Friday, September 25, 2015

A lesson well learned

All hail Thera the Beneficent, Enabler of Logistics for Poor Null Pilots. (CCP, please don’t nerf. I feel that is a necessary addendum these days.) As you have no doubt gathered we found a Thera entry just a couple of jumps away from our home system. This was tremendously helpful in our efforts to evacuate. However, before long a neutral appeared in our system! Again! This time it was a Brave pilot who I soon saw was the proud owner of a Dramiel.

“A neutral! KIIIIIIIL HIIIIM!”, I cried in local. I do local etiquette. He was toying with an Ishtar and Caracal near the station when I undocked my Svipul, from which he fled in terror.

I warped to the gate he had been aligned to but no Dramiel had landed. Hmm. He was still on d-scan but not at a celestial. A safe spot! Innocent Scout hopped into her Buzzard and probed the scoundrel down. Unfortunately, he was burning straight up (not toward a celestial) at 4.5km/s and was already 50km away when Innocent landed. I could have pulled a fast Interceptor out but he was still rabbiting away in local and I figured he was unlikely to hang around when he saw a faster ship coming his way.

So one of the guys had a good idea. He refitted his Ishtar with omnidirectionals for drone tracking and range and made ready with his sentries. He then warped to Innocent before aligning upwards in the direction of the confident Dramiel. Innocent then probed and immediately punted the Ishtar towards the Dramiel. He dropped his sentries and popped him in one shot. Hehe, that’ll learn him.

Dramiel: http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/killmail.php?eid=48840347

As it transpired, our valiant Brave pilot had visited us out of the goodness of his heart to tutor us in the finer points of EVE. FIrst, he told us that we had 'completed Level One', although this was tempered by the statement that we were ‘plebs’ and that it ‘took us long enough’. I like lessons like that. It was very good of him. He then left the system and abused some of our corpies next door for not being able to AFK in J2 any more.

And so ended our adventure in Scalding Pass. I have to admit that it was a sad moment when I departed for the Thera entry for the last time. I finally understand the allure of sov null. Fighting for a system and staking out a claim made me feel very invested in the process. I'm hooked. But I will never rent.

Since I promised that this thread would be an honest account of my activities I must confess that I gave serious consideration to hiring mercs to torment that nasty corp who persecuted us with such a cowardly home ground advantage. I also contemplated leaving Innocent Scout in their system to entose their stuff when they were offline. But given the blue complication I decided it would just become too much hassle.

What really tilted the balance was the pilot who was so recently bereaved of his Dominix coming into our system and crying about his ship. Apparently he had brought it into null specifically to deal with us. He was extremely upset that it had died. I told him to cry me a river and that his Dominix was weak and deserved to die. It was glorious. And yes, I am that petty :)

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