An Eve Vegas presentation by Data Scientist CCP Larrikin highlighted pilots with the most kills between 2007 and 2019. As the scroll slowed to a stop, Eve’s current, most efficient killers were shown. This is the second in a series of articles about a few of those pilots. Part one can be found here.

“I started seriously playing in 2010 and joined a renter corporation called Rookie Empire, says Daavid Cee, who ranked third in CCP’s killer list with 34,453 ships destroyed. “It was led by a dude named Goshee. His gregarious personality got me hooked, and we moved to nullsec. In 2012 I rage-quit after losing a Hurricane. Quit Eve for 18 months.”

“I came back in 2013 and hooked up with friends from my rookie empire days,” Cee explains. “My motivation is PvP fun with my close-knit group of friends who I’ve known for years. Going through a dozen eviction notices against the largest forces in Eve with none successful so far. Even they have to admit it’s our space.”

Friendship and Community

Cee believes that “the reason you stay is the people who you’ve became friends with. The relationships that you build with these strangers you’ve known for 10-plus years are just as close as IRL friendships.” That’s moer valuable to him than a Komodo kill. He’s quick to point out other members of his corp and alliance that have, if you count pods and rookie ships, more kills than he does. “I would rather be in a group of 15 close friends than be the leader of a group of tens of thousands, any day,” he says.

He and his cohorts had a few stints flying under the banner of such nullsec empires as -A- and Goonswarm. “After some years in -A- we got kicked, along with the other English speaking members, over moon drama. After Stainwagon totally collapsed we weren’t ready to wholly commit to the small-group camping lifestyle, so I got Hell On Earth Corporation into Goonswarm. We weren’t a good fit at all. We didn’t go on enough fleets or even live in Delve, so we got booted after a while.” After that Cee and his friends formed xHellOnEarthx, a member of the Simple Farmers alliance.

Booshing Goons

Finding themselves on the other side of Goonswarm, Cee recounts an interesting battle that resulted in his team engineering a unique tactic. “We deployed our Alliance to the Saranen system at the same time as the Goons moved there during World War Bee. We camped them in a station very badly. We started spearfishing to pick them off of the station, they didn’t even try to stop us. We ended up just instalock-camping them with Svipuls on the station at zero. We did what I believe to be a totally original tactic at the time, and I don’t know if anyone has done it since. The Goons began undocking Caracal fleets to run off our Svipuls. Since you can’t smartbomb that close to a station, we undocked smart-bombing battleships right at the same time as they undocked their Caracals. Then we booshed them AND our battleships off the station to smart-bomb them to death. We named the tactic Grenade Fishing, it really felt innovative. We felt like we were Rooks n’ Kings or some shit.”

“Ever since those two weeks in Saranen I wanted to see us use booshers in fleet, but it never really took off for us back home.” Shedding no tears over the boosh nerf, Cee says “they were an important doctrine, but the clever minds who think of this stuff will just find a new method.” He likewise took the Blackout in stride. “If CCP nerfs Rorquals, it hurts Rorq pilots and helps hunters. If CCP nerfs booshers, it helps Rorq pilots and hurts the fleets trying to kill them. But Blackout, it affected everyone equally. We could be sneakier, but we were exposed to the exact same vulnerabilities as our enemies. The fact that we thrived under it whereas some other groups just docked up until it was over is something I’m proud of. It says a lot about us and our style of playing. I am kind of amazed that our enemies didn’t try to pull a sneaky on us doing Blackout, it was their chance.”

Batphones

To keep their engagement profile wide, Cee and xHellOnEarthx typically eschew bluing vast swaths of other corporations and alliances. “As few as possible.  None preferably.” But having contacts in the right places does seal the deal every now and then, “I was leading a squad of eight or nine Sabres to tackle three supers in southern Catch. They had a small Dominix fleet with them, so I batphoned my friend in Pandemic Legion and they began burning towards us.

We somehow managed to keep the supers tackled with just me and my friend remaining as PL started landing on us, maybe 30 minutes later. All three supers died, the third one was so close to the POS they were heading to that his wreck ended up inside the forcefield, unlockable.”

Despite being one of the most successful killers in Eve, Cee is humble, and grateful. “I’m not the most skilled player, but I have played this game for a long time and I’ve found exactly what I enjoy doing,” he says. “I lead my group to focus on that.” He often thinks of the “art museum exhibit CCP made, and people looking at the simulation of the Eve universe. Thinking about them imagining all of our struggles, our victories, our defeats, our drama, our friendships, our grudges and enemies. It kind of gives me a sad, nostalgic feeling. I feel very fortunate to be a part of it, and I’ll be sad to see it go if it does.”

Cee knows Eve doesn’t exist in a vacuum. “The player base is growing older, having families and responsibilities. Lots of people don’t just up and quit one day, they kind of just log off for the last time and have other, more important things to do. I did that one time for a year and a half, and the whole time I was gone I thought about Eve and the friends I had left behind. I really like the Korean drive, it’s good to see the player count rise again.” He says, “Other groups could rise up and do the exact same thing we do, hopefully on the other side of Eve from us. So we can both grow and flourish.”