Tuesday, May 5, 2015

Ninja Salvaging Series 2 - You can't catch them all

EVE has a steep learning curve. Or so they say. Some get into this game and right from the start feel like fish in the water. Some, have hard time grasping gameplay after many years. When there are no big signatures in the system a.k.a battleship size hulls, I often visit younger generation of pilots.

Antimatter lessons


I visit Caracal and Brutix Navy Issue in a mission. They seem to be in aggressive mood today.


I casually burn to Brutix, while ignoring Caracal. Neither missiles nor Railguns do much damage. At this time, fighting battlecruisers and cruisers feels more like a necessity. The blood does not rush so much, but it has to be done. Someone has to bring emergent gameplay to these guys. That's the only way to save EVE. Even CCP agrees. Soon Brutix and his pod were converted to wreck.


Glad to be of service. Upon checking his killboard history, I am once again saddened to see lack of any activity. It's up to us to bring content to these people, or else they would be lost in their missions and likely to quit overall. Upon checking his losses, I've noticed another interesting kill 4 days ago.


Few jumps out, in the area he already met a ninja. And died from it. Normally we have this saying: kill and ransom all you can, because they will never shoot twice. Obviously there are exceptions. 4 days is not a long time to forget a lesson that engaging a ninja in pve fit ship might not be a good idea.

So close, yet so far


Today's highlight is a story of how you always have to be on your toes. You can't take a kill for granted until there's nothing left, but a wreck. It all started when I visited a Vargur at the site. He was one of those that liked to take pot shots. From safe distance of course. I started burning to him and then he just warps out before I could get to him. I was not even mad, I saw him aligned to station so I never expected to catch him.

Strange thing, however, is that instead of docking up, like most do, he just turned around and warped out. According my cloaky scanner sitting by the station, I saw him warping back to the site. Holy crap. That's the first. Engagement timer was not even half way. I was waiting for him to drop out of warp while rubbing my hands and a cheeky smile on my face. Not long now.


When he landed a glorious fight started. Everything was going according the plan. Vargur takled, logi chain setup and Orca in warp.


Once Orca landed, it was time for the old switcheroo trick. He goes into Bastion mode, I deaggro and swap for a killer ship before he warps out. Simple. It seemed to work quite fine. I usually deengage right after my scrambler is off which normally gives enough time to swap and tackle with new ship before Marauder aligns and warps out. So I thought. I end up staring at the empty space.


There is nothing, but the void left after I helplessly watched Vargur warp off, probably sighting from the relief. This left quite a bitter taste in my mouth. I couldn't believe what just happened. Marauder is one of the biggest fishes a ninja can expect to catch. I had him. It was within hands reach. It reminded one of my experiences. It's like when you go fishing and catch a big one, only to have our line break and fish swim away. That was how I felt when watching Vargur swim back to the sea of high-sec.

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