Wormhole trap

You know something is up when you jump in and see Drake Navy Issue sitting on the wormhole.

I'm not surprised. I know there was a cloaky scout flying around and I'm fairly certain he saw me. Only I did not care enough, but it may be the time when I will be sorry that I didn't.

Of course I'm not going to attack him. I got only one jump back and nooone to tackle him on the other side. Drake on the wormhole is not really a threat, but something doesn't feel right. It could be he was just on his way to farm, but longer I wait for him to react, more I get worried. I end up waiting until very last second of my session change timer. Once it's up, I move and cloak. At the same time interdictor uncloaks, bubble goes up and he burns at full speed to decloak me.

My dual plate Proteus is not exactly fastest ship in galaxy. I also did not cycle my mwd and I can't warp out as I use subsystem that gives me extra mid slot. It's only a miracle I don't get decloaked as dictor passes me at 2.3km.

I keep a close orbit. They still try to decloak me, but I'm not trying to run away either. I start warping my Domi fleet in position. Corp is over 100 members big, but most of activity is in US timezone. It's a good bet only handful of people are logged in. Besides, no backup is arriving so I think I can get a decent shot at getting a kill. I wait out polarization timer while Domi fleet gets into position one wormhole away. I warp my fleet in, decloak and tackle the faction battlecruiser.

They shoot me for awhile until I get few Domis in then Drake jumps out. I follow. I try to tackle him before he could burn back to wormhole, but with no success. He sticks around on close orbit until I am forced to bring Domi fleet back. They get polarized and Drake jumps out. Obviously an experienced wormholer that knows his stuff. I decided not to tease my luck much more and warped off. We both gave our shots and we both came out empty handed.

Lucky gas site

I've logged in. I'm at a temporary c3 system. It doesn't have a corp with any potential targets, it doesn't have any good statics (only high-sec) and on top of all, it's a pulsar system that penalizes my armor tanked fleet. The only reason I'm in this system is because my gut told me to log out here. It told me that c3 pulsar can be a suitable place for a solo Tengu or Gila - two most popular shield pve ships.

I check d-scan, expecting to see a shiny cruiser, only to get  two Ventures returned as a result. I hate Ventures. I hate them because they are so cheap, small, flexible and can mine any high-end gas you want. I usually ignore them, along with t1 haulers, t1 mining ships and, sometimes,  t1 scanning frigates. I don't see them as worthy targets to break my cover for.

Despite everything, things were getting interesting. I now had a fleet of Ventures mining that gas site.

Great thing about wormhole gas sites is that in short time, sleepers spawn to defend it and Ventures can't do shit, but to warp off, which happens exactly that. Sleepers spawn and Ventures leave. The big question remains: what will they bring to clear the site? Two Gilas is the answer. I must admit I am extremely lucky. I had only one signature scanned, which turned out to be the gas site of interest for the visitors. I make my move. Praise Bob.

Unfortunately his partner was too far away to hold them together. Once my fleet arrives it's just Gila against Domis. It tanks quite well. Even with three sets of heavy drones, it does take awhile to kill it.

Three large shield extenders with three passive relays in the lows and t2 rigs. No wonder it tanked like a champ. I quickly check the killmail for any valuable drops and shoot the wreck when I see there's nothing worth looting. Align and warp out. Meanwhile, my scout Proteus reports two Hurricanes in an aggressive mood.

I consider for a moment if I should try anything, but without real intel what's on the other side it's never a good idea. Especially after revealing my cards and ganking one of their own. I stick around in hopes to catch them on high-sec exit, but with no luck. The jig is up and since it's rather late, I call it a day.

In the right place at the right time

I spotted Stratios. Somewhere at the planet V.

When I arrived, there were only probes on the overview. It seems to be a standard probe launch and cloak at a random planet thing. Then all of a sudden I see him decloak.

Well, that's unexpected, but who knows what his reasons are. I keep an eye on him.  The guy is 100km away so I can't try and tackle him. I keep waiting but he doesn't cloak up or move. A potential target in front of me, but no way to get it. There is no good celestial to bounce of either. He probably came from a wormhole that I haven't scanned yet. I try to bounce of closest celestial to at least get into point range, but 70km was the best I could do.

Weirdly enough, the guy was still floating with his cloak turned off. I did not expect him to stay in the open for so long. I decide to take one last chance. I warp to a planet that is out of d-scan range, launch combat probes and warp back at range of my previous position. Stratios is still there.

Doesn't look like a bait either. I align, scan him out and warp for a kill while Domi fleet sits on the high-sec wormhole. Tackle goes without a hitch.

Of course when I get him pointed, Stratios pilot wakes up and sends his drones on me. They barely scratch my shields when Domi fleet lands and finishes the job of whoever got Stratios into structure.

A nice 600 mil kill. Quite good for a cruiser and I also get to keep one of those deadspace repairers. I do not know why pilot neglected to turn on his cloak. Maybe a wrong hotkey or  maybe a new map was blocking his modules. All I know is that I was in the right place at the right time.

Stalking Probe Patrol

I've been watching Probe Patrol for some time now. At first it was just a tower with few ships at it. It's a 100 member corp so there's bound to be some activity. Most of them are active in US timezone, so it's perfect. I can get a kill without risking getting ganked by a pvp fleet. That's in theory though, reality doesn't always go hand in hand with it.

I do a routine check on the towers and see some interesting stuff.

Pos defense modules are being unanchored and being scooped by Occator and Iteron. I'm starting to put up a plan. My main interest is Proteus inside the pos. If modules are being unanchored, most likely the tower will be packed as well. To do that they will need to lower the force field and maybe I can get a few seconds before Proteus warps out.

I get occasional urge to gank Occator with all guns offline, but common sense prevails. I need to be patient. Iteron is of no interest and Occator can be fully wcs fitted and warp away. Proteus, on other hand, a good chance it will have faction stuff and if I tackle it, it won't warp anywhere.

Time was passing by and before forcefield went down, Proteus started orbiting the pos at a weird angle. Damn it. Maybe it is moving outside and I can intercept him. I struggle to get a good camera angle from 200km. Shield goes down and Proteus cloaks up. Fuck. Tower unanchoring process starts and transport ships warp off.

What now? No modules to scoop, there's no need to stay at this tower. Only chance I will get probably will be in one hour. Suddenly Occator comes back. I have no idea what he intends to do here. He can't scoop the tower just yet. Deep transport ship lands close to the tower and cloacks up. Whoa. Why didn't he stay at another pos? I'm not the one to question his bad choices. I am the one to use them to my advantage. I warp at 20 to the tower.

Once I land I see a Proteus decloak 50km off. God damn it. I warp back to my 200km bookmark again to try and get a good warpin position.. only to have Proteus cloak up again. Are you kidding me? Enough with this shit, I am going for that Occator. I warp to 20 again. I am not exactly sure where that Occator cloaked up. I don't want to reveal myself and burn around the tower in search for it like an idiot. Then it hits me. He came from the direction of another pos, which is at planet VI. My money is he warped at 10.

I bounce off the planet VI and warp to the tower at 10. Decloak and whola, Occator appears 0km off me.

Tackle on, Domi fleet in warp. Battleships warp slow. It feels like an eternity, but so far d-scan stays clear and Occator in place. Soon it melts under focused fire.

I must say I am surprised. 5 wcs fitted with 2 native. Even with points and scrams from all my fleet, he could have warped out without a problem. Of course it all becomes clear when I manage to lock his pod and send him back to the empire.

He was afk. Over 400 mil in total damages. That's what happens when you are not paranoid enough. I get paranoid orbiting wormhole at 70km that I somehow will get decloaked.

I continue to watch the tower for a bit. When timer ended, Myrmidon arrived. Not sure if it's a bait or not as he is aligned. Either way, I don't do second shots, especially after just killing someone. System is suspiciously empty of ships, while my watch-list with their main pilots is very green.

New d-scan - hunting in easy mode

Brain in the box. It's supposed to be a total rewrite of how server deals with skill point information and such. All fine and dandy, only there have been some reports of weird situations. If you read reddit you might have noticed some. I was hoping to avoid bad surprises, especially when I put my ships on the line. I stalk one high-sec connection when suddenly a Typhoon Fleet Issue lands.

Oh wow. What a nice, big and juicy target. I decloak my Proteus on the other side and wait. Faction battleship jumps. After seeing hostile Proteus he burns back to wormhole at full speed. No problem, I will just tackle him with my sensor booster Proteus and do a bump. Only I end up watching Typhoon approaching without my lock even starting. I spam ctrl+lclick like crazy, but nothing happens. Typhoon approaches the wormhole and jumps back to high-sec and warps out. This is an overview from my Dominix in high-sec.

Now want to see the funny part? Here's an overview from my Proteus in the wormhole at the same time..

Sigh.

Next I find a rolling Megathron. A good old fashioned gank of a rolling battleship always cheers me up. I get ready.

He goes in and goes back. I get my weapons hot and wait for him to show on my overview. He appears 12km off me, enough range for a point and a web, but not enough for a scram. I don't normally web before putting a scrambler, but when ganking on high-sec exit every meter counts. Of course Mega was stab fitted and I watch him warp away.

Most welcome, Marcus. Glad to be of service.

Not losing hope, I continue checking other wormholes. This time I end up in a c3. D-scan reveals Raven. Absent of wrecks, but also absent of towers. I play around to get his position, but can't seem to pinpoint it. It's not in any of the anomalies and neither in the direction of any signatures. He is also staying in one place as time passes and position is still the same. I finally decide to combat probe him out.

I warp out of d-scan range get probes out, warp back to the closest celestial and start working on his position again. And here is the reason I use a new map system over an old one.

I can't even explain how easy it was to get his position, range and set probes correctly. With d-scan now being displayed in a map view, it's a piece of cake. I set probes 1 AU and, of course, get a hit. I am pretty confident I could have gotten 0.5 too. Something that took a lot of adjustments and experience to get such accuracy before, now it's almost fool proof. Make no mistake, I see this as a positive change as it greatly improves success of hunting small signature ships, like t3. Only thing that is gone with the old system is my pride.

I warp to Raven and find him floating in an empty space. Not sure what he was doing, but soon it became a floating wreck.

He was not a sleep as pod got out. That's an interesting fit. What's up with the hull repairer and no rigs?

Back in shape

Wormholes. It's just something so special about them. Well, I know what's so special. It's no local. Noone to lookup my name without direct visual and get information of all ships I fly. I mean, I am an open book. All my kills are Proteus and three Dominixes. One of reasons I never have my blog in bio to increase traffic. If someone wants free info on me, they have to make two clicks and check it themselves.

I visit a c2 and see something is up.

Sabre and Sleipnir sitting on a wormhole and waiting for someone. It's not the high-sec. I have scanned them out, but apparently probes were not spotted or they didn't care. I'm not about to jump on first sight either. I orbit and observe. I see some ships jumping in and out, few ships at the tower. Later both pilots log and then Gila lands on the wormhole. Same alliance, but different corp.

I decide to go for it. I get in range and get ready to make my move. Plan is to grab Gila, let him jump, go after him, grab on other side and force him back again to the arms of my Domis. I have no idea what's on the other side. Maybe a big fleet or maybe nothing. But with almost no activity in 20 minutes, I decide to take my chances. I decloak, tackle and warp my Domi fleet. Gila doesn't jump. In fact, he seems to be burning away from the wormhole. He was a bit out in the first place, but he could have easily moved and jumped.

Quick and dirty. Gila explodes and I'm on my way back to high-sec. I leave the wreck and Proteus behind. It doesn't hold anything more than t2 mods and I did not care enough to shoot it. Maybe I can get an engagement out of it.

As expected, system got quiet. I see a bomber on d-scan. Interesting, maybe he will try to scoop the wreck. My Proteus has sensor booster, so I could lock him quite fast so I wait. After several minutes I see Manticore decloak, but still aligned. I wait for speed to drop before making my move, but the bomber pilot seems to know better. He grabs loot with a drive-by and warps off. Well, all is good. I got my first gank back in w-space and it didn't end up me horribly dying. I call it a success.

Meeting a fellow ninja

After being done with ninja salvaging, I decided to revisit w-space and fool around with high-sec connections.

I set Jita as my destination. I travel on set route and scan wormholes in each system, visiting them, trying to judge if it's a good place to stalk or should I move on. Idea is to settle somewhere closer to the hub. Whenever there is a connecting close to Jita, it becomes a hot topic in wh corp and chat gets lively with logistics discussions. This especially is valid for high class wormholes. It would be very lucky to find one. Later, after scanning 30+ signatures and without finding any direct connection to a wormhole above c3 level, I adjusted those chances to: super mega very lucky.

So I continue my travel when I spot a suspect flashing in local. I do a quick research of the guy and find out he likes to kill mtus and bait mission runners. Well I'll be damned, it's a ninja. A ninja that is not sitting in Ninja Dojo channel, which means he is not a part of ninja community and thus is a target.

His ship of choice is Ishkur. I quickly resolve his signature and get a visual.

I land quite far, but still cloaked. I slowboat and watch him desperately try to bait that Drake and Nighthawk into shooting him. 50km is a lot to cover when going 200m/s. Half way through, missioners decide to warp out. Of course, with nothing to bait, Ishkur leaves as well. I assume to his next target, so I start scanning again.

This time I find him at the safe spot. Without wasting any time I decloak and get a tackle and warp my Domi fleet.

There's only one way he can get out of this and that's having his suspect timer end before my fleet arrives. Proteus has only two medium blasters for dps. I probably would have to let him go. Fortunately, this was not the case and under pressure of 15 warriors Ishkur explodes. I scoop the deadspace armor repairer and the storyline neutralizer. A cool 60 mil. I almost feel tempted to keep an eye and maybe repeat the gank, but wormholes await me.

Ninja Salvaging Series 3 - Ninja statistics

Welcome to the last post of Ninja Salvaging Series, Season 3. Once again, it's been a fun journey. It depends on a person, but I see ninja salvaging as a temporary activity. It's a great way to break off your routine, but not something I would like to engage "full-time".

As this is a closing post, I have prepared something special. Shortly after I started season 3, I have began collecting data, something that has never been done before. I have kept records of every engagement in order to make some sort of statistics. A lot of mission runners have been visited.

The goal was to visit 100 unique ships and pilots and I'm happy to say, the goal was reached. I understand that this number is still too small to make any serious analysis, but hopefully it will give us somewhat an idea. There were temptations to close it before as activity in my system was not at such good level. Dodixie hub was out of the question and next door systems would also be tricky as I did not have my tools (ships) there, so everything was done in Agrallarier. Let's look at ninja salvaging backed by hard data.

The ship of choice to do missions is, of course, a battleship, which consisted a total of 61% of all ships encountered. Due to the data sample, I have combined faction and non faction hulls. Cruiser and Battlecruiser hulls were almost equally popular.

The majority of mission runners are between 1 and 2 years old, which accounts for 48% of total pilots visited. Please note that the count starts with first year, meaning if pilot is less than 12 months old, he will appear under 1 year bracket. Pilot with 12-24 months will appear in 2 year bracket and so on.

I believe this data backs up my general feeling, that new players either mine or run missions in high-sec, until they "grow out of it" and move out to another areas (see sudden drop after age of 2 years). Then there are hardcore old mission runners (3 years +) that stay in high-sec for various reasons. Can be just taking a break, alts, or generally not interested in life outside high-sec.

I have mapped reaction from mission runners. I've divided it in two groups: early and late reaction. Early means the reaction I get upon entering mission and staying for some minutes, usually not more than 3. Late is reaction I get when I stick around, usually up to 10 minutes.

From the above graph, we see that roughly half of mission runners will ignore you - 52%. When you stick long enough, only 44% of total mission runners ignores you for the entire time. Second most often reaction is a warp out. They leave their mission in hopes you will move on, get killed by npc and won't come again (hint: you should).

The purpose of ninja salvaging is to get aggro. Trend is that only 10-15% percent will shoot you. One fifth out of those who shoot you, may have pvp fits. Out of 16 Aggro, I had 3 encounters of people with pvp fits.

Of course it highly depends on what kind of ship they are flying and how old they are. If you visit only new players and cheap ships, chances to get shot at are much greater. In above graph I compare chance to get aggro per ship type. Of course data sample is rather small, but highest chance to get shot at is from cruisers (36%), battlecruisers (18%), battleships (13%). While sample is small, I can tell from experience, that it more or less reflects the reality.

Due to spread out age, it's hard to make any reliable analysis of age and aggro, however there is one trend that my experience backs up: high probability to get attacked if player is less than 1 year old. In contrast, the more old the pilot is, the higher the chance he will not care about you salvaging and looting his wrecks.

And there you have it. Mini analysis of ninja salvaging. Here is the table of all the data collected.

Ship	Ship type detail	Age (years)	Early reaction	Late reaction	Group (2+)
Hyperion	Battleship	1	Aggro	Aggro	no
Dominix	Battleship	1	Aggro	Aggro	no
Rupture	Cruiser	1	Aggro	Aggro	no
Vexor Navy	Faction Cruiser	1	Aggro	Aggro	no
Drake	Battlecruiser	1	Aggro	Aggro	no
Vexor Navy	Faction Cruiser	1	Aggro	Aggro	no
Brutix	Battlecruiser	1	Aggro	Aggro	no
Thorax	Cruiser	1	Aggro	Aggro	no
Vexor Navy	Faction Cruiser	2	Aggro	Aggro	no
Raven Navy	Faction battleship	3	Aggro	Aggro	no
Raven Navy	Faction battleship	4	Aggro PVP fit	Aggro PVP fit	yes
Armageddon	Battleship	5	Aggro PVP fit	Aggro PVP fit	no
Hyperion	Battleship	10	Aggro	Aggro	yes
Myrmidon	Battlecruiser	11	Aggro PVP fit	Aggro PVP fit	no
Kronos	Battleship	4	blues wrecks	ignores	no
Drake Navy	Faction battlecruiser	4	blues wrecks	blues wrecks	no
Nighthawk	Battlecruiser	6	blues wrecks	blues wrecks	yes
Ishtar	HAC	1	goes afk	shoots wrecks	no
Golem	Marauder	7	goes afk	warps out	no
Golem	Marauder	9	goes afk	goes afk	no
Thorax	Cruiser	1	ignores	ignores	no
Dominix	Battleship	1	ignores	goes afk	no
Dominix	Battleship	1	ignores	ignores	no
Arbitrator	Cruiser	1	ignores	ignores	no
Brutix	Battlecruiser	1	ignores	warps out	no
Drake	Battlecruiser	1	ignores	warps out	no
Hyperion	Battleship	1	ignores	ignores	no
Brutix Navy	Faction battlecruiser	1	ignores	ignores	no
Machariel	Faction battleship	1	ignores	ignores	no
Caracal	Cruiser	1	ignores	ignores	no
Vexor	Cruiser	1	ignores	ignores	no
Vexor	Cruiser	1	ignores	goes afk	no
Dominix	Battleship	2	ignores	ignores	no
Nestor	Faction battleship	2	ignores	ignores	no
Dominix Navy	Faction battleship	2	ignores	ignores	no
Gnosis	Battlecruiser	2	ignores	ignores	no
Machariel	Faction battleship	2	ignores	warps out	no
Armageddon	Battleship	2	ignores	warps out	no
Myrmidon	Battlecruiser	2	ignores	ignores	no
Rattlesnake	Faction battleship	2	ignores	ignores	no
Megathron Navy	Faction battleship	2	ignores	warps out	no
Dominix	Battleship	2	ignores	ignores	no
Hyperion	Battleship	2	ignores	ignores	no
Myrmidon	Battlecruiser	2	ignores	ignores	no
Typhoon	Battleship	2	ignores	ignores	no
Dominix	Battleship	3	ignores	ignores	no
Kronos	Battleship	4	ignores	ignores	no
Raven Navy	Faction battleship	4	ignores	goes afk	no
Gila	Faction Cruiser	4	ignores	ignores	yes
Raven	Battleship	5	ignores	ignores	no
Armageddon	Battleship	5	ignores	Aggro	no
Dominix Navy	Faction battleship	6	ignores	ignores	no
Kronos	Battleship	6	ignores	ignores	yes
Kronos	Battleship	6	ignores	ignores	no
Dominix	Battleship	6	ignores	ignores	no
Omen	Cruiser	7	ignores	ignores	no
Dominix	Battleship	7	ignores	ignores	no
Dominix Navy	Faction battleship	8	ignores	ignores	no
Megathron	Battleship	8	ignores	ignores	yes
Nightmare	Faction battleship	8	ignores	ignores	no
Dominix	Battleship	8	ignores	warps out	no
Drake	Battlecruiser	9	ignores	ignores	no
Dominix	Battleship	9	ignores	ignores	no
Dominix	Battleship	10	ignores	ignores	no
Kronos	Battleship	10	ignores	ignores	no
Golem	Marauder	10	ignores	ignores	yes
Ishtar	HAC	10	ignores	ignores	no
Kronos	Battleship	11	ignores	ignores	no
Kronos	Battleship	11	ignores	ignores	no
Megathron Navy	Faction battleship	11	ignores	ignores	yes
Vargur	Marauder	12	ignores	ignores	no
Golem	Marauder	12	ignores	goes afk	no
Dominix	Battleship	3	shoots wrecks	goes afk	no
Hyperion	Battleship	1	warps out	warps out	no
Brutix	Battlecruiser	1	warps out	warps out	no
Myrmidon	Battlecruiser	1	warps out	warps out	no
Myrmidon	Battlecruiser	1	warps out	warps out	no
Hyperion	Battleship	1	warps out	warps out	no
Myrmidon	Battlecruiser	1	warps out	warps out	no
Raven	Battleship	1	warps out	warps out	no
Vexor Navy	Faction Cruiser	1	warps out	warps out	no
Brutix Navy	Faction battlecruiser	1	warps out	warps out	no
Rattlesnake	Faction battleship	2	warps out	warps out	no
Machariel	Faction battleship	3	warps out	warps out	no
Hyperion	Battleship	4	warps out	warps out	no
Machariel	Faction battleship	4	warps out	warps out	no
Megathron	Battleship	5	warps out	warps out	no
Hyperion	Battleship	5	warps out	warps out	no
Stratios	Faction Cruiser	7	warps out	warps out	no
Dominix	Battleship	8	warps out	warps out	no
Kronos	Battleship	12	warps out	ignores	no
Dominix	Battleship	12	warps out	warps out	no
Dominix	Battleship	1	yellow box	ignores	no
Megathron Navy	Faction battleship	1	yellow box	warps out	no
Golem	Marauder	2	yellow box	warps out	no
Dominix	Battleship	5	yellow box	warps out	no
Rattlesnake	Faction battleship	8	yellow box	warps out	yes
Dominix	Battleship	10	yellow box	Aggro	no
Dominix	Battleship	11	yellow box	yellow box	no
Dominix	Battleship	12	yellow box	warps out	no

Ninja Salvaging Series 3 - Imaginary features

Perhaps now is safe to shoot?

No no, just back up a little bit.

What about now, Boss? Not quite yet, back up some more.

The reality of ninja salvaging. Sometimes I think there's no safe distance for mission runners. You just can't be too careful. Though I do like the carebear stares. It shows that they care. Get it?

I start to enjoy visiting battlecruisers. While there is a medium micro jump drive, it's a whole different story than battleships. Battlecruisers don't have that big lock range and their guns can't reach as far away, thus people are usually fitting good old fashioned mwds. And it often happens that they won't resist not to poke you.

But not all medium sized hull pilots will be aggressive. Some won't shoot you no matter what, thus it leaves up to ninja to create his own content.

I visit a Myrmidon. I fly around, salvage and loot, but get no reaction. My scanner reports no new signatures, so I either dock up and go afk or try to tease some more. I decide to convo the pilot and say whatever comes to my mind.

I start screaming at the guy to leave my stuff. It's half-arsed attempt to make him try and drive me away, but more as an entertainment.

I get a very underwhelming response. Despite me stealing the loot and being flashy, I was not noticed. I continue to try to take over the mission and ask him to leave. Domix Gatrau checked my profile and saw over 850 mil bounty on my head. He decided it was best not to "mess" with me. It's clear he was not going to shoot me. I was interested on how much I can push psychological warfare without firing any antimatter.

I couldn't believe he bought that. Me coming and hijacking his mission and making him abandon it? That's something I haven't even thought about when started this conversation. But I've got to admit it. A feature where you could hijack someone's mission sounds really awesome. Maybe high-sec missions community would be lively again.

Ninja Salvaging Series 3 - A trap

While looting other peoples' wrecks, you are subject to the life of a suspect, which means a free game to anyone. It's one of the reasons I avoid major hubs to do ninja salvaging. It's very easy to screw you up. It's also why I fly Enyo and nothing more shiny. Everyime I visit someone in a mission I am fully prepared to face the consequences and lose my ship. Same reason my logi of choice is Augoror and not Guardian or Oneiros. I keep my losses to a minimum. This way I am not very attractive target for organized fleets. Few people want to waste time trying to kill Enyo and some t1 logi. However, there are still some people doing missions and fully ready for an opportunity kill.

I visit Armageddon. It's piloted by MK Professor, that I liberated just the other day. I start shooting his mtu and before I could check his notes, he opens fire. Perhaps he wanted to return the favor and liberate me this time.

Now I do not think I have killed anyone for second time. Not in that short period anyways. I normally would not waste time and warp to the next target right away. But this time reaction was almost instantaneous, so I was interested to see where this is going. Even though, deep down, I knew something was fishy.

My logi were on gate and as soon as I got tackle on Armageddon I ordered them to enter. Meanwhile, I was taking damage. A lot of damage. It took me a second to realize I am pointed, scrammed, webbed and neuted. Now there was also Rapier on grid and two sets of drones on me. My logi was getting bumped by an acceleration gate and took their time to enter warp.

It was getting hot. My ship's armor was gone. I managed to run few cycles of my ancillary repair module before I ran out of cap. Alerts were going through the roof. Logi was exiting warp, but I was already entering the structure. I spam that lock and pre-activate all my reps. I keep looking out for notification of doom, which usually comes just before your ship explodes. I don't know if I will make it. This might be it.

Remote armor repairs land.

I still receive a lot of dps. That repaired armor goes down as fast as it goes up. Soon my secondary logi lands and I have 6 medium armor reps on me. I make sure scram is still on Armageddon, setup spider tank with Augorors and get back to focus on my Enyo. You've had your chance, now it's my turn.

Rapier seeing me back at full armor warps out. I continue and finish off  the battleship.

An exactly same fit as the last time. Well, except for medium neutralizer. That explains why I was not sucked dry the very first second. To be fair, those few cycles I managed to run, made all the difference. I convo Rapier pilot to ask if I am being hunted or if this was just an opportunity trap.

It was a revenge plot. And by all means it was a close one. I put both pilots on my red list and made appropriate notes to avoid getting surprised in the future. Good fight.

Ninja Salvaging Series 3 - Saving everyone

Saving militants

If we don't consider common patterns when ninja salvaging, every encounter can be different. And I'm not necessarily talking about pvp action. Scanning out missions and looting their wrecks is a great way to meet new people. This time I visit Drake and Gila.

Just two buddies spending quality time by doing missions. I hope there's room for a third. It should be. The more the merrier, but I spot some concerns in local, so I convo to see if everything is ok.

Nometh was surprised to see a stranger around. No wonder, considering all the high-sec changes that drove most ninjas away. So many people don't get to experience emergent gameplay. One can only interact with so many.

Nometh was cool with me looting and salvaging his wrecks. Well, except one in particular. I have to admit, when someone says something like: "don't take the transport wreck pls", I hear: "pls take the transport wreck". And so I did.

Nometh tried to ask me to hand over the militants, whom he needed to rescue and protect. I refused. After all, how can I trust someone who can't even protect his own wrecks and loot? I'm happy to report that those militants arrived safely at the station in Agrallarier. Meanwhile, Gila and Drake left empty handed.

Liberating capsuleer

On my patrol I've encountered Armageddon. At first, I thought it was your average carebear doing mission, but on closer look I've noticed someone was in desperate need of help.

 He was 70km off when I arrived, but as I was approaching I've noticed something strange. Armageddon, from the looks of it, was webbed and disrupted. With no drones out, I could only assume they were killed by an aggro switch from npc and now he was stuck. What would be his reaction when he saw a fellow capsuleer? Would he ask for help? No, he would shoot first and ask questions later.

While others take aggression as a threat, I took it as a cry for help. "Help me and send me home via pod express" sort of help, to which I happily oblige. I took my time to burn 30 km, but distance was not an issue as battleship was kept in place by npc. Once I came to range, liberation started.

For once npc seemed to be on my side as the battleship broke to our combined forces. I always have been telling that if someone is shooting you and someone else comes and shoots him, he probably is your friend. Enemy of my enemy and all that.

MK Professor was rescued and taken out from the doomed ship and sent back home via pod express. Another great example of how EVE community will come to assist a pilot in need.

P.S. Looking for wh stalking partner.