Flights of the Planet Dollaz 3

I returned from a 2 week opal digging excursion to settle back in to a bit of PVP. I spent a few hours probing around the chain, to little reward. Wormholes are pretty deserted right now, thanks to the changes, which anyone can see via checking the price of nanoribbons (up from 3.7M to 4.1M).

I found my way into a C2 and saw a Heron probing. He said hello in Local, and I struck up a conversation where it turned out he had spotted a Tengu in the hole, and was it me? The guy was a 4 week old nub, and asked what he could do to make money in wormholes, my answer of course being "not much". He advised me to watch ut for the Tengu as it was "a tech 3 ship".

Thanks, guy.

I informed him I was going to kill it with my hauler. He of course didn't believe me. So in goes the alt and warps to planet 2 POCO,seeking companionship from a Tengu. Within 20 seconds, a Stratios decloaks at 10km and neuts the Nereus flat and drops Geckos and the battle begins.

Ordinarily, I try not to engage neut boats or drone boats, and this was both. Neut boats cap you out and turn the Invulnerability Field off, and drone boats such as Ishtars, Vexor Iavy Issue and Stratios carry drones, which track far too well vs a shield tanked bloatbarge. So I was thinking I'd be cactus inside of 20 seconds.

5 minutes later, after dipping into armour a few times (y u no FRAPS, TF?), I've disposed of a Gecko (hehehe), the Stratios is in half armour (hehehe) and he's capped himself out fruitlessly by alpha neuting me, and my nosferatu is keeping my Invul and tackle working intermittently, enough to keep him on field and tank him. I've finally got enough spare attention to begin reshipping TF into my Absolution 2 wormholes away.

Then the peanut gallery starts up.

First, the Tengu pilot offers his help to the Stratios, since it's apparently taking too long to kill the Nereus. Then a third party insults the Stratios, keeping the Tengu cloaked, and sparking a short conversation about who will inevitably win.

My Abso is in warp to the Nereus to finish off the Stratios when his mate arrives in a Taranis, to blap my drones. The Stratios gets a cycle of neuts off, and my point drops just before I get backup with the Abso, so I swap the Nereus tackle to the Taranis and finish him off as the Stratios escapes in low armour.

I loot the field and bail. Taranis down, Stratios schooled hard.

Later, a corpmate borrows the Planet Dollaz and pretends to do PI, baiting out an Astero.

Same wormhole as the Taranis, a bit later, I've been baiting out the local guy in a Cynabal, and we see two Stratios and a cloaky Vaga (yeah, it's apparently a thing), scanning towards the B274. I deploy the Nereus again, doing a fake PI run, and eventually decide to just drop it 100km off the B. Instantly a Stratios and the Vaga decloak and burn straight for me. Stratios goes down, Vaga escapes.

Finally, the Planet Dollaz golden run ends. I found a pair of retrievers in an ore site in a C3, with several mates in the POS. We figure they are fairly carebearish so won't take well to us dropping actual combat ships on the Retrievers, but you never just go in to kill two things when you can bait out the rescue party. So of course it's the Nereus again.

I tackle both Retrievers, with a single scram. You do this by cycling the point on to whoever gets their velocity up to 80m/s, which cancels their warp. I've got one Retriever in hull when the rescue party arrives. First, a HML Drake which begins to tickle. Then a Cynabal, who lands seconds before the rape party arrives. I drop point on the Retriever and hard tackle the Cynabal. We then extricate ourselves, sans the Nereus, as another Drake, a Thorax, and battleship reships begin landing. 

So, we are down an 18M ISK hauler, for about 800M in kills. Not bad.