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My Orca Adventures - Ransomed!

It was my own fault for not paying attention. Multiboxing and travelling can be bad for you. I didn't actually go AFK. I started to warp to the next gate and was waiting for my screen to flicker on my other monitor and tell me that I had arrived at the next system. Because I was doing something with another alt I lost track of time. I eventually looked over at my main screen to see my account warping but not going anywhere. How strange.

As I look at my screen, I see a Machariel heading for me and bumping me. I realize that I am 100k off of the gate and being bumped. Dread hits. I'm about to be ganked. I assume I am being knocked out of the range of gate and station guns. It is Udema after all and today was my day to pay the piper. I try to avoid Udema and Jita on the weekend but I hadn't been paying attention.

Well this sucks. I like this Orca. I made it after all.

I've been killed plenty of times but never ganked in high sec. This would be new. I turned on my DCUII. I hit my invuls but turned them off. I would need all of my cap for when the gank landed. I'd planned this a dozen times before in my head. There was a chance that with my tank going I'd make it through. A small one but one none the less. It is why my Orca is not max expanded. It also does not have cargo optimization rigs.'

My mind cast around for possible things. Could I get an alt there fast enough to spawn concord and web me? I didn't think so. Little of my life is spent in The Citadel. I'd have to eat this loss. It had been a good run so far.

It means a loss for TCS. I was carrying supplies for the store. That would suck. Yet this is why I never haul huge values. Had I miscalculated somehow? A quick check of my ships cargo still told me that I was moving around 400m in uninteresting things. T2 guns, a few hulls, some isotopes. Nothing interesting. Not even a billion ISK in cargo.

I was going to die. The pilot was in SniggWaffe, Sniggerly's feeder corporation. A bunch of flashy reds that I could see ganking to gank. I was going to die... I was going to... Wait. What would be the point of ganking me? I had not much for cargo. I don't think I'd pissed anyone off of late, overly much. My alt is a neutral and pretty uninteresting. She never talks or interacts with anyone. Just someone carrying cargo. Maybe I could make this harder for everyone involved. If they were going to gank me then so be it but there were such better targets out there if one was ganking for profit.

Why, oh why hadn't I paid more attention? I tried stopping and rewarping but I couldn't get an alignment down. Fine. Next goal, get back to the gate. I set my target back to where I had come from, some 140k away and started pulsing my MWD. He bumped me, I'd MWD and slowly I closed the gap back to the gate. He targeted me at some point. I have autotarget on for these exact situations. It also makes me look like more of a carebear. If he cargo scanned me I know he found that I had little of value on board. Maybe he had realized I wasn't worth a gank.

Oh? I double checked that it was the Machariel pilot. It was. I accepted.
[19:03:26 ] Him > sup
[19:03:39 ] Him > how much you pay for me to stop
[19:03:49 ] Me > bumping me?
[19:03:54 ] Him > ya
[19:04:17 ] Me > well is it amusing you?
Maybe I could keep him talking while I worked my way back to the gate.  Or something. I was thinking. I didn't really believe him. Like most of Eve I am doubtful of ransoms. I was surprised by the request. I wondered how much he would ask for.
[19:04:35 ] Him > 15 mil and i let you on your way m8
[19:04:43 ] Me > My options?
[19:04:56 ] Him > i keep bumping
And this is when I came up with my idea. I could give him 15 million, sure. But, he was bumping me and I didn't like it. My suborn side had kicked in. I'd die before I accepted his ransom! At some point he had wasted more time trying to ransom me then it was worth to ransom me. But, I wasn't in the mood to spend an hour playing with him. And such my plan was born.
[19:05:06 ] Me> for 15 mil?
[19:05:17 ] Him> i stop if you pay me 15 mil, yes
I noticed that my alt was sitting on a low sec gate. Whoops. I sent her off to a station so that I could better deal with this situation.

Fuck his ransom. I could log off in space and just go away. Didn't CCP introduce safe log off with Retribution? I'd never used it and my first efforts told me that I couldn't use it when approaching something. If I remembered correctly I wouldn't warp off but I would just go poof. And he'd lose his target. I hit stop and watched him approach me again. I had no timer flags. My safety was green. I believed this would work.
[19:06:35 ] Me > is it worth your time?
[19:06:45 ] Him > is it worth yours? lol
[19:06:52 ] Me > yes :)
What was worth my time was denying him his ransom. His Machariel slammed into me as my Orca flickered out of existence.


I logged back in after fifteen minutes to find myself alone. I landed back, 80k off the gate and warped  off on my way to deliver to my store. I debated that I should have tried to cloak when he was 20k off and planning to bump me again and see if it made him miss. Then I could have aligned and been on my way. These ideas come up at the worst times.

And that, my friends, is my fuck you to being ransomed.

Comments

  1. Hehe. I once got bumped for a while while flying my (mostly empty) freighter through some lower hi-sec. I didn't notice it until I was in the next system and re-read local chat, because of my habit of not looking again at the screen until I hear the gate jump; figuring that if somebody decides to gank me, there's nothing I can do anyway, so why watch?

    I'm wondering, though: did it feel different to possibly lose your Orca, opposed to losing a combat ship in lo-sec? For me, it does.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It had the same feeling of falcon or insta lock camp. Nothing you can do but sit and let them use you. It took me a minute to figure out a possible solution to the situation but I wasn't going to just sit there and die.

      Delete
  2. i had bought a billion worth of stuff for my store two weeks ago, stuffed it into my provi and warped happily out of jita. i got two jumps out of jita when i realized what i was doing...duhhhhh. so i parked the provi into a station in urlen and then flew down to my home station and got a couple of blockade runners to haul the bulk of what i bought safely....cloaked. uedama is hells kitchen and i didnt want to be breakfast. thanks for the story.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Wow. You really AREN'T a pirate, huh? As one of your neighbors (I roam Metro/Molden) — who is a pirate and honors his ransoms — it bothers me that you're saying Fuck Ransoms from the perspective of a lowsec PVPer. You do have a growing audience, you know. It'll hurt my wallet in the long run and makes me not want to buy from your store.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I have never ransomed anyone myself. When my fleet has, it is always honored.

      That does not mean that I want to be on the other side of a ransom. So it is a choice. Give the ISK and see if the ransom is honored. Find another solution to not pay for the ransom. Even if that means losing my ship.

      And I fully understand and accept that my words will not always make someone happy. I write a lot of honest things here. If my decision to not give into his ransom and find another solution makes you not come to TCS, it is an unfortunate side effect.

      Delete
    2. See, no matter what you do it isn't PvP to someone. I've seen epic threads on the forums about who and who isn't a pirate. You fought the guy, you won, but now you're not a pirate. Too funny.

      Delete
    3. If you tackle someones snake clone in lowsec and charge them isk to let it go, that is a ransom. Bumping someone with a mach and demanding a ransom when they can easily leave the situation is not.

      The difference between these is that in one case you are able to inflict loss to the other person and in the other the only thing you are able to do is slightly annoy them.

      If you cannot inflict loss then there is no reason to expect to get anything from a ransom attempt.

      -Viceorvirtue

      Delete
    4. Sorry to break this to you mate, but ransoms are a joke.

      The only people who fall for them are newbies or clueless high sec living carebears, neither of which will suddenly have an epiphany that ransoms are not worth paying just because of Sugars blog post.

      Also no-one has a responsibility to look out for your profit. If I wanted to ransom someone and then blow them up anyway even if they paid, and somehow that hurts your profit from ransoms in the long-run, it's no-ones problem but yours.

      Delete
    5. @Malcolm: word man. It's all in the eye of the beholder, and scumbag anon decides not taking a ransom revokes your piracy license. A laughable claim from a forgettable source.

      Delete
    6. "Wow. You really AREN'T a pirate, huh?...It'll hurt my wallet in the long run and makes me not want to buy from your store."

      Actually, if you're this upset about something for the sole reason that it might hurt your wallet in the future, then you're the one who's not a pirate, you're a carebear.

      Delete
    7. You're only a pirate if you pay ransoms to anyone who asks, even when it's avoidable? That's one of the most retarded pirate credos I've ever heard. Post your in game name so I can make you pay me to stop making fun of you in local.

      Delete
  4. @Anonymous - The only person in Eve I would trust to honor a ransom is Chribba, and he doesn't believe in PvP in space. Paying a ransom is a gamble at best, and the most likely outcome is losing both your ship and cargo and whatever money you foolishly paid out.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I don't ransom very much, but when I do I honour them.


    (I also recently tried baiting with a fully loaded freighter on a high > low gate......freighter got out in 36% armor.....it was rather exciting)

    ReplyDelete
  6. You could just turn on hardeners, keep "warping" to your next gate and go AFK. Sooner or later he recognizes that he won't get anything.

    ReplyDelete

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