EVE Online is a game that is dominated by the big stories. You hear the reports of $300,000 USD being blown up in one fight, of servers straining under thousands of players in one battle, or cloak and dagger stories of people sharpening knives and trying to overthrow huge alliances.

But that's not the day to day of EVE. EVE is a game that generates stories, big and small. You never know just what you're going to run into when you log in.

This thread is for those stories. Pull up a chair and grab a drink.

One of my favorite stories from EVE happened in the first year of Kite Co. A few months after I joined up, we moved out to NullSec (where the big PvP fights happen) and we found ourselves a nice little station and a growing friend in Brave.

One day, we get word that they found a Titan that had been tackled, with a support fleet, making it so that the enemy couldn't run for safety. About 6 or 7 of us in Kite quickly scrambled, taking small, fast moving Interceptors to go and maybe deal a little bit of damage to the Titan. We couldn't really do much, but we wanted to get on the kill report if it actually happened.

We get out there, moving as quick as we could. We land on field and felt pretty secure, since larger weapons have a hard time hitting smaller ships, as they can't rotate quickly. We're off on the side of this battle, the largest we'd seen at the time (though nothing compared to the ones in the news). We pull way off, about 100km away from the enemy, line up an attack run on them and start moving in as fast as we could. We're seeing shots being fired back and forth as we move in and one of the guys on voice comms opens his mic and plays some music.

We burn in, hard. One of our Interceptors explodes, one of the enemies got lucky and scored a direct hit, blasting the ship into dust with one volley. I get close, lock up the titan and everything that I can then start dumping missiles to score a little damage. As I'm burning past them, I see my overview (the list of enemies near you) start to get yellow boxes, telling me that they're targeting me next. I bank my ship as hard as I can, trying to cross past them, hoping they don't get lucky again.

I see a white smoke line just behind me and a notification pop up that I was missed. It looked like the shell just passed behind me (later I realized that it doesn't matter how badly the shot misses, EVE still shows the graphic just missing you).

We pulled back a bit and did a few more hit and runs. We never ended up killing any of those ships, but that dive was super memorable.

So one day about a year and a half ago, Kite Co. was hanging around, shooting the shit, and doing nothing in particular. Seeing that we had enough duders around to get a small fleet together, I called for everyone to get into ships and form up. Being the super-elite well-trained spec ops force that we are, Kite Co. formed up promptly and it wasn't long before we were undocking from our home station and rolling out.

We set out in search of something to shoot and kill, and we came across a few hostile ships that we dunked on, but we were having trouble finding anything of suitable size to sate our appetites. We jumped through a few more empty star systems before passing an allied fleet going the other direction. We greeted them in passing, lamenting our inability to find anything to shoot at. Our allies wished us luck and continued on their way, and we kept moving.

We made it a couple more jumps without seeing anything interesting, and boredom began to set in. Chatter died down and my commands grew lazy as our guards dropped, and I called for our scout to jump into the next system to see if there was anything worth chasing after.

"There's an Archon on gate."

His response was so deadpan— so completely calm— that its significance didn't even register at first.

If you don't play EVE, it's likely not clear why I should have been excited. An Archon is a carrier— a capital ship— and is a pretty big ship in EVE. It was even rarer to find one on a stargate (stargates are the means by which players travel between systems) since at the time, carriers could not use gates.

"Say again?" I managed to compose myself and ask for confirmation.

"Yeah, there's an Archon on gate with a bunch of dudes shooting it."

"Everybody jump jump jump, go now!" I called for our fleet to go through the stargate into the next system. Sure enough, when we entered the system, we were greeted by a carrier with a hostile fleet shooting at it. "Everyone on the Archon! Don't let it get away," I shouted as I scrambled to contact the friendly fleet that we had passed just minutes before. Our small fleet wasn't powerful enough to bring down the carrier ourselves— we would need help.

Our allies jumped at the chance at such a juicy kill, and I was assured help was on its way. With the cavalry not far behind, I turned my attention back to the fight and remembered that the hostile fleet was still on field. I contacted their leader and a temporary truce was agreed upon. As much as we would have loved to shoot each other, the Archon was a bigger target. With the other fleet on field now friendly, both Kite Co. and our ad hoc allies were able to breathe easier and focus on preventing the carrier from escaping. We did so successfully, and it wasn't long before the cavalry arrived and the large allied fleet we had passed jumped into system. With the extra firepower on our side, it didn't take long before the Archon was blown to pieces. Congratulations were exchanged, and all three fleets went back on their separate ways once more.

The Smartest Player In Eve

Back in Syndicate, almost 2 years ago now, Kite Co members were taking down an enemy structure in our space.

Kite Co members had taken out their highest dps, lightest tanked ships in order to speed up the miserably dull process of shooting an enemy building that doesn't shoot back. The goal was to remove all these buildings to make our space safer and more profitable.

Everything was going as expected in our lightly tanked, low health ships UNTIL an enemy bomber started warping in and harassing the weak Kite Co Ships.
The enemy bomber would do the same thing each time: Warp In, Drop a Bomb on our structure bashing ships, warp away, cloak up.

This was slowing down our destruction of the space building long enough to be annoying, while not really endangering our ships unless we made a terrible mistake.
Me, being new to training bombers and still pretty new to the game, came up with the most fundamentally basic of plans to stop the enemy bomber: I would wait to where he had warped in the last 3 times in MY OWN cloaked bomber and hopefully catch him as he released his bomb. (The window of time here is actually pretty small as you can cloak up almost immediately after dropping your bomb and warp away). I had fit guns on my bomber instead of bombs and a warp disruption module to stop the enemy bomber from warping away if I caught him.

I wait like an invisible crocodile, hiding in the water, waiting to snatch another invisible crocodile (yeah this metaphor fell apart here)?

...
A few minutes go by.
"Maybe he gave up," begins to cross my tired, slightly inebriated mind.
...
A few more minuets go by.
I sit determined to protect my fellow Kite Co Members as they continue to fire at the enemy building.
...
I wait still, now mostly just avoiding changing ships to help take down the enemy building.
...
Boom!
The enemy bomber shows up.
He appears almost directly beside my cloaked bomber to drop is next bomb on the Kite Co Fleet.
"I GOT HIM" I shout over comms over-excitedly
"I'm the Smartest Player" I say on Mumble while filled with the elation of my stupid trap actually working.

The enemy bomber is destroyed in of "poof" of anti-climatic space dust.

To this day, when I say something stupid in eve, Kite Co members remind me of that time I called myself the smartest player.

Kite Co. is currently on a vacation to our ancestral home in Syndicate. We had reinforced a few POCOs (Player Owned Customs Offices - structures orbiting a planet that are used to mine or manufacture specialised resources on that planet). The way this works is you reduce the health of a structure to a certain point, after which it becomes invulnerable for a length of time - typically just over a day or so - and you come back and finish it off.

So, Myself and Aigis were warping cloaky alts around the POCOs in 9GY as they came out of the reinforce timer today. We knew we probably wouldn't be blowing them up as we didn't really have the numbers, so we were just keeping an eye on things to see what the locals would do.

We saw a Stabber Fleet Issue and a couple of Interdictors sniffing around the planet 1 POCO, but opted not to engage. After half an hour or so, the locals appeared to have docked up and we were joined by Mattisen and reshipped to brawling Vexors to go and poke the POCO on planet 5.

For a few minutes nothing much happened. Supercool, one of the locals in an alliance called Syndicated, warped a caracal in and attempted the kitey bullshit that is the current most popular form of internet spaceship combat. We chased him for a bit before it became apparent that weren't going to keep with his shield cruiser in our heavily armoured ships, so we returned to poking the POCO. At this point Seamus joined us in a jackdaw, while Matt went and got a stabber for something a bit faster, while Aigis was in his own Caracal.

Of Flukes, Drones and CAS

By pure fluke, Aigis managed to fly close enough to a cloaked enemy ship to decloak it - a nice juicy Stratios, an expensive faction cruiser, was what they'd had watching us and Aigis wasted no time in warp disrupting it so it couldn't get away. While this was happening, an Oracle had warped in to snipe at us from extreme range. Mattisen burned for it, managing to land tackle while Aigis was getting shot up pretty badly by the Stratios' drones.

By this point I'd managed to get my Vexor into warp scrambling range of the Stratios and landed the scram a few moments before Aigis' ship exploded under fire from its drones. My capacitor began to disappear as the Stratios landed a pair of medium energy neutralisers on my ship and all I could do was keep him tackled while my drones and Seamus' Jackdaw poured on the damage. My armour was evaporating, but the Stratios was going down faster and the pretty little ship soon became a pretty little explosion:

https://zkillboard.com/kill/47589500

While this was happening, Matt was wearing down the Oracle when a hostile fleet from CAS entered system and warped to us. They primaried the Oracle, giving Mattisen time to warp away, after which we thanked them in local chat. We repaired our ships and waited for the CAS roam to leave.

https://zkillboard.com/kill/47589510

After a while the system was quiet enough for us to resume our business shooting the customs office and seeing what would turn up. We didn't have to wait long before Syndicated turned up with a Rupture, two Caracals, a Scythe and a Gnosis battlecruiser. It was a tough fight, but we managed to take down the Scythe https://zkillboard.com/kill/47589899 as well as the rupture https://zkillboard.com/kill/47589917 before our own ships went down - three vexors lost.

We regrouped in the station and noticed that our opposition was hanging around the POCO to loot our wrecks, at which point we quickly grabbed fresh ships and warped in. We pointed and killed one of the Caracals https://zkillboard.com/kill/47590002 while the other ships managed to warp out. At this point we called it a day and docked up, but there was one more twist in store.

Black Omega and VEGA makes a party

We'd had a cloaked frigate watching the POCO to see what would happen, and were surprised to see two Dominix battleships warp in and just sit there, doing nothing.

Not having the firepower to dispatch these ships in a timely fashion, we opted not to engage. After a few minutes and even a request in local for more fights we noticed that there was a new neutral pilot in system and sure enough I saw a covert cynosural field pop up on the overview of my stealth bomber pilot.

Black ops battleships and assorted other covert vessels poured through the bridge and both Domis were turned into a fine mist in seconds: https://zkillboard.com/kill/47590597, https://zkillboard.com/kill/47590593

Myself and Matt warped in to try and get on the killmails, but saw the Gnosis had warped back to extreme range. We burned for it, and I managed to bubble it in my Sabre while Matt had tackle at range. We had hoped that the black ops gang from Black Omega would dispatch the battlecruiser, but for some reason they just jumped back out of system. It quickly became apparent that another hostile fleet of Cerberus heavy assault cruisers backed up with Basilisk logistics ships from VEGA had entered system while were were occupied and had landed on the customs office. Mattisen managed to escape, but my Sabre was not so lucky: https://zkillboard.com/kill/47590643

Turns out, Syndicate is still pretty fun.

As the Aigis mentioned in @gnu2000's story, it needs to be said that stumbling upon a cloaked up shiny ship as serendipitously as I did holds some special memories for me. This region of space, Syndicate, is considered our ancestral homeland because this is where we resided over a year ago. It was the first little corner KiteCo. moved into upon leaving the confines of high security space for the lawlessness of null sec. This was also all well before we decided to throw our lot in with the much larger alliance led by Brave Newbies, resulting in the two blog posts written by @jesterroyal detailing the nitty gritty of EVE Online politics. (By the way, if you haven't read them, you really should. Part 1 can be found here.

When KiteCo. first showed up on the scene, this little pocket of three interconnected solar systems that we lovingly dubbed "The Pocket" was in fact occupied by another alliance whose members we dubbed "The Germans". We extended the olive branch at first, hoping to live in peace. However our offer was rebuffed and it became a full on invasion of sorts after that. Now, as some of you may already know, you can set up various pieces of infrastructure in the solar system that orbit the planets and moons. When you invade someone else's system, destroying these and setting up your own is necessary, and it becomes a game of knocking these structures below a certain number of hit points, and showing up to do it again after a period of structure invulnerability before the enemy can repair it.

This is where my story begins. KiteCo. had done the necessary damage against a structure the first time. However, the timer displaying structure invulnerability made it extremely easy for the enemy to guess at when our second assault will begin. They prepared by apparently hiring mercenaries. These mercenaries would not simply fly into the system through the usual jump gates, but instead essentially teleport in through the use of a ship equipped with a special beacon called a Cyno which would allow them to cover long distances with powerful but slow ships in the blink of an eye.

The clocked ticked down until the structure was a mere 30 minutes before becoming vulnerable. I was a fairly new pilot, and in an attempt to ease my nerves, decided to simply quickly visit the soon to be battlefield. I undocked from the space station, selected the enemy structure, and decided to warp in at a distance of 70 kilometers. I land, and fly forward for a few seconds before a ship suddenly appears right next to me. Blinking for a second, I was not quite sure exactly what had happened. When my mind finally caught up and I proceeded to scream in voice chat while target locking the unexpected vessel. I began firing on it with missiles while calling for reinforcements as I did not have a warp disruptor equipped, the module needed to prevent an enemy from warping off. Fortunately for me, my worries proved unnecessary. That ship never moved, and mine dispatched it after 4 or 5 missile volleys.

I approached the wreckage, flush with victory over what was, in hindsight, a ship with an afk pilot, and discovered a cloaking device and more importantly, a cyno beacon. Apparently it was this ship that was going to light the signal for the mercenaries to cyno in. With the cyno ship destroyed, the mercenaries no longer had an easy point of entry. They never showed up, and the Germans, now alone, did not contest either. We blew up the structure, taking another step in securing the system for KiteCo. glory.

To this day, this is one of my fondest EVE Online memories. Over the year that followed, I have been involved in much larger fights flying much bigger and shinier ships. However, nothing has quite managed to make me smile more when I think of them.

A year and a bit ago when we lived in Syndicate full time I decided to go fr a little trip. There was a long string of systems that had one way in and one way out. I decided I should check out the biggest "pipe" I've ever seen. I put a cloak on my ship that did not allow warping when cloaked just ot ensure I could make the trip relatively safely.

Kite Co. at this time was in a place of boredom in a sense. There was not much going on, leadership was trying to make events for people to log in and have fun flying spaceships. It was then in the mumble comms chat I pipe up saying "I'm trapped in this system, they're camping me. I could use some help."

Thus began operation Saving Private Densae. Kite Co. scrambled a fleet and headed out to my location to bust me out of the danger. I was sitting cloaked in the system, with all the exits covered by my enemies. They verbally harassed me trying to get me to fight a one sided brawl. The systems local chat was getting "heated" with gifs.

I kept them talking. Knowing my friendly fleet was right around the corner. As a little too much time passed for them to be interested, Kite Co. fleet didn't make it in time before they got bored and left. They couldn't have been more than a few jumps away. Our fleet decided to chase them, we had nothing to do anyway.

Unable to catch up with my captors everyone did have fun banding up to complete the objective of saving my sorry ass. Taking the long way home, we found our fight. Two Dominix ships jumped through a gate out fleet was sitting on. Dominix's are battleships. They take a lot of damage and dish it it out well with drones. Our fleet was comprised of Cruiser class ships. We could attack their drones, and also apply enough DPS to take them down while sustaining casualties that were likely to be half of our fleet.

We engage them and realize something interesting about them. They were spider tanked. Meaning the ships would link up and send repairs to the one that was taking the brunt of our DPS. This made it harder to kill them, but it gave them much less attack power against us. All we had to do was apply damage, and send our drones to kill their drones. They had no way of warp scrambling us so we were free to warp away to safety at any given moment.

This all resulted in a great impromptu, fun night that netted us two rather large kills at the cost of two very small losses.

Thank you for Saving Private Densae.

@dinosaurs: Saving Densae Sensei was definitely a good memory.

I remember specifically remember our fleet being comprised of almost exclusively Thorax class cruisers. Each ship was fitted with two webifiers, which slow the movement speed of a ship down by a percent. We caught the Dominixes by almost complete chance. We landed on a stargate, getting ready to enter the next system when the gate flashed, signaling ships were coming through, and two new names showed up in the system's local chat. When the gate's cloaking effect wore off on them, we immediately warp disrupted them to keep them from flying off, and threw webifiers on them to keep them from flying the 15 kilometers back to the gate and jumping back through. There were 8 thoraxes in fleet, two webifiers each, and the Dominixes were essentially moving at a speed of single digit meters per second once we got on them.

Unfortunately, I was in literally the only non-thorax ship in the fleet, a dragoon class destroyer that was far less tanky. The two Dominixes, realizing they were dead anyways, decided to basically get the only kill they could and blew me to smithereens.