Tuesday, August 7, 2012

With a little help from my friends

The pirate had already wiped out one Worm in his Hookbill that night; he thought he was going to get another.

I was flying a new Worm almost by accident; a corpmate had stumbled across a blueprint, built the frigate, and decided to go fly it out and get killed in it.  I checked the stats, realized that my cross-training meant I could get full use out of its bonuses and that it would make a very nice frigate for the plexing end of faction warfare, and asked if I could buy it off him.

A couple of days later, I'd fitted it out, put it through its paces, and discovered that a fully bonused Worm with Hobgoblin IIs and a tech-II drone-damage amp could basically run small and medium plexes on easy mode.  With Tech II rockets (and double range on them), and full shield resistance bonuses, it made a tidy little ship.

Then I showed up where the corp was running a few plexes, and things went a bit sideways.  After going looking for fresh plexes, I accidentally warped to the wrong one - a minor plex that had already been opened ... and that had a Hookbill sitting right at the acceleration gate.

I quickly looked for the nearest celestial, but it was too late; I was pointed, webbed, and engaged, and suddenly the fight was on.  I hadn't prepared for the fight, and if this guy had already wiped out one of my mates, I wanted to disengage.  Out went my ECM drones to tag the guy, while he threw rockets at me and hammered down through my shield buffer; I engaged with my own rockets, but suddenly his shields kept popping back up.  Ancillary shield boosters strike again, apparently; suddenly his shields were back to full, quicker than I could take down his buffer ... and again ... and again.  I realized I'd forgotten to turn on my damage control, and hit it right as my shields went down, and he started to bite into my armor.  I still hadn't dented him.

Then my buddies landed from the other plexes they'd been working, right as he stripped off the last of my armor and bit into my structure.  One of my corpmates was flying an Arbitrator with which he'd been testing a spider-tank fit, so he quickly threw a shield booster at me, giving me a tiny bit of extra buffer, and the rest of them started hurling nastiness at him.  My structure hit fifty percent and lower, and I was spamming the warp command, ready to face the loss of my brand-new pirate frigate ... when all of a sudden, I heard Aura's voice:

"Warp drive active."

Thirty-four percent structure, but I was away.

And the Hookbill was pinned by another Hookbill, an Arbitrator, and a Navy Caracal ... which finally cracked its buffer and blew it to shrapnel.

As he ran in his pod, he complained in local:

"You can't handle a 1v1, so you blob, huh?"

I was too busy looking for a place to dock up and repair my smoking wreck of a ship to respond, but my corp-mates answered nicely that he didn't exactly have a right to expect a one-on-one matchup.

The corp's at war, and strength in numbers is what helps keep us alive.  If one guy gets tackled, and corpmates are in system in fighting ships, it's understood that combat support will be coming as quickly as possible.  Granted, it might not be quickly enough to save the ship, but we don't leave our guys to turn in the wind to do our own thing, not if we're close enough to help.

Now, if he'd issued some sort of formal challenge, demanded a one-on-one duel, and I'd accepted, and then my mates had landed on his head ... he'd have had a legitimate gripe.  But when the challenge is issued via warp scrambler ... then the rule is, there are no rules.

He had a Hookbill fitted with dual medium ancillary shield boosters, overpowered for a frigate, theoretically invulnerable.

I had my friends.

And in the end, that made all the difference.

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