Deadspace reconnaissance

My agent sends me on an important mission, asking me to recon some deadspace complexes to see if they are safe for transit for a convoy, or if pirates or mercenaries would hinder operations. With him offering a huge 476,000 ISK mission reward I throw myself out of dock barely a nanosecond after accepting the mission.

I warp to the deadspace complex and find some rats lying in wait, with the target acceleration gate below me. I start towards the gate but missiles start pounding against my shield, so I decide to give a bit of a fight back. After all, I'm a daring mission runner with plenty of rat kills to my name, a couple of cruisers shouldn't be a problem. I lock on to all three targets and fire a full missile salvo at the first. As all the missiles hit and leave hardly a dent on the quickly recharging cruiser's shields I flick the reheat on and point myself back to the acceleration gate. When the mission mentions that I don't need to engage any rats I should take it as more than a suggestion.

Warping out using the acceleration gate only finds some more trouble, but luckily this shows the route to be unfavourable and I can return to my agent to report as much. Before the warp drive kicks in I take a bit more of a missile pounding, with the damage scraping through my depleted shields, down past my armour and to the very structure of my Caracal! Back in base my agent furrows his brow at the scorch marks all over my vessel and gives me almost half a million ISK as promised. It's just a shame that I took so much damage just trying to escape from all the cruisers' heavy missiles that I have to pay almost 420,000 ISK in repairs.

Because the first route is dangerous I am sent to investigate a second route. My agent tells me that 'If the mercs leave you alone, and you don't find any pirates roaming around there, then we've found our safe route.' It's a shame the mission is listed as 'part 2 of 3', as I'm supposing this means we won't have found our safe route, although on the positive side at least I can be more prepared to have my Caracal shot in to Swiss cheese again. But for just over 100,000 ISK reward I'm hoping it won't be anywhere near as dangerous as the first, barely profitable mission.

I manage to get out of the second zone easily enough, taking minimal damage. The locked-down acceleration gate didn't appear on my overview, so I wasn't sure what I was supposed to be doing there until I re-read the mission briefing. It was simple enough, as there were no attacks before getting to the gate, and then it was just a matter of the warp drive activating before I had taken too much damage. Now I am to be sent in to dangerous gas clouds and radioactive zones. I'm hoping this is even simpler, and with only 80,000 ISK as a reward it had better be.

Green toxic clouds and radiation damage pelt my ship with damage as I turn the reheat on and rush for the acceleration gate. I make it with plenty of shield to spare and warp through to a safe zone. I hope the agent is happy with this route, although they'll need some shielding for the gas clouds.

With the three reconnaissance missions complete I have only made as much ISK as a single normal mission, because of repairs for all the damage I took. However, I only came close to losing my ship, and had I taken just a bit more damage I would have made significantly greater losses from having to buy and refit a new cruiser. Moreover, whilst I only made a little financial profit on the first stage of the recon mission the loyalty points and increase in standing remains and is significant, and my increased reputation makes me think it's again time to look for a new agent with a higher quality rating. Onwards and upwards!

Posted in Gaming |
Tags: agents, caracal, deadspace, eve online, penny ibramovic