Wednesday, April 29, 2015

Ninja Salvaging Series 2 - A carebear stare

Letting your guard down


If you ninja for good time, you will sometimes win, you will sometimes lose. You try to do your best assessment and take action. It may not always work out, but that's the beauty of this game. You adapt and try again. Besides win and lose situations there are mixed ones. I call them lose-win situations. One of those times was when I've met a Navy Vexor in his mission. He was being a smart ass and took aggro. At the same time he was keeping 30km+ range and there was no way I could catch him with my ab frigate. So he was playing around with me, until I was forced out of the site. Before warping out I waited out my weapons timer so I could swap to another ship.

As always, me being disorganized, I realized I do not have 1mn microwarpdrive to fit on my frigate. It probably is in Orca when I moved all modules to fleet hanger. With 5 minute engagement timer running out I opted for Brutix. Not exactly fastest ship, but I was hoping with overheated mwd and links I will manage to get in point range, then web and then scram, assuming that pilot is still at the site. Without wasting time I go back.

Upon landing I still see Vexor on scan. Good. I go through acceleration gate and there he is. I overheat all my modules and burn as fast as I can. He is sitting 45km out and my overheated point is reaching 35km. It was tense, but I managed to land a point. Soon I was on top of him and had him scrammed and webbed. Now he is not going anywhere.


While I was busy shooting Vexor, he was busy shooting last remaining npc. I believe he was afk and did not pay attention until his armor alert went off. You know, it usually means you are in danger. And in danger he was. His ship exploded. I guess missions are not engaging enough to stay focused. It worked out this time in my favor. If you aggro a ninja, expect it to be back.

Social engineering


Social engineer is a big part of Ninja's lifestyle. Sometimes carebears need a little push before they can open fire on you. I came across a Megathron pilot. I have been salvaging and stealing his loot for quite some time. Usually I leave mission runners that ignore me after awhile, but sometimes I invite them to a convo. Especially if life in the system is slow, then I give extra attention to my targets.I convo a Megathron pilot.

Zosius > o/
Zosius > just helping myself to some stuff
RenderBroken > doing good?
Zosius > quite well, thank you
Zosius > and you?
RenderBroken > You want the salvage?
RenderBroken > yea
RenderBroken > always good
Zosius > its good money
Zosius > i pick up best salvage from missions
RenderBroken > if you want the salvage, have at it
Zosius > you dont need it?
RenderBroken > no
RenderBroken > I will just loot
Zosius > why not
Zosius > i want to loot too
RenderBroken > I dont have may salvager near by
Zosius > yea
Zosius > but loot is good too
Zosius > how about you tractor stuff
Zosius > and i loot
RenderBroken > So you ninja salvage for money? lol
Zosius > yes

It usually starts friendly. No harms done sort of way. Just me, salvaging and looting. It's important to try and set non threatening tone.

Zosius > hope you dont mind me coming in like that
Zosius > other people dont take it so nice
Zosius > how much does it pay missions?
RenderBroken > well what can I do, blow you up or just keep going
Zosius > you get concorded
RenderBroken > missiongs are ok I could make 100mil/hr
Zosius > its quite safe
RenderBroken > just leave me some and I am happy ;)
Zosius > i will leave you small wrecks
RenderBroken > gee thanks
Zosius > :)
RenderBroken > you do have a bounty
RenderBroken > lol sorry
Zosius > do i?
RenderBroken > not really targeting
RenderBroken > yea
RenderBroken > 9mil

At this point things are getting interested. When conversation goes direction of killing, I usually pretend I have no idea about killrights and boast that if I get shot they will get concorded. Megathron pilot gets me intrigued when he locks me.


Yellowboxing is usually half the work. From here on now I need to play my cards right.

Zosius > ah
Zosius > some people were upset when i took their ore
RenderBroken > I bet
Zosius > and why are you targeting me
RenderBroken > you dont have someone to team up with?
RenderBroken > I unlocked you
RenderBroken > I didnt mean to
 RenderBroken > lol
Zosius > hmm
Zosius > there was other guy said same thing
Zosius > almost one shotted me

I try to keep conversation on the subject and tell how some mean people shoot at me and even kills me. Usually at some point you try to spin conversation for the carebear to give an excuse to shoot you. Most popular tactic is "test my tank". It's where you ask a carebear with big ship and large guns to try and shoot you in order for you to see how well you tank.

Zosius > last guy almost one shot me. so I improved my tank now
Zosius > trained some armor resistance
RenderBroken > good
RenderBroken > you also need kinetic and thermal hardeners
Zosius > hm
Zosius > i have those
RenderBroken > good
Zosius > what is your damage type
RenderBroken > kin and therm
Zosius > can we test the tank before i leave?
Zosius > i am full with loot
RenderBroken > thats what Galente use
RenderBroken > I dont want to get concorded

It looks like my acting turned against me. Now the guy does not want to shoot me due to CONCORD. I try to find a solution to our problem.

RenderBroken > you can aggro in the next area
Zosius > hm
Zosius > how can i aggro
RenderBroken > if you really want to test it
Zosius > i can invite to duel
RenderBroken > just fly close before I can shoot
Zosius > they implemented this new change now
Zosius > that you can test without concorded
RenderBroken > duels?

I tell him about duels. He acts all surprised. I try and send him invitation to duel which gets auto blocked. He has his options set so all duels are rejected and yet he acts all surprised. I am quite confident the guy never intended to shoot at me and was playing dumb just to pass the time while missioning. I try one last time to ask if he is willing to help me out.

RenderBroken > so you are dead set on looting all the good stuff huh?
Zosius > yep
Zosius > why?
RenderBroken > just curious
Zosius > hmm
Zosius > can we test tank?
RenderBroken > not at the moment

It's been fun, but unfortunately no cake for me. In any case, this is how ninja social engineering works. It has netted me quite few kills and quite few tears. The shock these guys experience after your small frigate goes from being defenseless to killing machine is amazing. 

2 comments :

  1. Heey Zos, long time no see! This is Ferna, used to roll with usysc
    Sweet that you're still running this blog! Keep up the cool posts! And I'll see you around, I know DT and "Disbanding as we speak" are recruiting, I just left the pirate life. Hit me up ingame?
    Cheers o7

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    Replies
    1. Hi Ferna. I'm afraid I am done with lowsec piracy for foreseeable future :), however if you want to do some stuff in high-sec or wormhole stalking, we might work something out. I plan to perhaps create a w-space stalking focused corp. How does that sound?

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