EVE online: Pirate Invasion

Þetta er grein sem ég skrifaði fyrir corpið mitt á avatars united og langar að birta hér þó hún sé á ensku. Segir frá skemmtilegri upplifun þegar ég bauð tweimur corp meðlimum með mér í level 4 mission running.

This was a fine evening in the outer reaches of the EVE universe. Here I was sitting plushly in my fine Hyperion BS just outside the gate to the mission site with two of my better fighters Dict and Hermo to help me finish this Pirate Invasion mission my agent had given me few moments ago. Our goal was to stem the flow of angel pirates into our space and do it in such a way that they would think twice before trying again.

I had put on armor setup that I had been using for some missions against pirates from other faction and had worked very well but I was soon to find out that in this mission it would fail me. In mid slot I had 100mn afterburner because I like to be able to move relatively fast in my BS between gates in mission and also to be able to move quickly away from big swarms of npc rats if I needed to. In low slots I had typical tank, gank setup, one LAR II, (Large armor repairer II) eplosive and kinetic hardener II, two EANM II (Energized adaptive nano membrane) and two MFS II (magnetic field stabilizers).

We did talk a bit about how to work the mission before jumping in and in main the plan was that I would jump in first in my BS and take aggro from 1-2 groups and then they would jump in and fire at will at the rat ships closest to me, and then I would get aggro from the other group of pirates until I had full aggro, very simple plan for sure. When I was sure all was clear and everybody understood the plan, not hard to do as we were only 3 in the fleet :) I activated the gate and jumped in.

I really think that having two BS pilots with me was making me err in judgement because even if I had run this mission solo many times then I usually aggroed only 1-2 groups at a time and tanked incoming damage while taking them down.

It was easy at first in there as only 1-2 groups of 4-6 angel BS's and some cruisers and frigs aggoed my ship and started to fire at me so I could easily tank incoming damage. I watched my shield disappear very quickly and then the damage started to eat into my armor but when I activated my LAR it repaired the armor completely and kept it in the green. Then I sent message to my gang and told them to jump in and join me in killing those damn angel rats. When they had arrived I locked ships from the rest of the pirate groups and fired at them to get full aggro. That might not have been the brighthes idea that I've had because then I suddenly had up to 15 BS's firing at me and a lot of cruisers and frigs. I had told my gang to focus on the cruisers and they were doing good job in blowing them up but as one was flying Armageddon Amarr BS and the other in Caldari Raven I knew it would take them some time to clear out the cruisers.

I sent my drones against the frigs to be sure that no warp scramblers would keep me in there if I wanted to warp out and also to take down the webbers. That was a very good move because things very quickly turned to worse and my armor started to melt down, I watched it go down to 60%, 50%, 40% and continue receding, so I sent message to my gang to prepare to warp out if and when I told them so, and 10 sec later my armor was down to 20% so I gave the order, Warp Out, Warp Out, and pushed the Autopilot button on my ship, none to soon because my armor was down to 10% when at last my ship got into warp. They got out safely and we docked to talk things over and I decided to refit my ship to take into account all this damage from full aggro of all rats in there.

This time I put on another LAR II instead of one of the MFS II and got some more drones that I lost when I had to warp out and we met again at the gate to the mission. I jumped in locked and shot at some of the BS's and they joined me in there. I gave broadcast target to my gang and then locked one ship from each group until I had full aggro, this time my armor went down to 40% and stayed there as my gang had cleared most of the cruisers in the previous attemp to stop those bloody angel pirates and I had gotten 3 of the BS's before jumping out last time. So we cleared the system of all angel rats and I reported to my agent and told him the good news.

He was quite happy and thanked me for job well done, but when I asked for another mission he told me the angel rats were back in our system so could I please go there and stop them right now. I was not very happy as last time me and my gang did not get through it as easily as I thought we should have but accepted and told my gang the good new, more fun and lots of hard angel rats to kill.

So outbound again and this time we would show those angel rats who was the boss in this system. I decided that we should try to use same plan as last time and they agreed. I jumped in, got full aggro and started to blow up the first BS with my tech II railguns while sending the drones for the frigs. Told my gang to jump in and they started to blow up the cruisers. I was a bit careless this time as I thought my armor tank would hold out much better this time and only activated one LAR II at first, but I was in for a surprise as suddenly my armor started to go down much to quickly and when I acitvated the seccond LAR II my cap started to go down to quickly also. My armor was down to 60% and then really started melting down as more angel BS's zeroed in on my Hyperion and inced closer and closer, I watched my armor go down to 50%, 40% and continue receding so I sent message to my gang to be ready to warp out, called in my Hammerhead tech II drones and when my armor was down to 20% I gave the order to Warp Out, and pushed the Autopilot button on my ship.

My ship should have warped out but did not, to my horror I realised that I had been so confident about my armor that I had not aligned my ship to the warp out stargate. While my huge and slow Battleship was turning so slowly around and aligning to warp out I watched my armor disappear and my structure taking hits, even if I was repairing it nonstop using both large armor hardeners all the time. My structure went down to 70%, 60%, 50% and my ship was almost aligned even if it was taking ages for it to turn. Fortunately my armor repairers gave me some protection and got my armor up to 10-15% now and then, but I saw that my structure was almost gone, it went down to 20% and I thought that I had lost my fine Hyperion BS, but then luckily the warp drive kicked in and I got out with 15% structure. That was a really close call and more scary than fun.

My corp members got out safely and we docked to talk things over and to give me chance to get over this close call. I decided to refit my ship again to take in account all this damage from full aggro of all rats in there. I put on another explosive hardener II instead of the MFS II and threw out my 100mn afterburner and put in another Capacitor recharger II and out we went again, warped in and quickly blew up all the angel rats in there and then I docked at my agents station to tell him the good news.

He was happy that we had stopped the angel rats and did not even blink when I told him that I had almost lost my fine Hyperion BS.

I asked him for another mission and surprise, surprise, the angel rats were trying to storm our system for the third time. I accepted the mission, we used the same plan as before and this time my full active armor tank held out fine even if it went down to 20-40% armor most of time.

So we finished the mission and I went back to my agent and told him the good news. This time he told me we had stopped those bloody angel rats for now and our system was safe and sound, hopefully for some time.

In hindsight I think that my overconfidence came from running those missions solo and aggroing only 1-2 pirate groups at a time and also thinking that two more BS pilots should be able to clear out the angel cruisers and BS's so fast that I could tank all incoming damage. Well you live to learn and this time I survived and learned the lesson even if it was one of the closest calls in my carreer as mission runner in EVE.