Close Calls and Not So Close Calls

Tale # 1

I was out in my trusty Thorax Saturday morning hunting for belt ratters or miners foolish enough to not watch the scanner. Molden Heath is not great for this activity, I find the pilots here tend to be on the ball.

In Atlar I run into a Rifter on scan. Hmmm, a challenge but definitely doable. I spend about ten minutes trying to track him down but he's moving a lot. I warp into a belt and he's not there again... but someone warps in behind me. OH CRAP! An Arazu, the Gallente Force Recon cruiser, more than a match for my Thorax.

Before I know it I'm locked and webbed and scrammed. I get my 5 ECM drones out and get them on him before sensor dampeners kick in. I'm going down and I've barely scratched his shields. My only hope is the drones so I spam the Warp button. Just as my armour is gone and my structure starts to get hit I hear that wonderful voice say "Warp Drive Active".

I quickly escaped back to high sec with only my drones lost.

Tale # 2

Sunday morning I decide to hook up with a corp mate and hit Great Wildlands. I decided to break out the Scorpion because, hell, its not going to see much action otherwise and I wanted to try it out. And I didn't have any good battlecruisers on hand.

I get to Egbinger fine and dock to take a minute break. As I undock there is a Thanatos sitting there. Thanatos. As in big assed Gallente carrier. Locking me. Scramming me. Bastard! I quickly lock him back and show him what 7 ECM modules can do. Bah, broke it already. I warp to the gate where my buddy said there was no gate camp on the 0.0 side.

Unfortunately, he didn't check the low sec side and I warp into a gate camp of three ships. An Apocalyse Amarr battleship and two more (!) Thanatos carriers. No worry I think, I'll land on the gate and jump and the carriers can't follow me. And that voice that was so sweet Saturday morning seems so cruel and vindictive this morning:

"You may not jump due to acts of aggression."

Oh shit. The two minute aggression timer. You see, CCP created a two minute cool down before you can dock or jump to prevent people from doing something nasty and then avoiding NPC Police or sentry retribution. By jamming the carrier at the station I undocked from, I started the timer and 30 seconds later I'm 90 seconds to wait before jumping. And in 20 seconds I'll be dead from the battleship's lasers and the carrier fighters. I run.

Of course, being warp scrambled is not a surprise so I get to try my ECM trick again. I locked the three targets and activated the ECM modules and even sent my flight of ECM drones on the battleship, and then started spamming the warp button. Half into structure, "Warp Drive Active"!

"Woo hoo!" I think, "I got away again!" I come out of warp at a station and still can't dock but I'm safe. Or am I? My structure starts going down but there is no one on the overview. What? Drones? From who? I can't dock, I try to warp, but too late. I explode.

What happened?

Fighters. Damn awesome fighters. For the uninitiated, drones are small robotic ships that you carry with you and can tell to attack enemies. Fighters are like uber-powered drones that also have the ability to warp through space to follow a target. And that is exactly what happened, the Fighters from the carriers at the gate followed me through warp and continued to attack until I was dead. Nice.

The good news is that the ship was insured and I was able to quickly dock and undock in a rookie ship to loot my own wreck for some very valuable modules that survived.

Tale #3

After the loss of the Scorpion, I went back to base and bought a Brutix battlecruiser and joined up with my corp mate, determined to get out and actually hunt. We went to 0.0 a different route. Along the way we ran into a beligerent Claymore Minmatar command ship, the T2 variant of Battlecruisers. I was in my Brutix and my wingman in a Rapier, the Minmatar Force Recon. He was beating the shit out of me but my ECM drones and corp mate made him nervous and we were able to disengage in good order.

We carried on into 0.0 and eventually found a Drake battlecruiser ratting in the belt. We tackled it but it had a good active shield tank going that I could barely tickle, and the high sensor strength of Caldari ships meant my 5 ECM-600 drones had a poor chance of jamming him. As the Drakes missiles tore up the Rapier we decided to disengage this experienced pilot.

My time for the morning was up, and I was forced to safe spot and log.

Tale # 4

Sunday evening I log in to my Brutix all alone in 0.0 space. Not exactly a good situation. I'm two jumped from the relative safety of low sec so I head that way.

WHOOPS! Local filled with reds, not a good idea. I run back. Well, what about this direction? Another jump and another local filled with reds. Run back.

Ok, any decent alliance will have intel channels and will probably be aware of my position and the possibility of a hunting party forming to get me is very strong.

One more direction, no reds, one neutral. Ok this way I figure, flying deeper into 0.0 space. I think I will dock at one of the NPC stations in the middle of the region I say to myself, and wait out the weekend. I get to the system and its filled with reds as far as the eye can see, but none on the gate. I warp to station hoping I don't run into a warp bubble and I make it there safely, docking.

Along the way I noticed Alesseo's character in local. Shout out to regular reader! Word. ;)

I jump clone back to empire and gather myself. Lots of close calls, one ship loss, and no ship kills. Another typical weekend for Kirith Kodachi.

Sigh.