It turned out to be an interesting morning in Umokka.
I was suspect flagged hopping through the belts in my trusty Merlin, stealing everything when I came cross a Venture mining plagioclase into a can. I flipped it, and he warped away.
I waited a few minutes, then hopped the rest of the belts as he didn’t reappear.
Now, as I doing this, I was discussing mechanics with a couple fellows who joined the chat room listed in my tutorial.
As I made my second round of the belts, he was back, but immediately warped away when I landed. “excellent!”, I thought… perhaps he wants to fight.
Moments later, he landed in a Gnosis.
So, I haven’t played EvE with much more than a passing interest since 2012 (retribution patch), so I wasn’t really all that sure what a Gnosis was. However, in the spirit of “why the hell not”, I let him and his merry band of drones lock me up and start shooting.
So, I have now come to believe the Gnosis is quite a ship… in my initial approach to tackle, it went through my shields far faster than I expected. I suspected this gentleman was about to find justice in the death of my poor Merlin.
However, as I swapped to fast tracking ammo to try to get rid of the drones and hit “orbit 500”, (my shields flying past 1/3 on the way to armor), I was relieved to see that I was able to drop a substantial portion of his inbound DPS.
It became apparent that this all needed to happen fast when his initial DPS came down on me, so I did what I always do, and started overheating the AB.
I found myself feeling deeply grateful for him not having a web.
I killed his drones shortly before he scuffed the actual armor of my ship, and, as I was orbiting him at 500 with my scram disabling his MWD, his gun tracking was slightly below my shield recharge in DPS output.
I was going to be ok. Now the big question: can I kill this damn thing?
I had this particular Merlin fit with 2 blasters and a small energy neutralizer… so I turned it all on and just kept reloading as his shields seemed to be holding.
At this time, however, I mentioned my activities to one of the gentlemen I was tutoring. He said he was anti piracy… I said I was, in fact, little more than a pirate.
He said he wanted to stop me, and asked how to do so. I told him that his only real options, assuming I could kill the Gnosis at all, were to bump me or gank me.
He showed up shortly thereafter and got himself Concorded…I’ll work with him on that next time I see him.
Now, this took a while, but the shields eventually started to erode. I wanted to use T2 ammo, but every time I slowed down my orbit the Gnosis would blow my shields off… so I had to stick with faction antimatter.
Slowly, slowly, slowly… I pushed him into armor and then structure.
Having recently discussed ransoms with Keno Skir, I consider d it for a brief moment… but decided I had worked way too hard for this kill.
Pop, went the Gnosis and I felt a bit of pride for still being able to hunt such large game as rusty and ignorant as I am. I scooped about 7 mil in junk.
Then I scrammed his pod and demanded 10 million isk. He left chat. I decided to let him go.
Then, I got back onto my patrol, shortly coming across a Garmur.
Once again, I didn’t really know what the damn thing was, but I suspected it was a speed boat and I figured I’d be able to swing it close enough to catch it like I usually do.
He locked me up and hit me with missiles and and a disruptor. I began running back and forth, fanning the overheat on my afterburner… but I couldn’t get any closer than 20k. Wow, I thought, he’s orbiting far out. I should be able to dump him pretty easily. So I started trying to get away. I was able to swing him to about 34k… but the disruptor was still on.
■■■■.
Ok, he had me, and I was probably at about half shields. And a legion was just warped into the belt. And I was still suspect for another 2 minutes.
■■■■.
I stepped in the gas and burned in the direction of “not the legion”.
It became apparent that the legion didn’t have the speed to catch me, because he warped away. I figured he would be warping back soon… so I started fanning the overheat on my AB.
At full speed, I couldn’t tell if the Garmur would be able to overcome my passive shield recharge… it was very close.
And the legion landed… I still had 40 seconds on my suspect timer… But he was falling behind fast.
He locked me up, but didn’t shoot before the timer ran out.
Now it was just me and the Garmur… who was slowly cutting into my shields.
I had maybe one more cycle on the AB overheat, and it was a little iffy whether I’d still have an AB if I used it. His damage rate seemed increased, it’s possible he was overheating to push through my recharge. Maybe I could hold him off and stalemate him…
Moments later, I heard the “low shield alarm” indicating that he had pushed me to my maximum passive recharge and was still going.
I was really losing this one.
Pop.
I logged out feeling like I went for a run. Thanks for an exciting morning Umokka!