High security space, home of the vile

New Eden is such a vast and complex universe that I could never hope to master every aspect of it. This never-ending complexity is part of what makes the universe so fascinating. The greatest combat fleet commander could be a powerful force behind their corporate wing of Munnins but put them at the head of a mining fleet and their abilities falter while their profits drop due to a lack of knowledge and experience.

I would be surprised if I ever meet a capsuleer that knows everything about New Eden. Our universe is filled with countless capsuleers and is filled with an equally countless amount of ways to interact with it.

Yet no matter how you choose to explore New Eden there is always one constant — social structures.

Even for someone like me, who flies solo a majority of the time. I still interact with those I fight. Normally with the cold silence of the hunt at first, then the wrath of guns and finally, if I’m lucky, a friendly conversation afterwards about the fight.

Social structure is integral to New Eden and nothing more clearly shows that than its capsuleer made corporations. Corporations, after all, were made as a means for pilots to pool their resources together and thus achieve greater goals than they could ever hope to on their own. This sharing of knowledge and pooling of resources is what allows that combat fleet commander who we thrust into a mining operation to learn how without suffering too many losses.

Capsuleers help each other so that getting through New Eden is just a bit easier. Even out here, in what some call the “Wild West” (another old Earth term) we help each other out despite the fact that our main goal is the destruction of any ship not identified as friend. Throughout my travels I have even found that the citizens of low security space are, on the whole, a friendly and helpful bunch.

Well, with a few small exceptions.

But in both null and high security space, I always find myself faced with hatred. It is a large part of why I abandoned it in the first place. Nevertheless, I sometimes find myself back there.

As much as I enjoy my life in low security space, there are only so many times you can engage other capsuleers before you feel numb to even the prospect of defeat. So, every once in a while, I find myself looking to knew experiences to shake up my routine. Recently, I set my sights on helping the Triglavian invasion effort against EDENCOM, the new allies of Concord.

I chose the Triglavian side even though they are strange beings from an unknown dimension that have still not made plans clear. The reason being, everywhere they go they evict Concord and reduce the security status of any system they control to zero, more or less. As far as I’m concerned, the less safe spaces the better.

Unfortunately, my war effort was short lived as I once again was reminded of the vileness that is inherent in the citizens of high security space.

My mission to help the Triglavian community however, started off a bit shaky. I did get into their communication channels and acquired versions of the ships they were using for their fight easily enough but that is where the friendliness ended.

I jumped into the system where the Triglavians were doing battle alongside their capsuleer allies and, like any good fleet member, I did what I was told. I opened fleet communications and asked if it was safe to warp to the fleet commander.

Instantly, I was greeted by four pilots asking me which one because, it seems, there were multiple. Well that is fine, I had not realized that it was possible to have more than one and so I asked how I could verify which fleet commander was in charge of me — I was met with silence.

So I asked again, “How can I tell which FC is mine?”

Unfortunately for me, it seems as if the capsuleers of this fleet were more interested in discussing the latest memes and how expensive their ships were to explain the intricacies of fleet hierarchy. They seemed only to have the time to let me know, once again, that there was more than one fleet commander and I would need to be more specific.

Not to be deterred, I decided to go with my gut and warp to my best guess. I land on grid and it looked like my instincts were good but I was still a little put off. This was supposed to be a new player friendly fleet after all and we were all in this together. Yet no one here would take the time to help someone new to concept of blowing up the EDENCOM ships.

Regardless, I’m there now, and I start doing my part as a cog in the Triglavian machine. Target lock, fire, destroy, target lock, fire, destroy. It goes on this way fairly well for about five minutes.

The thing is though, I fight other capsuleers and rarely ever in large groups on either side. I also rarely engage with any pilots that do not have the luxury of eternal clone status. Pirate factions and racial armies are normally spared my assaults. As a result, my ships scanners and heads-up displays are not set up to efficiently filter through all the ships that tend to be present on both sides of large fleet engagements.

So, as I progress through my target-locking and firing process, I move on to the next target and once I start firing, I soon start taking damage.

Thinking the EDENCOM forces have chosen my ship as their primary target I immediately hit my broadcast button to alert our logistic wing that my ship will need armor repairs in order to keep functioning.

A few seconds go by and there are still no repairs coming in. I get a little worried and at that moment, the Fleet Commander announces on the main communication channels, “Do not repair that asshole!”

“Pardon me?” I think, “But why not?”

My ships explodes and I am forced to warp away in my escape pod. Not wanting to disrupt any fleet operations, I pull out my keypad and inquire in fleet chat what just happened. While I wait for an answer I continue to hear on comms and read in chat multiple references to “that asshole.”

Going through my logs I find the ‘mistake’, it seems someone that was not involved in our fleet warped in as the EDENCOM forces were warping away and I mistakenly targeted and then destroyed their ship. As a result, Concord came sweeping in as they do, trumpets blaring, arrogant heads held high and they blew me to bits.

Now in a normal fleet it common practice to fire upon anything that is not in fleet with you. If a ship lands on grid and your HUD does not display it as in fleet, or “purple,” then you delete that ship from existence. But again, this was high security space, there are ‘rules’ here.

Had my logistics wing actually decided to repair my ship, they too would have perished. Fortunately, any good logistics pilot already knows this. Thus, they had chosen not to repair my ship long before commands of “Don’t help that asshole” ever came through. So +1 to the logistics pilots. I made a mistake and they reacted appropriately.

My one wish was that someone politely explained to me what happened instead of instantly choose to band together and ridicule me for a simple mistake. One that would likely not happen again now that I knew what to look for. This should have been even more forthcoming in a new player friendly fleet. But then again, perhaps this is just how high security space citizens treat their friends.

I talked to my corp-mate, Leucippus, and they agreed. They even reminded me that I “…was in his [the FC’s] fleet. They should have backed me to the hilt.”

What is more interesting is the reaction from the person I accidentally destroyed, a capsuleer piloting a Catalyst fit for salvage. They invited me to a private communication channel and asked if I did that on purpose. I said no and then, since at the time I was still quite confused by what just happened, went back to sorting out my HUD to be better suited for the task of large fleet engagements in high security space.

But then it got weird. The Catalyst pilot threatened to hunt me down and destroy my ships unless I paid them four times the value of what they lost from my mistake. I, of course, found this ridiculous and told them I would not be paying.

Now, do not get me wrong, I am all for extortion and violence to keep your place in the universe but there is a time and a place to do it. Here, fighting against the more powerful EDENCOM forces, was not that time nor place. Yet they chose to go straight for intimidation. Had they just asked for me to replace what they lost I would have gladly done so and possibly thrown in a bit extra for their troubles. But instead the greed of high security space took over and they chose to try and hurt someone who was new and was actually trying to help them.

Out of curiosity, I asked my fellow pirates what their experiences have been among the high security citizens when they are not actively pirating and all had said the same. There is much arrogance and petty squabbles due to fewer reasons to ever need to band together against a threat.

Personally, I blame Concord. At first those that live in high sec appreciate their firepower but then they must depend on it.

Anyways, I’ve started to ramble on this entry and I don’t want to sound upset at the whole ordeal. In the grand scheme of things, the loss of the Thorax is sad but small.

What truly hurts is when players are banding together for a common cause yet when one of their own messes up, they go for ridicule instead of compassion. They may not be part of your corp at the time, but that is your friend who stumbled, pick them up. How sad it is that they go for hate over kindness in that situation.

This expansive universe is designed to test us. Are we living really living if we don’t fall flat on our face and fail occasionally? We have an eternity to learn and immortality to do it with so we should not be afraid to take chances and mistakes should be expected. It is, I think, why we undock and fly into the stars in the first place. To challenge ourselves.

I guess I should be happy it works the way it does. Low security space surely would be overrun by now if it were not for the arrogance of the citizens of high security space and their inability to cooperate.