Monday, August 29, 2016

Squeeze me baby one more time

Recently I gave my girlfriend a cocktail book as a gift. I told her to choose any cocktail and I would make it for her. She chose margarita. One of the ingredients of margarita is a fresh lemon juice. I squeeze the lemons, but to make sure I get all the juice, I squeeze it at least few more times. In my previous post I wrote how I've encountered 3 marauders and managed to gank 2 of them. Now one would think that's the end of the story, but like with the lemons, I saw a potential for a one more squeeze.

I tell Trey we should move to this c4. It's a small wormhole, occupied by a small Russian corp that just lost two expensive ships. Now I know they have at least one Golem in station. I also know, that these guys like to farm, like clockwork. I couldn't help but sense an opportunity here. Ganking two out of three Golems felt as a job half done. The stealth would have to be a top priority. If you gank someone, they won't blink twice, but if the same people saw us the very next day, the jig would be up.

The tower is at the outer planet, so we are forced to make bookmark near the center of the system, which isn't a good thing. Mostly anoms spawn in the middle, so if we happen to log in when our targets are doing anomalies, there's a big risk we will be noticed. Same thing applies if we log in near the station and they happen to undock or check the d-scan. Preferably we will be already in the system cloaked up by the time our targets come. And that's exactly what we do when we log in early. It's time to play a waiting game. I wonder if these guys will feel like farming after yesterday. As someone who have been in a Russian alliance, my gut says they won't tolerate these two anomalies present in the system.

Time goes by. I check the EVE client and spot probes on the overview. I did not manage to see who launched them, but it's quite obvious as they are exactly on the station. I wait for the locals to finish scanning the system. Probes disappear, but scanning ship is nowhere to be seen. We have all exits covered. I bet they put the scout on the wormhole again, which is great news. That usually means the farming is about to take place.


Well I'll be damned. A Golem appears on the overview. It's the lucky pilot that managed to get away yesterday. I knew they still have a Golem docked. I keep my eyes on where he will go. This time we have the whole system scanned out.


Another Golem undocks! I guess they had a spare one. There's still one pilot docked at the station. Will there be a third ship? I watch both Golems warp to an anomaly. I guess they only have 2 Marauders left. Me and Trey observe as the ships do the site. We don't want to engage too soon when there are still a lot of sleepers on grid. Our hearts are racing, hands are sweating. We pray Bob that neither of us gets disconnected. Finally only one sleeper of the third wave is left and we make our move.


This time gank goes by the book. We tackle both Marauders, bubble up and focus on an mtu first. The Golems seem to be taken by surprise as barely any of our ships are taking damage. Our targets go down one after another. To make sure the job is finished this time, we also send both pilots back to the empire via pod express.



It warms my heart to have a successful op. The gank was executed in an optimal way and both, me and my partner, each bring home 800mil isk. We go back to high-sec, get the loot safely to Jita and decide to chat up our victims, to see if there's any isk left that we could squeeze out with a ransom in order for us to leave the system alone.


Neither of the pilots are online. Don't know if it was a rage quit or they simply thought that was enough of EVE for one day, but one thing was clear - this system is dry.

3 comments :

  1. I am always amazed that you actually find these targets. I usually end up in empty space.

    Lootfairy loves you :-)

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  2. More content please! Your blog posts always brighten up my day.

    ReplyDelete