I can personally attest that every roamer in Razor space
generates at least a few people willing to hunt them down, simply for the
affront of believing they could travel or – gasp! – plex in our space. Generally, these infiltrators are killed if
they’re not flying cloaky ships, and about half the time if they are. We take defending our space very seriously.
And we’re obviously not the only ones. Already, I’ve written about one situation
in which I both a) hunted ratters to generate response fleets, and b) fought
them when they arrived. In that case, I
expected to face smaller gangs and was surprised by the number, but I could
have even survived after getting a couple kills (assuming I had the chance to
warp out, which I believe I did). For
this post, the point is that the defenders did respond to my incursion exactly
as I hoped, and it generated content for both of us (ie. I didn’t run).
I think it’s safe to say that in the regard of “defending
your space” and chasing outsiders away, if people do it, they’ll do it anywhere:
WH, null-sec, or low-sec space. After
all, it touches on the same sentiment in players, the desire to defend what you
believe to be yours. Having sov is
irrelevant to “ownership”. Just ask
low-sec corps or NPC null corps in Syndicate.
So, last night, when my Harpy found a dead-end low-sec
pocket populated by the good folks from Some Say, I started snooping
around. When I entered Ussad, I saw a
Hulk and Tengu on dscan. After quickly
discounting an ice anomaly as their location (hey, I’m not a miner!), I
narrowed them down to one of two belts, and warped to the first. I hadn’t fought a Tengu before in my Harpy,
and I didn’t want to land right on top of a scram/web Tengu, so I warped at 50.
When I landed, I was 69 off the Hulk and 60 off the
Tengu. I quickly closed range, keeping
the Hulk between me and the Tengu, and started to attack the mining barge. I suspect they were dual-boxed by the same
pilot, since neither ship moved or attempted to align, but the Tengu did lock
me.
As I fought, I tried to keep range from the Tengu. He hadn’t pointed me yet, so I assumed he was
at least scram fit. But after taking
some damage and seeing that his heavy missiles couldn’t do enough damage to my
dual-ASB tank to pose a serious threat, I finished off the Hulk, then came in
close.
I was able to get within scram range without being scrammed
myself, but just as I started attacking the Tengu, a Rapier entered grid
uncloaked. Having flown these
frequently, I know how that ship can cut up assault frigs, so I quickly aligned
out, not even bothering to point the Tengu.
He warped away to a station as I warped to the sun. As I did, I made a bookmark, and upon landing
warped back to it. A Rapier and a new
pilot in an Ishkur landed as I was warping off to my safe.
A few dscans with my probes-only overview confirmed that
they weren’t using probers, so I sat and thought for a bit. How could I separate the Ishkur from the
Rapier long enough to kill him? As I
did, a couple other ships entered scan.
A Vexor among them. Obviously, I
couldn’t fight the entire gang. But a
dscan confirmed that only the Ishkur was on the Ibash gate, so I warped to the
gate and jumped through. The Rapier
showed up on a long dscan, but not a short one.
The Ishkur jumped too.
Upon loading grid, I reapproached the gate, and the Ishkur
faithfully decloaked and began to approach me, and yellow-box me. When he scrammed and webbed me, I made my
mistake. I hesitated for a moment,
expecting to see the gate guns start to eat him up. So I missed a couple cycles of my guns at the
start. As I fought, I saw that he was
starting to go down fairly well. I
didn’t realize until later that my suspect timer was still active, and he had
attacked me with impunity. Once I did, I
fired back.
It’d be a close fight. My second mistake was in not activating my
first ASB until I was at about 10% shields.
That’ll be important later.
However, I started overloading my guns, only stopping when I was at
about 50% heat damage, and I was clearly ahead in the fight. The first ASB ended and began a reload cycle
as I activated my second one.
And that’s when the Rapier decloaked and began to attack
me. Time really flies when you’re in a
fight, and I hadn’t realized enough had passed for him to warp in and
jump. Suffice to say, the added DPS of
the Rapier was enough to break me before my first ASB could reload. If I’d started to use it earlier, it would
have cycled, giving me enough time to take out the Ishkur before dying.
The dual-ASB Harpy is still new to me, but this is a mistake
I’m not going to make again.
Fortunately, I was able to get a hulk kill out of it. That same behavior by the dual-boxer would
have lost him a Tengu as well if Some Say wouldn’t have been as on-the-ball
with response ships.
I have to give it to Some Say… they didn’t blob, and Ianov
Saraban was willing to engage me solo at first.
It was so much fun, I think I’ll head back there.
But it also proves my basic thesis, that players have an
inherent interest and tendency to defend space they consider to be theirs, and
that attacking ratters will elicit a response fleet. Granted, this doesn’t work very well in
renter alliances where corps only care about themselves and their own members,
but if you travel to a true sov-holding alliance, a NPC null alliance, or a
low-sec pockets “owned” by one group or another, they will respond to attacks
on their ratters or miners, if only for content on their doorstop. Nothing incenses an alliance like tossing a
gauntlet before them by killing one of their carebears in their home system. Good alliances will always react.
Or, put another way, kick the workers and the guards will
react. And react, they did! Well played, Some Say!
No comments:
Post a Comment