Our wars have officially been over for about 2 days. It feels like it's been a week, but I'm constantly sleep deprived, so it might only be me if time feels like it moves at different rates that reality.
So, during our downtime, I attempted to recruit a new guy. It hasn't gone so well, and chances are that since he has some buddies that got him into the game I think it highly likely that he'll end up joining them. Seems like a good guy though, maybe he'll join us for a bit at some point. He is however, extremely new, and I taught him about fitting where his friends appeared to have left him in cold on that.
Also during our downtime we've some initial scouting. We've come up with a short list of targets, the kind that can fight back, but won't crush us, and probably won't kill us in any solo fight. Then again, wars should be fought in packs, right?
After the scouting out potential targets, Dread and I went for a low sec roam. For a good half hour we found a whole lot of asteroids and not much else. We eventually jumped into Hulmate (next door to Arnon). Initially, yes, we were looking for a new player out ratting in low sec. And we found him, or rather he happened to warp to us looking for rats to kill after we figured out what area he was in.
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"Ugh, where the hell is this guy?" I cursed. Patience was increasingly becoming something I was bad at. It was fine if I was doing something, but trying to find an elusive target was beginning to frustrate me. Drakes were not supposed to be hard to pin down. This Drake had gone to somewhere within a three belt range.
Dread and I had checked all the belts and found nothing.
As we sat there twiddling our thumbs, trying to chat through the static-ridden comms about what to do, the Drake warped in on us. My eyes went wide with excitement. Between my Rifter and Dread's Merlin, we would crush this five month old capsuleer's Drake, and hopefully his pod afterwards.
"ATTACK the Drake!" I called out forcefully over the comms. Still static-ridden, I hoped my forceful tone would file in any gaps.
As I got close to the Drake, a Wolf warped in. Of course, a Wolf.
I suppose it was bound to happen. I mean, we were only killing people that the pirates surely wanted to kill themselves. Why wouldn't they come looking for us as well?
"...a....bail..." came Dread's static communications.
At that point, I felt it only natural to assume to he said he was going to bail, rather than asking me if he wanted to bail. At that point, I made my exit from the stage while Dread attacked the Wolf. "He's...ing me down!" came Dread's voice again. Apparently he had not, as I assumed, bailed.
Groaning, I waited impatiently to exit warp and immediately warped back to him. Halfway through warp his communication came through, "They got me!"
They?
Exiting warp, I found myself greeted by three flashy red ships on my overview: a Wolf, Taranis, and Ishkur. I attempted to warp out immediately to something that was pretty much inline with with my direction of flight.
I expected to warp, and found myself not warping, yet not under fire. I checked my overview, and, without a doubt, the interceptor, designed for catching ships, had me disrupted. With no choice but to fight and probably die anyways, I opened fire on the Taranis while the three pirates attacked.
I gritted my teeth, overheating all my weapons. I orbited the Taranis as fast I could, shooting it with everything I could muster. Its shield vaporized in four seconds, the armor was breaking apart somewhat slower, but still breaking rather fast. Not blinking, I willed the Taranis to die.
It was not meant to be. My shields failed completely when the Taranis hit about one third armor down. My armor was pithy at best, and my hull lasted longer, albeit only by about two or three seconds. It was enough for me to get the Taranis into structure, but that was it.
I ejected in my escape pod, trying to select a station to warp to as my ship reset all of its data. I smashed the buttons in a futile attempt to lock onto SOMETHING so that I could warp out in time. It was, of course, the Taranis that caught me, and the three of them sent me back home the short but exceedingly painful away. I got a quick glance at my frozen corpse floating through space before I was pulled into my new body.
Elated at the combat, but a little downtrodden at the defeat, I rested somewhere between extreme adrenaline high and utter depression as I fit out another Rifter almost exactly the same way. This would one put out ten more damage per second, but had a little bit more of a range issue than the previous Rifter. Thinking about it though, I realized that if someone was kiting me, I'd have no hope anyways except to do some fancy flying, which might or might not make the difference in time. It should at least allow me to escape, let my shields recharge, and give me the chance to trick my pursuer into a close range fight I would be sure to win.
"Right then, off to Dodixie..." I mumbled grumpily to myself. I was in no mood to fly the ship manually however.
I set the autopilot and stalked Rifter's food storage area for a strong alcoholic beverage. A really strong alcoholic beverage.
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Looking back on that combat, I found myself wishing I had never attempted to run and had instead opened fire immediately on the Taranis. I would have killed it, and quite possibly the pod. At the very least, I would have cost that pirate gang as much ISK as my ship and Dread's ship combined. It's a lesson for the future: when you warp into a gang with an interceptor, don't even bother trying to escape, just destroy the Interceptor, then think about escape, the other guys might not have a warp disruptor or warp scrambler.
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