Skill training completed

Hello my lovelies, I'm back in New Eden from planet earth, and tired as fuck. So busy I haven't slept well all year... It's time for more mundane stories about everyday Eve life, after RagnaR's wonderful yet short regency of the content. Fear not, I have a feeling he'll be writing more as soon as he thinks of something to say and recovers from his horrible cocaine addiction...what's that? oh, cookie addiction, not cocaine, well that's better. But this is not a blog about real life events. To Oz Eve!

Yesterday, CCP made me shed some more of my newbie skin, as I was auto-unsubscribed from the rookie help channel which means I've been playing for a whole month!
It's the weirdest feeling not actively playing for just a few days, upon returning you feel like you've accomplished so much more then when you're in the game, as you don't pay attention to your skill training queue until you come back and you've learned all kinds of new things! Is there any sweeter sound in the galaxy than this?


I don't think there is.
I myself, got my refinery efficiency and several ore-specific processing skills to level 3. Now I can refine those ores with 100% efficacy, all I need is to get my standing up from 6.3 to the fabled 6.67 so my NPC corp of choice would stop taxing me for refining entirely. Next up: cruisers and better combat skills.

Space gold

But in the meantime, standing needed? That can only mean one thing: Boring missions ahoy! And I don't mean boring in the sense how a 12 hours Danish opera would be boring, I mean boring like your dentist bores holes into your jaw. Mining! Huzzah! Well okay, both kinds of boring.
Eve Online: the game best played when not actually playing it.

After a few lvl 4 mining missions, I'd gotten my ranking up to 6.55, that's  pretty darn close. Meanwhile I'd been chatting with a Belgian corpie named Toyla Kaundur, and we decided to do something together. Lvl3 security missions, why not? Surely his year of experience and Maelstrom battleship can help me and my puny Coercer Life Lessons against even punier rats. He gives me some tips on ships to train up, I call him minmatar slave scum, good stuff.
The first mission goes fine, his 50km+ range cannons wipe out NPC pirate frigates before they can even get a shot in edgewise. But already I'm feeling a bit uneasy for reasons I can't put my finger on just yet.
Our second mission promises twice the reward money and a lot more LP too...but twice as many pennies is still pennies. Barely a million ISK for a multi-room extermination mission.

Good thing there isn't a cockpit view, or I'd be blind by now

Upon arriving at the deadspace location, 10 Gallente frigates and 3 battleships await us... damn. My ship being a fragile eggshell despite the best fitting I could imagine, I can't tank all of them, and I even get knocked down to 18% hull integrity pretty quickly...okie dokie, I'd better warp out faster next time. Dock, undock, get a quick free full cap and shields, and repair my armour on the way back.
To my extreme surprise, Toyla is also having trouble, he has to warp away  to recharge his cap more often than I do, and I start suspecting that his fitting is slightly poopy. He apologises profusely and even talks of giving up, but NO SAHR! We will not give in. It's fucking 1 AM and I should be in bed, but I'm too stubborn to give up! Ever!

Toyla did do his fare share of aggroing

Then we run into the next big problem: while I can skirt along at 500m/s and orbit the enemy at my 15km optimal range while keeping slightly out of theirs, my buddy has a much harder time at it. His guns won't do anything when too close, and when I ask him why he isn't moving he says he is in fact moving...at a top speed of 100m/s...well poop, even my big honking mining barge is faster than that. lolminmatarlol.

At this range, his guns are useless.

Thanks to a few lucky shots he manages to squeeze off, his drones, and my kiting; all enemies in the area are eventually down. Thngs are looking up and there's even talk of getting his salvaging Noctis in there to clear up the wrecks and mayhaps doing the storyline security mission I was just offered.
But we still have another acceleration gate and room awaiting us...this time with 4 battleships, a webbing tower, three missile sentries, and lots of targetting dampening frigates...Toyla finally gives up and goes to bed...well shit. Nobody else from the corp is online, but I see RagnaR is still on IRC.
"-HEEEEEEEEEEELP!", I yell.
"-I am your knight in shining armour." he says. He then qualifies it by adding that his armour is only shiny because it's worn so thin and that his knighthood is actually honorary. Whatever, shut up, come help me.

Jackus Loftus gets in his Auguror like he did last time, and we're off!
I briefly discuss the preceding events and my corpie Toyla, also showing Jackus the former's fitting. Terrible. Or at least inadequate.

Here's some homework for you readers:
using what you learned last week from RagnaR's postings,
tell me how this fitting should be improved for this mission

Maybe I should disregard Toyla's advice on what to fly and what to equip...Still I am very grateful for him lending a hand, and we did have fun fighting.

Jackus arrives, and we're back on mission. Still 5 hours to get the time bonus, everything is fine. He remote-repairs me but...uh-oh...my armour is shifting between 20% and 80% integrity while I get aggro'd by everything under the sun. Yet the enemy webbing goes down quickly, then the frigates, and everything is fine...everything is fine.
Well, everything is fine until I notice that my faction infrared S crystals are getting worn out, and I have to go exchange them for normal ones...everything is fine...until we notice that with my now weaker laser cannons and his few drones, the battleships can tank us indefinitely...thus we're strictly out of options. Fuck. We can't win, and I have nobody left to call for help. We have to abandon the mission.

Just as the night is darkest before dawn, things always go smoothly before going horribly wrong

RagnaR goes to bed, it's nearning 4 AM for me, and with my head hung low in shame, I salvage the wrecks from the first room... at least I got some good loot out of this ordeal. But failing a mission is plusungood, and my NPC corp standing takes a 0,40 point hit. God dammit! Shoulda stuck to mining. Every. Single. Time. I think I've learned my lesson, but noooooo, gotta go bite off more than I can chew. *sigh* I see yet more drab mining missions in my near future.

P.S: I know I could have just finished the mission some other day, instead of abandoning it, since it wouldn't have timed out for a few days, but it makes a more compelling narrative this way.