Red ring of death
19th April 2014 – 3.16 pmI found myself some minor excitement, now it looks like there may be some miner excitement. The EVE University-held class 2 w-space system I'm in has a single anomaly, an ore site, and a Skiff exhumer coincident with it, according to my directional scanner. Of course, there are also six towers that I can see, a bunch of other ships, and I've only just engaged a Talwar destroyer and Sentinel frigate on a wormhole in to this system. The Skiff's got to be bait, right?
'Yes', says Fin, the Skiff must be bait. It's not like I need confirmation, but getting a sanity check is always welcome. I warp in to the site to take a look anyway, and the exhumer looks authentic from a distance, sitting next to an arkonor rock. It even warps away, disappearing out of the site for a minute, before returning to the same spot, as if it has just dropped off a load of ore. It's good acting, but it's a ruse.
I warp closer to the Skiff, close enough to see the hull shimmer with an active tank, easily close enough to see that its mining lasers aren't active. It's not even mining. It's miming mining. Oh sure, I'm still tempted to shoot it, just to find out that of course it's bait and I shouldn't shoot it, but I actually listen to sense and just take my word for it. I warp away, leaving the mimer alone, and reconnoitre the system properly.
It's a small system, everything sitting in range of d-scan, and only six moons around the planets. The C2 is saturated, no doubt a conscious plan by EVE Uni to help protect their presence in w-space. The ships in the system are evenly spread amongst the towers, which I only detect using d-scan. I don't much care to ping each tower and confirm pilots. I bet EVE Uni has rules about not leaving unpiloted ships floating inside force fields.
I launch probes to scan. Apart from the one anomaly there are three signatures: the wormhole I entered through, and the two static wormholes. I ignore the first and resolve the other two, an exit to high-sec and a connection to class 3 w-space. The C3 wormhole has a Raptor interceptor land on it as I warp away after bookmarking its location, which is good. The interceptor is back in this system and not loitering on the other side of the low-sec entrance. It's perhaps a good time to try to get out the way I came.
I warp to the K162 from low-sec, see no ships, and jump through to a waiting Talwar, Sentinel, and a third ship, which I only later identify as a Proteus strategic cruiser. I am also under two kilometres from the wormhole, making it impossible to cloak immediately. Time is of the essence, as my appearance will no doubt have whatever EVE Uni pilots available warping to the wormhole, so I move, try to cloak, and get targeted pretty much immediately.
There's not much I can do in low-sec. Even if I could pop the Talwar and Sentinel before help arrived, the Proteus will hold me in place easily enough. I dive back through the wormhole to C2b. The wormhole is clear, I am nearly four kilometres from the locus, so I move and cloak. Come on, stupid ship; move and cloak. Ah, great. Apparently my first command was recognised, just flowed back to me with undue latency.
Not only did my cloak activate, making me safe, but the repeated command was not met with the usual 'damn, fool, your cloak already be active! Quit fucking with the buttons', but a resigned sigh of, 'whatever, I'll switch it off, make your mind up next time'. The first I know of this is seeing the red-ring of cloak inactivity surrounding my module. I didn't even see the green ring.
Did I mention the Raptor warping on to the wormhole in C2b as I moved from the wormhole? Yeah, he turned up to see my Loki strategic cruiser decloak for no reason, and doesn't hesitate in locking on to my once-more visible ship. Great. A glitch takes me from being polarised and safe to polarised and dead. I do what I can, which is target the Raptor, scramble his drives, and start shooting, but the Talwar and Proteus come from low-sec, and just about every ship in the w-space system comes to pile on Penny.
When I say just about every ship piles on me I am apparently understating. The Skiff even turns up. At least there's no ECM to frustrate me further. I rake through the Raptor whilst burning my ancillary shield boosters to stay afloat, but the incoming damage is massive. It was hurting badly, but I can't even tell if the interceptor is still in range when my Loki explodes around me. Not that it matters. I aim my pod for the high-sec exit, and even that goes wrong. I am caught again, and unceremoniously woken up in a clone vat.
Maybe I should have taken the safe route to high-sec in the first place. That's kinda boring though. What irritates me is that I was actually safe, it wasn't my actions that got me caught. I couldn't trust the cloaking command to have gone through if I was getting no feedback. What if it hadn't? How long do you wait? There's no point lingering on it, though. I do, of course, there's just no point to it. To bring the evening to a close I update my clone, buy a new Loki from Jita, and find a quieter system to dock in overnight.
8 Responses to “Red ring of death”
That has happened to me several times. The UI needs to provide some feedback that it has received your input even before it sends it to the server.
Yeah, our pilots do tend to react quickly when they hear someone is nearby.
Sorry about the cloak malfunction.
Congratz E-Uni brahs.
I've been in this situation myself, with similar results... heh.
I feel for you.
I am also amazed that you manage to get screenshots in combat. Kudos.
These things happen. I'll just get myself a new Loki, with a working cloak, and hookers.
It's things like this that really hammers home how much Eve would benefit from the addition of a descent sound feedback interface.
The "Eve has sound?" joke is only funny because it is almost true.
Use the hookers like radar chaff so you can get the loki away safely?
Well, they'll be too cold to use as flares.
That's a good point, Akely. This kind of issue would be well served by a positive acknowledgment that the client has received your command.
I still spam the 'jump' button for wormholes. It just isn't clear if the command has been registered and if I'm actually going to jump, particularly when I try once and sit on the wormhole for what seems like two or three ticks.