Ninja salvaging series - Size does not matter

I start my salvage operations. System feels fresh. There are quite few carebears running their missions and all are neuts, which means most of them will probably meet me for the first time. First impression is always important, so I need to look my best.

I love exceptions

Majority of mission runners use Battleship as a ship of choice. I guess that makes sense. Of course in Gallente space I meet Gallente ships, namely Dominixes and Megathrons. Drone boats are quite annoying to fight. Their guns can't track me, but they do have a lot of drones in the bay that you need to tank until they are gone. It usually is not a problem, though there are times when you go multiple acceleration gates deep in the mission with majority npcs still intact. As a rule of thumb you will pickup aggro from the rats, and when you get an aggro from a player it can be quite a challenge. Sometimes I encounter advanced level ships such as faction battleships, t3s or Marauders. Statistically, the more fancy the ship, the less chance carebear will want to risk it and shoot, but there are always exceptions!

After visiting few bears and without any success to have try defend their loot and salvage, I scan out Kronos. I think I can count on one hand fingers how many Marauders have aggressed me. Nevertheless, I always give a chance so here I warp in and start cleaning out his wrecks. Few minutes later I get a weird greeting in local:

I'm not sure what he means by that. Is he warping out and leaving me be? Is he going to shoot? I doubt about the latter as he hasn't even locked me. Since my presence was acknowledged, I decide to stick around and salvage some more. I fully expect carebear to just warp off and already am looking for new potential missions to visit with my scout alt. It looks like Kronos pilot has other ideas. I get yellowboxed and aggroed.

I can't believe a Marauder just shot me. And from close range! I quickly get into low orbit and start to make short work of his drones. Logi alt is in warp and I start thinking about my strategy on what should I do while slowly chipping through his shields. I do not expect to break his tank with just Enyo. Not the Marauder. I bring in my logi ship with hope he aggroes it out of desperation so I could have 2 tackle ships. It would be easy from there on. I would keep him tackled with my logi ship and Orca swap my Enyo to something with more power.

As soon as my logi lands on grid I bring on reps. Kronos pilot seeing he can't kill my Enyo switches guns to my logi. What a relief. I love when that happens. Usually it makes things so much easier. I get my Orca and warp to the site. While my Orca takes it's time to align and warp I see something strange. Kronos is at half armor and steadily dropping. I do not know what is going on. Doesn't he have reps? I decide to convo the pilot and see if I can get ransom. As soon as I state my terms he abruptly closes the convo. Are there no more manners? At this point I doubt that I will even get a good fight.

In the end I didn't even need an Orca. Enyo alone was able to break the will and the tank of the carebear's Kronos. Ship exploded.

After seeing a killmail I am again reminded in what poor condition highsec is. I'm no mission expert, but I believe what he wanted was Vindicator not a Kronos. Bastion module and rigs I guess are overrated. The longer I look at the picture, the more I can see sad face on poor Kronos, that just begs to be put out of his misery.

Hijacking a plex

Kronos is a great trophy for a ninja salvager to have. My sixth sense said I should stick around a bit more. I launched probes and started scanning. Unusual ship appeared on scan - an Ashimnu. I think it's first time I encounter it in my ninja operations.

I initiate warp and it turns out to be a 3/10 DED site. That suddenly makes a lot more sense. I hope I am not too late. First room cleared. Second room cleared. Damn. I feel worried, but get relieved when I meet ashimnu in the third room shooting npcs. While he shoots, I will loot and salvage. This division of work seems more than fair to me. But I guess an ashimnu pilot was not too happy about another visitor in "his" plex. It took but a minute before his patience ran out and he opened fire. For someone who fights battleships with frigate a fight was rather underwhelming. Ashimnu melted and exploded without much resistance. I wonder why.

Nope. No idea. Since I'm almost at the last room, I might as well do some carebearing myself and finish the plex. I quickly dispatch remaining npcs and warp to the last room. I ignore all dps and go straight for the station. Looks like I'm lucky. I think. I score a Dramiel BPC which sells around 60mil. Not enough for me to retire, but for sure it will buy a lot of new ammo.