Worst Fight Ever

Let’s start from the beginning. I was scrolling through my Twitter feed and saw a tweet from Torvald Uruz, were he ran the “Chilling Spree” combat sites with a Blaster-Deimos. Blasters are fun, I thought and purchased a cheap T2 fit in Jita. Nothing special, apart from the Thukker Large Cap-Battery for fitting-reasons.

Prologue: Lowsec

After a quick investment in a lowsec-filament and took the jump. A Mymridon on dscan. After a couple scans, I located it’s site an joined him for a friendly exchange of hot projectiles. The fight ensued right on top of the beacon, and I would have got away with my first killmail, but as so often: EC-300 ruined my day but made his. Argh!

Anyhow I continue to run the site. There are a lot of people in local as well. I keep an eye on dscan at 1 AU and lose some drones to the NPCs because I split my focus. Local had just grown by about 20 people. That might be a fleet… then: Two Enyos on short dscan!

I cycle my MWD to gain distance from the warpin. As it turns out, a good choice. The two Assault Frigates land seconds later. One directly speeds over to me, it’s at 20km already. No time to align and warp somewhere. Damn it! I should have aligned right away! I pulse my MWD one more time before the Enyo gets on top of me. I’m scrammed and webbed. Meanwhile my lock on him is complete. Scram, web, remaining drones on him. Overheated blasters with tracking ammunition begin to work on his tank. I only have a couple more seconds until the fleet will arrive. It’s a frigate gang from Ivy League, the Eve University Alliance. My web and scram prevent the Enyo to get under my guns and the pilot had to use his Assault Damage Control. What was the second Enyo doing? Maybe he was tacking screenshots of the pretty site, at least he wasn’t moving at all. Maybe it was tackled by the NPCs, who knows. I for my part, was very okay with it not coming any closer while I was killing his friend and began to look for an object to align to. Ah, there. A nice little moon without Athanor. Perfect. I preheat my MWD which I would cycle once to make sure the other Enyo would not catch me before I could warp. Then, just as Enyo one started to break I see the fleet on dscan. Roughly twenty ships. Mostly Assault Frigates. Not a chance survive that if they catch me. The always-satisfying *bong* sound informed that the structure of my tackler finally had been reduced to zero. Phew! A split-second later I initiate warp to the moon and get safe. gf!

I took a couple jumps through lowsec systems close by where the eventful snowstorms where still raging. Very pretty by the way. Only one person in local, nice. It seemed to be an Astero. Okay, I should be able to deal with that if it should decide to engage me.

I pick a site a couple AU away from the gates and start running sites undisturbed. Three sites, an hour later and with about ~300m in cargo I decide to jump back to highsec and check out the sites there.

Thiefs and Nightmares

And here it is where my misery began. I was running a couple sites and most people just warped to the next when someone came in, or was already in the site. They did not want to contest the loot from the NPC-Battleship.

After a few sites with only marginal payment, I activate an acceleration gate together with a Golem. That’s the Caldari Marauder, for anyone unfamiliar. While we took the gate, I had a quick glance at his launchers: Cruise Missiles. Not the best choice to kill things smaller than Battleships. It was a relatively new character at that. Not even a year old. That made me suspicious. Either it was a wallet-warrior or someones alt. We proceeded to run the site. We both shot the Battleship and he got the last hit on it. With that, the right to loot was his. I had to decide if I wanted to go suspect for the loot. The loot itself was maybe 20 million ISK Totally not worth it. But the Golem on the other hand would make a very interesting fight, if not even a killmail. So I went for the loot to go suspect and see what my Marauder-friend would do.
To my surprise he locked me up and started to shoot instantly.

Okay, I thought. Here we go!

I hurled over with MWD boosting and landed the scram. Yes! He probably was in Bastion-mode anyway, but you never know when that runs out and he would have tried to warp. My Adaptive Armor Hardener was cycling and slowly but surely adapting to his Mjölnir Precision Cruise Missiles.

With hot drone-on-drone action I quickly defanged his Hobgoblins and Warriors which helped the armor hardener to adjust quicker. After a while, resistances had built up that far that I could tank with a single T2 armor repper comfortably. Meanwhile I was putting Void M into his shields. The most critical part now are the next fifteen minutes. During that time my suspect timer would make me a legal target to attack by anyone who might come into the site. But the timer passed without anyone showing up.

With things settled and a laugh, knowing this would take a bit, I posted a screenshot on the corporation’s Discord and sparked a lively discussion.

After something like 30 minutes, a bunch of frigates showed up. They where in the same corp as the Golem pilot. One of them webbed me, the other applied target painters and then the Golem started to shoot me again. They tried to increase the Golems application, but CONCORD blew them to pieces before my tank showed any sings of being affected.

Mid-Term Goals

By now it was obvious this would take longer. A quick glance at my cargo hold confirmed my suspicion: I would run out of close range ammunition in a couple of minutes. So I logged in my alt and burned it ~20 jumps to Amarr, the closest trade-hub. Meanwhile keeping an eye on my main and the blasters cycling. A couple minutes later I docked my alt in the Emperor Familiy Academy and purchased a Sigil with a ship-scanner, filled the lowslots with intertia stabilizer and the hold with 100.000 rounds of Void M. Then set route towards the fight.

My Deimos had meanwhile run out of Void and I was shooting the situational subpar Null at the Marauder. He was still tanking fine.

While I was moving the Sigil with the extra ammunition over, I looked at Discord and saw people wishing me good luck and some offers to help along with a discussion of highsec mechanics.

No sleep for the wicked.

Meanwhile, more and more people showed up. We are about an hour in now. A little swarm of Catalysts and other Destroyers begin to follow my Deimos that’s still circling it’s bait like a shark in the water. Sooner or later, they will attempt to gank me and free the Golem that way. I’ll need to be wary and ready to press my Assault Damage Control for that moment.

Even a Brutix followed me around in the attempt to free his Golem-friend.

The occasional attempted bump failed because of my ship automatically orbiting, while I was busy talking on Discord. The Sigil with more Void M finally arrived and I learned a lesson in timing:

I needed to abandon the container before scooping it with the Deimos or I would go suspect again and be an legal target for all the stuff on grid! Probably I could have killed a bunch of the destroyers, but the Golem might get away in the process. That had to be done right. If I abandoned the container too early, one of the destroyers on grid would scoop the contents before my HAC could. So I had to open the container with the main, abandon it on the alt and then switch back quickly to scoop it the server-tick afterwards to get it before the others would. After two failed attempts and a happy “Yay! Free ammo!” in local I got it right and could shoot the appropriate bullets again.

The Golem’s reaction to me switching to Void M again, probably.

You bet I had thought I would spend my Saturday night different than this. But out of principle I did not want to let this Golem pilot go. No. Not until one of us exploded!

That seemed to have been the thought process of the corp whose Golem I held hostage as well:
The Catalysts and other destroyers on grid suddenly started to shoot me, one after another. As precaution I activated my ADC as the two Catalysts close to me red-boxed me. My list of kill-rights grew a little.

We are on grid for roughly one and half hour now.

Greed

Maybe the ship-scan of the Marauder had a little to do with my stubbornness. It showed modules worth three to four billion. Especially the three C-Type shield hardeners fueled the desire to get some loot out of this mess.

If I just had an energy neutralizer fitted… IF! Since I had to keep the Golem tackled, I could not deaggress and refit one of my guns to a neut on a mobile depot. But – in retrospect, that might have even been possible! Since he needed to be in Bastion-mode to tank me and be stationary for more than 1 minute, I probably could have done that. Anyhow, I did not think of it at the time. Now that I write and reflect about it, this might have been the way to kill him… hm. Maybe next time. Well. Next time I would fit an energy neutralizer instead of the fifth gun right away.

Instead of refitting, we thought about another way to reduce the Golem’s capacitor: Large energy neutralizers, to “alpha” it. My corp-mate who did the initial ship-scan invested in an Armageddon for the purpose and of course platinum insured it. Once on grid, he also abandoned his Hammerheads, so I could scoop those for the extra damage. Then the moment of truth came: He launched heavy drones and prepared for the inevitable death of his ship through CONCORD. I heated my blasters and… AND IT WORKED!

The Golem, barely tanking after being neuted out by an Armageddon.

But only until the Marauder pilot remembered of his Energy Nosferatu and started to leech his capacitor back up from my Deimos. Damn it!

My alt jettisoned a last can of Void M from the Sigil and started to head back to Amarr to get another Armageddon. On the way, I injected some unallocated skill points to be even able to fly the thing. The Golem would not survive this a second time! In the meantime the Marauder pilot played it smart: He actually was able to volley my Hammerheads with his precision cruise missiles and reduced the DPS pressure a little.

Final Moments

When the second Armageddon was only two jumps out, I saw the list of ships grew on my mains overview. Nine Catalysts and a Cormorant had showed up! These where almost double the amount of ships that attempted to gank me the first time. While I was still thinking about which of those pilots I could activate a kill-right on, shoot and reduce the DPS of the incoming gank, they went for it.

I heated my asynchronous running armor reppers to reduce their cycle time and activated the ADC. I had no time to re-cycle my adaptive armor hardener. And it probably would have made no big difference since the Golem started to shoot me again as well. My HAC dropped into hull for a second, repaired back up and was back in half hull again. Then a volley of Mjölnir Precision Cruise Missiles landed before the reppers could finish their cycle and ended the existence of my trusty Deimos that had accompanied me for this adventurous Saturday night. While I warped my pod to the next station in system I typed “gf” in local.
Moments later, the Golem landed beside me with gaping holes in it’s slim layer of armor, revealing the bent structure below it, where it’s trusty shield modules continued to spin like r/Eve after the ending of a NIP.
The Armageddon was slowly losing his gate-cloak two jumps out.

After more than three hours, the Golem pilot finally had managed to coordinate a gank to safe his burned hide. The killmail of my Deimos showed over 212.000 damage taken. I’d call that a solid number.

The Lesson

What I learned here? When you go suspect baiting, fit at least one medium energy neutralizer.

Should I have just asked for a ransom? Maybe. But I had the feeling this guy would not take it… Maybe after the first Armageddon, when he hit structure would have been a good moment. Well, you always are smarter afterwards… Will I be going suspect baiting again soon? Unlikely, but it was an interesting change compared to my usual small-gang PvP in nullsec.

Come to think of it, I probably provided a great team building exercise to this particular corporation and it’s members. Your welcome! ^_^

TLDR:

I suspect baited a blingy Golem in an event-site in highsec with a Deimos. We both were cap-stable and after 3.5 hours of holding him hostage, his corp finally rallied enough Catalysts to successfully gank my Deimos and get the Golem free.

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What was your longest fight? Did you ever do suspect baiting, or got even baited yourself? I’d love to hear your stories in the comments!