I’ve said before that what defines a
winning poker player is not how big they win, but how small they lose, and that
the same is true in Eve. After all, you
can’t get kills #2, 3, and 4 of the night if you die killing your first ship.
This is where situational awareness comes in, particularly
when you’re in a situation where you can successfully escape, such as on a gate
or station. Let me give you three
instances in which an aggressed ship successfully de-aggressed in time to
survive to fight another day.
And, as a bonus, the first example was when someone did it
to me. One of our FCs caught wind that a
few folks would be repping a medium tower with some carriers, and he waited
patiently until they started their op, then called in the cavalry. Two titan bridges later, we were there. The enemy managed to reach the shields, but
not before one of our pilots managed to get a single shot off on him, starting
his 15 minute engagement timer.
Seeing that they hadn’t managed to repair the tower above
50%, we realized we could take it down without suffering through another
reinforcement cycle, so we started eating into it. The carrier pilot had to watch as we chewed
through the shields while his own alliance mates – who had no aggression –
logged off one by one. We were briefly
excited when we realized he was down to around a minute left on his time, yet
hadn’t turned off his hardeners.
But, of course, he did turn them off, and logged off as the
tower was in structure. A minute later,
the tower was dead. Had he not
understood the aggression mechanics or forgotten to turn off his hardeners, it
might have given us the time to finish the tower. But he had the situational awareness to
remain calm and get himself safe.
Twice today, the same thing happened to me. First, when took a Harpy to visit the good
folks of Some Say in Devoid, I caught a Loki on the gate and began to approach
him, locking him up. When he attacked me
on the gate, I was delighted, got in a tight orbit, and watched as the gate
guns took his shield down quickly.
Figuring the escalating damage would do him considerable harm over time,
I scrammed him. When he hit armor, I saw
that he had a strong buffer, but time was on my side. Even when his armor repaired, I wasn’t
terribly worried, as he was doing no damage at all to me with my orbit. Even scrammed and webbed, I could still keep
up with him.
Then, Curse landed on field.
Within one cycle, he had me neuted completely. Realizing I was in trouble at this point, I
left all my modules off and kept to the gate, sipping my ASBs one at a time to
keep my shields up. I jumped with 90%
structure, just as my first ASB finished its reload.
The second time, my roam into Cobalt Edge was halted early
when I caught and killed a lone Ibis in my Vagabond, only to find a Vexor and
Falcon jump through into system and set to work on me. My align command didn’t take when I started
attacking the Ibis, so I was sitting at 0 speed with my MWD on for about ten
seconds before I realized it. I
slow-boated back to the gate, scrammed and jammed, for a maddening 23 km, as
the Vexor tried to stay close. I think
at one point he tried to bump me off, but he missed. My ASB repaired a full 50% of my shields with
each pulse, and I was in no real danger so long as my charges held, which they
did. I jumped out at 30% shield only
because I saved my last ASB charges in case something was waiting on the other
side.
At one point during the fight, the Falcon lost jams – thank
you compensation skills – and I briefly considered putting my drones on the
Falcon to chase him from the field. But,
it was too much of a gamble given how many ASB charges I had left, so I wisely
decided to keep myself from aggressing and lived to fight another day.
Incidentally, the Vexor followed me into Tenal as I went to
pick up some more cap boosters for my ASB in A1RR, and ran smack into a
Gentleman’s Agreement gate camp on the SF- gate.
He was dead before I got back to the gate. Had he been a little more cautious and led
with the Falcon, he wouldn’t have lost the ship. But he was fixated on the kill, and paid the
price for not adjusting his strategy (ie. not heading into unfamiliar territory
in an armor ship without intel).
In the first three cases, the pilot in jeopardy kept his
head and successfully de-aggressed to survive the fight. But in each case, the situation was also
right for de-aggressing. In my two
instances, I jumped into a fight aggressively when there were very few folks in
local. In both cases, enemies jumped
through my in-gate after I had seen them in local, so I knew how many they were
on the other side of the gate. And in
both cases, I was in a solo vs. small gang situation, facing one DPS ship and
one ewar ship, so the incoming dps was enough for me to tank.
It’s much easier to survive de-aggressing when you’re facing
a few targets. If I had been attacked by
multiple ships, I’d probably have tried to kill something – anything – as I
went down. But by recognizing the
situation, I was able to instantly change from “aggressive” mode to “escape”
mode.
It’s a hard thing to do sometimes, but when flying in
hostile space, you need to be able to give up on a kill you can’t finish. It’s hard to spend the time and come out with
nothing, but nothing is better than losing your ship because you also lost your
cool.
Sometimes, you need to fold and leave the table with your
money. There’s always another hand.
Side note: My Harpy survived about a minute and a half under
fire from a Loki and Curse. I love me my
blarpy. I’ve mentioned before that Some
Say are awesome dudes, and don’t blob the way some alliances do. This guy (who confirmed he was dual-boxing)
and I had a great after-action discussion about the fight, and he shared a
Jaguar fit I’m dying to try out. That’s
one of the benefits of being professional in space… fight opponents, not
enemies.
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