Ironfleet Towing And Salvage

Today saw more explodey good fun in Greater Mars. It went down like this.

First of all, there was an odd crew that showed up in a small fleet, consisting of a Heron, an Incursus, and an Iskur I think (I’m talking about that assault frigate with the nasty drones). They sat on their entrance wormhole, where I found them; and the wormhole was new to me, leading directly into Gallente space only a few jumps from Dodixie, where Suddenly Ninjas and much of the rest of my TEARS alliance works out of. I traded some shots with these guys, but they were reinforced with a battlecruiser, so I decided to leave them alone after making several terror runs to pummel them with heavy missiles from range. Shortly thereafter, they left.

Meanwhile, Kahega Amielden, a Ninja and one of our more aggressive “usual suspects” who has been leading TEARS on some quite successful wormhole hunting trips lately, asked if he could come visit Greater Mars (since it was right handy) and maybe stage a few ships in for later use. I encouraged him, and he showed up in a Wolf, which I gather is a Minmatar assault frigate. He then jumped back out to grab a hauler load of assorted gear, but when he got back to the wormhole, he saw it close in front of him, just after a Myrmidon jumped into Greater Mars.

So, he cursed and swore, and then I told him about the other high-sec wormhole then open, which was fourteen jumps away and threatening to expire. He started jumping. I was messing about in the POS, minding my own business, until it was time to go meet him outside the wormhole.

Finally he’s in the wormhole, his gear is stowed, and he’s back in his Wolf, all hot to find that Myrmidon. Go go go, I told him — and he started probing.

Well, he didn’t have his fully pimped-out probing Cheetah handy, so he found the guy but was having trouble getting a fast warp-point. So we decided to get tricky. I probed the Mrym in my buzzard, initiated a fleet warp to send his little Wolf flanging into harm’s way, canceled my own warp, hopped into my Caracal, then warped to Kahega when he started shouting that he had the guy locked down.

(I kinda got the idea that he had a bit of a tiger-by-the-tail feeling going on. “Sure, I caught it; but I sure hope you’re planning to show up fairly soon to help me kill it…” That’s not what he said, but his “warp to me” had that certain expressive urgency about it.)

When I dropped out of warp, he had the Mrym pointed and was shooting at the guy’s drones. I locked the Mrym, added another point, and began pounding on his shields, which were substantial.

Then Kahega started complaining that he’d been jammed with ECM. Really? On a Mrymidon? But it was true; a little while later, I got jammed myself.

None of which did the Myrm pilot any good. We were light on DPS in our Wolf and Caracal, but we had two points, and he only had one jammer. The Wolf was busy schooling the drones, and I just kept launching heavy missiles, and it was slow, but we were clearly gaining.

Kahega, who’s got more pirate in his blood than me and I think perhaps a not-quite-so-fat wallet, asks me if we want to ransom. I say “Not me, but you feel free to try.” He has me stop shooting, and initiates a convo.

I’m not privy to all that was said — I’ve got a request in for the log, to share it here — but fairly quickly Kahega tells me to start shooting again, and he goes back to dancing with drones. Apparently the Myrm pilot laughed at him, scoffed (at least implicitly) at our DPS, and said he had friends on the way (which struck me as unlikely).

So, after shooting him a little bit longer we finally got through his impressive shield tank, after which he melted like warm butter and popped easily. Unfortunately, we were not fast enough to get a lock on his pod, so he got away. However, I now wonder how much good it did him. At that moment, the wormhole he came in via was closed, and there were two more available. Did he already have them bookmarked? One of them went to hi sec and salvation; the other one, into more “unknown” space. The next time I probed — a few minutes later — he was gone from the system, that’s all I know.

The Mrymidon salvaged nicely — we got five Armor Plates — and here’s the killmail:

2009.03.25 03:22:00

Victim: Drahcir Sirrap
Corp: Lost Drone Squadron
Alliance: NONE
Faction: NONE
Destroyed: Myrmidon
System: J235321
Security: 0.0
Damage Taken: 48934

Involved parties:

Name: Marlenus (laid the final blow)
Security: 1.2
Corp: Ironfleet Towing And Salvage
Alliance: Tear Extraction And Reclamation Service
Faction: NONE
Ship: Caracal
Weapon: Caldari Navy Scourge Heavy Missile
Damage Done: 36753

Name: Kahega Amielden
Security: 0.5
Corp: Suddenly Ninjas
Alliance: Tear Extraction And Reclamation Service
Faction: NONE
Ship: Wolf
Weapon: Wolf
Damage Done: 12181

Destroyed items:

Core Probe Launcher I
Viscoelastic EM Ward Salubrity I
Antimatter Charge M, Qty: 4
Shield Power Relay II, Qty: 4
250mm Prototype I Gauss Gun, Qty: 3
Core Scanner Probe I, Qty: 11 (Cargo)
Antimatter Charge M, Qty: 9703 (Cargo)

Dropped items:

Additional Thermal Barrier Emitter I
ECM – Multispectral Jammer II
Large Azeotropic Ward Salubrity I, Qty: 2
Antimatter Charge M
Core Scanner Probe I, Qty: 8
Shield Power Relay II, Qty: 2
250mm Prototype I Gauss Gun
Prototype Cloaking Device I
Lead Charge M, Qty: 5000 (Cargo)
Core Scanner Probe I, Qty: 77 (Cargo)

Note he was carrying 96 core probes. It wouldn’t do to run out!

All in all, it was quite fun to get a kill that I wouldn’t and couldn’t have gotten solo. And for all that I’m an anti-social sort who plays EVE solo most of the time and is just fine with that, it’s always more fun to have a successful hunt with alliance mates.

Addendum: Doh! Completely forgot that my Caracal has a drone bay. Launching those might have been handy! Sigh, next time.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 25th, 2009 at 12:45 am and is filed under Salvage Notes, 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.