So I found myself at loose ends today, and decided it was time to go clean up some of the dangerous jet cans that litter the spaceways. And so it was that I found myself in my Crane, with a cargo hold full of Dense Veldspar, looking at an angry Osprey flashing red at me and attempting to gnaw me to death with three light drones and an occasional light missile.
Pish, tush. “Captain to Gunnery, would you be so kind as to crank up the heavy missile launcher we carry around at great expense for just such an eventuality? Oh, and you might as well warp scramble this boyo, he’ll probably try to leave long before we crack open his carapace and start scraping out the greasy goodness inside.”
And so we began tossing heavy missiles at the guy.
They were having remarkably little effect.
A genuine mining cruiser (which this guy was, I’d counted at least two lasers burning) is usually not very heavily tanked or gunned. This guy? Tanked better than most.
Of course he tried to flee, but my Crane had the speed to control the range, and the cap to maintain the scramble forever.
His shield eeee-ventual-eeeeeey was gone, and so I paused to switch ammo to a more armor-eating flavor. Dang if he didn’t regen enough shield while I did that to make it unbreakable with the new ammo! I had to switch back to EMP, and stay there.
By this point I’m noticing that he’s got a corp tag and an alliance tag. This salvage operation is taking entirely too long, and I’m starting to worry about a passing battle fleet landing on my head. Nothing for it but to stay alert and keep pounding him. Shield regen is enough to make the project slow, but I continue gaining.
Finally he explodes. The killmail makes the problem clear — he’s fitted a Tech II Medium Shield Extender and a small (but best named) shield booster:
2008.01.15 20:22:00
Victim: eracklionne
Alliance: Zenith Affinity
Corp: Pleasure and Pain
Destroyed: Osprey
System: [redacted]
Security: 0.7
Damage Taken: 10224Involved parties:
Name: Marlenus (laid the final blow)
Security: 1.2
Alliance: NONE
Corp: Ironfleet Towing And Salvage
Ship: Crane
Weapon: Thunderbolt Heavy Missile
Damage Done: 10180Name: Guristas Arrogator / Guristas
Damage Done: 44Destroyed items:
XeCl Drilling Beam I
Bloodclaw Light Missile
75mm Gatling Rail I
EP-S Gaussian I Excavation Pulse
Small C5-L Emergency Shield Overload I
‘Dactyl’ Type-E Asteroid AnalyzerDropped items:
Expanded Cargohold I, Qty: 3
Dense Veldspar, Qty: 4941 (Cargo)
Medium Shield Extender II
Standard Missile Launcher I
1MN Afterburner I
All in all, an unusual mining cruiser fit, especially mounting only two mining lasers and that monster extender.
I’m still a little bit amazed he didn’t get some help in the time it took — do you know how long it takes to deal 10k damage with a single heavy missile launcher? (According to my logs, it was almost eight full minutes the way I did it, which included time for some errors on my part.)
The next part was almost more fun. While I was crawling back to pick up some more ore, he came back in a Raven!
Who mines in a cruiser when they have a Raven to play with?
Well, I saw his Raven and called with my Manticore. It “felt” like he didn’t really have the Raven skills and fittings he needed yet, because in just a few volleys his shields were below half and he chose to leave.
All in all, a fun outing on the salvage grounds.
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