Dumb Ways To Die

It's weekends like that which make me think I've learned nothing about this game. I got killed three times in stupid ways, plus one more near miss. I have a couple of them on video which I'll share with you above. To my generous corpmates who gave me an Algos and Tristan -- sorry I got 'em blowed up!

Mistakes Were Made

The first mistake was a near miss -- while undocking I saw a flashy orange Thrasher docking. I was mindful to NOT change course and get to the corp insta-undock bookmark, but I didn't know that initiating warp breaks your "undock invulnerability". In the time it took for the warp to kick in I got locked and took a volley from a 280mm Howitzer II up the date. I was in an Imicus not fitted for combat: shield gone, armor gone, structure tickled a bit. I think the better bet would have been to re-dock as soon as I saw the Thrasher.

 I continued the journey -- it was into highsec to move stuff around -- and hit my second minor fail. I'd not noticed was that I'd set my destination six jumps away and not noticed that it took me through Caldari space.  On reaching Yashunen I get the "enemy of the Caldari people" warning but I was not intercepted. I think the faction police will only reach you if you hang around.  I fixed this for future occurrences by adding the system to my "avoid" list, and letting the autopilot plot my return journey worked fine.

The first loss was a the rookie error of not watching d-scan while plexing. We had just defended a plex and most of the fleet had warped to another plex. I stayed behind to pick up drones, which I heard someone say they'd left behind. I had stopped watching d-scan when three enemy ships arrived. I quickly picked a celestial and tried to warp out but my ship was almost stationary and I was scrammed, then melted in a few seconds. I suspect they'd been d-scanning our plex and when everyone BUT me left, they saw an opportunity.

My next loss was five minutes later to the same gang! I had jumped into another ship like the one I just lost and headed back to Heyd to join my corpmates in a plex. They told me there was a small gang on the gate but I always use the Hans Slide method to safely enter a plex (warp to 10km, while arriving you select acceleration gate in the overview and click "Activate Gate" repeatedly in your Selected Item window). But it didn't work! My ship landed and did a slow u-turn to try and enter the plex, but I lost my ship. It's possible that I didn't click the Activate Gate button fast enough.

The last loss was a strange one. We had just killed a 412M ISK Vagabond that had been hanging around our plex gates all night, a very satisfying chase and kill, when the Deimos that was 100 km away locked me. I had turned away from the gate to loot the Vagabond as our FC requested; I was only 6km from it. I turned back as the blows landed and reached 0 km on the gate as I entered structure. I'm confused about why the gate didn't actually get me out of there...it just did this slow smear of a move as I got turned to wreckage. It's in the video above. The Deimos that got me, and was actually on the Vagabond kill too, had previously piloted a Jaguar that we caught and killed.

Good Times

The good news is that our effort to hold Heydelies seems to be working well! It got as high as 75% contested, but we ran a lot of plexes and also I noticed the Dust 514 factor in our system went from -12.5% to +12.5%. So that was a big change in our favour!  The system is around 50% contested now and since we successfully moved our base of operations to Heyd it should be even easier to hold it.

Our corporation is having it killingest month ever, though our efficiency is down a bit. I think that's an acceptable trade-off. It means we're out there fighting for plexes against whatever comes and it's mostly cheaper ships like frigates and destroyers. Also we also have a lot of new, or new-to-Faction-Warfare, members that might still be finding their feet. And me, finding new ways to mess up!

Lessons Learned

• When everyone leaves the plex except you, that may be an invitation for sharks to come and eat you. Watch d-scan! You'll get plenty of warning and plenty of time to leave.
• It's so easy to freeze when you're under attack. Try and break out of it and do something different.