What Were They Thinking?

A long long time ago, before I knew any better, I set my Caracal cruiser on autopilot and left the computer to do something else. I came back later to find my ship destroyed and podded. Turns out I did know I was supposed to tell the autopilot to go through safe security space only and it took a tour through low sec where someone had a good laugh, probably asked himself "What was this guy thinking?" and then opened fire.

No matter how long you play this game you will still often come across kills that leave you scratching your head. Sometimes its the fit, sometimes the actions of the pilot, sometimes both.

Take last night's Machariel kill for instance.

We were out in a Kitchen Sink fleet looking for trouble and had a corp mate coming from high sec near Tama in a Vexor Navy Issue and asked us to cover his jump into low sec. We were in Tama so warped to the Nourv gate on a perch and provided intel.

As we're sitting there with our VNI pilot almost ready to jump, a neutral Machariel jumps in. We debate trying to grab it but its neutral so we'd have gate guns to deal with, and there are reports of more neutrals in Nourv so we figure bait trap. Our fleet is a Caracal, Thorax, Confessor, Svipul, Atron, and Incursus, with a Comet nearby and the VNI jumping into us.

While we ponder the situation, the Machariel is moving around, and has moved off gate and towards us. Hey, maybe we should just go for it. As we get up the nerve to try and tackle it, the battleship warps off.

Darn.

NO WAIT! He warped to a medium plex! LET'S GO!

Thanks to the warp speed changes and the Mach pilot warping to the plex at zero, we get point and the fleet moves in for the kill, meanwhile I'm obsessively watching local for the spike that surely is coming from his friends, right? RIGHT?

Wrong. Nothing but a third party Raptor show up, and the Raptor pilot was merely kill whoring.

Looking at his fit raised only more questions... Large cap transfer module in extra high slot? Three tracking enhancers? Barrage and Hail ammo but no faction EMP, Fusion, or Phased Plasma? Our current theory is that he was an incursion runner and simply took a wrong turn, but we may never know what exactly he was thinking.

Remember kids, TAMA IS SAFE!