Anyone who has played Eve for any length of time can tell you the game is like a weird complex clock, full of gears and wheels all ticking away on their own time. Cycles. Ups and downs. Coincidences. Strange happenstance. Use whatever analogy you want. No matter who you are, or what kind of game you happen to be playing inside of this game - sooner or later the gremlins will get you. About a week or so ago I was just chillin' performing security duty for a group of industry folks in our Alliance. I was cloaked up in my Legion sitting about 30k from the nearest miner. Nothing happened for a long time. And then, I DC'd. Unfortunately for me, this was during the time that Eve was opening 4 screens wide on my computer and then crashing. I'd have to boot it up again, at which point it opened just fine. (Luckily that was a brief moment in time, it opens normally now.) Which meant it took twice as long to log back into the game. When I returned I was caught by an Arazu. And we all know what happened next. Bad luck. Although I did manage to solo that damn Arazu.
What I couldn't have known then, was that incident was only the beginning of a string of bad luck. In one fight my armor repairer wouldn't cycle. In one fight my ship refused to turn and just burned straight at a dude with Arties fitted. Yeah, it has been that kind of weird ass time in Eve lately. But nothing that has happened personifies the bad luck quite like a fifteen minute stretch the other day. So let me share with you the worst 15 minutes in-game I can remember in a long time. (I can't say it is THE WORST 15 mins, there might be worse ones. I can't remember everything.)
This day I thought I'd fit up a Cruiser and go cruising. I chose to explore using the Thorax because I hadn't flown one in a long time. My fellow Stay Frostian Phoenix decided to join me on a short roam to see what kind of trouble we could get into. Earlier I had almost solo'd a young Vexor and would have if a roaming Taranis hadn't swooped in to whore on the kill. So the ship was working fine. Nothing special or expensive, just a solid Thorax blaster fit. And nothing happened for the longest time. Usual stuff. Eventually we found ourselves in Aldranette and the system was busy as usual lately. But nothing was around to engage. Phoenix was doing his own thing when I decided to warp to the Oicx gate.
Unfortunately for me I arrived at the same time as a gang of Gnosis and some support ships. Phantomite was one of them I noticed. Now that was just bad luck. And either I warp off or I jump, only two choices. So I quickly jumped and tried to warp away before they followed. My odds were not good, but better to try. And sure enough I got caught. I aligned out and tried to save my pod. Which I did and was safely in warp to the nearest station. Which just happened to have a waiting Proteus sitting there. Boom. Pod gone. Goodbye snakes.
Of course I did what I always do, I jumped into another Thorax and undocked. In warp to the Loes gate I noticed a Caracal sitting slightly out of jump range to the gate. Odd enough. It wasn't moving and the pilot was a younger pilot. Trap, bait, afk, or just on a bio break? Who knew. So I did my usual, I boated out and locked it up without aggressing. No response. At this point my hope is that the other ship shoots first so I can engage without gate guns shooting me. But no response. I bumped it, no response. No effects on the shields. Well y'know, you don't become Pirate Lord by being cautious. So I OH'd my guns and engaged at point blank range. Immediately I knew something was wrong, those shields barely moved and then I was scrammed and webbed. That's when the Arazu de-cloaked and lit the cyno. And lo and behold a Redeemer showed up.
Yep ladies and gents, Ghostmoon used a Redeemer to kill my T1 Cruiser.
I did the only sensible thing at this point and logged off. Tomorrow is always a new day. And hopefully the worm will turn in a new direction. Which it did, we had a great Hookbill roam the next day I managed to score nine kills without any losses. And we all had a great day in fleet.
So whenever you are having a bad day, just remember you are not alone. We all have bad days. And sometimes that ship is actually bait. And sometimes it isn't.