Today's post is a small story that I'd like to share with you. It isn't a great story and I certainly don't come out of it as the Hero, or a genius, or anything. But it happened. And it is a good story. I said on Twitter afterwards that Eve is the kind of game where even after a decade of playing - you can be an idiot in one minute and a genius in the very next minute.
Not a lot was going on last night in the old neighborhood. A quiet evening between EU and US TZs, which is typically when I prefer to play. I enjoy the relative calm in this period, space is in transition and people are logging off and logging in. Some people think its boring, but for me it is full of potential and I often get some truly good fights. Not always volume, but volume is not what my game is about anyway.
I won't bore you with all the details of the evening. I had just finished a truly good fight between a Maulus and my Tristan. Johnnie's Algos was too big to get into the Novice and he was nice enough to point me towards the Maulus. The other pilot did a good job and it was closer than that fight usually is, so kudos to him for a fight well fought. I grabbed the loot and the loose drones and headed back to the station for repairs.
As I landed I spotted the Gila sitting about 40k off the station. No other neuts in local, everyone else was Stay Frosty. I quickly docked up and switched out for one of my boosh ships, "Oh Nelly!" a dual rep Magus. When I undocked the Gila slipped into station. No one else was active and Johnnie was several systems away in his Algos. So I figured I'd sit outside and wait for backup to arrive. Shouldn't take long and the Gila would probably never undock...
Two things. One, I live in an opportunity based environment. I take the opportunities that are given to me. Sometimes they work out fantastic, like a Rifter taking a Vexor. (See earlier post) And sometimes they don't, see any number of losses on my killboard. But that's me and I ain't changing. And two, I specifically order my modules the same way on every single ship for key command purposes. I've done this for a very, very long time so that it has become second nature. The same mods on the same keys - always.
So the Gila undocked and I was totally alone - so of course I booshed him anyway. I have dual faction reps on this thing for a reason after all. Except what I didn't realize until it was too late, was that for some reason my Cap Booster (a critical component of keeping those dual reps running) was not located in the proper slot. My key mashing was doing nothing. The reps ran out of cap, I noticed they had run out of cap, I went to inject some much needed cap - and I exploded.
You'd think I'd be upset about the loss of the ship, but the only thing I thought was, "Damn, he's going to get away!" I quickly warped off to the nearest celestial and warped immediately back, fully expecting him to be gone. Instead he was still out there slowly picking up my drones and loot. (Luckily the loot fairy did not see fit to grant him my faction reppers!) Johnnie had landed at some point but had to warp off due to station guns.
I took a chance and grabbed my own Gila and undocked. He was still about 91k off the station, so I kicked in the MWD and hauled ass out to get him. I saw from my earlier killmail that he was Rapid Light fit and now I had a Limited Engagement with him - so no Station Guns and my Rapid ASS Missiles would shred him easily. Sure enough he turned to intercept. Oh man, it was beautiful. Like something out of a training manual, I swooped right in got my point/web on him and started shredding with ASS Missiles. I didn't even bother putting drones out. In less than a minute he exploded in a glorious fireball.
I will mention here that I let the Maulus pilot's pod go earlier because I try not to pod pilots that give good fights. But my definition of that varies by instance, so in this case - since I lost the Magus earlier - I went ahead and podded the Gila pilot. In my defence, he could have easily have gotten his pod out if he cared.
So that was my adventure last night.
I love this game.