Catching red handed

Time sure flies. It's been awhile since my last post. Truth to be told there hasn't really been that much to write about. I've been cutting down on my gaming and engaging in some other things, like learning to play golf. That shit is hard, no matter how easy it looks on a TV. In my first attempts I hit a good chunk of ground together with the golf ball and it flew further than the ball. Spring time arrived and here in Sweden we got some really nice days.

While I still log in daily, I haven't been doing any scanning or scouting. Every time I choose a system in which I hope to find some activity, I end up with no targets. Instead of visiting c4's and waiting for that shiny, I tried to stalk a c3 for a few days. Lucky me, I would soon find a Rattlesnake starting his farming activities. I get quite annoyed when I see him anchor a mobile tractor unit together with a mobile depot. Seriously.  I know it's a smart thing to do, but I despise that. I look forward to a soon to come patch, that will at least prevent you refitting if you shot your weapons in the last minute.

Since I don't want this Rattlesnake to warp away  after refitting to warp core stabilizers, I align my Nestor fleet, send them in warp and only decloak once they are on d-scan for a few seconds. I also decloak 10km off and aim for a good bump. My Proteus has 4 warp core strength in tackle. It will buy me some time before he refits his low slots. Everything goes well. Nestors land and soon I have Rattlesnake scrambled with 4 ships. He is not going anywhere now.

I am please to see his shields dropping fast. He quickly pops and pod warps away.

As I expected, he was refitting to warp core stabilizers. He still had one wcs left in his cargo. I'm not sure if he got bumped out of mobile depot range or he just died that fast. Either way, that extra wcs would not have saved him. While it's not an expensive kill, there's something mildly satisfying killing a ship full of warp core stabilizers.

Gifts from Bob

I log in and see Tengu, thanks to, now automatic, d-scan. The weird part is that I logged in my safe spot which is out of range of any celestials. It also doesn't look like he was just flying by as he doesn't go away. What's going on here?  I narrow him 1.5 AU from my safe.

Do I really have a random guy sitting in a safe near mine? I think it's time to show that it's not so "safe" to just float there and do nothing. I warp to outer planet to launch probes and return to the spot so I am close to him. Once I get a positive hit I warp to 10 and get a visual.

This is just too good to be true. I do a quick cautious check of his killborad. It's more done from a reflex than from a need. Unless I see something very strange, like a huge fleet fight that happened very recently, I will tackle him and log my Domi fleet. I do the check in 10 seconds and switch back to EVE with intent to grab him only to see an empty overview. First thought was that he finally cloaked up, but adding to watch list shows him offline. Dang, he must have safe logged. I guess better now than me making my move seconds later and him disappearing right before my sensor calibration ends. That would suck even more, and while having him disappear just before I decloak sucks less, it sucks nevertheless. Oh well, I proceed scouting the system. Warping around I spot a lot of wrecks.

Looks like someone has been busy. I do a combat probe sweep on the system and find no ships. The whole point of wormhole sites is to salvage the sleeper wrecks. I quickly scan mobile depots while system appears to be empty. When checking out wrecks and mobile tractors I get a different owner name than that of a Tengu pilot. I add him to watch list and he appears to be offline too. Interesting, but my gut says I will see them again. There are 3 sites, full of sleeper wrecks. I doubt they would just leave them be. I park my ship at the spot where Tengu was last seen and keep a half open eye for any notifications.

After short time, I have one of them log in. Unfortunately it's not the Tengu pilot. I spot a destroyer on scan and as I expected, I see him warp to mtus and salvage all the wrecks. I could, of course, grab him at the last site and hope to cash out on all that loot, but I try to be patient instead and wait for that Tengu.

Once salvaging is done, the guy warps out somewhere and soon after I have my awaited Tengu pilot log in. He comes when I'm in the process of following the destroyer. Once I get to the safe, I see an empty space. Without losing hope, I fly around and find him at a fresh anomaly.

Well hello there. Glad to see you back. I've been waiting for you! Let me give you a proper welcome. I grab the strategic cruiser, giving enough time to only kill two sleeper frigates. Once Domi fleet lands, he becomes a part of the small wreck field.

Not the most expensive Tengu, but certainly could have been a cheaper catch. It's a class 2 after all. I scoop the deadspace booster, shoot the wreck and warp out. I don't expect any more action for the next two hours. Half finished sleeper site for some reason puts people off.

I am humble and usually don't expect to score more kills without actively looking for targets. But sometimes Bob rewards the humility. I orbit one of the exits when I suddenly hear a jump sound. I focus on my EVE client and see Tengu decloak and warp to an anomaly with a purpose.

Today is not a lucky day for this pilot as I tackle him, giving only enough time to kill two frigates, same as for the previous victim.

Fast forward few minutes and Tengu's pilot is warping out in a pod. This probably will be one of the shortest farming activity for him. Though this time the ship was more on the budget side than the previous one. I do my respects and praise Bob for all the gifts he have sent me today.

There is always a cloaky Proteus

I decide to take a break and take it easy for awhile. After stalking the c4, I find a nice quiet c2 with c3 and high-sec statics. My new home does not have any active towers and is uninhabited, but I do like c3 and hs connections. One of the reasons I choose this system is because I am too lazy to find a proper wormhole and my heart is just not into it. I park my cloaky Proteus on high-sec exit and go play some other games like Dota and XCOM. I have already played XCOM Enemy Unknown, but I was told Enemy Within expansion brings quite few changes. Game has huge replay value anyway. Once I'm done, perhaps I will try Long War mod too!

Sometimes I think I spend too much time focused on just EVE. Even though I afk stalk and claim to have minimum effort invested, I still pay attention when there is an active jump through the wormhole I have been watching or there is activity at the tower. Willingly or unwillingly I end up scanning some chains, trying to poke more than few jumps away and it all ads up. I also resumed my evening school to learn Swedish after work, so time goes by faster than I would like to and I know it's not going to get any better, so it was time to take it down a notch.

Good thing about system with high-sec static, you are bound to have some tourists. I am fine with that. I see nothing wrong in nabbing an occasional scanning frigate. But if you stay in the system for long enough, you can see many "interesting" things. Like a guy from null-sec bringing freshly bought Redeemer.

Or a surprise Megathron fleet trying to roll me out from the neighboring wormhole.

It would be really nice to have an extra hand. Unfortunately, my search for Partner was not that successful. I guess the play I do us very niche focused and most people desire a full functioning corp instead. People that joined me so far either had wrong timezone or haven't logged in awhile. Apparently, taking afk part all too literally.

I keep watching high-sec when a wild Astero drops in.

I don't think much of him at first and was waiting for him to start doing data/relic site, but something was off the way he acted. He  jumps to high-sec and then jumps back in. Goes in and out for a few times. Then out of nowhere Iteron, a transport ship, jumps in.

His corp appears to be the same as Astero pilot's. I watch him warp to a random planet and I follow. I watch it land and then approach the customs office. I don't know what's this guy's deal is. Don't you need to setup your space colonies first? I doubt he is collecting PI. I then watch him warp to another planet, then back to wormhole and then back to a planet, where I find him and Astero sitting close to each other.

I watch their every move in my cloaky Proteus. I don't know what's going on yet. Perhaps he wants to setup a tower, but does not know it has to be done at the moon? I am very interested in Astero. Perhaps I can have a shot at catching him. They are too far for me to make my move now, but I see they like to warp at 100 to every destination. I closely watch them align and warp to the next planet and I immediately follow. Luck would have it, I land 10k off them.

This is it. I set on collision course, but do not rush to decloak just yet. Astero likes to go invisible and he does just that. Only Iteron is left on the overview, but I have a feeling the frigate is still there. I patiently keep flying and decloak once I feel I moved around 7km. If Astero doesn't appear, I can still try my luck with Iteron. Bob smiles upon me today as I see Astero appear right on the spot.

I get a positive lock and put a scram on him. In addition, I disrupt Iteron, but he warps out without a hassle. Damn those warp core stabilizers. Well, at least faction frigate is without any wcs and meets a slow death.

Who knows what riches were inside that Iteron, but I am happy with the outcome nevertheless.

Can always count on wormhole community

I have been stalking a Russian corp. After killing their Noctis and Dominix the plan was to move on. Only problem was I did not have where to move. I was staying relatively stealthy and haven't scanned surrounding systems. Now that the jig is up, I launch my sister probes and do the unglamorous part of wormhole stalking - scanning.

Home system has c2 and c4 statics and since c2 is end of life I go to the c4. It has a lot of signatures. It takes me a good while to scan them out. Quite few of those signatures are wormholes. After finishing scanning I warp to 10 to the first connection on my list. Daily tip from Cloaky Bastard: never warp to 0. I land at the wormhole and as I approach within jump range I do one final check of  the d-scan. Procurer appears as a result. What the hell? He was not in the system before. I have been probing for a long time and haven't been clicking d-scan all that often so I am quite sure he has been enough time to see my probes. Something doesn't smell right here. Random miner decides to mine with probes in the system? I warp to ore site to investigate.

I make position bookmark and start doing background research of the pilot and his corp. Miner checks out. He really looks legit. Nothing suspicious on the killboard history. Bunch of high-sec mining ship losses. Corp has various activity, but no procurer baits that I could see. Could this guy be for real?

Corp sticker says BAIT. It would be hilarious if I went for it, but I don't buy it. It doesn't have that legit feel. I do a bit more research of the corp and it's fleets composition. I see mostly 7 people in fleets on average, flying quite squishy ships. I think I could take them on, assuming I get my spider tank up and running in time. Question is, do they bait me or my ship? Did they see my name when I jumped to the system or only Proteus on scan? I haven't jumped anywhere since I came here, so it would be quite a coincidence if they saw me come in. Then again, if they bait unknown Proteus, that also feels like a big gamble. But Procurer is not really a ship I feel using my effort of moving three Navy Dominixes. Ore site will spawn some sleepers at some point and if this miner guy is actually mining, he will have to bring something to kill them. If he is baiting, he will have to bring more shiny bait.

It takes around 20 minutes for sleepers to spawn, but they finally do. I watch Procurer leave and warp to the next Ore site. Well, I guess it's all clear. Second site spawns sleepers and he warps to a third. If that was not enough, I also see Helios, piloted by the Russian corp I've ganked few hours ago, land right on top of him.

Zero reaction from Procurer. I watch and wait for this baiting to end. I am very interested of which out of these 4 present connections he came from. Soon I see him warp back to one of c2s. I follow and set orbit. Procurer is followed by a cloaky Stratios from the same corp. I guess baiting is over. Without much happening afterwards,  I poke around in surrounding systems only to find emptiness. I decide to move back to my dear Russians and stay for the night. I'm sure they won't mind.

Strange things were happening back in the "home" system. Tower was absent of at least 2/3 of ships. Now bunch of Ospreys are left floating.

There are still a lot of pilots logged in. At least 14, but all I see is few at the tower and few at the customs office. Where the hell did just disappear half of my watch list? I run a locator, but get message that they are all unreachable in w-space.  I watch Tempest warp off to a customs office and find him together with Hyperion and Gila. Sleeper wrecks are still on scan which means that not even two hours have passed since my gank and they are shooting the poco now? And what happened to most of the pilots? So many questions without answers. It's either an elaborate bait or I don't know what it is. In case it's a bait, I get an idea and convo Disciples of Aphrodite, my baiters.

Turns out they came across The Dark Space Initiative corp from Scary Wormhole People alliance and my baiting fleet got decimated. I invite them to ambush the poco bashing party and they in turn invite scary wormhole people. Now with bunch of Frenemies ready, sitting two jumps out, it was a moment of truth. I would go in and tackle Hyperion with Tempest and invite everyone to come. If it's a bait, they are in for some surprise. If not, I just hope I do not become the target for blood thirsty pilots.

To be honest, I had some second thoughts about warping my Proteus in. Let alone my full fleet with Dominixes. But I was in the wormhole space, dealing with wormhole people. Reputation in w-space carries a big weight. I would never do it with low-sec or null-sec residents. But with wormhole corps, I go in YOLO and send my whole fleet in hopes to escalate the fight.

The fight went very anticlimactically.  Hyperion gets killed and Tempest warps out. It soon becomes clear why.

I guess in the end it was just a petty customs office bash with warpcore stabilizers fitted. Had it not been for my faction scrambler, Hyperion would have warped away too. I don't extend my stay too long and as soon Hyperion is dead, I warp away.

Big shout out to The Dark Space Initiative and Disciples of Aphrodite for forming a fleet and joining me on the op. And especially thanks for not blowing me up for content.

Waiting for the right moment

Some corps like to leave their ships out of hangars. I understand the need of saving space and all, but there are times when I wonder if those ship hangars are even used.

Note the scrollbar on the right. Meet Russian Power Group 7. A corp that keeps all their ships in the pos forcefield for everyone to see. List is so long that it's a pain to track on d-scan of any changes. In other words, I can't easily spot activity with only d-scan and I am not a fan to stay afk at the tower due to random connection drops or EVE not responding when I connect my PC to a TV. Anyways, I settle in a random safespot and wait for my opportunity. The corp had a Marauder loss in their killboard. System was clean and I was eager to see what PVE tools do they use. Besides that, system also had pocos reinforced. Something was definitely up.

When first poco came out of reinforcement, I kept a close eye. It probably will be too much for me to handle a structure bashing fleet, but you never know. I have 12 members online and half of them I find at the customs office.

I think for awhile if I should attack. I probably could take them on, unless they are all pvp fit. I am solo handling multiple ships and all of them have a cloak fitted. I am more worried about people online. Since they have all their ships in space, I can see logistics and jamming ships. It could be a very bad news if they came to help. I shake my head and remember that my primary is a farming ship. I should not get very excited about t1 battleships or even Gila if I can have a shot at killing Golem. I decide to wait.

Finally farming time. I see wrecks on d-scan. I warp to take a look.

Talk about disappointing sight. Not only that there's no shiny ship to gank, but it's pve setup that I probably couldn't break. Three Dominixes are spider tanking, of course, and Ospreys are spewing shield reps too. Upon closer look I see it's a mix of armor/shield tank.

Since I don't see a Marauder at the pos, I am not sure if it's even there. Perhaps locals did some math and realized it's better to use cheap stuff to run c4 sites. I do not know if I can take this little farming fleet on my own. Problem would be Ospreys as they are orbiting at range. I'm afraid this fight could drag on if I tried to break them and with at least 8 more people online at the tower, I definitely want to avoid that.

I wait. I do not want to stay too long in this system, but at the same time, I do not want to leave too early. Site is getting finished. Someone will have to salvage those wrecks and it may be Noctis, seeing as there is no MTU and wrecks are all scattered up. Let's see what they will do.

Once site gets finished, I see Ospreys warp off. Dominixes start approaching and looting random wrecks with Noctis landing at the same time. Interesting. Maybe this is the moment I've been waiting for. With battleships all scattered around I can strike and probably kill something. Too bad they are too far away from each other, which means I can't hold two ships at the same time. I wait until only few wrecks are left on the field and grab Noctis.

While holding the salvager with Proteus I order my Domi fleet in warp. I see pilot eject and warp off. Smart move. Dominixes are 160km away and while I wait for my fleet to land, one of enemy battleships warps and lands near me. I don't know if it is an attempt to save Noctis, but it felt more like a"warp to help a friend" instinct more than anything.  I promptly tackle it and now I hold two ships instead of one. Seeing he is not going anywhere, Dominix pilot ejects and warps his pod clear. I finish off both ships, loot and shoot the wrecks and disappear in an empty space. Quick and dirty, just the way I like it.

It's just not meant to be

After scoring a free kill of a guy who thought was cloaked, but was not - one of my biggest fears I might add, it was time to move on. I knew I will be moving out of the wormhole that I have been stalking in for almost a week. I now needed to find a good connection and since I didn't have any, I parked my ships cloaked for the day and went to watch some TV.

Before logging out, I do a routine sweep of surrounding systems. I visit the system where I scored Stratios kill. Almost six hours have passed so it was already an ancient history. Well, maybe not, but certainly a long time for a random gank. D-scan reveals a battleship somewhere in the system.

I resolve it at the tower and find him warping to high-sec. I see him jump in and jump out. A rolling battleship! Connection still looks healthy so I guess he just started. I get my Domi fleet positioned on the neighboring wormhole. He goes in again and goes out, only this time he is greeted with "innocent" Proteus and his friends. With active sensor booster I lock him instantly.

Another rolling Megathron goes down. I'm so happy to see full lows of bulkheads and not warpcore stabilizers, even if it takes hella long time to kill it. If you roll the wormhole you should roll it like a man. I 100% approve of this.

Next day I find a c2. When viewing killboard history, one particular element stands out. Can you guess what it is?

After recent failure to get smartbombing Proteus it almost felt like Bob wanted to give me a second chance. A lot of scanning frigate kills have dictor on it, but some indeed have Proteus. I already have a bait Astero fitted for the purpose, so why not give it a shot? I call my friend.

After watching locals for awhile I got to know how they operate. During quiet periods they stay cloaked on wormhole and/or data/relic sites. I manage to get a snapshot of d-scan just after one logs out. I narrow the guy at one of the relic sites.

Once he logs back in, I instruct my friend to come to the system and warp to the site where Proteus presumably is sitting cloaked. I am making it easy as I can. I have system scanned and there are some connecting wormholes and I have spotted Adhocracy scout earlier. Adhocracy is a well known, active wormhole pvp corp. I do not scout the neighboring wormholes as I do not want to be seen. I will gamble and hope that I don't get stomped by a big fleet. Since Adhocracy operates mostly in US timezone, I don't feel too worried, but still concerned.

Since my friend does not have the bookmarks I tell him to bounce of my scout at the site, which then I realize what a bad idea it is, especially with Proteus watching. If he hears warp exit sound and checks EVE client and sees Astero warp at 300 and then to a can, that won't look suspicious at all. No sir.

Astero starts hacking the site and I wait 10km off him. He hacks one can, then another, but nothing happens. I start to get worried. I saw these guys kill a tourist minute from him entering the wormhole. I just know they see Astero, but Proteus not making his move gets me worried. It's quite possible they see through the bait. These guys know their way around and I was careless to suggest my scout as a warp in. I tell my friend to have preselected celestial or even the sun and be ready to warp on moments notice. I expect them to come in a dictor. If Proteus did not make his move by now, I doubt he will. As expected, I see Eris on scan. My friend doesn't manage to warp out, despite me yelling as soon as I see him on d-scan. He gets tackled and I watch him being murdered.

Astero is tanked so I am in no rush to reveal myself and still hope for that Proteus to show up. He does not and so I decloak and try to save my friend. I grab Eris and proceed killing him very slowly.

I am in no rush to reveal all my cards. Perhaps his teammates will come to help. Maybe not Proteus, but something still interesting enough. Eris pilot gets quite confused. Looks like he expected bait, but did not expect me.

I guess there really is Adhocracy somewhere nearby and he has been expecting them. Perhaps if timing was different and without "dangerous" neighbors, they would have risked Proteus. But I do not care, I was not in the mood for another elaborate trap. I simply used the opportunity. At least this time I did not come out completely empty handed.

The killing was slow and took time. The guy tells me he unplugged all his inplants to deny good kill. It's quite funny, because he kept shooting bubbles up and managed to trap himself. I did not expect to get his pod anyways. Perhaps he was hoping for Adhocracy to jump in on us any moment.

As for my friend, I did not instruct him not to use scram on anything else than Proteus. Since he did scram Eris he now is on the killmail and is now a quite obvious bait. At least until this particular kill is pushed back far in the history.

I don't rush to leave the system. Adhocracy gets active, more parties join in and local gets lively. Some interesting dialogues pop out in local.

Of course I keep my mouth shut.

Don't touch my socket

There are good wormholes to stalk in and there are bad ones. The bad ones are populated by big corps that do a lot of pvp and would destroy my little fleet without an effort. In fact, any corp that focuses strongly on pvp, even the small one, can be my end. Big pve corps can too ruin my day by overwhelming with numbers. Thus I try to find a nice quiet system with a small corp that operates in my timezone, preferably with a nice loss history as proof they are using shiny ships for their pve fix. I have been stalking one such corp for almost a week now.

It all looked perfect. Corp was Russian and activity matched my timezone. They had nice Marauder losses in their recent history. System was clean of anomalies and only handful of signatures were present at the time. All points of a perfect target have been checked and yet, I had no opportunities to gank anything.

Locals would login and just sit at their tower or more often than not, login for a short time and log out. Anomalies spawned slowly and they were left alone or cleared during my working hours. It was rather annoying, so naturally I started scouting neighboring wormholes a bit more frequently. On one such checks I spot Stratios.

He warps to an empty space in the system. Judging from overlay scanner, it doesn't look like a signature, but then again, it may not be that accurate. I wait for the thing that Stratioses (Stratioi?) do - to cloak up, but he never does. I narrow down his position and have a good idea where he is at.

Whatever he is doing I am growing impatient. He is in the middle of the system and there's no celestial out of range to launch my probes. I say screw it and drop probes and send them out of the system as fast as I can. Stratios is still on scan. Good. With new fool-proof d-scan, I position combat probes and do a quick ninja scan.

I get a hit and warp at 10 to see what's up. I did not get any signature hits so that felt weird. I find him floating in the middle of nowhere. I don't know what is his game. Doesn't feel like a bait. Regardless his reasons, I decloak and grab him. I assume sound of aggression wakes the pilot up and I get neuted, but not scrammed. I had a few close calls when I lost tackle of the Stratios. Proteus is really useless against neuts. Scrambler does not take much cap so you can cycle it even when sucked dry, but there are short moments when you lose your tackle. Those short moments are all that's needed for a capable pilot. If he was aligned he would have escaped, but now, with my Dominix fleet arrived, he was not going anywhere. Stratios explodes and pod warps clear. After the fight was over local lit up.

Stratios pilot was very surprised. He was certain he was cloaked, but I explained him that he was not and he has been sitting there from beginning without disappearing even for a moment. I know because I was there, actively checking the d-scan.

We talked a little bit more about EVE's connectivity problems. While I doubt cloak failure was caused by the servers, I do feel the socket closure problem. I had it happen myself, but not to extent to get annoyed by it. In my line of work random socket closures would literally kill my play style.

Life in the jungle

I roam the wild in look for my prey. Sun of J153104 rises and it looks like it's going to be a beautiful day.

I discretely enter a class 3 forest and spot a herd of Drakes.

I assume I opened the connection, because system I come from is very inactive. Shortly after I have a scout in covert ops warp and jump to the wormhole I just came from. Something is up in this system. I find the herd at the tower and watch them for awhile.

Finally scout returns and swaps for another Drake. There's only one lake in this forest and I see the herd move towards it. I follow.

I watch them peacefully drink the water. At the same time I approach, get into good position and wait for my moment to strike.

Conveniently, the herd is orbiting around the mobile tractor unit which position I use. It's time to strike! The herd tries to run away, but I have two of them captured. They soon find themselves left behind and their life within mercy of my jaws.

Unfortunately for them, my appetite is up. I mercilessly slaughter both of my preys. I know there's no life left in them when I do not get a good fight reply in local. Satisfied with the kill, I retreat back to the deep jungle. Survive to hunt another day.

Hunting Bex - when your heart is not enough, Part 3

Bex logged in. I was keeping a close eye on him. I was patiently stalking in the shadows, following his every move without him realizing.

There's no way he knows I'm here. I even went as far as to add Valtyr Farshield on watch list. Valtyr is the guy that tried to bait his Proteus few days ago. I did not know if he was still up to something inside the same wormhole, but I did not take any chances. Few characters from Sudden Burgery in connection to Bex were also added. Everyone was offline when I moved and scouted. I was as stealthy as I have ever been. There was only one problem. My friend has not finished yet fitting the bait Astero. I watch as Bex scouts connecting wormholes and logs out shortly after, presumably going off to work. That was a very short window. I am committed to this hunt, but not committed enough to wake up at 6 in the morning, which would be most suitable time to get him. The gank is put off for another day.

Next day Bex logs in in a similar time. My friend is sitting in one of high-sec stations, waiting for my signal. I call him right away and give instructions to which site to go first and which container to hack. I have 200km positions on every data/relic site. Meanwhile I watch Bex on d-scan, but not directly on tower. My precaution in case connection drops. If he does not see me on the overview I could still have a chance.

Bait Astero starts working on the site. Just as he starts hacking the first can I see Bex swap to Rokh and warp to the center of the system. Is he warping on my Astero in a smartbombing Rokh? No, that does not make any sense. It's not low-sec. I narrow down Rokh at Operation Frostline site. Now I have Bex and our bait on d-scan. Damn it. 

Bait Astero does not have a cloak fitted and it was too little time to warp back out to high-sec. Well, there are plenty of explorers who don't check d-scan all that often, so perhaps we can play along. As a fellow wormholer, I know the suspicion will be up due to Astero not warping away.

Bex takes his time to finish Frostline site. He did not warp out right away as I would have hoped for, but his alt logs in. His alt is Appex Bex and is the actual character that we are baiting. Now what will be his weapon of choice? I keep eyes on the tower and spam d-scan to see if he swaps for Proteus. I instruct my friend to use ecm and not to use scrambler if he gets attacked by anything other than smartbombing Proteus. Click...click...click...

The weapon of choice is Proteus! This is it, I scream to my friend on comms and warp to position bookmark. He is slowboating to the next can and I tell him to approach to 0 and stay put. Cycle analyzer and wait for Proteus to show up, with me sitting 10km off. I move out of tower line of sight to make sure I do not get decloaked if Bex appears at 10km. With Astero not leaving the site while his Rokh was visible on d-scan I guarantee he will be aligned. But that's ok. It's why Astero is so heavily tanked against EMP smartbombs. Once he tackles Proteus I will make my move.

Seconds were passing and they felt like minutes. I am in the zone. My heart is racing and I have full attention on the overview. Proteus decloaks!

I ask my friend to lock and scram him. I hear smartbombs go off. Will the tank hold off? How long has it been? I don't get any positive confirmation that Proteus is scrambled, but it has been so long. My eyes can't see anything. There is some blurry grey column in my overview. How long has it been already? Can I make my move? No I should wait for confirmation. My hand is moving. Why my hand is moving? Mouse pointer moves on the cloaking device. Why my mouse is pointing on cloaking device? Why my left hand is holding left control key and finger keeps left clicking on grey column? Why nothing is happening? Why distance bracket is insanely large and increase by the second?

Shock wears off and I start to realize what just happened. I was not able to keep a cool head and my body moved on it's own. I did not check if he was aligned, though I saw speed was up, but unconsciously ignored that fact. I did not wait for my friend to confirm positive tackle. I took for granted that frigate should have locked the strategic cruiser, but ignored distracting hacking mini-game on screen and that my friend is back to eve only for a few days. I see Proteus warp off, but it takes a moment for my mind to accept this as a fact. Following realization I am soon overwhelmed by the feeling of regret.

Click me for dire situations

I was dumbstruck. Everything was going so perfectly and according the plan, only for me to make such a rookie mistake in the last crucial seconds. For Bex it was the "usual" hit and run, but for me, it was a carefully planned and prepared hunt. I can honestly say I gave my best. Despite all my hunting experience, preparation and putting my heart into, it was still not enough. And it was 100% my mistake, which I'm not sure if it makes me feel better or worse. Big props to Bex for taking the shot and risking his shiny Proteus on a suspicious target. Hit and warp out was executed flawlessly. I hope Bob will allow our paths to cross again at some point in the future.

Edit: You can read Bex's side of the story at http://bexfire.blogspot.com.au/2016/01/that-cloaky-bastard.html

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...