately opened fire with all available weapons on his tiny Bantam. Definitely *not* what he was expecting me to return with. I chewed through his shields, his armor, and almost destroyed his hull before he warped away after only 19 seconds of combat. Another few seconds or a few good hits and I'd have killed his ship and left him floating in his "pod" in space.

He probably escaped with 30,000 ISK worth of ore. But he almost lost a 150-250k ship (including gear). The value of ore inside the jetcan was around 2.2 million ISK. Another corpmate and I stayed in orbit around the area for another 30 minutes waiting to see if he returned. It was also to serve as protection while my corpmate got his hauler and pulled the ore to the station.

Next time... I'll be equipping a warp scrambler, which will prevent the would-be thief from warping away.