Hey all, this may be a noob question, but since this has happened twice now, i’m definitely wanting to get to the bottom of this. Both times was against the same person.
I’ve been attacking a Thorax near a station, they then vanish from site (station dock, I presume), then come back out with a Vindicator, ultimately resulting in a lost ship and being podded. The parts I don’t understand is that when the ship change occurs, they appear in the same spot (no, not near the undock gate or area) and the Vindicator has the same shield, armor and hull status as the Thorax.
Yes, they probably docked up and came back with the Vindi. And maybe it had similar levels of damage, or you had some kind of UI glitch that made it look that way.
In either case, this is why a lot of people tend to avoid playing PvP station games. If you shoot at them, you are unable to dock up for 60 seconds. This is plenty of time for them to dock, switch ships, and undock.
So if you’re fighting a target within docking range of the station, and they pop back inside, your best bet is to warp off before they come back out. Or else hope you can tank the damage they deal, until the timer expires and you are allowed to dock again.
Also if he appears in the same spot instead of actually flying out of the undock, check for a Bowhead close. They can store a few ships that allows you to reships quickly giving the affect of docking but then suddenly reappearing near or at the same location.
Yeah it sounds like the Bowhead trap. I got fooled once. I forget what he was in, something attractive to fight, but suddenly he switched to a heavy interdictor and was basically unkillable and inescapable. It was pretty clever actually.