So. Yesterday. Your trusty correspondent Jim Bridger is still stuck in high sec waiting for a jump clone timer. Can flipping in an armed destroyer is a little too … obvious and is not passing the time. I’m remembering how much fun Marlenus used to have in the combat Cranes, but I can’t fly a Crane, and I don’t have a Prowler available inside of thirty jumps. I check the market, but they’re more than sixty million, and this 0.0 PvP stuff has left me skint.
Obviously, there’s nothing for it but to step next door into Jita and set up a nice cheap battle Mammoth.
A short fitting flurry later, the Pissed Pachyderm is patrolling the belts. What’s this? A Retriever mining barge, jet can out, flying a single Hornet I drone? Surely that’s got to be bait, right?
Quick check, the pilot has a corp, only one other pilot in the corp, not in system. He’s on his own.
Motor motor motor. Battle Mammoth is not speedy. Motor motor motor. Can is getting closer.
Pass my time investigating the pilot, one Xhaine. He’s a… what? Ohshit noshit, he’s a freakin’ 2003 character? I smell herring and buttfuckery.
But if I chicken out and shy away from this juiciest of battle Mammoth targets, I might as well put the ship away. Plus, here’s the can, and it’s mostly full of the juiciest veldspar. Take what I can put in the Mammoth, flip the rest. It’s my way.
He’s locking me. The Retriever is locking me. I start locking him back, waiting nervously for four Warrior IIs or some sort of long-forgotten unobtainium GM’s-handed-them-out-as-loot-in-some-2004-event Drones-O-Death to launch and start nibbling my kidneys.
He’s locked. Still just one Hornet on me. He’s webbed, he’s pointed, and I am autocannoning him about the head and shoulders.
Faster than you’d think, he pops. No surprises, no tricks. Just kaboomage. Turns out he didn’t even have a fitting on the barge, just two strip miners and four mining drones he wasn’t using:
2010.06.21 02:11
Victim: Xhaine
Corp: Internet Gods Inc.
Alliance: None
Faction: NONE
Destroyed: Retriever
System: [redacted]
Security: 0.7
Damage Taken: 2241Involved parties:
Name: Jim Bridger (laid the final blow)
Security: 5.0
Corp: Steel Fleet
Alliance: Important Internet Spaceship League
Faction: NONE
Ship: Mammoth
Weapon: 200mm AutoCannon II
Damage Done: 2089Name: Thorn Rocket / Guristas
Damage Done: 152Destroyed items:
Dense Veldspar, Qty: 16953 (Cargo)
Mining Drone I (Drone Bay)Dropped items:
Strip Miner I, Qty: 2
Mining Drone I, Qty: 3 (Drone Bay)
If I’ve ever shot at an ’03 character before, I don’t know it. And I still can’t quite figure this guy. A seven-year-old mining alt would be in a better barge, surely? Even a purchased character shouldn’t be that broke — anybody with the billions to make the buy would have some more isk available for the purchased character, right? Just can’t figure out how anybody could be simultaneously that old, that broke, and that clueless.
But it was a great first outing for the Pissed Pachyderm!
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June 21st, 2010 at 12:00 pm
Two words:
Re-sub’d player?
I dunno, just a thought though. Vast majority of the time, players you see that old, played the game in the early days, didn’t like it initially, but came back eventually.
June 21st, 2010 at 1:21 pm
Yeah, it’s hard to figure, though. He’s the CEO of a 2-person corp that’s almost as old as the character, so that means he got far enough to create his own corp before he unsubbed. But the didn’t figure out to put *anything* on his mining barge, not even a rock scanner or some cargo expanders? And he must have a hauler somewhere, because he was jet canning.