Yesterday was a lazy day. I fitted up a few ships, transferred some recently captured loot, and caught a few players doing things they shouldn't be doing. I even got called a "hoe" for stopping an ore thief from stealing my ore. And I found another one of these weird empty shuttles hanging around the Sun. An easy day. Stuff needs doing. Eventually I got tired of that and decided to take my trusty Comet out and about to see what kind of trouble I could get into. When I undocked I saw the Avalanche outside the station.
Needless to say we don't get a lot of freighters in our neighborhood. People transporting goods or supplies tend to use Jump Freighters or DSTs. He docked up and so did I. We were alone in local, other Stay Frosty pilots were out doing other things or hadn't logged in yet. So I made the decision to go with the only ship I own that has already solo'd another freighter, the super awesome Nightmare. I undocked and waited. I will say here that I never expected to get an engagement. My expectations were that the other pilot would simply log off inside the station, or undock - see me - and then log off inside the station. However, as I always tell my pilots - always expect the unexpected. People only have so much time to play Eve and they often make decisions based on that limited play window.
He undocked, saw me, and then docked back up. But he didn't log off. Suddenly my expectations changed. If he was going to log off that would usually be the time to do it. He undocked again and started aligning to the HS gate. So I started aligning to the HS gate. Now this is all a bit of bluster on my part. If I engage early on station, he can dock and I get timers. If he warps to zero at the HS gate he can simply jump. But seeing a Nightmare aligning with you is a bit nerve wracking to say the least. So he docked up again. Now my expectations are soaring. This player needs to leave, he won't be logging off. Sure enough he undocks again and starts aligning towards a LS gate instead. So this time, I go ahead and align in the wrong direction. I don't want to scare him again and I want it to seem like I'm making a huge mistake. It must have worked, because he warped off.
Thing about freighters is - they are slow. I didn't need to be aligned to beat him to the gate. I jumped through and waited on the other side. I didn't have a scout so I just had to trust in human nature. Sure enough he jumped and appeared about 7k from me. Lock, scram, and a nice overheated bump to get things started. The rest was just time.
Now I know a lot of people reading this are thinking that I just ganked this poor freighter pilot. An argument could be made, but let me provide an alternative perspective. For one thing I am truly alone in this scenario, I have no scouts, no tackle, no intel. I'm risking a ship that is easily almost as expensive as the freighter in an environment where at any moment another group could drop us or stumble onto the fight. I'm constantly spamming my d-scan. The freighter pilot could have friends. Also, these freighters shoot back. He has a full rack of Rapid Heavy launchers and he is using them. I'm also getting shot at by the gate. And I only have 9 cap charges and I'm running through those like candy to keep everything running. Plus also bumping him away from the gate. And managing it all in a very short window.
It takes a while to explode. But the outcome, barring any outside issues, was never in doubt.
Over 16 years of playing this game and this is only the third freighter I've managed to kill. Like I said, we don't see them round the neighborhood much.
Shout-out to this intrepid player for trying it.