Ninja Salvaging Series 3 - A smartass

There are particular people I call smartasses when ninja salvaging. Meet Cebelrai Gardnerian. Cebelrai likes to lock you.

But he won't shoot you. Not until he is far away at a safe distance.

And even when the shots are fired, he will continue burning to opposite direction at a higher speed than my afterburner frigate can reach. Cebelrai is a smartass, because he has it all figured out.

What can I do? Well, not all that much really. Since the introduction of micro jump drive, it's became a propulsion module of choice to run missions. It is not cancelled even when scrambled by npc. You can fit your ship full dps and snipe from far away and having no problem to tank incoming dps. If rats get too close, you just spool that mjd and ship is out of danger again. PVE in easy mode.

It so happens, that it's one of most annoying things to encounter for a ninja. I've been doing some theory crafting, but I couldn't come up with a good counter for such situations. You can't warp to your target as mission is always a deadspace pocket. You can't go fast enough with mwd to get into scram range. Of course you can try using nano Dramiel solution or something similar to reach crazy speeds, but you still have to tank that dps and break a battleship. Disruptor is useless as it will not stop mjd and no matter how fast you go, it will be extremely hard to get into scram range in time.

I am open for suggestions. Meanwhile, I make remarks of such pilots to know what to expect. I am, of course, happy to get aggro. Aggro from 100km is better than no aggro at all, however, my only hope is to wait for a mistake to have a shot at getting a kill. Sometimes, with a lot of patience and baldness, you can get just lucky enough.

Next day, while  ninja salvaging, I encounter the same Raven Navy Issue. I check pilot's notes and see that he likes to aggro from a distance. Sure enough, I get yellowboxed and shot at from 140km distance.

I literally have no idea what to do. I am with my standard afterburner fit and max out at 1km/s speed. Hell will freeze before I can get into scram range. On the other hand, he doesn't do much damage to me. Even with a target painter on me, signature is small enough to neglect incoming dps. So I just set an approach course without any particular plan in mind. Maybe this chase will be long enough for us to burn outside the deadspace pocket. I have no idea how realistic that is.

I keep going and RNI keeps his mwd on. He sends his drones on me, but I quickly get them disposed. Once I kill all his three sets of drones, I see a speed drop.

Focus camera doesn't work, so that can mean only one thing - he has initiated warp. Not unexpected, though I was hoping to at least get within 50km before he decided to warp. In a few seconds I see him warp off to the direction of a station. I get the most crazy idea that will definitely not work. When warping to the station, you can land anywhere between 0 and 2.5 km. Docking range is 500 meters. Maybe if I get lucky enough, he will drop out of docking range. That's a big if. Even by slowboating he can get back to dock. Furthermore, I don't have a proper bumping ship. Even if I did, angle is no good. The dock is 30km away and station is in the way. But what do I have to lose? I warp to station and wait for the faction battleship to drop out of warp, while swapping from Augoror to mwd fitted Dominix with my alt. Here he is. He lands and it seems to be out of docking range! I grab him.

I undock my Dominix and burn at full speed for a bump. To my surprise, instead of trying to dock, Navy Raven starts shooting me. What's even more strange, he seems to be burning off the station. I have no idea what the hell is going on on the pilot's mind, but with the help of few bumps from the Domi, we are now at 20km off the station. Strange things do not end there. Battleship starts breaking under dps of my Enyo. Shield was going down way too fast. Something felt off, but I might just be able to kill him without a ship swap.

He enters armor, then structure, followed by a glorious explosion . I can't believe this just happened. I check the kill report and my eyes open wide in surprise.

A 1.5 billion worth of kill. Approved by the loot fairy as almost all faction and deadspace modules drop. I quickly scoop a cool 600 mil. As a cherry on the cake, I also manage to get the pod.

An extra 700 mil in damage done. I do not know how many missions is that, but I bet it's a lot. I can't help but feel this was a suicide attempt. No matter how you slice it, these kills should not have happened. What thing I took from this engagement is that sometimes, no matter how low are the odds, you should just give it a go.