I was roaming around my base in Auner looking for
trouble. The other 6 pilots in Auner
were sitting in the station, so I started jumping through the systems leading
away from high sec. In one I came across
a merlin on scan. A perfect target for my
rifter. Or, more likely, vice versa…
I narrowed him down to a Faction Warfare plex and headed
there with everything overheated and all knobs turned up to 11! But, when I arrived, he was gone. A runner.
Or a cloaker. Many of the FW guys
are reticent to do battle with anyone.
And, it’s probably a good idea for many of them seeing as they are often
either new players or new alts of players and don’t have many skills.
So I continued on.
The next couple systems were filled with FW pilots – 25 in
each. That’s a big number for our
neighborhood and I moved through them as quickly as I could.
Then I found a quiet system.
And I found that same merlin.
I narrowed his location down to a plex and again headed
there with guns overheated. This time he
was there and waiting for me.
I set the orbit to a tight 500 meters and started peppering
him with my blazing autocannons. In
return he was taking big chunks out of my shields with his neutron blasters
(those things are vicious!). I turned on
my armor repper when he reached my armor and continued to take his shields down
step by step.
It wasn’t looking good.
But then I finally made it through his shields and things
changed. His armor and hull quickly
disappeared and then there was the big explosion! I won!
\o/
We chatted in local and he asked about my fit – whether it
had a plate. I shared it with him (it
did – just the standard 200mm). He said,
“that explains it”. I didn’t mention
that I was also wearing the slave implants (Thanks The CEO!) that no doubt
boosted the armor by large amount… J
I scooped the loot and headed to a station to repair. Then I headed to a nearby system where I had
some exile boosters from a previous purchase.
I grabbed one of those and headed back to Auner – it was getting late.
I managed to slip through the busy FW systems and when I
arrived in Auner there was a Procurer mining ship on scan. Hmmm…
I found him in an asteroid belt and turned up everything to
11 on my way there. I had no real hope
that my rifter could kill him (especially since I was low on ammo after the
previous fight) – but I was game for trying.
I arrived to find 5 hobgoblin II drones flying around the
procurer and a bunch of wrecks from the belt rats. I tackled him, targeted the hobgoblins and
started killing them. Well, killing one
of them. Then I targeted a second and
started in on it. My shields were
rapidly being destroyed by the drones so I gobbled down the exile booster pill
and turned on the armor repairer. I also
noticed that I was not tackled – the procurer didn’t have a scrambler so I was
free to leave if necessary.
I was having trouble hitting this second hobgoblin but
doggedly continued. My armor was losing
to the combined efforts of the 5 drones and soon it was almost gone. It was time to leave! I picked a planet and hit the warp-to button –
at about the same time that I heard those scary words in a very comforting voice,
“The capacitor is empty”.
Oh oh.
I kept jabbing the warp button and a couple seconds later I
was flying through space. I had escaped
the procurer with my rifter burning and smoking – but intact generally!
I said “gf” in local and got ignored. I then looked at the effects of the exile
booster and noticed that I was suffering from a side effect – “reduced tracking”. That explained why I was having trouble
hitting the drones even with them webbed.
A fun evening.
