Ironfleet Towing And Salvage

It had to happen sometime. Perhaps it was inevitable, then, that it should happen on the day that I was burbling happily about the profits to be had in w-space.

During the day, today, I spent quite a lot of time probing down all the signatures in Greater Mars. In the process, I discovered that all the fresh grav sites had small Sleeper spawns waiting to be harvested; and I also determined that there were a number of new Cosmic Anomalies to stomp flat. So, I dug out the Drake and started with the easy stuff, stomping Sleeper frigates and the odd cruiser, while the Empress of Greater Mars cleaned up the loot and salvage in a tiny frigate of her own.

I think we’d killed five, maybe six, sets of Sleeper frigates and cruisers when it happened. I was clicking the directional scanner frequently; she was (supposedly) probing to watch for new ships in the system. Apparently, mistakes were made. Somebody got careless.

Surprise was total.

She saw it first — a Broadsword heavy interdictor skidding out of warp right on our heads. Bad news. She attempted to boogie.

My Drake, on the other hand, wasn’t going anywhere. There was a bubbly thing. I’m very vague on the technology used by heavy interdictors, but I’m pretty aware that once they grab you, you stay grabbed. On the third hand, by reputation they have fearsome tank but limited ganking power. My Drake, on the fourth hand, has a bit more gank than your average Drake; so I figured my only (weak) hope was to stay and slug it out. Maybe the pilot is underskilled, maybe by some miracle he’s flying alone, maybe I’ll get lucky. So I turned on my warp disruptor, launched my drones (Yay! I remembered my drone bay for once!) and attempted (without much optimism) to punch my way out of trouble.

The Empress, meanwhile, did not succeed in her first warp attempt, but she was making a klick a second in velocity; her second warp attempt worked, so she zoomed home to her fortress of solitude. With, she estimates, 6-8 million in Sleeper loot in her cargo hold. So, at least the ratting effort was not lost.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, it wasn’t going very well for Our Hero. The big problem was, it wasn’t very likely that somebody would be roaming alone in w-space in a Broadsword. As soon as I got fully engaged with the Broadsword, an Ishtar heavy assault cruiser showed up and popped a full load of Guarde II sentry drones. My tank, which had been doing fine up until that point, was suddenly and painfully evaporating.

I decided to shift my full attentions to the Ishtar, and managed to chew a respectable hole through its armor; it all happened very fast, but I’d say I got into the bottom third. It was no good though; I was surrounded, pinned down, outnumbered, and outgunned:

2009.03.28 04:34:00

Victim: Marlenus
Corp: Ironfleet Towing And Salvage
Alliance: Tear Extraction And Reclamation Service
Faction: NONE
Destroyed: Drake
System: J235321
Security: 0.0
Damage Taken: 37868

Involved parties:

Name: Haffrage (laid the final blow)
Security: 3.1
Corp: Sharks With Frickin’ Laser Beams
Alliance: NONE
Faction: NONE
Ship: Ishtar
Weapon: Garde II
Damage Done: 17798

Name: Oneiric Missile / Unknown
Damage Done: 15059

Name: Troubadour
Security: -0.4
Corp: Sharks With Frickin’ Laser Beams
Alliance: NONE
Faction: NONE
Ship: Broadsword
Weapon: Broadsword
Damage Done: 5011

Destroyed items:

Caldari Navy Scourge Heavy Missile, Qty: 21 (Cargo)
Ballistic Control System II, Qty: 3
Damage Control II
Scourge Precision Heavy Missile, Qty: 500 (Cargo)
Anti-Thermal Screen Reinforcer I
Sensor Booster II
Targeting Range (Cargo)
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Qty: 4
Scourge Heavy Missile, Qty: 20

Dropped items:

V-M15 Braced Multispectral Shield Matrix
Scourge Fury Heavy Missile, Qty: 500 (Cargo)
Scourge Heavy Missile, Qty: 313 (Cargo)
Viscoelastic EM Ward Salubrity I
Scan Resolution, Qty: 2 (Cargo)
J5 Prototype Warp Disruptor I
Targeting Range (Cargo)
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Qty: 3
Large C5-L Emergency Shield Overload I
Scourge Heavy Missile, Qty: 50
Large F-S9 Regolith Shield Induction

Worse yet, once my Drake popped, the heavy interdictor voodoo continued to work its magic, and my pod experienced some difficulties leaving the scene. There was a brief lull, which eventually (I’m slow) suggested to me that they might be offering to take a ransom; but by the time I figured out what comms channel they were using (local, as it happened, which is not something I tend to monitor in w-space) I just had time to type a “LOLno” before they blew me back to my clone vat in a hail of autocannon rounds.

2009.03.28 04:36:00

Victim: Marlenus
Corp: Ironfleet Towing And Salvage
Alliance: Tear Extraction And Reclamation Service
Faction: NONE
Destroyed: Capsule
System: J235321
Security: 0.0
Damage Taken: 390

Involved parties:

Name: Troubadour (laid the final blow)
Security: -0.4
Corp: Sharks With Frickin’ Laser Beams
Alliance: NONE
Faction: NONE
Ship: Broadsword
Weapon: 220mm Vulcan AutoCannon II
Damage Done: 253

Name: Haffrage
Security: 3.1
Corp: Sharks With Frickin’ Laser Beams
Alliance: NONE
Faction: NONE
Ship: Ishtar
Weapon: Ishtar
Damage Done: 137

The ransom offer, in any case, was too high; they wanted 100 million, which is two or three times what the cheap metal in my head was worth. Nor would I have paid in any case; I resolved early in my EVE career never to pay a pirate, and I’ve not yet been tempted to abandon that principle.

And so I was podded, for the first time in more than nine months, and possibly (I say because I might have forgotten one or two that predate the corporate loss history screen) for only the third time in my EVE career. I seem to have the good luck (or bad) of being caught mostly by skilled professionals. Nine months ago, in Faction Warfare, it was Friedrick Psitalon of the Dead Parrot Shop [FOOM] who did the dirty deed; this time, it was Troubadour and Haffrage (with eight and a half years of combined EVE experience between them) of that notorious pirate crew with the coolest corporation name in the game, Sharks With Frickin’ Laser Beams.

If I’ve got to lose — and paranoid though I am, everybody has to lose sometime — I’m always delighted when it’s to somebody older, richer, and more famous (or infamous, that works too). The Sharks will do.

One fun final note. Remember the Empress of Greater Mars, cowering beneath the protection of her POS bubble with my loot? She tells me that a few short minutes later, Troubadour in the Broadsword dropped out of warp and just about collided with one of her POS guns. He wasted NO time in warping away again — but the guns fired once, so at least we can hope he got his teeth rattled and his paint job chipped, compliments of the Empress’s lovingly hand-polished Illudium Pew-36 Explosive Space Modulators.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 28th, 2009 at 12:48 am 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.