Hunting Bex - when your heart is not enough, Part 2

The second phase of my plan was to think of a way to create an opportunity. I know Bex is smart. Especially after some people trying to bait him he will now be vigilant as ever. A no name, no history character in a t1 frigate won't do. I shuffle through my alts, but can't find a good candidate. Either they don't have history or have obvious connections to my corp through employment history.

While I'm with my thoughts, my RL friend chats me up. He just recently re-subbed to EVE and was telling how he keeps dying in Faction Warfare. Holy shit, this is my answer. I offer him to be a bait and he agrees. Perfect, now I have a completely unrelated character to do baiting. What now I need is a ship. T1 frigate won't do. There is also one general problem with frigates - they die to large smartbombs. But at the same time, it must be a frigate as I am baiting a smartbombing Proteus. I settle down on Astero and start theory crafting. After some tinkering, I come up with anti-Bex frigate. Behold (warning, napkin math ahead!).

Anti-em shield and armor tanked Astero. If Bex is using 5 EMP faction smartbombs, which do 592 EM damage each (wormhole effects + 58% damage) would do 2962 total damage (977 after resists). He would need 2.2 cycles to just enter armor. To armor it would do 508 damage after resists, that's another 4 cycles and it's not even considering overheating. Numbers could be off, but bottom line is, Astero will live long enough for my Proteus to decloak and get a tackle on him. If, by chance, it gets attacked by a non Proteus, it has 3 sets of ecm drones as a backup.

I was ready. I instructed my friend to fit the ship and head to static high-sec system and be on call. Once I see Bex on-line we would start our baiting.

Of course while waiting I had to defend system from bloody tourists. If they hacked all the sites, there would be nothing to bait in.

I grab the tourist Astero this time and convo the pilot to ask for a ransom.

This one was not very trustful. I wonder since when a word from a random stranger is not good enough? I know I won't kill him, but he doesn't know that. I am willing to be very flexible with payment terms. Seeing as he is not willing to trust me with full amount, I offer to pay half ahead and half after he is released.

After tough negotiations he agrees. I get 30mil transfered to my walled and cycle off my scrambler. Here's the question. Will I get my 40 mil?

Well, I'll be damned. He actually paid up. I am now up 120 mil. Just by stalking, I already paid for my Astero bait. Maybe ransoming is not so dead as others say it is? You just need the right approach and the right attitude.

Finally, the man we all have been waiting for, logs in.

To be continued...