People will make decisions and have ideas that make zero sense to anyone else but in that moment, hopefully out of ignorance, seem great.
Today's song of caution is titled: How not to get chased down and killed by a hurricane with a cynabal backing them up.
The answer is very simple: Don't fly a typhoon in low sec at 2 months old.
The story:
One of my alliance mates noticed a Typhoon on scan a system out from me. When he checked the pilots in local he got a little bit of a shock. The typhoon pilot was two months old. He pulled the name into chat and said, "Typhoon in Weld."
I had been reloading ammo into a cane for a PLEX that Hurome found. I heard Hurome say, "Where?" and I asked, "Are we doing the Plex or chasing the Typhoon?" I was told, "The Typhoon, get on coms."
So I did. Teamspeak of course needed to be patched. Lovely. The Typhoon pilot jumped into Klingt. I planted myself on the Unertek gate and waited. And waited. And waited. I couldn't see him on scans from the gate but he was still in system. I relayed this information and the consensus was to check the mission stations.
I bounced to one and caught him on scan. No wrecks however. As I was narrowing down where he was, he vanished on me. Mane was in Weld so he had gone to Unertek, where I had just been on the gate. "He's left the system I'm going after him."
In my mind I am running all of these little scenarios. I should be okay. Even with a good skill training program and a lot of experience, a two month old player is very ineffective in a battleship. I had Mane coming up behind me and Hurome coming up behind him. This had to be something that I could handle regardless. I'm not used to being at the front of a chase. Doubts and reality clashed for a bit as I hit the gate and jumped through.
He was in local when I landed. I scanned and he vanished. With a curse I headed for the next gate and reported the information. The next system over split with a high sec pocket on one side and low sec on the other. If he went for the high sec pocket there wasn't anything we'd be able to do. I could only hope that the slowness of his battleship let my hurricane catch up to him.
When I landed in the next system, I saw he was in local. Then, to my shock, he was on my overview as well. "He's here." I said. For a moment, I had a "what do I do?" feeling. I was alone, Mane was two systems behind, this was a battleship, I was in a battlecruiser, I was going to take gateguns...
My mind cleared, I approached, locked, Pointed and MWDd to slam into him.
Point. He was not moving and just sitting off the gate. From the distance it looked like the spot that he had decloaked in.
I started to lay into him and the gateguns started to rip me a new asshole. My plan was to bump him to stop him from getting back to the gate. However, he never moved. He eventually targeted me back and started to shoot at me. However, I dropped my little overpowered ECM drones on him, overheated everything and started to chew through his shields and then into his armor. I'm not sure that he wound up damaging me at any point.
I was watching my own shields as the gateguns blapped away at me. Mane landed in system when he was around half armor. Hurome was behind but he was going to go down before he got there. Once Mane had point I aligned off and continued to pour damage at him. It was a tiny race as the gateguns ate through my shields and he went into armor and structure. At 20% shields for me, he popped. He warped off his pod nice and quick. I recalled my drones and warped off.
No local spike.
In retrospect, he could have been cyno bait.
We floated around and shot some belt rats and anomalies while our GCC and gategun timer counted down. Mane took the time to compose a letter to the Typhoon pilot. He might not be a new player or he might be a new player. However, if he was new we could direct the song of caution directly towards him.
From: Mane Frehm
Hey there:
Welcome to EVE.
You were wandering through our lo-sec area in a Typhoon earlier today when I spotted you in Weld...and my first reaction was "why is a 2 month old character wandering through lo-sec in a battleship? This is a bad idea." Alliance mates were in the area; we followed you, tracked you down and you died a few systems later.
This was not personal in any way....its just what we do. But we also like to help new players out, and so here are some words of advice:
1. Don't fly what you cant afford to lose. If this loss was crippling, convo me and we'll chat.
2. A 2 month old character has NO business being in a battleship. You just don't have the skills to fly it reasonably well, even if your training plan was perfect (and as a new player its unlikely to be perfect). You are also unlikely to have the experience to fly it well - you could have escaped us in a variety of ways but failed to do so.
3. Dont mission/mine/explore in lo-sec until you know what you are doing. People like us will find you and blow you up. That's not to say you should be afraid of going into lo-sec. The risk is much lower than many think, but you should have a good reason to go to lo-sec and you need to know what you are doing when you get there.
4. Most importantly - EVE is an MMO, not a single player game. Figure out what you want to do in Eve (mining/missions/exploration/PvP/whatever) and join a corp in your timezone that does those things. If you don't know what you want to do....thats perfectly understandable. Its a big sandbox with a long and difficult learning curve. Do some reading - lots of blogs and info out there. Join a corp like Eve Uni to learn the basics. If you want to learn PvP join Red vs Blue or Faction Warfare. Convo people in local and ask questions; most folks will respond in a positive way. Above all - get social and engage folks. You'll have a much better gaming experience.
Good Luck
Mane Frehm
Director
TEXN Corporation
Then we went and finished the plex.
Pretty nice letter. So did the guy write back?
ReplyDeleteI'll do a follow up with Mane.
ReplyDelete