or Harass Me While I’m Salvaging, Will Ya?!
TL;DR version? A ninja salvager warps into your corp running a mission – with no less than six members - salvages the large wrecks, takes a few large blasters, and kills a member of your corp while the rest either run away or stand by and watch.
-----
A recent addition to my salvaging frigate is to fit a multi-spec ECM module. This serves a few purposes: It “tags” NPC rats, allowing you to collect bounties and sec status while salvaging a mission, and it will save your ass should you be warped scrambled by a player or NPCs.
-----
While salvaging the afore mentioned mission, I noticed that there were several industrials, a frigate or two, and a stealth bomber that were accompanying a Megathron that was running the mission. I’m not sure what the industrials were up to, I’m guessing that they were looting the wrecks or mining the asteroids in the mission.
After looting a few wrecks myself, I was targeted and shot at by both the Megathron and the Nemesis. Now normally, under these circumstances I high tail it out of a mission when I get fired at, but these guys were doing virtually no damage whatsoever. The large guns on the Mega couldn’t hit me, his Ogre II’s were usless as I easily outran them, and the Nemesis, despite it having fitted a target painter, was doing very minimal damage, so I decided to stick around for a while a see what kind of chaos I could stir up.
I began to orbit the Nemesis with my Vigil, activated the ECM module, and unleashed the fury of my single Warrior II drone upon him. The ECM module failed to jam the bomber, but it didn’t matter as my drone seemed to be doing its job. Before I knew it, my little drone ate right through his shields and was half way into the Nemesis’ armor when I noticed:
Oh crap, a Stilletto just showed up to the party!
Now I don’t know if that Nemesis would have been stupid enough to stick around to be killed (I didn’t have a point on him) or if he would have eventually bugged out, but I wasn’t going to stick around to find out. I clicked on a planet and hit the warp button, the Silletto furiously closing the gap.
“Warp Drive Active,” purred Aura, and then….nothing. Nothing! My engines had even shut down like they do when your warp engines fire up, but then suddenly at the last possible millisecond, the Stilletto must have gotten a point on me. Gah!
To my dismay, my shields and armor began to strip away in chunks. That is, until I remembered.... The ECM module!
Target. Activate.
YES! The ECM module activated and the Stiletto’s lock failed. I couldn’t believe it, the multi-spec actually stuck! I bolted away like a bat out of hell and returned to the station, waited for the aggression timer to wear off, docked, and waited for the timer again in order to switch ships. I hopped into my Crusader. Vengance would be swift indeed.
As I was undocking, I noticed that one of the pilots from the mission had docked in the station with me, so I lingered for a minute outside waiting for him to undock, but he never did. He stayed holed up until his aggro was gone. Figures.
I returned to the mission, hoping that I would find the Stilletto there still, but found only the Megathron sitting about 100 km away from where I had warped in. I approached him at full speed as he launched his Ogre II’s. As I got near, I swung around into a loose orbit, bookmarked his location, and took off again in a straight line, pulling his drones along with me. Once I was a safe distance away from the Megathron, I orbited the drones and began poping them one by one. The Megathron pilot realized this about the time I started in on the third drone and pulled them back in. I warped away back to the station, and grabbed my Raven.
Now, my Raven is specifically fit to kill mission runners very quickly, something that I would need to do in case the Megathron’s friends returned. One of them was still docked up, so I undocked and warped to the bookmark that I had made while in my Crusader.
I arrived out of warp to find that the Megathron had barely moved from where it was earlier, and that there was also an Enyo on the scene now as well. I began locking the Megathron, but just as my targeting system was about to lock, he warped off. Curses. He must have been aligned.
The Enyo though was not as smart however. He targeted me and began firing. I targeted him back, and to my surprise, he actually stuck around long enough for me to get a lock on him. Have it your way Mr. Enyo.
Pointed, webbed, double large neuts….Yeah, he wasn’t going anywhere. My torps and Warrior II’s made short work of him. Too bad his buddies didn’t stick around to watch him assplode. (No point was fitted on that Enyo, btw. Brilliant strategy for a tackling frigate...) The industrial ships that had been sitting around a fair distance away up to this point, began bugging out like the universe was about to collapse.
I waited for a moment to see if any of their gang would return for another easy kill, but thought better of it and returned to the station with the satisfaction knowing that I had successfully foiled their night’s plans for fun-filled, corp mission grinding, replacing it with a nightmare of woe and sadness. Yay me!
(Note to self: Next time, fit a point on your Vigil!)