Monday 2 April 2018

A Bad Day For Mining

The day's murdering started literally immediately that I logged in.

I had jumped an EOL hole the night before with Miskoranda and it had evaporated behind me. i missed a Stratios and a Raven while probing through the chain to get to a better exit, and laid up in an exit to Aidart and logged on the outside of the B274 to J112528.

Logging in the next day, and loathe to go 24 jumps, I just jumped in the C2 to go find a way back home. Covetor on scan, and an Athanor. So i warped in on the Athanor at 100, and lo and behold, there he was. Warped to his roid, blew him up. He briefly undocked a Rattlesnake from the Astrahus, but thought better of it.

The Z647 led to a hole exiting in Vullat, 7 jumps from home.

A bit of scanning later and I found a Harby Navy doing sites in a C2, so after watching him MWD around and re-warp 4 times, we pounced. Ship. Pod Nearly 1 billion ISK.

A little while later, one of the coalition mates said "TF you like killing noobs. There's a guy doing a mining mission in Mateber." So, yeah, what the hell, it's not glamorous or anything but a bit of swish swish and beep boop, and i gave a warp in for myself and a corpmate (~1 month old guy) and we tackled the Retriever with an Atron and a Magnate. Yeah, combat magnate FTW!

Lo and behold if he did not have ORE strip miners!

I went to get a second coffee, this being barely 8 a.m. and only 1 hour since I woke up, so I missed the fact the guy had rage-undocked a Hurricane Fleet and warped back in. That didn't go much better. So I sit down to hear Ming Sun-Tzu say he's got 5% hull left and I'm like "Whut?" Sheesh.

Time passed, comprising Easter Monday activities like walking the dog, cooking lunch, and QT's with the fams. But as downtime approached it came time to visit some Spanish friends who live in a C2 (J131204) who you may remember from a rolling mega we (or, according to zkill, only I killed) ganked on the 30th March. he was one of a pair, backed up by 2 Stratios, a Gnosis and a Hyperion, which we tangled with on a connection.

We had a way in to their hole from near Dodixie, and coincidentally one from Pator, 7 jumps from our base in lowsec. They were a mining corp, of miners, and a belt had spawned in their system according to 'rumours' so efforts were made to get in there 3 hours prior and cloak a dictor in said ore anomaly, and camp their freeport Astrahus with a cloaky battery Stratios.

A friend supplied an alt in a dual rep Myrm, and Ming brought a Vexor. It was going to be a tough fight if it happened.

Lo and behold, Monday was the day their Athanor popped its rocks, so the Retrievers (up to 3) were in that belt, and a Sabre was deployed to the K162 to Pator to provide 'security'.

I bubbled one, and was 100m off bubbling a second Retriever, and the Sabre hung up Ming on the K162. We then played ping pong around system before the K162 to Pator, at 50km, became the location for a classic throw down.

battle report

They warped atop our Myrm, and I took out the Purifier first, to clear the DPS off. The legion and VNI nearly cracked the Myrm, as our Vexor capped out trying to crawl 50km off the hole. Thrasher died fairly quick and reshipped to an Omen, who arrived just in time to watch the Legion blow up, and then died himself.

Good fights!