Bomber on Scan!

I managed to pull myself away from my Wormhole PI alt and my Red Frog freighter alt and my station trader alt long enough to have Jack Dancer fly out of the Auner station to see what was happening.  Lots and lots of drones were the first impression.

Lots and lots of drones.  Like 30 or 40 of them.

I went back to the station and grabbed a covert ops ship and tossed out some combat probes to hunt them down and picked up a dozen hobgoblin IIs.  Just cleaning up the neighborhood.

Then I went back and grabbed a fighting ship.  My newest plan is to not assemble any new ships - but to use up all of the ones I have already assembled in the station.  There's more than 20 of them - all sorts from rifters to battle ventures to wolfs (wolves?) to breachers to jaguars to firetails to ruptures.  Some of them I've never even flown - but they're put together and ready to go.

So, I hopped into one of the half dozen firetails sitting there and left the station looking for trouble.

The firetail is set up basically the same as my usual slasher fit - the extra mid slot has a tracking disrupter with an optimal range disruption script.  The plan is to orbit something at around 5k or 6k and shoot them from outside their range.  It's worked with the slasher and I was hoping that it would work with the firetail.

I did a quick dscan and there was a hound.  That's something I don't often see - a stealth bomber.  I narrowed down the scan and found him at an asteroid belt.  Probably ratting.  I turned everything up to 11 and warped to zero on the belt.  Sure enough he was there - but 30k away from where I warped in.  I've flown stealth bombers and know that they can put out a lot of damage.  My first thought was that I didn't relish the idea of flying 30k while being hit by his missiles - so I turned around and left the vicinity pronto.

At my safe I had some time to think about the situation.  Not so much the dynamics of the firetail vs. hound fight - but more my weltanschauung as an Eve player.  I've gotten a bit too care beary with all of the PI, hauling, and trading.  Time to blow up some of those piles of isk that the other activities have accumulated for me.  So I warped to a planet and again headed to the asteroid belt that held the hound - ready to have a fiery finish to the evening.

I landed about 30k away again, but this time I headed towards him with my afterburner overheating.  25k.  20k and still no explosion so I targeted him.  15k.  10k and I was still alive to tackle him and turn on the web.  Guns and rockets activated, I was doing damage.  Also the target disruptor with the range script (which, as everyone knows, is totally useless against missiles...).

I set my orbit for 5k and continued to rain destruction on the bomber.  He went through shields and then armor (stealth bombers aren't known for their defensive prowess).  Then into structure and BOOM!  He blew up!

To be honest, I'm not sure if he ever shot at me.  It could be that he was afk the whole time.  My situational awareness isn't always the best in these fights as any reader of this blog realizes...  (a post mortem review of the combat logs shows that he didn't shoot in my direction at all).

I tried to grab his pod, but made the noob mistake of not hitting the approach button - so whatever direction I was heading when the hound blew up was the direction I just kept on going - inside and then quickly outside of warp scramble range on the pod.  He apparently woke up then because he flew off to safety.

While not an epic fight - it was nice to get a kill worth about 50 million with 10 million isk worth of loot in the wreck (that took me 4 trips to haul back to the station).