Patience is Rewarded: Megathron Navy kill
Posted by Khalia NestuneI warp into a mission with a Megathron Navy Issue and start looting. The Mega Navy pilot, ‘Maxx Wolf’ aligns to a station and targets me. Interestingly he has no drones out, and drones are usually what is going to cause me problems – even a fast Vigil has issues outrunning light drones.
Maxx Wolf opens fire but his large railguns have no chance in hell of hitting me as I orbit wrecks at 1200m/s. Since he’ll just warp off if I go get pew I just putter around and continue to loot and salvage as his shots whiz harmlessly by me. After thirty seconds of this he warps off to the station.
Most mission runners will stay docked up until their aggression timers expire. Using my secret ninja skills – ok, it’s just shooting wrecks – I can extend the timer by fifteen minutes, and I can do that over and over. I finish looting the rest of the field and use a drone to pop one of the wrecks.
On a check of local I realize Maxx has gone to another system. Lots of mission runners also do that – move one system over and dock up, or run another mission. I enlist Captain Charismatic to help me search the surrounding systems. We locate him in Auvergne and not in station. Captain Charismatic starts to scan the system for a Mega Navy while I continue to pop a wreck once every fifteen minutes to extend the timer.
Eventually we realize he has docked in the one station in system. Captain leaves system on the idea that Maxx might be on the lookout for Jerk corp members in local. I then get myself ready. Khalia (my main) gets into the gank Abbadon and stays in the mission to shoot wrecks. My first alt positions outside the station in Auv with probes out to grab a scan id and watch for warp-off location. My second alt positions in Dodixie on the Auv gate to see where he goes if he returns to Dodixie.
What? Doesn’t everyone have three accounts?
Another few wreck shooting cycles go by and it’s somewhere between 45 minutes to an hour since I’ve been shot at, when Maxx undocks from the station in his Mega Navy. I immediately fire off a scan and get an ID. I watch him warp off to the Dodixie gate. Perfect! I can ambush him on the other side of the gate. I warp the Abbadon to the Auv gate.
The Abbadon’s downside is being fat and slow. Maxx’s Mega Navy appears on the gate and I watch on my second alt as he warps off – not toward any celestial, gate or station. The Abbadon lands about five seconds later – just missed him.
This works to my favor as I realize he’s warped back to his mission. I wait a full minute so I know he’s taken the first acceleration gate, and then warp to the mission and right through the gate. He tries to align to a station on seeing me but I get a point on him and the shooting starts.
It only takes a few minutes and he explodes. To say that I was excited would be an understatement. My hands were shaking, which may have been from all the coffee I just had, but the thrill of killing my first faction battleship definitely was a factor. I wish I had gotten a screenshot!
I open a conversation with him for tears, and he gives one of the more hillarious excuses I’ve ever seen:
Khalia Nestune > that didn’t work out to well for you there
Khalia Nestune > I hope you’ve learned not to shoot ninja looters =)
Maxx Wolf > it happens…I accidentally fired on your bait ship when I meant to just warp out
Khalia Nestune > LOL
Maxx Wolf > I was trying to fire on the stupid serpentis cruiser
Khalia Nestune > “accidently”
Khalia Nestune > yeah
Of course! Clearly a 2006 character flying a faction battleship and who had pre-aligned to station would fire on me by mistake!
This was a victory of patience and good planning. If Maxx had been smarter, he would have done any of: a) not fire on me at all; b) dock and log for several hours; c) go 8 or 10 hops away.
Nice work Khalia.
SHHH! Dont give away “ancient ninja aggro extention secrets”. If you tell them then we have to kill them. :)
Great blog. Keep up the good work.
Does aggro extension always work for you?
I do it often with can flipping, but what usually happens is that I can only extend aggro for 15 minutes. Once my original 15 minute timer is up, I can no longer shoot their cans or npc wrecks without getting a Concord warning, even though I’ve already extended aggro and have plenty of time left.
As the above is a bit ambiguous, here’s more detail.
1. I can flip a miner and he comes back with a fighting ship.
2. I kill the miner and he warps to station and stays docked.
3. As my aggro timer approaches 0, I target and shoot or web one of his npc wrecks or cans. This resets the timer to another 15 minutes.
Here’s where it gets weird.
Sometimes, I am able to extend aggro again by shooting another wreck or can, or the miner will come back, this time in a barge or hauler, and I’ll kill him again.
Most of the time, however, I get a Concord warning when I try to extend aggro again, or if the miner comes back and I try to shoot him. I still have an aggro timer, but I can’t extend aggro or attack.
I also find that if I dock at any point in this process, once the original 15 minutes are up, even though I’ve extended aggro and still have a timer before I dock (say 5 minutes), the timer goes away completely and the miner is no longer flagged to me.
I’d say I’m able to kill someone 40 minutes after my first fight with them about 10% of the time. 90% of the time I get the Concord warning.
What am I doing wrong?
well done khalia. I’m still working on popping my faction BS cherry.
Awesome blog man… I may be a n00b, but I still don’t think I’ve ever accidentally left clicked my turrets, or hit F1, instead of right clicking a marker and then warping out of deadspace!
Wait there was that one time that I was playing dance dance revolution while simulatneously mission running on eve and I accidently slipped, while busting a sweet move, and hit F1 on the key board that I had managed to tape to my left arm so that I could play eve and DDR at the same time…. Needless to say that was the last time I ever did that!
No, but seriously, congrats on the kill