That escalated quickly!

Ship choice gets you fights.

So I mixed it up yesterday night. We had rolled the O477 and B274 and spent a good 3 hours trawling around for fights, eventually settling for welping some AF's in Null due to me fucking up my overview settings. So I went to Hek, got another Enyo, and as I was jumping in the B274 I stabbed d-scan and noticed a tractor unit or two.

I've had Raven Navy issues aggro my Nereus before, and that resulted in fails due to too much DPS (well, after 35 minutes when the guy twigged he should change to EM). So, since then, i've seeded my POS with a Burst, to either rep the Nereus against a Navy Raven or similar, or rep and escalate via aggro spreading. Last night, the second option came through.

I probed down a Drake, doing a drone mission. Ordinarily nothing much to do, as drones don't drop loot and it's impossible to farm a suspect timer. But eventually the guy drops a tractor to yoink a can, so I attack. After 5 minutes, he shoots me, so Nereus vs Drake battle starts. I didn't get it on Fraps because I knew this was going to either result in a stalemate, or a ransom.

The guy had 5 salvage drones, and I had my 6 Hob II's. After 10 minutes of 500m orbiting and Nos'ing his cap out, the drones and popgun start getting his shield down past 75%, so i think his shield alarm prompted him to begin shooting my drones. This allowed me to get an angle to bring TF in, so I head back to POS and undock the Burst.

So, dude in Drake shoots drone, Burst reps drone, guy eventually gets the shits and shoots the Burst. Bazinga, aggro is spread. Warp Burst back to POS and undock the active tank Loki. Get back to site and utilise the limited engagement timer, and we've got the Drake down to 30% shields...

...when in comes a neutral Sentinel. Obviously a mate of the Drake, who's been crying in his intel channels. So the Sentinel attacks the Loki. No problem, I'm tanking anaemic Drake DPS and I've got a cap booster.

So i get my corpmate to take over Burst duty. Sentinel and Drake decide that the Burst is a PITA, so the Sentinel attacks Izrid in the Burst.

Enter a fucking Megathron. Shit's just got real. So, there I am, running a 400M ISK deadspace fit active tank Loki off cap boosters and spit, vs Drake, Mega and neuting motherfucking Sentinel. Izrid hoofs it back to POS and grabs his Sentinel. I unwisely decide to drop point on the Drake with my alt, in order to mayhaps run the Burst to keep my loki up.

But then the allies hear about these shennanigans and reship to Scythes. Izrid gets on grid as I'm 10% shield, cap booster reloading and cap dead, and he neuts the other Sentinel flat. At least the point's dropped, allowing me a possible GTFO option. We take the Sentinel down, and the Drake (unpointed due to dead cap on my part) and Mega bail; Mega to sun and Drake to gate.

So we follow the Mega to the sun and murder him.

All in all, a proper hisec aggro escalation which would not have happened without the Burst. And, yes, i really need to get an Omen or something cheaper to bring in vs a Drake in a situation like that, because damn, that was close to a Loki loss to carebears.