Ninja Salvaging Series 3 - Sunshine and rainbows

Engaging in ninja salvaging feels like engaging in an EVE profession that is extinct. There's probably a handful of people that are still left doing it. Unfortunately, most of them are solo players and do not socialize in ninja community (Ninja Dojo channel). Which is sad, because sometimes, you just need an extra pair of hands.

I came across Raven Navy issue and Apocalypse doing mission. Without wasting time they both opened fire on me.

I quickly tackled Navy Raven and started organizing my usual backup. I had one logi already prewarped, however, a secondary logi pilot is my scanner, so I had to swap ships at the station. This setup worked quite well for me so far. My Enyo usually can tank quite well and there's always a logi ready to repair. Scenario works something like this: Enyo gets aggro, kills drones, tanks dps. Once AAR is out of nanite repair paste, logi then starts repping. It results quite often to logi getting aggro, which enables me to have a secondary tackle on my target. Meanwhile, my secondary logi arrives just in time to setup spider tank.

This was not the case with these guys. Action was going behind 4 acceleration gates. There was around 40km distance between each gate, and as you can imagine, it was a lot of burning to do for my secondary logi. To make matters worse, I had two ships shooting at me. One sitting 90km away, which means Enyo was tracked much easier. Once my first logi was forced out, Enyo got aggro again. After using up the nanite paste for the second time, I was not left with any choice, but to leave. Unfortunately, reload cycle is just too long.

That left a bitter taste in my mouth. It's so rare to have a faction battleship aggro you, and having to let him go, just because luck would have a fight happen in a deep mission pocket, behind multiple acceleration gates. I cut my losses and continue poking into random people's missions.

I readjusted my strategy a bit though. Instead of swapping my scanner pilot to secondary logi and run into same situation again, I logged my high-sec alt that has mediocre scanning skills. Now I have two dedicated logi pilots and a dedicated scanner, without the need to swap ships. Thanks to my new pc, I can run 5 accounts without an issue. It's overkill, but it's either that, or you have to take out groups from "potential targets list". Getting aggro is very rare, so I try to squeeze every kill out of every opportunity I get.

In my next visit, I stumble on a mission running party.

All ships lock me and starts shooting. I have a swarm of drones on me. I have no illusions to tank this. Even if I could, I couldn't do any damage with Exequror on grid. I was not planning to stay anyways. I quickly warp back to station and swap to something with bigger guns. I warp back only to find out, that I unconsciously made bookmark before landing on grid. So now I was sitting around 200k off my aggressors and only 2 minutes of the engagement time was left. There's no way I can make it in time anymore. Since scanner is not in the same corp, I have to bookmark with my baiter when I land on grid, which I failed to do so.

I go back and try to get another hit with my fleet waiting on standby on acceleration gate, only to have a guy from the same corp land and see my fleet. Of course intel was shared and I got no hits anymore. Instead, they make a remark in local on how I had to bring my "friends". I wish. Having fellow ninja next door would be a huge life improvement. Instead, I have to multibox like a madman or be satisfied with lower grade targets. It's not always sunshine and rainbows when doing ninja salvaging. You will encounter targets that you can't break, that are too strong or too many. You will make mistakes and have some escape you. To succeed, dedication and patience are needed.