Being a patient nub and going after an ishkur.

Sometimes patience pays off, being a nub doesn't help but patience and the ability to learn and have fun helps. I had spottted an ishkur in local and decided to try and hunt it down. The thrill of piracy for me is the ability to move and hunt down a mark as it runs from one system to another. Maybe oblivious to my intentions or completely aware of it and leading me on a merry chase. No matter, so long the mark stays in low-sec and undocked, I have the patience to hunt you down. Now, of course, the use of scan probes may have made it a *little* bit easier to scan mission runners but it takes time and patience and max'ed out skills to do so. Also, a fair amount of missions are completely off plain and impossible to scan out.

So it's back to using the scanner and my brains.

The ishkur pilot was not a rookie and knew what he was doing. He was moving between the belts and picking off choice Angel rats. The wrecks still spluttering and sparking. The ishkur was close. I flipped open the scanner and scanned again; maybe in the complex? I went there, anticipation building. Arriving at the beacon, I activated the gate and it sling shot me through into a deep system. Wrecks bumped off my Wolf-class assault frigate. Checking the wrecks, they bore the energy signatures of the ishkur. He was here and probably passed through into the next level.

I had to wait. Patience. So I sat in the first level of the complex and waited.

Nothing.

The ishkur was still around, so I warped out and sat in the safe. The ishkur hadn't moved but after 15 minutes, it shifted its position. It looked like it was back in the first complex level? Not wanting to miss this opportunity I activated the engines and bolted through the beacon gates. As my warp tunnel evaporated around me, the white square of the ishkur winked on in my overview.

Laughing, I locked him and hit my micro-warp drive to close the distance.

SHIT. My Microwarpdrive? Oh no..... I groaned to myself. I was in a complex and the mwd could not activate. The ishkur had locked me and had sent it's drones onto me and they were busy chewing into my shield. I was too far and the ishkur could control the range. His webber came on as well.

Making a decision to leave, I aligned and warped out, praying that the ishkur pilot had not activated his scrambler or did not have one. There was a pause as my engines fired up and my wolf lurched into space. I was out of the complex and a little bit embarrassed too.

I docked and switched an afterburner in and undocked. Going back to the plex, the ishkur had gone. Bah.

Cursing my own stupidity, I had to make amends. The ship was still on scanner and had not yet docked. So, once more I waited and zipped around the belts and planets hoping the ishkur pilot would make a mistake. After 15 minutes, I docked up. A taranis pilot, a pirate, tried his luck with the ishkur pilot but was beaten off. At least that is what I gathered from the chat in the local communication window. Not too sure if he had lost his ship in the process.

So once more, I was out and the hunt began once more. I was not going to let go and nor was this ishkur going to leave. I scanned and he was around but had moved over towards the V cluster. I jumped to Planet V and scanned. He was not at the belts but had once more, moved. I moved to another scanning point and I had him again. He was back towards the complex. Maybe he gave the complex time to respawn so he could go back in again?

I landed at the familiar beacon and activated it.

The device sling shot me into deep-space and there was the ishkur with a cheetah next to him. What luck! I locked both and scrambled the ishkur. The cheetah warped off. In hindsight, I should have scrambled the cheetah and attacked the ishkur; as the pilot had already proven he was eager fight.

No matter, with an afterburner glowing hotly, I closed the distance and the ishkur's webber came on and my velocity dropped. No matter, my inertia allowed me to drift close enough to my optimal that I could hit it. My x4 ACs spun it and spat out EMP rounds. The ishkur's drones screamed out towards while his neutron blasters tore into my shields.

My shields dropped quickly and I was into armour, with my tech 2 repper coming on. My cap dropped alarmingly fast. I had to maintain fire though. The drones were tech 2 hobgoblins and they tore into my armour blazingly fast. My repper kept up but my cap did not. I switched off the afterburner and had to toggle the disruptor to save more cap. With the disruptor off, there was a chance the ishkur pilot would want to leave....but I doubt it. I was into 75% armour and he was just entering his. He could smell a kill. I could smell defeat.

My cap was empty and my disruptor was in danger of switching off. I took a gamble and switched to hail. It meant ten seconds of limited damage, as only my rocket launcher would be firing but I needed the extra DPS on the ishkur's armour. At least, this ishkur did not have a nos or neut on it.

Some cap recharged and I decided not to switch on the disruptor - most people fighting would either try to leave straight away or leave close to when they're about to pop. Peeps rarely leave the fight when they appear to be winning. My armour dropped to 50% when I pulsed my small repper. A few seconds later I pulled it back to 65%. I switched off the repper. Let's look as if I am in trouble (which I was!). I had to keep him here.

Since he was using cap heavy blasters - the ishkur would be encountering cap problems himself unless it had a cap booster installed; and I knew he didn't. He had me scrambled and webbed and from his velocity, he had an afterburner. That's three medium slot items right there. The ishkur only has three medium slots.

My ACs could fire without any cap. Thank the elders that I could, since with hail and short range, the damage output from me was much more. It started to tear chunks out of the ishkur - and yes, he was repairing it and thus, depleting his cap further. I wasn't idlying but I was keeping my armour around 35-45%. Risky as hell but it was the only way I could preserve my capacitor. Also, my managing my cap and displaying serious armour damage was acting as a 'webber' and scrambler to the ishkur pilot: he was not leaving. He was hooked, even if he didn't know it.

My capacitor creapt back up past 50% as my repper pulsed once more. The ishkur, was only 3KM from me and I was scoring good hits on it. He was trying to kill my armour and his drones were buzz-sawing their way in. My repper was just keeping up. Just.

My velocity suddenly increased. This meant that the webber was off me. Means that the ishkur was now out of capacitor. Probably meant that the scrambler was off me too.

I decided that is was time to kill this ishkur.

I opened up my afterburner to increase my orbitting speed and pounded on him. The hail ripped holes into the ishkur. Yes, it was a drone monster but it could not out damage my wolf now. The ishkur did not last long after his webber turned off and in a glorious flash - was vapourized, I missed the pod though.

The fight felt like hours but in reality it was over in a little over two minutes.

My heart was pounding and his drones were still buzzing round me though they had stopped attacking me as their command link was now broken. I eagerly scooped up the drones into my hold, with the full intention of reprogramming them for my own use.

Moving over to the loot, I sent the salvage bots over to it and I was delighted in recovering a fair number of tech 2 modules. The concord email below showed me that the ishkur was completely T2 fitted and had two rigs as well. The loss to the pilot was in the region of a cool +44million isk.

I recovered the following loot: Small Nosferatu II, Light Neutron Blaster II, Warp Scrambler II, Stasis Webifier II, Damage Control II, Small Armor Repairer II, Reactor Control Unit II,
and nine Hobgoblin II drones. I think the haul came to about 12-14million isk based on local prices. Nice. Nice.

Love piracy.

2008.01.03 16:42

Victim: At1as
Alliance: None
Corp: Children of Thermonuclear Synthesis
Destroyed: Ishkur
System: Gusandall
Security: 0.4
Damage Taken: 7882

Involved parties:

Name: flashfresh (laid the final blow)
Security: -10.0
Alliance: None
Corp: BLACK-FLAG
Ship: Wolf
Weapon: 200mm AutoCannon II
Damage Done: 3442

Name: Gistii Thug / Angel Cartel
Damage Done: 3196

Name: 50freefly
Security: -9.4
Alliance: Blood Blind
Corp: Blood Corsair's
Ship: Unknown
Weapon: Hornet EC-300
Damage Done: 1244


Destroyed items:

Void S, Qty: 114
Light Neutron Blaster II
Light Neutron Blaster II
1MN Afterburner II
Anti-Explosive Pump I
Hybrid Collision Accelerator I

Dropped items:

Void S, Qty: 57
Small Nosferatu II
Light Neutron Blaster II
Warp Scrambler II
Stasis Webifier II
Damage Control II
Small Armor Repairer II
Reactor Control Unit II
Void S, Qty: 4862 (Cargo)
Hobgoblin II, Qty: 4 (Drone Bay)