Aridia - Wretched Pit of Scum

The Aridia region is one of the most deadly that I've visited. No, I didn't get ganked there, but this morning while moving Derranna through in a Probe frigate I ran into two gate camps, and previous living near here when Kirith was part of Coreli Corporation left the impression on me that Aridia is full of nastiness. I like it when prowling, not so much when travelling.

Reminds me of a story: a friend was trying to move his Raven battleship with all his worldy possessions through Aridia into Fountain. He had another friend scouting as is proper protocol (although he was violating the "don't fly what you can't afford to lose" golden rule) and between when the scout checked a system and when he jumped in a Battleship gate camp appeared. His Raven lasted for all about thirty seconds. He quit immediately after that; unlike me he never drank the Eve kool-aid so to speak.

Anywhoo, what the hell was Derranna doing in Aridia you ask? Long story, but its Friday and work is quiet so sit down, lean back, and read away.

You may recall the character Barak Vorn that I inherited from another friend who went on to other things in Real Life (TM). Well, along with the useful freighter he also came with a Carrier.

For the non-Eve players out there, each faction had access to about 37-40 ships of various sizes and requirements. The smallest and cheapest are frigates costing about 50K-200K, the typical ship of the line is a battleship costing 100-130 million. The bigger ships are classed as capital ships and start in price around one billion ISK, ten times more than a battleship. Carriers are the smallest of the 5 capital ships each faction has, but still more massive and expensive than any non-capital ship.

The downside to these behemoths is that they are too large to use the normal jump gates that connect all the systems in Eve (exception being freighters; they are more massive than carriers so don't ask me why in terms of logic, its a gameplay-balance thing). The only way to move capital ships is to have another character create what is called a cynosaural field in another system that the carrier pilot can lock onto and jump to directly. Its annoying logistically because you have to get your "cyno pilot" to the target system which often involves harrowing journeys themselves since capital ships are also forbidden from high security space (again, the exception being freighters for the same reasons as previously mentioned).

Cyno jumping does have its upsides. The capital ship can cover a lot of distance in one jump (13.5 light years for Barak's carrier) avoiding any intervening gate camps and the surprise factor can be crucial in combat; carriers are deadly with the waves of drone fighters that they carry.

But back on topic. Guess where Barak's carrier is located? That's right, Aridia region. In one of the busiest systems in that region to boot. I want to practice with the carrier but not in a system filled with potential hostiles. I would like to move it someplace safer but need a cyno in a low sec system within range to get out of Aridia first, and all of those potential systems required Derranna to brave the dangers of low sec so she could make the cyno field for Barak. This would be part of the logistical issues capital ships have that I was mentioning.

Anyway, Derranna in her little Probe frig was not a juicy enough target for the gate camps and she made it through to the first waypoint without issue. I'll probably wait until Monday morning before I actually do the move to avoid any weekend surprises.

After all, it would suck donkey ass if I lost the carrier.