Are My T2 Guns Cursed?!

From flickr user Lettuce

I was very happy today because I'd finally finished training the skills that would let me fit T2 guns. I decided to start the night with an experiment, putting a couple of T2 blasters on my Venture and testing how they'd do against the NPCs that defend plexes. I set out to find one, but instead found a slight change of pace - an almost empty system with a novice and a medium plex.

I checked the medium plex and it contained only two wrecks -- no NPC to kill. The timer was at 28 minutes, so I settled in for a long wait; but hey, I can wait that long for 25000 LP.  The system was, as I mentioned, *almost* empty. There was a fellow militia member having a terse chat with a non-militia player flagged as a suspect. The suspect had killed the militia guy and was ribbing him about it. Militia Guy didn't see the funny side. Suspect left the system. Milita guy must've gone off to re-ship.

I said nothing in local and from my perch 28km off the beacon I watched the timer count down. War targets came and went but nobody came to the plex I was in. I kept hitting d-scan anyway, out of habit, and around the 7 minute mark a Merlin showed up on d-scan. I didn't put two and two together (obviously it was Militia Guy) and cloaked up as is my usual practice. Militia Guy appears a few seconds later and settles into a spot 40km away from me. I decide to stay cloaked out of habit and anyway, I'd done the "work" of running the clock from 28 minutes down to this point.

The timer counts down and with 10 seconds to go I decloak. The following conversation ensues, with name changed to protect the lying whiner. Cracka Crack is a war target elsewhere in system.

[ 2013.10.12 01:59:23 ] ***** > wow
[ 2013.10.12 01:59:25 ] Message > Site has been captured.
[ 2013.10.12 01:59:33 ] Vic Vorlon > hi :)
[ 2013.10.12 01:59:34 ] ***** > what a douche
[ 2013.10.12 01:59:38 ] Vic Vorlon > huh?
[ 2013.10.12 01:59:45 ] ***** > I spent the last 20 minutes capping that
[ 2013.10.12 01:59:51 ] ***** > you come for 7 seconds and get 12.5k lp
[ 2013.10.12 01:59:52 ] Vic Vorlon > No, I did
[ 2013.10.12 02:00:02 ] cracka crack > haha i hear qq
[ 2013.10.12 02:00:02 ] Vic Vorlon > I was here from 25 min down to 7, when you arrived
[ 2013.10.12 02:00:17 ] cracka crack > go cry like a bitch to your corp or kill him for it
[ 2013.10.12 02:00:38 ] Vic Vorlon > thx cracka :)

Did you catch that? Militia Guy assumed that I had just warped into the medium with seven seconds to go, and *he* claimed to have been there for twenty minutes! If that's actually what I'd done, then I'd have been blameless, since you can't see the timer from outside the plex; it would just have been a coincidence if I'd arrived at that moment. Also he didn't notice that I was 40km away, i.e 20km off the beacon, so I must have been there already: you can't just appear 20km off the beacon. And it also meant he wasn't watching d-scan since if I *had* flown in he'd have seen me coming and could have blubbed about it some more.

Also I didn't catch him complaining that I didn't come and run the novice with him and split the LP over there, hmm? Dude, we coulda been plex buddies!

I warped out at this point to go do fleet stuff with the corp and my damned net connection dropped. I tried to join the fleet activity but suffered two more dropouts and gave it up. Bad karma, bad luck, cursed guns?

That's the first time I've been yelled at in Eve, and the first time I've had random net dropouts. T2 guns? You be the judge. And I still haven't fired the damned things.