Missed it by *that* much!

From flickr user neeravbhatt

Plexing

It was a fun night! Five members of Aideron Robotics jumped into frigates and looked for a fight in Heydelies.  The first encounter was with what everyone agreed was an interestingly fit Atron, flying solo. It took out me and another fast tackler before succumbing to our weight of numbers. And if you're counting ISK expenditure, this 15M Atron only took a few million worth of our ships with it.  I'm credited with being on this kill, but I don't know why. I did no damage and was unable to warp scramble him. Maybe I distracted him by exploding in an interesting way?

I've been blown up in what feels like the same way a few times now. The target will web or scram me so I can't use my MWD to get close to them, then pull away and start shooting. My guns are very short range so I can't do any damage. Perhaps I should switch to afterburners instead? I've had no reason so far to need the MWD since we mostly fight in plexes and I don't need to do long, fast dashes across space. The consensus on this forum post is to stick with MWD if your role is fast tackle; you need to be able to pin down someone who is trying to run away. And I guess I'm taking a hit for my colleagues in their more expensive ships, which makes sense; when the enemy has me pointed he can't also point them.

I zipped back to base to re-ship and asked the corp for a new ship to be put in my hangar.  I fumbled with the contract interface and the delay meant that I missed the next fight. The Atron pilot came back in a 66M ISK Imperial Navy Slicer and leaped into the teeth of our 5 man gang. Was he drunk? Or brave? Overconfident, perhaps?  Whatever the source of his bravado it didn't help him and he went down fast [Update: he had been damaged badly in a fight with QCATS pilots. Still doesn't explain why he entered a plex...perhaps didn't remember to check if it was occupied?]. The oohs and aahs rang loudly as we picked through his loot and examined the kill report. His microwarp drive alone was valued at 31 million isk! It's odd, because his kill record is pretty darn strong.

It was very nice to hear encouragement from my corpmates to get there quickly so I could get in on the kill; unfortunately my window of opportunity closed as I was reaching the acceleration to the novice plex where all this went down.  And had I gotten there earlier I'd have encountered the Slicer OUTSIDE the plex, alone, and surely gotten chewed up and spat out.

To cap off what was a fun night the loot division resulted in a windfall for me!  Those carrying the loot asked how it should be divided up and the boss said split it between those that got killed. My hanger has about 27M ISK of new shinies in it :)  Thanks guys!

Low-Sec Salvaging

In extra-curricular activities I'm thinking about running around in a cloaked Venture (because it has +2 warp core stability baked right in to the ship) like this. The shields will, hopefully let me survive an initial attack and the extra stabilizers mean it'll take a lot of effort to pin me down.

I got the idea from this Johnny Pew video.

[Venture, Low Sec Salvage]
Warp Core Stabilizer I

Medium Shield Extender I
Adaptive Invulnerability Field I
Limited 1MN Microwarpdrive I

Salvager I
Salvager I
Prototype Cloaking Device I

Small Salvage Tackle I
Small Salvage Tackle I
Small Salvage Tackle I


Salvage Drone I x2

I also tried my luck in a Velator (free noob ship) with just 2 salvagers attached (no other modules at all), but didn't find any wrecks to try it on!  I got chased from a gate back to my home station and actually survived it! Still, I think the cloak will be a better idea.