The Drill!

Lately, I have been running numerous missions for my recently acquantained agent. Scheenins has been a quite system and to be honest I didn't bother much for the attacks on the miners or the proceedings of the nearby pirate corps and alliances. Apart from the infrequent participation in gangs roaming the low sec, or camping stations in high sec, my everyday schedule involved the death of numerous NPC piloted ships.

However this day I wanted to put a break to this repeated pattern, so when a corp and alliance mate told us that some pirates were camping the nearby Stacmon gate, into Ostingele system, a low sec to high sec space gate, I left my agent for a while to take part in an attempt to lift the embargo. Sadly, by the time I had reached Stacmon, the thin gate camp had been lifted by the pirates and there were no immediate targets to attack to. However, my corp mate, capable at spotting stuff in space through his probe skills, located a Navy Issue Scorpion, relaxing to its safe spot. This same N.I. Scorpion was seen to be piloted by a pirate, thus making it a twice as juice target for us. We gave once more the call to arms, to gather the force to take down this ship, which is well know of its tanking abilities. We were almost ready, to attack, as my corp mate had resolved a convenient warp in point for us near the target, when the alliance comm channel was set on fire!

Apparently a POS owned by a corp in the alliance, in low sec, was attacked by some unknown at that moment force! A call to arms for all available pilots to gather at Stacmon in order to defend our POS was issued, so our small fleet's priority had to be sifted by attacking the N.I Scorpion to more important issues. The fleet gathered in sort time and our high alliance numbers made it possible to prepare a formidable force. However, before we would lead such a fleet into its possible diminish, we had to gather some intel about the force attacking our POS. Thus, various collaborators, that didn't wear our alliance colors, went into the POS's system to get us an assessment of the tactical situation. It quickly came clear that the attack was not a prepared one. A rather small force took some shots at our POS's modules and then - what a mistake - hide to its own POS shields to wait for the Global Criminal Countdown timer to go by.

Although the attackers posed a small danger for our alliance operations in the area, their actions of defiance of our authority couldn't go unanswered! The decision was taken immediately! Switch the goal of the fleet from a defending one to an offensive. Hit hard their POS, and get it removed from the system once and for all! When everyone was ready, the FC, took the fleet on the move. The few high sec systems between our current position and the entry to the low sec area were quickly traveled by our heavy BS gang. Upon arriving the first low sec gate, special care was taken to scout ahead for possible pirate camps, though at the same time we didn't want to delay the reply to our attackers actions.  A few jumps after and we were ready to attack the enemy POS.

Since this was  a big Gallente Tower, with guns and neutralization batteries protecting it, we had to ask the contribution of our capital ships fleet to make our work easier. The defenders, managed to catch a few of our pilots unprepared and so we endured two Raven losses. They were, sadly, shield tanked and that made them easy preys to the gunners of the POS and their concentrated fires. No matter of their efforts to defend, our heavy guns outnumbered and killed theirs. The POS's fate was decided at that point. After a few more minutes it entered into reinforced state ... allowing to the defenders to prepare better for our final attack that would send their POS into oblivion. For us it was time to take a break, relax and prepare for the final leg of this payback operation, 16 hours later.

After this wait period passed, and - what the planet side inhabitants call - a new day had come, we were ready to attack the POS and blow it up! I had to start late as various things required my attention into the station, but when I joined, the fleet had already been eating the armor of the undefended POS. Its owners seemed to have surrendered to the idea of its distraction. Our fleet didn't care! With or without defenders, this metal construction would soon be a scrap! A few minutes after my arrival at the POS location I was engulfed into a bright light ... the sign of the end of life of another POS.

The next hour passed with us repairing and unanchoring all the modules, guns and facility structures the owners had anchored to their POS. These would surely add some income to the alliance coffers or just be used in some of our future POSs. We all left after everything was collected and CONCORD had cleared their records of our illegal actions. Sadly the will of the enemies was so weak that our war had been retracted immediately after we had the POS down to its 50% shield the night of our first attack. An hour that the CONCORD rules would allow us to attack the enemies, was too short to bring us some more kills. Our reaction was once more swift and harsh ... the enemies had to pay for their actions and they did!

Mistakes cost!

They usually cost in disappointment emotions. Some times they can have big costs. Life related costs. It was good that my series of mistakes did only impose money costs to me.

I am a Gallente certified pilot. Lately, feeling that I am reaching to a spot of high capability with my race's ships, I decided to train for the ships and guns of a new race. The selection was not easy. All races have something to offer, and all have a ship you would wish not to meet as an adversary on the combat field. After a lot of thought I decided it was the time to start training for Minmatar ships.

The first skills have finished and allow me to fit my cruiser and battlecruiser ships with a good armament and a descent tank. No, they are not as good as my Gallente ships' fittings, but this won't matter much in most of the fights I will enter. What I  really like about Minmatar ships is their capability to decide whether they want to stay on the fight or not. Gallente ones just go in a fight and they will either win or won't come out of it in a piece.

I like the cruisers ships for solo work. They are small enough, to evade in most cases in low sec, but not so small to have a very limited selection of targets. Thus my first selection of Minmatar ships was the Stabber. I took her out in as a part of an alliance gang. The outcome made me happy, with some kills and no loses (Fight's log) (at least stabber was still intact after the fight).

The next test was the solo work. I took her to a close-by low sec system. Usually I find some pirates wondering around there and with some luck I would find an easy target to test her solo capabilities. Flying Minmatar ships is very different to flying Galllente ones, so I didn't want to overestimate my capabilities and have an early disaster with the ship.

A bit of scanning revealed some targets. The most prominent was a rifter. It looked like it was also scanning and moving around to get a fix to something to attack. We warped around a few times, doing these early reconnaissance steps before we end into a deadly dance. That didn't take long to happen on one of the system's asteroid belts. When the red rifter (signal that the pilot was an outlaw) exited his warp tunnel, I gave the command to the ship to accelerate, get a distance from the enemy and lock down and disrupt his capability to warp out, leaving the field. That was at least my intention, but alas, looks like the rifter was faster and made all these before me. The worst part was that he had now shut down my micro-warp drive engines, leaving me with a puny boost. That is the worst thing to happen to a Minmatar ship, and especially a stabber.

Nevertheless I decided to try to take the rifter. At least go down fighting. I released my drone and activated my gun and missile turrets. The rifter pilot got some hits on his shields mainly due to my trusty warrior II combat robot. He was experienced enough to prioritize that as the main threat to his ship. I was busy enough to try to gain some range to activate my micro warp drive, that didn't see it going down. After that the damage on the small frig was a laugh. So I aligned towards a celestial object and tried to gain some range, while I was awaiting my ships destruction. At least I wouldn't lose my pod. In the fray of issuing command to gain range, I issued some commands for warping out of the field. And in my great surprise one of these commands succeeded. I was off ... away from the fight with only a drone lost.

Strange! This usually never happens. A good attacker makes it sure he keeps you pinned down till the bitter end. How the hell did I manage to avoid that end? Local channel chat enlightened me. According to my attacker his middle rack modules had been burned out, during his overheat attempt to make sure he had the upper hand of the engagement. Damn it, I just realized that I should have never warped out from this fight ...

Since I still had an intact ship, with just some modules lightly damaged  by overheating, I decided to stay inside the system. Maybe I could make the rifter to engage me again. Maybe this time I was faster with my reactions and I could keep the upper hand. Surely after a few jumps around the planets of the system, the rifter reappeared on my directional scanner. A few more jumps around the planets and we met up on a new field ... hovering over a blue giant planet. Round two!!!

This time I was 45Km away from my pray. I decide to close against him, and put my ship in an orbit of 12Km, so that my guns would still put out a good damage and my micro warp drive was safe from his disrupting modules. I approached in an angle to avoid overshooting as he had also issued a speedy approach to me. The distance closed down fast. And when in 15Km, I issued the orbit command. Alas once again he managed to drop in at 8km range, thus negating my micro warp drive operation. He was so sure of his soon to come win, that he contacted me over a private communications channel to negotiate my surrender.

At first I ignored his call. I decided to play this out and see if I could gain enough range and maybe he was again careless and burned out his modules once more. The fight was continuing ideally for him. Being the hunter now, he was more relaxed and he could watch the pressure his modules were getting. After a few minutes my shields were almost gone and I was about to start getting damage in armor. The fight was clearly lost for me. I accepted the private call. Waved and expected his terms. He asked a payment of 12 million ISK. I replied that 10 million were more acceptable for me. He agreed. I made the payment of trans-galactic bank channels and we both dropped our webs, warp disruption fields and deactivated our offensive modules. I was free to go. I warped out with intact ship and a bruised ego.

Mistakes cost! This time it was only ISK. Next time I better not allow mistakes to happen ...