New Ships, New Tactics, New Targets!

I sat inside the cockpit of my new Pilgrim. Not exactly the most amazing vessel out there but it did have its perks. Tonight I was going to test this baby out on some unsuspecting prey. Joining me on this trip would be my good friend and corp mate Douglan. Apparently, he wanted to test out his nemesis.

After a few jumps we arrived into Elarel. Checking the comms I saw that no one was here but we decided to wait for a bit and see if someone would come and start attacking the Serpentis ships that lingered in most of the asteroid belts. No Luck...

I decided we should search elsewhere for targets and we began jumping to different systems looking for some meat. About 15 minutes later we arrived into Mannar. Doing a quick scan we confirmed that there were four pilots in system and at least three of them were undocked engaging the local Serpentis pirates. I gave Douglan the order to sit next to the Olide gate leading out of the system as I cloaked up my ship to find out where these pilots were located.

It wasn't very hard since these pilots were probably fresh out of the Navy Academy and had no clue how to use their on board ship scanners effectively. In about 2 minutes I had them scanned down and was sitting 100km away from them cloaked observing their actions and taking note of their ships. Two thoraxes and a Osprey. I decided to let them have their fun for now and decided to warp to the next belt at a closer distance.

Upon warping into the next asteroid belt my ship hit a rock and de-cloaked. I was furious. Would the cruisers see me on their scanners and decide to dock up? I moved away from the rock as fast as I could and recloaked up. I hailed Douglan to warp to me but told him to keep a good distance away. A couple minutes ticked by... They still showed up on my ships scanner but why didn't they come here yet? Maybe they were looting the serpentis ships they had just destroyed. I stopped questioning what was going on when their ships warped to my location about 7km away.

Pilgrim, Nemesis vs. 2x Thorax, Osprey

My heart started racing as I called out the primary target, Thracer. We were still cloaked up as I drifted slowly towards them. 6km...5km...4km...DECLOAK! My ship seemed to materialize from nothing as my cloak deactivated. Douglan appeared behind me 50km away from me. Neutralizers activated and drones released we engaged Thracer. The fight wasn't a very long fight but the three of them fought back with everything they had. But, they just couldn't fight a battle with no capacitor.

The three of them fell and I moved in quickly for my reward. Decent loot I guess. I continued to skim through the contents of the loot as we waited for Concord to stop flagging us as criminals. Once the timer was up we jumped back over to Elarel to see if it was still empty. There was a lone vexor there roaming the belts. Wasn't too long before we had it pin pointed in a belt and before long I was sitting right next to it cloaked.

Pilgrim, Nemesis vs. Vexor

The fight wasn't exactly fair to be honest. I tore through the ships hull in seconds. By the time we finished the Vexor off it was pretty late and we decided to dock up for the night. Hopefully I'll get to fight some bigger ships with this one.

Hanging out in Elarel

Its been awhile since I had last been in Elarel and I was never a really gave a thought of pirating until tonight. Tonight was special two newbie pilots, DarkTycon and Bati Boi, had urged me to go pirating with them. I reluctantly brought my thorax thinking it wouldn't be much of a loss even if I did lose it. As we undocked I saw they brought a vexor and a maller. Simple we won't lose much if we get killed.

What made Elarel an easier place to pirate was that it had no stations in the system. Therefore, if there were players in the system they weren't docked. Arriving in Elarel I checked the comms and found two other people here. Surprisingly one was an old friend from a previous alliance, Institute. We started a convo and ended up inviting his vexor into our fleet in search for the neutral thorax running around.

After about ten minutes checking if the thorax was ratting we concluded that he was just running to different safespots. I sat back watching the comms and waited for another pilot to come in. Then the comms reported that Bahim had jumped into the station. I contacted the rest of my gang and we started scanning. Quickly, we found out he was in a Scorpion. I knew we could take it if we could just find it...

Institute > I got him warp scrambled WARP TO ME!
Necravolver > Tycon, Bati warp to institute

Thorax, 2x Vexor, Maller vs. Scorpion

As we warped in we saw that Institute had his drones out attacking the battleship. I punched the key to lock the target, activated my modules and released my drones. I put another warp disruptor on him and my Heavy Electron Blasters began to tear him up. Soon about 10 seconds into the fight he targeted me and jammed me. Fearing that he might get away I yelled to DarkTycon and Bati Boi to get a point on the scorpion. Luckily DarkTycon had brought a warp disruptor and we kept the scorpion held down until its final moment a 30 seconds later. I was still shaking from the adrenaline rush as I approached the wreck to gather the loot.

The loot was mediocre. There were named multispecs and a warp disruptor t2 at the best. After waiting out the Criminal countdown I quickly warped to the next system to drop of the loot just in case we died in out next encounter. As I undocked from the station in Bille to head back to Elarel, Institude informed me that there was a megathron in system. I quickly jumped the gate back to Elarel and checked the comms.

Tunk Slothup was in the system somewhere. I keyed for his info and was surprised to find out he was in the same corp as Bahim. Was this revenge? We cautiously scanned the system down and we found him ratting at a belt in a Megathron. I've encountered many megathrons before and past experiences were telling me to not engage. To make matters worse Institute was scolded by his CEO on pirating and was told he couldn't participate in this fight.

Thorax, Vexor, Maller vs. Megathron

I decided to fight and we warped in. I released my ECM Vespa drones and started a close range engagement. Hopefully the megathron had no blasters. However, in the next thirty seconds as we started to chew into his armor he didn't target any of us. Either he got jammed by my drones or he was falling asleep I didn't know. All I did know was that the three of us were shaking from the adrenaline rush that we might kill this megathron.

After those thirty seconds though he started targeting us and shooting me with missiles. A feeling of dread came over me as I saw the missles fly and impact my ship. The damage warning went off and I checked what happened. He was shooting...heavy missiles!!! We weren't gonna break off this engagement it had been about one minute and we were half way through his armor. Tunk Slothup then released his drones. As I thought we might be in trouble because of these Ogre Is I began to tell my gang to start locking the Ogres and destroying them if they start hitting us. That never happened as Tunk also started to smartbomb my drones and his own.

For the last minute of the fight we laughed uncontrollably at the pilots tactics in attacking his own drones. We looted his loot which was pretty lame but loot is loot. We decided to end on this high note 2 battleships killed and no losses.

Life just might be more exciting being a pirate :)