Fear and Loathing in Eglennaert

The Den collects articles of general wisdom, from philosophical musings to the examination of game mechanics, to simple tales of great hilarity. This one is about paranoia and irony. Oh my.

An odd bear

On an otherwise perfectly normal Monday evening, I warped my Slasher into a mission which my probes told me had a Brutix and a Gravy Raven (more commonly known as the Raven Navy Issue) in it. I started some slow salvaging as I gathered intel. Both pilots were in the same corporation which was ten characters strong in total. A look at local told me there were no other corpmates around. Both characters checked out as very young – a little under three months for the Brutix pilot, and just over a month for the Gravy Raven.

Come again? Less than a month old and flying a half-a-billion ISK faction Battleship? Well, nothing's impossible, but this did not smell like your average mission bear. Spacerich players often create alts to run high-sec missions for ISK and outfit them with expensive ships and modules for the purpose. These players tend to be quite a bit more experienced than their alt would seem. The older Brutix suddenly grew more dangerous in my mind. An escort, perhaps? Ninja hunters had been active in Coriault recently. I was on my toes. Sure enough, the Gravy Raven launched a volley at me as soon as I stole some loot and I raced back to station to switch ships.

Yuri Wayfare > shield RR in Eg please

Yuri Wayfare > double take

Leffy Skaramour > k

Leffy Skaramour > ready say when

Yuri Wayfare > scratchthat

Yuri Wayfare > armor

I'll just fly this death machine instead.

At the last second, I decided to fly my sturdier and significantly less expensive Hurricane instead of my normally favored Cynabal. If these were serious ninja hunters, they would have corpmates standing by in adjacent systems and things could get very ugly, very fast. Leffy was at my back though, and Radonicon (with his small army of alts) just a couple of jumps away. And the old ninja adage rang in my mind: always bet on stupid. If you're not sure whether your enemy is an idiot or a highly accomplished PVP-er, assume he's an idiot.

Into the unknown

And so it was I landed my Hurricane on-grid with Leffy's RR hot on my heels. I pointed the Gravy Raven and started laying into his shields. The Brutix responded. A target painter came on to assist the Raven's clunky torpedoes, followed by a web, a nosferatu, and then the hallmark of a PVP-er: a scram. It was a trap!

The Brutix closed up and pounded blaster fire into me, stripping off my shields and proceeding to take chunks out of my armor. Leffy landed on grid and threw on his repairs. I gritted my teeth. If they were going to take down my 'Cane, they were damn well going to lose their shiny bait too. The Gravy Raven was melting. There was simply no way a month-old character could have built enough tanking skills to effectively keep a ship like that alive. It exploded satisfyingly.

Yeah - that.

I glanced over at my armor. 75%. Not bad. Local showed no other hostiles in system yet. This was proving to be a remarkably poor trap. My warp disruptor and web found the Brutix. So did the neuts and the array of 220mm Autocannon II's. I was surprised to find the Brutix already in armor when I locked it, but assumed it had been tanking the rats. What do I know about missions anyway? I just loot them.

There was a flash and the Brutix immolated. The field was ours. We took our spoils and laughed all the way to 'Dixie market.

Aftermath

That's when things got interesting. Examination of the killmails revealed a tremendous fail-fit on the Gravy Raven. The Brutix was better, a fairly typical starter's PVP-fit, but the devil was in the details: the Raven had put damage on the Brutix. A lot of damage, in fact. More than my 'Cane.

Then came the convos. The Gravy Raven pilot came first, begging and pleading for his 500 million ISK back. I blocked him after his third attempt where he threatened a lawsuit. It was too emberassing to publish here. I mailed the Brutix pilot and advised him to have a chat with his friend about target selection. This went a lot better – the Brutix pilot was upbeat and friendly, and seemed to be just delighted to have had his first taste of PVP. I congratulated him on his attitude, told him not to be too hard on his friend, and wished him luck in his future adventures.

And so, a trap turned out to be not a trap after all. In this crazy, lovely game of ours, the pilot who had reason to be humble was tearful, and the pilot who had reason to be upset was cheerful. I love EVE.


NINJA EDIT: Somehow I overlooked the fact that the Brutix had put damage on the Navy Raven too. As it turns out, the two pilots had fought a friendly duel on the acceleration gate before warping into the mission. I showed up early enough afterward that the damage was carried over on the killmails. The figures are therefore a bit out of whack. The Brutix pilot confirmed, however, that his friend shot at him in the confusion that followed.