Pages

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Did I Really Do That?

"Honest... I ran out of gas. I... I had a flat tire. I didn't have enough money for cab fare. My tux didn't come back from the cleaners. An old friend came in from out of town. Someone stole my car. There was an earthquake. A terrible flood. Locusts! IT WASN'T MY FAULT, I SWEAR TO GOD! "

- "Joliet" Jake Blues

I didn't mean to do it.  Honest.  It just happened.

On Monday I wanted to build some torpedoes and ran out of pyerite.  No problem right?  Low sec has plenty of scordite and plagioclase just sitting around in belts.  For some reason people don't like to mine in belts.  That's okay, more for me, right?

So after Rosewalker cleared out some Angel Cartel battlecruisers with a stealth bomber I warped Wandering Rose into a belt and started mining.  The system had a couple of pilots hanging around, but they were either high security standings pilots or faction warfare members too busy doing important faction warfare stuff to bother with a mere Procurer.  A couple of times I saw local spike so I warped Wandering Rose off and hid in a station.  Standard precautions.  After all, I just wanted to mine, not fight.

Once while fighting a couple of Angel frigates with a flight of Hobgoblin IIs I saw a new pilot come into system.  I finished killing the last frigate and was pulling in my drones when a Coercer warped into the belt.  Yipes!  The Coercer started to close the distance on my Procurer but I was able to warp off easily.  Rosewalker stayed cloaked and watched the Coercer hang around for half a minute or so and then warped off.

I putzed around for awhile in real life waiting around to make sure only friendly, or at least uninterested people, were in the system.  Moving ore and minerals around was safe enough and then real life interrupted so I didn't wander back to the belt for 30 minutes or so.  When I did warp Wandering Rose back into the belt, she was jumped by two Angel frigates and two destroyers.  My five Hobgoblin IIs outnumbered them and swiftly dispatched them.

After a couple of cycles my friend in the Coercer showed back up in system.  I was a bit slow aligning because he warped in on top of me in a Thrasher and warp scrambled me.  Yipes!

Oh, I screwed up.  I was kicking myself for losing a Procurer in such a stupid way.  After what seemed about 30 seconds trying to warp away, I realized I was still alive and my shields were holding up pretty well.  At that point I thought maybe I could convince him to fly away.  Rosewalker was stealthed in a safe spot watching the action so I warped him to 70 km from the fight.  Then I realized that Wandering Rose's flight of drones was in the drone bay so I targeted the Thrasher and then sent the Hobgoblin's after the destroyer.  With that out of the way, I uncloaked, lit up the Thrasher with a target painter and started launching torpedoes.  Even though the range was 68 km and my engagement envelope is 73 km, I missed with my first launch, so I started moving closer.

During the fight I was really focused on one or two spots on the screen.  As I moved in closer in my Hound I saw that the drones were taking a toll on the Thrasher's shield.  Then I saw the shield drop away and go about 1/3 into armor.  Suddenly I saw the Thrasher's icon disappear.  Good, he warped off so I could go safely to the station.

I turned my attention to the window with Wandering Rose's controls and went to check on and recover my drones when I saw I wasn't alone.  A pod was sitting less than 3 km from my ship.  Somehow my last flight of torpedoes destroyed the Thrasher.  I still don't know what happened.  I know my Procurer was nestled in the middle of a lot of asteroids.  Maybe the Thrasher got stuck in the roids and became a sitting duck for the torps.  I know I didn't tackle him.

After the Thrasher pilot's pod warped off I scooped up the loot and then docked up, my hands shaking from the adrenaline rush.  Looking at the contents of my cargo hold, I realized that the pilot was firing Barrage ammo at me.  I perhaps was fortunate that I was attacked by a Minmatar ship as my shield tank is most effective against explosive and kinetic damage, the two damage types that Barrage inflicts.

I want to say I wasn't trolling for someone to attack me.  I just wanted to get some minerals to make some torpedoes.  If I am going to live in low sec I don't want to have to travel to high sec to get something as easy to make as ammunition.  I also don't want to travel to high sec to either buy minerals or mine the minerals.  I want to get them from low sec myself.  Mining in a belt is risky, but I made a plan to account for if I get attacked.  I was really shaky executing the plan and I'm glad that I didn't know at the time the pilot I faced had a 1300 to 120 kill/death ratio or I probably would have lost any semblance of calm I managed to hold onto during the fight.

Still, I plan on exercising more caution in the future.  Getting my first low sec kill was good, but I'm a carebear.  I don't need that kind of excitement in my life.

17 comments:

  1. But I'm so proud of you! You don't have to kill for fun. Defendin yourself matters. That is what first led me down the path of Pewpew.

    Gratz on not being a victim. He may have assumed you were an idiot when no one else appeared.

    Trolling for Pewpew isn't wrong. :P

    His kill death ratio means nothing without context. Has he killed a thousand ibis?

    Welcome to lowsec. You know where to find us if you need chats about stuff.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I went on BattleClinic and checked out his record. Looks like all his kills, at least over the past year, were in null sec fleet actions.

      Delete
  2. Very cool, congratulations! Be careful though, you might start to enjoy it after a while :-)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Good work, sir!

    Beware that adrenaline rush does not become addictive. MUHAHAHAH

    ReplyDelete
  4. Gevlon,

    You don't know what you're talking about when it comes to PvP fittings. Please refrain from commenting on them. The Thrasher had 2 tank modules and, in any event, is a fairly common fit Thrasher. PvP ships can do one, maybe two if they are decent T2 ships, things at a time. Tank, dps, tackle, speed and so on. Pick one and fit for it. Now, it is true, most ships with at least fit a DC2, but that's a n 8/3/2 ship. A couple of rigs and pure dps is what it's built for.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Mining ships have a suprisingly good buffer tank now. Certainly suprised the thrasher pilot, would be my guess. A procurer would have melted before the buff.
    What was your fit btw? Any active tank?

    K/D ration does not mean a lot if it was achieved in fleets in nullsec. I have a 99 percent K/D ratio for example, but it is nothing special.

    Congratulations on your first lowsec kill.
    Did your hands shake afterwards? :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. For about 10 minutes. I'm glad they didn't start shaking until I saw his pod.

      Delete
  6. To be honest, I disagree with the anonymous person.

    A couple of rigs does not constitute a tank on a Thrasher imo, you can easily fit on a Medium shield extender, with two gyros in the lows (or a DCU and a gyro), a MWD (or AB if you want to keep speed up under scram) and a scrambler. Hell I believe you can even get a 400mm plate thrasher working fairly well. Either way, you should have SOME form of tank on a Thrasher, even if it's just to keep you alive under drones.

    And you might say BUT WHAT ABOUT A WEB. Frankly with the dps a thrasher can throw out, stuff will either die before it can run or you'll be dead. Imo, a web is immaterial to a Thrasher in the majority of cases

    ReplyDelete
  7. I totally agree with Seraph ...
    And for your assumption about being lucky a minmatar did agro you with barrage : he was just a stupid minmatar :) Knowing it was going to agro a barge, which are commonly shield tanked, he should have loaded faction EMP, by the way, nice kill ! I hope you'll enjoy low sec pvp ;)

    ReplyDelete
  8. Well done. Amusingly, the guy is probably telling all his friends about how you baited him with your evil, evil over-tanked Procurer.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Newb question. He was carrying Barrage, Hail, and Republic EMP. Is there some way that you know he was firing Barrage that is in the killmail or your logs? I ask because I'm trying trying to learn from my meager fights what my opponent was doing, and that would help a lot.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The kill mail will show what ammo is loaded in the guns.

      Delete
    2. If I read the kill report right, he had 6 guns fitted with barrage and one with Hail? And he was only firing the one gun loaded with Hail?

      Delete
  10. Well done! I've known a lot of carebears that, after getting the taste of blood in their mouths, have turned almost completely to doing PVP. One friend of mine went from being an industrialist to a -10 flashy pirate.

    Don't assume that just because someone has a good kill / death ratio that they are good at PVP -it might be that they are simply risk adverse, or only go after soft targets.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Lol dude well done, I remember my first kill, was a t1 frig with no guns, and I was an addict from then on, don't let any of these gimps lessen it for you it was a good kill.

    I know guys been playing 4-5 years and still can't duel box and they experienced pvp'ers, so fuck these lot and well done sir :)

    ReplyDelete
  12. Interesting and amusing. Nicely done.

    ReplyDelete