Taking on a Talos
31st May 2014 – 3.14 pmHello, there's a Talos on the wormhole home. The battlecruiser isn't really blocking my way, as I'm sure I can evade a single ship on a wormhole, but what else do the pilots of this class 5 w-space system have around? I've been at a distant tower, watching a hauler do nothing for a little while, and trying to monitor other changes using my directional scanner, but it seems this Talos slipped my attention. If the battlecruiser did, what else did?
'Raven, new in C3a', says my glorious leader, spotting the battleship in our neighbouring class 3 system, through the static wormhole on the other side of our home system. 'Heading your way.' That is, Fin is heading my way. The Raven is local to C3a and idling inside the tower. Fin is coming to see what we can do about the Talos. Shoot it, I reckon.
What ships should we use? What assumptions should we make? We should assume it's not alone, and that it will almost certainly jump through the wormhole at some point if we get the advantage. We have plenty of ship choice at our tower, but maybe we're better just to engage in our cloaky Loki strategic cruisers, so that we can evade whatever else will appear when we engage. As for wormhole transits, we should avoid becoming polarised. That should be possible, with us currently either side of this wormhole. One can chase, one can sit and wait.
Our plan, such as it is, seems good enough to try. Good enough to encourage Fin to bring a Legion strategic cruiser to the party instead. That would make evasion more awkward, but give us a much more potent ship in the fray. Here she comes, the wormhole crackling to indicate her jump, and I wait for the Legion to start shooting the Talos before revealing my own ship.
Fin has the Talos locked and disrupted, so I can safely decloak and soak up the recalibration delay without fear of the battlecruiser warping clear. I gain a positive lock on our target and open fire, waiting for the wormhole crackle that signals the Talos's exit. Nothing yet, though. There's no retaliation either. I don't mean that help doesn't arrive, but that the Talos doesn't shoot back.
The battlecruiser explodes with a little encouragement, and I grab the pod and prevent it from fleeing. We have a few seconds before it could escape through the wormhole, so as soon as I see missiles launching towards the pod from Fin's Legion I help crack it open with my autocannons. And all is quiet. That was curiously straightforward.
I loot what I can from the wreck and shoot what we can't carry, before heading home. I jump first, checking the other side of the wormhole for a potential ambush, but all is clear. Fin comes back unmolested too. It seems we simply caught the Talos snoozing on a wormhole. That's not a great place to wander away from the controls, more so when you have seven hundred million ISK of implants in your clone's head.
'Do you want to see if our other neighbours are also feeling foolish?' Sure, why not. We warp across to our static wormhole, Fin jumping ahead of me. 'It doesn't look promising', with the locals still sitting quietly inside the force field of their tower. I circle our K162 as Fin checks through the high-sec exit. 'No oranges.' Even a newly arrived Mammoth doesn't do anything, coming on-line apparently to idle with his colleagues. We give him a few minutes, but there's no change. That's okay, we got a mildly interesting kill with the Talos, which makes for a good evening.
10 Responses to “Taking on a Talos”
I follow your blog because you are an excellent writer, and I lived in wormhole pockets for over a year starting when Apochrypha went live.
Unfortunately, I would suggest that shooting an afk battlecruiser is not "Taking on a Talos" or "mildly interesting. While your excellent writing does a great job every day of making your day to day life sound more interesting, when it is broken down for what it actually is, that life is fairly mundane and boring. That is not an insult. I know quite well how wh life is without a critical mass of pilots.
That being said, you certainly do your best to liven things up by fighting above your weight class. A well fit Talos would have problems with a neut Legion and your Covops Loki, but given the unknown backup that takes some guts to engage.
It just saddens me that you have to engage so often solo, and pass up on a lot of conflict because of flying solo, or maybe paired. But it sounds like your small group is happy with the status quo, and it does not sound like it is your call to change anyway.
I think your day to day exploits, and by extension, your blogs, would be much better served if you had a couple more pilots with your enthusiasm for your wormhole combat style in your corp.
In all fairness: it's hardly known if a ship is AFK before attacking or not. Just as it often is after the fact that the pilot was very young and/or inexperienced. :)
I to solo a lot. And although multi-boxing can increase once odds I find that often people run at first de-cloak and tackle. So it IS possible to engage substantially larger fleets. This is of course most true when attacking a fleet inexperienced in PvP. Intel is our best friend when it comes out figuring the most likely response of targets.
He was afk if you were wondering why i was so easy :(
Yep, we had no idea what we were taking on, and I mostly try not to give away too much about the post with the title, but I know that's not why you're writing.
I'm open to suggestions about how to improve my gaming time. Can't say I find it particularly easy finding other people, though.
Well, thanks for the tempting target and surprisingly easy kill, Blod. I was kinda expecting ships to jump out of the aether at us.
I was thinking "bait". Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
He hasn't really logged in since. Said Talos pilot that is.
We podded him so hard he biomassed!
He was so bad at staying at not getting blapped by WHEN he abandoned his CEOship and hasn't been seen since :)
Really would rather you hadn't podded him so hard he was too embarassed to play again though. Lot of admin to shoulder in his absence.
Sorry about that. We can offer you a spy to install as the CEO if that would help.