Friday 23 December 2016

Bringing the rain


In business, a rainmaker is a person who brings in new business and wins new accounts almost by magic, since it is often not readily apparent how this new business activity is caused.

There are some pilots in the Tuskers who seem to generate content for the corp as if by magic. Me? I'm not that guy. I fly solo, and that's pretty much how I like it. But every now and then I get the chance to pay it back a little.

We're connected to a C2 with a high sec static, and we've been hauling through it all day. We've tangled with the residents, but with several other wormholes connecting to this system, I figure there's more content to be had.

I sit my Manticore behind the high sec hole. I'm about 10 km directly across from the sun, and the idea is that when a hauler comes in from high sec, I drop cloak, align to the sun, and start my attack run. If all goes well, the hauler dies in a volley or two.

If all does not go well, however, I'm pre-aligned to the sun for a warp out. And if I can't warp out for any reason, I can jump through the wormhole because my direction of travel will take me right through it.

It's not a hauler that jumps in on me, however, it's a Hurricane Fleet Issue. I can't take him out fast enough to stop him jumping back to high security space, so I remain cloaked and wait to see what he's up to. As it turns out, he wants to drop probes and then cloak up.

I wait patiently for him to scan down the system. Satisfied, he de-cloaks and warps to an anomaly. I follow him, sensing an opportunity.

Sure enough, he's decided to run the site, so I work the intel channels and a makeshift fleet forms up in Chaos. Moving as fast as I can under my cloak, I maneuver such that the HFI is directly between my ship and the wormhole leading to Chaos. He's mwd fit, so he's zipping around at about 600m/s. Judging it as best I can, I call for tackle.

"Warp to Taurean at 20. Taurean at 20."

Our Sabre jumps into the C2 and immediately enters warp. Because the HFI is moving around so much, it's not a direct hit, but he's still caught in the bubble. The rest of the gang jumps in.

The HFI starts to mwd out of the bubble so I de-cloak and overheat my warp disruptor. Unless he or the Sleepers take me out, he's not going anywhere. All I need to do is hold long enough for the heavy tackle to arrive.

And arrive they do. I'm still not taking any aggro, so I stay on grid to keep my torpedoes and my target painter running. He doesn't last long. And there must be something about w-space that makes it hard for people to get their pod away, because we get that too.

Afterthoughts

This kill was not about a cunning plan, or a hard fight, or an amazing killmail. It was just long hours of roaming, decent coms discipline and good teamwork making a fairly simple plan come together smoothly.

But as I say, it's nice to occassionally provide some content for the pilots that work so hard to find kills for the rest of us.

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