It's all so new...

I'm now at -5.5 on the security meter, which means I'm permanently flashy red. Between you and me, this has created an entirely new gaming experience!

Now, when I see people at a gate or station, they try to target lock me because the sentry guns no longer work in my favour. This means that every gate is a potential 'gate camp' by anyone who's there, who might want to take the opportunity to attack me.

I've been an outlaw for about 24 hours now, and I've had only a couple of random people trying to attack me at gates I've been passing through. I avoided them very quickly, because I was surprised they were trying to attack me. The consequences of being an outlaw is still very new to me, and I've got to adjust to it.

I've also discovered another interesting aspect of all this.

Fear.

People are afraid of me now. They run and hide, or dock, or quickly leave the system. They call in reinforcements, and they try to hunt me down.

This is just fantastic! It really creates such new and exciting experiences, where I am more the hunted than the hunter.

Tonight was an incredibly exciting time. I entered a system where there were a dozen others in it, in an out-of-the-way, deadend system. I started chatting with one of the locals, who turned out to be an alt of someone who talked to me about my blog last week. They informed me that the local antipirate protection they had, had advised them to hide in their POS, and reinforcements were on the way. I thanked them for this intel, talked a couple more minutes, and then turned my Ishkur towards the only gate leading out.

On the other side, the excitement began.

There were about 5 heavily armed and powerful ships being flown by the antipirates - all of them waiting for me, camping the gate. My heart rate began to increase. These people wanted ME!

So I quickly ran their camp, heading for a gate that happened to be in front of me. They were in hot pursuit, and I arrived at the gate around the same time they did. I jumped through, along with them - and found even more ships on the other side of THAT gate!

Laughing at the excitement, I activated my warp drive towards a distant asteroid belt, running their second gate camp. As soon as I hit the belt, I realigned and warped off to another gate. They had pre-empted my course, however, and had already arrived at this gate, with some of them jumping through to again try and catch me on the other side.

I jumped through anyway, not having much of a choice, but confident of my abilities to laugh in the face of such danger.

On the other side there were 3 of them, waiting for me to uncloak, and I again warped off to a distant belt, followed quickly by another gate.

This time I lost them, and I jumped into a system that was empty of their presence. I quickly docked, choosing safety over the constant danger of being 'on the run'. But none of them jumped into the system, and I managed to take a breather and calm myself down.

That was an awesome experience, and very enjoyable! It was even more exciting than actually getting a kill!

Being a pirate is different to anything I've experienced before, but it's so much more enjoyable too.

Being the hunter or the hunted has just increased in intensity.