Ironfleet Towing And Salvage

Yes, folks, Santa Clause has shit down my chimney:

Worse yet, I probably deserved it. Pride goeth before a fall. I was tempting the gods with my hubris, and picking on the weak at the same time. All the laws of justice cried out for my blood. Which was duly delivered, in a bucket. [Afterthought edit: A bucket with little paper umbrella decorations and naked lady swizzle sticks.]

I came upon a Catalyst destroyer, mining in a belt. A newbie, we might assume. But all veldspar spends the same.

The newbie, DanceofDeath, is a member of Astrodynamic Innovations [ADIN], which doesn’t mean anything to me. He’s been a member less than a day, so I figure, probably one of the little corps that — like Ironfleet, so I don’t mean anything bad by this — infest high sec. No worries, guys like that never seem to get the backup they need.

Irate note to self: There’s no damn hurry. There’s always time to check local to see how much potential backup the miners have. ALWAYS. You dumb arrogant fuck.

Ore. Not very much. My cargo hold. Align for departure. He’s flying a mining drone, does this guy even have a gun?

Er, yes. I can tell because he’s shooting an asteroid now.

That’s always comedy gold, in large part because I can remember doing that myself once in a fit of newbie panic.

This I’ve never seen before: now he’s shooting a DIFFERENT asteroid. I’m laughing now.

Finally he targets me, and starts shooting me. Not so funny now; I lock him up and lock him down and begin introducing him to the concept of the heavy missile.

Which goes quickly and smoothly. He goes boom, I open his wreck and loot the components, it’s time to go…

Ouch. There’s a Harbinger battle cruiser standing on my head and shooting at me with very ugly lasers. I never saw him arrive. Was he cloaked? Or, more likely, was I too intent on my easy kill?

Boy, he sure got here fast. It only goes to prove, even newbies can have big brothers.

And this guy’s big brother has got my head in the toilet and his foot on the back of my head. I’m webbed, I’m warp scrambled, and I’m melting so fast I don’t think my speed (such as it is, under the web) is going to save me. Does this swirly even come with a flush?

It doesn’t:

2008.12.25 03:52:00

Victim: Marlenus
Corp: Ironfleet Towing And Salvage
Alliance: Tear Extraction And Reclamation Service
Faction: NONE
Destroyed: Prowler
System: [redacted]
Security: 0.7
Damage Taken: 5914

Involved parties:

Name: Deadzero (laid the final blow)
Security: 5.0
Corp: Astrodynamic Innovations
Alliance: Strength in Numbers.
Faction: NONE
Ship: Harbinger
Weapon: Heavy Pulse Laser II
Damage Done: 4946

Name: DanceofDeath
Security: 0.1
Corp: Astrodynamic Innovations
Alliance: Strength in Numbers.
Faction: NONE
Ship: Capsule
Weapon: Light Ion Blaster I
Damage Done: 968

Destroyed items:

Ballistic Control System II
Nanomechanical CPU Enhancer I (Cargo)
Capacitor Control Circuit I, Qty: 2
Plutonium Charge S, Qty: 703 (Cargo)
Caldari Navy Thunderbolt Heavy Missile (Cargo)
Medium Shield Booster II
Concentrated Veldspar, Qty: 1200 (Cargo)
Havoc Fury Heavy Missile, Qty: 200 (Cargo)
‘Smokescreen’ Covert Ops Cloaking Device II
Veldspar, Qty: 2838 (Cargo)
Havoc Precision Heavy Missile, Qty: 200 (Cargo)

Dropped items:

Ballistic Control System II
Heavy Missile Launcher II
Small Shield Booster I (Cargo)
Thunderbolt Fury Heavy Missile, Qty: 200 (Cargo)
Y-S8 Hydrocarbon I Afterburners
Nanomechanical CPU Enhancer I (Cargo)
Caldari Navy Havoc Heavy Missile, Qty: 31
Caldari Navy Havoc Heavy Missile, Qty: 153 (Cargo)
Plutonium Charge S, Qty: 69 (Cargo)
EP-S Gaussian I Excavation Pulse (Cargo)
Caldari Navy Thunderbolt Heavy Missile, Qty: 176 (Cargo)
Depleted Uranium S, Qty: 962 (Cargo)
Faint Warp Disruptor I
Thunderbolt Precision Heavy Missile, Qty: 200 (Cargo)
Veldspar, Qty: 5012 (Cargo)
Tungsten Charge S, Qty: 100 (Cargo)

Yes, boys and girls, that IS my shiny new ‘Smokescreen’ Covert Ops Cloaking Device II you see there on the destroyed items list. Thanks for asking.

I don’t think my most expensive ship hull, with rigs, cost as much as that one module. Maybe my Cerberus, at the price I paid for it back in the day, if I’d bought the rigs on the open market; certainly, nothing else I own even comes close.

I had that cloak for five hours and forty-six minutes. Hmm, let’s see, that’s what work out to? 434,000 ISK per minute, give or take? A little over seven thousand ISK a second?

Hookers and blow would have been a bloody BARGAIN by comparison.

Moving on. I can, if I want to, afford half a dozen more ships just like that one; it met the definition of “can afford to fly it.” But still, ouchies. The last time I lost a blockade runner, it was a Crane, to a guy named Girin, in a Cyclone, and it was before I started this blog, way back on January 12, 2007. Of course, I’d have lived this time (maybe) if the blockade runners still had two points of warp strength; much though I love the cloaking, I paid for it tonight. This is only the third Blockade Runner I’ve lost in my EVE career — so wouldn’t you know I’d lose it five hours after fitting a module that could buy four more with enough left over for TII fittings all around?

That’s what makes EVE so strange and wonderful and terrible.

Just for giggles, here’s the entire combat log after the Harbinger arrived, so you can enjoy the extreme brevity of the face-melting I endured:

(combat) Deadzero [ADIN] (Harbinger) hits you, doing 520.8 damage.
(combat) Deadzero [ADIN] (Harbinger) hits you, doing 869.8 damage.
(combat) Deadzero [ADIN] (Harbinger) hits you, doing 670.5 damage.
(combat) Deadzero [ADIN] (Harbinger) hits you, doing 493.3 damage.
(notify) Warping to Stargate ([redacted])
(notify) External factors are preventing your warp drive from responding to this command.
(combat) Deadzero [ADIN] (Harbinger) aims well at you, inflicting 859.3 damage.
(combat) Deadzero [ADIN] (Harbinger) hits you, doing 1533.1 damage.
(notify) Ship is out of control

It’s still an hour short of Christmas, in my time zone; I think I’ll go to Jita and buy myself another present.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 24th, 2008 at 11:03 pm and is filed under Ship Losses, Today In Ironfleet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.