Since moving to wormhole life, a lot has happened. A big part of what I do now is logistics, planning, and helping run the day to day corp stuff as I have joined the leadership of my new corporation. Just to prove I still actually play Eve, I will recount my second completely solo kill.
I logged in, not sure of what I was going to do. Check on the POS? Run my PI? Oh, wait, there is an Imicus on d-scan. I hop into my Loki (overkill, to be sure), and start looking for my prey. I assume he has no cloak, as I see probes in space and he is still on d-scan. I narrow him down to a particular planet, and warp over.
My approach was good, but he was just outside of point range, and moving. Moving in a direction that gave no good warp in, as it was towards the edge of the system. I really need to make perches around each planet. I start flying in the opposite direction, and the phone rings. I have to help carry up groceries! This is ok, though, as I can burn away for a minute or two, and use the distance to warp on him.
One sprint of the stairs later, I am 250km from my prey, still on grid. But I still cannot warp. If this guy is any good at scanning, he should resolve the few sigs easily. Time to go all in. I warp off to a safe, launch combat probes, nail him on the first shot, and make a beeline back. I’m 20km off, a bit more than I would like, but I drop cloak and burn. He doesn’t seem to notice. My autocannons are blazing, and as I sail into range I get my scram engaged. A few moments later I am rewarded with a nice explosion. He is paying attention now, and the pod gets away.
My victim is a good sport. We chat about his fit, which I noticed has no cloak, and instruct that wormholes and cloaks are like peanut butter and jelly. He relates that he was surprised to see me, as d-scan was clear ten minutes previous. I explain that you need to be refreshing that every ten seconds or so. He asks how he could have beat me. I explain that in a fight between an Imicus and Loki, there is not much you can do after you get pointed. Salvagers and probe launchers will not do much against anything but wrecks.
He leaves, and I send him some isk. He asks why. I tell him I want new players to be wary, but not afraid to engage in playing the game.
What did I do right? I found him with d-scan and managed to get to him without doing anything to signal my presence, at least at first. What did I do wrong? I need to better prepare my home system for pouncing on targets of opportunity.
What did he do right? He was moving away from his location, which meant I had to use probes to get to him. What did he do wrong? No cloak, not enough checking of d-scan, not aligned to get a fast warp out. Mostly, he wasn’t paying attention. He had a solid ten seconds to warp while I was visible and firing but not in point range.
It’s not an impressive kill, but it was a nice chance to practice with a low risk target, at least for me. It was quite fun to bag a completely solo kill. I don’t have enough of those. I hope my target learned a few things about staying alive. Maybe he’ll be back in a few months and catch me out. I hope so.