Still hanging around my deserted C3 waiting for the static to end up near enough to be reasonable. Last night I was watching a Kronos and a Paladin breeze through all the sites, following their Noctis, they came from a C5 connection.
2 things interested me in this, could I get the Noctis and how paranoid were they? That was the wierd bit, they would stay on field with the Noctis, which was good practice, and gave me no chance. The second was what they would do when I dropped probes. I started with core probes as new wrecks started appearing, and over a minute later new wrecks were still appearing... were they watching Dscan?
A few minutes later I had the sigs that I wanted, only probing above 26% if it was a wormhole. So I thought that I would scare them. Knowing from Dscan which combat anomolie that they were in I dropped combat probes and centered on it at 0.5 AU. Immediate 100% hit.
Warped to them at 100km, but crucially left the combat probes sitting there, 5 mins later with the Noctis on grid as well, they were still around, then they warped to the next combat anomaly.... and started creating new wrecks....
They were either
1. Not watching Dscan and oblivious and stupid.
2. Very confident that they had the backup to fight off what may drop on them...
To be honest, probably the later.
So I withdrew the probes, hopped into the Null hole to see where it lead, which was in the far north east, with no targets 2 jumps in any direction, jumped back in and logged off...
Next day, new static, and one other hole, a C3. The new null connection was just as useless, in the heart of the Northern Coalition. The few reds in any of the systems seemed to be all in stations though, so went back to investigate the C3 hole.
This lead to a C3 Black Hole. Now these give interesting system effects, that I failed to take account of later.
I went through the usual routine, and checked for the locals. Only one tower, appeared dead, and bizarrely had its full armament of cruise missiles untouched.... Now in a system that give a -27% to missile velocity, and given the complete ineffectiveness of cruise missiles as POS armament, told me that if any locals were still around they probably would not be top of the game.
Many, many signatures in system though so made a safe, dropped probes and cloaked up.
Several gas, relic and data sites later I see normal core probes on dscan, so shot mine out system. A short bit of warping around later an Imicus is on scan...
I narrow the location down on Dscan , and recall my core probes and drop combat probes. Takes me 4 attempts as he seems to have moved in the mean time. So if he is watching Dscan then warning given. Now he appears to be in a Relic site, in a C3, in an Imicus, with drones out ....
Now my limited grasp of wormhole sites assumed he would be dead from the sleepers before I get there. So warped in at 20 km to see.
Very cluttered environment, and he appears to be hacking cans, so I attempt a manual approach to steer clear of cans.
Drop the cloak at 10 k hit lock, launch drones and micro warp. As soon as lock, I see a loot spew from the can, so scram and web and hit weapons. Then, I bounce straight off debris, I had forgotten to hit approach, and had hit orbit, giving me a non straight line path into debris at speed, and ended up 16 k away, blasters doing nothing and scram out of range. Drones started hitting and he warps out....Not good.
I pick up my drones cloak and bring the combats back in. On Dscan within 5AU...so combat scanned 4 AU centered on me, 50% hit, next pass nailed, warped to 10k.
He was at a safe spot... and watching, as soon as I dropped cloak he warped off. That's it I thought, he's off, so I recalled the combat, dropped core probes and cloaked up using his safe spot. As soon as I cloak up and Dscan I see a Gallante Frigate wreck, and his capsule lands back on grid with me...
Immediate thought was that hostiles had been lurking, went to de cloak, but he warps off to an anomaly I had not scanned yet. Realistically I am not going to uncloak and catch a pod anyway.
What killed him... I narrow his wreck down to the Relic site we had just left(and I had not bookmarked) so scanned it down.
This time, full of sleeper Frigates and a Sleeper battleship. And a frigate wreck. Ho hum I thought, and went back to my waiting hole and logged off for the night.
Now, I got the kill mail, IMICUS KILL doing about 20% of the damage.
This in my opinion is not deserved, because:-
1. Should have planned my approach better and approached rather than orbited in a cluttered environment.
2. Forgot/ignored the system effects, -27% to lock range and turret fall off and +55% to velocity and agility. These last two made the micro warp both unnecessary and bounced me out of combat range. My error and I kicked myself for it.
3. He was killed by sleepers after making the mistake of warping to a site rather than a random (but safe) celestial to avoid me. Not killed by me.
Learnings for me.
1. Pay attention to, and understand system effects
2. Make sure uncluttered approach.
3. Keep in scram range...
In general .
1. Watch Dscan. If you see combat probes, get safe.
2. Watch Dscan some more.
3. If no cloak, and up against combat probes, do not stop, keep bouncing off random celestial's until you can leave.
4. Do not warp back to an anomaly in scanning ship(or any ship with hostiles chasing you) unless cloaked.
5. If you are attacked in a safe spot, do not warp back to that safe spot in your pod, or anything else for that matter (unless you now have a fleet)...
6. Have fun
John
No comments:
Post a Comment