My Loot, Your Tears

I was beginning to feel like all I ever did was fleet work, so when I logged on yesterday I politely turned down fleet invites from other ninjas and struck out solo. I pulled my Helios scan ship out of my Orca, scanned down four hits, swapped for my vigil, and went to work. The first two hits were folks who had already salvaged (or already been hit by the NinjaFleet that was also running around Dodixie), the third hit was a good Serpentis field which I quickly picked clean, and the final hit was a Rogue Drone mission, which showed "Alute's Megathron" on directional scanner.

The first room had an interesting wreck pattern:

So I salvaged and looted everything, warping the Orca into the first room to tractor in my cans.

I warped into the next room, where the Mega was working on a large NPC and several mediums. I salvaged and looted for a few minutes, ejecting loot as it filled my cargo hold, knowing that he probably knew the dangers (corp-wide aggro) of stealing from a can. He was just about to down the battleship when he targeted me. I zoomed out to get a clear view and made sure I was at full speed to evade his guns if he fired. Guns on missionbear ships typically can't kill ninja frigates, but drones will do so in a hurry. Missionrunners often start firing their ineffectual guns first, giving the ninja plenty of time to get away before drones arrive. This missionbear understood that, so my first warning (I'm glad I zoomed out) was seeing his drones heading my way. I aligned for my safespot, waited a few seconds, and warped as soon as the first drone hit my shields.

I made the call in corp chat: "Need logistics, preferably shield RR. Have aggro on a mega."

Khalia Nestune, Tavrek, and Zedrik Cayne answered the call, and were soon in fleet. I warped back to the first room where my Orca was stationed, swapped my Vigil for my Drake, waited for the first of my support fleet to warp in (Tavrek in an Osprey), and warped into the second room, instructing my friends not to warp in until I had a point, so that they wouldn't spook him before I engaged.

Fortunately, I landed right on top of Alute's Megathron. I started locking him, engaged my point, and fell into a tight orbit as I gave the all-clear to warp in. I began popping his T1 drones with my Warrior II's, and his guns were mostly missing my relatively speedy battlecruiser, but it was pretty clear that I would need to do something different if I wanted to break his armor tank.

When Khalia arrived and began hitting me with a single small energy transfer array, Alute apparently decided that the Maller was a much greater RR threat than the Osprey (?!) and began firing at him. Little did the missionbear know that Khalia had fitted his cruiser in a "Surprise! Energy drain!" arrangement, and with aggro from being shot at, could unleash multiple medium Nos and Neut energy weapons. These are certainly not formidable at that size, but they were enough to cap out the missionrunning Megathron, whose tank immediately declared that it had had enough and was going to go vacation on a sandy beach someplace.

Alute's Megathron assploded soon after.

I gave a hearty "gf" in local, but Alute never responded, and logged off about a minute later. I paid my support fleet five million ISK each for their help and expressed my gratitude.

Alute lost her ship because she made a series of mistakes. I will list them for you:

Do not shoot at ninjas.

If you do shoot at ninjas, get out of your mission and dock up until your aggro timer is up. Your PVE-fit ship will not fare well against even a ship of an inferior damage-dealing class.

If you do not dock up, at the very least don't shoot at logistics ships that come to help gank you. Although remote repair is handy, the real motive is to get you to shoot more of us so that we can come back with something nasty and pew you. Had Alute not shot at Khalia, I might not have been able to break her tank, depending on how cap stable she was.

It was a nice 40-minute solo play night for me. Thanks to those that came and helped at the end.

This entry was posted on August 11, 2009 at 9:47 AM by paul and is filed under Combat, Ninja Salvaging.