Monday, December 12, 2011

Reverse Kill Rights

I made a little mistake the other day when I got a kill ninja style. I was cloaked in one of my target low sec systems watching over a gate camp on the high sec entry gate. A Pilgrim jumps through and the gate camp immediately goes for him. Normally you’d expect a Pilgrim to simply cloak up but unfortunately for this person they got disco’d. Not thinking about the consequences I thought it would be fun to take the opportunity to get on the killmail with my Hound.


The other members of the gate camp weren’t too happy with me whoring their mail, but come on, this is EVE. I reviewed my Kill Rights list and thought, oh crap now I’ve got kill rights on me. This is really going to screw up my game of going after others if I’m constantly looking over my shoulder. Miss Shieeela is quite aggressive in going after Kill Rights targets just like me as I found out the next day when I ran a locator and found her/him in Jita. I sent my alt there to take a peek and saw her/him and his two alts, one in a Helios, one in an RR Domi and herself/himself in an Abaddon.

Once she/he arrived back in home system I wanted to see just how aggressively she'd/he’d go after me. I jumped in my Tempest and went to a safe spot. Her/His Helios came in, scanned me down in under a minute and the Abaddon came in to tackle. I was already aligned, so I made it look like I warped to the low sec gate but actually to another safe spot.

Now certainly I could have just logged off and avoided this girl/guy but what’s the fun in that? I knew what her/his home station was so I decided to challenge her/him directly just to get it over with. I was fairly confident that I could take her/him with my torp shitter Typhoon fit since the biggest weakness of the Abaddon is its drone bay.

We played around a little at first since I didn't want to play station games with her/him. I would dock up so she/he could see me and then align to an asteroid belt and warp there but she/he would never follow. On my third attempt I noticed a secure cargo container within warp distance of the station. She/he undocked in her/his Abbadon and after a little hesitation warped to me. During this time I had my RR Guardian ready just in case he brought out his RR Domi. After she/he warped to me at the can there was additional hesitation but when I finally convinced her/him that I wanted a 1v1, which of course in eve means 1v1 plus RR, she/he decided to shoot me.

Looking back at my mistakes of this fight I was thinking how could I have been so dumb? While I don't want to make excuses I can only say that my adrenaline was pumping pretty hard and my hands were shaking as I tried to regain control of the fight. There was so much more that I could have done, but from a strategy point of view, didn't even think about it. There is always the next time.

We started our battle. She/he scrammed me and was firing the mega pulse IIs and Hammerhead drones. I engaged back with the scram, web, torps, guns and drones. While I have full respect for the Abaddon and have an Amarrian alt with two of them I believe the only problem as a tier 3 BS is its drone bay. Maybe a heavily tanked ship like the Abaddon doesn't need a large drone bay but when you are going up against a Typhoon that can do 1000+ DPS with Ogre IIs in a 150m3 drone bay you had better watch out. Part way into the battle I decided to use the advantages of the large drone bay and reeled in my Ogre IIs and launched the ECM drones. This was the point that actually gave me a pretty good lead because he was focusing on shooting my drones and not me. I pulled my ECM drones back in and redeployed my Ogre IIs.

It was a pretty long battle and at the time it seemed like it was forever but we were at the point where we were both less than 40% in armor. I had a slight advantage over him with just a little higher % of armor. It went down hill from there. One of his buddies comes from somewhere with a Geddon and starts repping him a little. At this point I was fine because I was still ahead in DPS and armor % by a good margin. Then, probably thinking she/he was going to lose she/he brings out her/his RR domi and warps to us and starts getting reps. In retaliation I warped in my Guardian and started giving myself reps. I was stupid though because I didn't have the watch list up and I actually targeted the wrong ship. Because I don't have friendly ships on the overview it took too much time to get my Phoon targeted. Finally I was getting reps but in my confusion I stopped paying attention to my Guardian and was focusing on shooting the Abbadon and I hear the whistle of low shields and low armor. This is where the power of the Abbaddon came in with Scorch L. Even at 75km she/he was able to hit my Guardian and /me facepalm, with no tank it got blown up.


It was pretty hopeless at this point for my phoon but thinking back on the situation I could have done a lot more. I could have relaunched my ECM drones and warped out of there. I could have had my Guardian aligned a lot closer to the fight and once I reached the supposed safe distance, I could have made sure I was aligned out of there just in case. I could have taken my alt back to station, re-shipped into a Geddon, Apoc or Abaddon and came back with a vengeance. I could have done many things different but...well I didn't and hopefully next time I will do better.

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