Dumb move
11th September 2013 – 5.13 pmI'll maybe have just a little poke around w-space tonight. Aii's on-line and has scanned a bit, which should help speed up matters. 'I'm hunting in C2a.' Oh? Are there any pilots? 'A Myrmidon is clearing a site alone.' Well then, I'd better get a ship to you. My directional scanner shows the home system looks clear, so I warp to our tower, stow my scouting boat and swap to a Legion strategic cruiser, and warp to the K162 from class 2 w-space already scanned and bookmarked. Jumping through has a curious sight, though.
There's a bubble and a Typhoon on the wormhole. I tell Aii this, concerned that a battleship should be apparently guarding our way home, but he seems blasé about it. 'Warp to me, there's only two Sleepers left.' And, with that, the Typhoon cloaks. That's most odd, a cloaking battleship. But if Aii knows about it then we're probably okay. I move out of the bubble, make a bookmark outside of the bubble for safety, and warp towards Aii's Tengu.
I can see Aii's strategic cruiser on d-scan, but check to see if I've remembered his ship's name. 'Yes, I got decloaked somehow', he says, and he's engaged the battlecruiser in the anomaly, one Sleeper ship with them. As Aii is visible I drop my cloak mid-warp, activating my armour hardeners and getting my offensive systems hot. I'm warping in to a fight.
I drop out of warp in to the anomaly a little over ten kilometres from the tackled Myrmidon, Aii's Tengu already piling on the damage, and have to burn a bit closer to get my systems working. I start draining the capacitor juice from the Myrmidon and fire my lasers, and the battlecruiser starts to take damage, albeit slowly. I'm a little wary about that Typhoon making an appearance but d-scan looks clear. Not for long. Here he comes.
It's time to consider whether to flee or stay and fight with a second target. I think the battleship will be just a new target for us, given how badly the Myrmidon is damaged, and although Aii starts trying to pull range I've got myself invested in this fight. And so it is that I am far from warping away when the Purifier stealth bomber and Pilgrim recon ship decloak, and Scorpion battleship warps in. Fleeing would have been a good idea.
Too late now, I half-heartedly try to leave the anomaly, but I'm already scrammed, webbed, and neuted. I can't warp, can barely move, and my capacitor juice is dropping quickly. So be it, but if I'm going down I'm making sure that damned Myrmidon goes with me. The battlecruiser is dipping in to structure damage, just a few more seconds. Down, down, and there he goes. Pop! It's not much of a trade for the Legion, I have to admit, but at least it's something.
Now what to do? Nothing, apparently. What could have been a good fight is reduced to waiting to die, as the Scorpion gets its ECM working on my ship. I can target nothing, so I can attack nothing. The Typhoon moves away, looking to and managing to catch Aii before my colleague can escape, so I move in the opposite direction to try to get some systems working. Of course, it doesn't work. Although the Typhoon's scram drops from my Legion it's already been replaced by the Pilgrim's, who is keeping nice and close to me. So that's that.
I can't shake the Pilgrim, the ECM doesn't drop, so all I can do is watch my ship die slowly. A Prophecy battlecruiser turns up for some late glory as I prepare to warp my pod clear, and my ship explodes surrounded by flames. It's okay, it's a dry heat. I get my pod away cleanly, warping to the far side of the wormhole outside of the bubble and jumping home safely. Aii follows behind shortly afterwards, also getting his pod safe albeit stripped of a Tengu. Oh well.
Fleeing would have been a good idea, but not fighting in the first place would have been better. I should have called a louder audible when I bumped in to the Typhoon, but I got carried away with the solo battlecruiser and Aii's enthusiasm. I guess that's why bait is made so attractive. And at least I got some action within minutes of coming on-line. That doesn't happen often. Now back in my Loki strategic cruiser I return to the K162 to watch the wormhole be collapsed by our ambushers, the connection having served its purpose.
9 Responses to “Dumb move”
A lot of people who fly strategic cruisers don't seem to realize that if you wait up your weapons timer while going down, you can eject from your ship before it explodes to prevent the skill loss. If you were jammed out for more than a minute, that would have been viable.
Yep, good point. I forget how close I was to being able to eject, but it probably didn't help that I wanted to take down the Myrmidon in spite.
The skill point loss doesn't bother me too much. I can scan in a full-strength Loki, shoot Sleepers in a full-strength Tengu, and, if I finally get around to buying one, hunt in a full-strength Proteus whilst I wait for my Legion skills to reload. As long as I don't lose strategic cruisers too regularly I don't mind the occasional bit of retraining.
Ouch.
You must be recording video of your play (all of it? Just battles?) to produce such screenies from within a battle. What program do you use?
Naw, no video recording. I just get a screen grab whenever it seems appropriate, using OS X's native feature with the cmd-shift-3 shortcut, which I can conveniently reach.
I am able to get a screen grab whenever I feel in control of the situation. If I'm desperately trying to catch a ship or flee an ambush there is unlikely to be a picture of it, but once the circumstances settle to an inevitable ending I like to be able to capture the moment.
In this case, I was caught and going nowhere, and that wasn't going to change with the destruction of the Myrmidon. Then again, had I not been trying to capture the best angle of my awesome failure, I may have remembered to watch my aggression timer to see if I could have ejected, as Araziah notes.
The problem with ejecting is you're admitting defeat the second you do it, plus you're giving a nice present to your enemies. Why give them everything when you can make them dance with the loot fairy instead?
Jams fail. People forget to turn off MWD and cap out, dropping scram. They double click in space and fly out of range. All sorts of random things happen in the heat of battle.
Choosing to eject means you're no longer looking for these opportunities to capitalise on.
One of the best things I ever did was start to fraps my fights. You realise afterwards all the mistakes you AND your opponents make. You see the missed opportunities to escape or to sneak a kill in. Or even just the basic derpy stuff like forgetting to turn on a tank mod. It's only like $50 or something, pretty minor really. Just watch your harddrive space :P
Oh wow, you play eve on Mac huh? I'm surprised how many people do, you, Rixx Javix, even I do lol. And I agree with Bayne, recording certainly helps. Just in case you want to take it up, you can use QuickTime on Mac to record somehow, but it doesn't record computer audio, which is too bad, and why I bought Camtasia for Mac... But that includes a editing program as well, which is more useful for what I do (making YouTube videos).
Good points about choosing not to eject, Bayne. People definitely make mistakes, and it pays to be alert in order to exploit them.
I've been asked about videos before, but it always seems like more effort than I'm prepared to make for whatever results it would produce. It may be interesting to replay certain engagements, though.
I've been caught twice in my tengu and both times I miraculously escaped (once because it was just 2 guys and neither had neuts and they couldn't break my tank and had no batphone and the other time when a handful of guys with a bhaalgorn incoming dropped point inexplicably,) though I think solo ratting is a lot more dangerous than it used to be and I wouldn't try to repeat history.
Usually in a situation like you were in I check the corp's killboard. That corp's looks mediocre at best, you were quite unlucky that they were on their balls for a change. Funny, your strategic cruisers were among the last couple of kills made by them.
So we gave them a couple of pity kills? I'm okay with that interpretation.