I had an awesome “girls night out” last night with Mynxee of the Hellcats, and several other applicants/new recruits. It did differ from most of the girls’ nights that I’ve experienced, in that the weirdest/scariest guy in the room didn’t immediately fixate on me (what is it? Some kind of creepy male instinct that says “here is a woman who is too polite to throw a drink on me or tell me to piss off”?). Anyway, it was a class in her wonderful Hellcats Yarr Girls Charm School.
What did I learn? Well, Mynxee is an awesome teacher, and I learned how to travel in a pack, how to create safe spots, set up my overview, and so on…and I learned how hard directional scanning is. I totally fail at it. Oh, I could pinpoint someone within a fairly narrow angle, but there might be two or three planetary bodies in that slice of space, and once I go to one of them…I lose the target. There is something that I am missing, and I will need to practice a lot – probably in hi-sec so I don’t get smooshed by someone. :)
We did a small roam, looking for someone to interfere with, but didn’t find any likely victims. Again, like many of the girls night outs that I remember. :) One of the group did get separated and smacked at a gate, but she was able to get her pod away…which was actually one of the lessons last night so I suppose she passed that one with flying colours.
I got to bed after 2:00am, couldn’t sleep, got up, drank some hot milk and read until 3:00, then got up at 7:00. It was worth it, though, and I look forward to the next one.
Was loads of fun! Thank you for the compliments–EVE is so complex, sometimes I worry I just muddle the explanations. There is so much information to convey, but only so much that can be assimilated at one time. Practice makes perfect, I suppose. Every time we go out, I’ll be in coaching mode until everyone is comfortable with their role in fleet and with performing the associated tasks.
It is a blast to fly in a women-only fleet and really speaks to my goal of being able to field a ferocious fleet of lady pirates…we are well on the way to that! We’ll do plenty more practice with the scanner…I have some suggestions in-game for refining your technique. Also, Shae is brilliant at teaching use of the d-scanner; ask her for some one-on-one coaching…I’m sure she’ll be more than willing to help.
I look forward to the next time…and getting you on your first killmail!