EVE-Mag.com

by Sam Guss

An amazing thing happened to my three-day old character last night. This same amazing thing happened with nine other pilots, seven of which have been in the game for less than two months. That’s right, eight brand new pilots were introduced to low-sec PvP.

My story begins with news on our alliance channel about a POS being torn down in a system we control, or gaining control thereof and while waiting for news if we needed to go help or if it was cool to just sit back and watch. Since talk was going back and forth on it, and the logistics of what we needed to bring – hmm “we” as if any of us newbs would do anything but sit back and gawk. I was flying to “Sams” to pick up some belongings to bring to .3 space when over the comm. Came news of two of our corp mates being killed at a gate camp that leads to our sector of space.

While deciding whether to counter attack or not, I warped into the gated system and did some recon work. Me, in a Condor and when I found the gate, there were six pirates, five of which were flashing red, all of them with the red minus sign. I leapt back and forth for awhile until I figured out that where I was jumping to (due to instas outside the 150KM mark from the gate) observe them was beyond their firing range. Odd, I thought that they didn’t seem to have a sniper.

For the next twenty minutes or so, I provided intel on their coming and goings, and eventually they settled down to only four pirates in system. One of which, we shall name “LT” – thorn in our alliance’s side for the past few months and a 3-4 year old vet and known pod-killer. Meanwhile back in corp, people start to fleet up and having a sense of security that I was indeed out of their firing range (one did fire, but was ineffective and I simply aligned myself to be moving away from him and was fine) started to put out what type of ships they were flying. A Heavy Assault Cruiser for LT, two Gallante Battleships and a Caldari Battleship. Meanwhile our rag-tag fleet was a couple of Caracal’s, a couple of Frigates, an EWAR Cruiser and a couple Battlecruisers. And we were plotting to jump a gate camp with a Tech 2 vessel and three Battleships?

The EWAR boat and a couple of the other ships outfitted themselves with racial jamming equipment and prepared to form up in the next system, meanwhile keeping a close eye on a shuttle pilot we suspected of providing intel to LT and his gang. Back at the gatecamp, a game of cat and mouse began, with one of the Battleships started to close in on me, by warping away on my trajectory and then returning of “warp within 100KM” of the gate. Twice he literally landed on top of me within 10km but each time I simply jumped away as I was already aligned.

The moment was drawing near and two of the pirates were now engaged in trying to flush me out of my lookout point. I aligned for the easy gate jump across system and when they arrived passed them going the other way. The bait was taken and after the jump I turned around to warp back to my lookout spot, while the two pirates jumped in on top of me again.

It was at this time, that our fleet jumped to the gate on the other side and prepared to jump as a fleet into the gated system. I could literally hear the shuttle spy relaying the info on voice over to the pirates and I warped. My suspicions were correct as I landed out of warp, our fleet uncloaked and targeted LT first. Meanwhile my two pirates warped past me to the gate to engage. I followed suite a second later after acquiring lock on LT.

Right as I was warping into the midst of the battle, both Gallante Battleships released their drones, and suddenly I was surrounded by 10 drones of various size. Remember in the death star battle sequence when the rebels first engaged the TIE-fighters? Yes, it was like that. Luckily none of them were targeted on me. Meanwhile all of our preparation was paying off, as the EW locked up their ships from being able to fire back right away and in seconds LT was down. We switch targets and continue our rampage as one of our ships goes down. Then again, then one of ours and then another of theirs, and another one of ours, then the final victim.

The entire battle lasted maybe all of two minutes, though for us it was an hour long engagement while we sat on the edge of our seats. Us newbs were nervous, we didn’t know what to expect, we honestly thought that despite our numbers we would probably get owned – though we did suspect we would also put down some of them. We were not prepared I think for our overwhelming success.

In the end, we as a fleet, lost 3 ships and with outfitting cost us 28 million isk. The kill-mails after being totaled up was well over 700 Mill isk in damage down to the pirates and we managed to pod kill two of them. Make no, mistake every one of these pirates had pod-killed our corp mates and this was an act of revenge and of defiance that we would not sit back and be their victims.

For eight of us, including myself, it was our first engagement and it brought with it such a rush and such pride that we, a bunch of newbs had taken down more experienced players than us. Yes, we had superior numbers. That helped out a lot. We had great intel to let us know what we were up against to outfit ourselves properly. Most importantly though, we had the courage despite sweaty palms and a sense of foreboding to stand up to these pirates and send them a message: “We will NOT be your victims and you HAVE become our prey.”

So, as a newb to other newbs out there. Don’t be victims; superior numbers, outfit appropriately, and stick together you CAN and WILL beat even veteran pirates. Please, notice that none of us had anything above tech 1 equipment and ships and we were against superior ships decked out in tech 2 equipment and even rigs – and we won.

After the battle was over, and folks had left system I came back to an empty system with just LT and myself. In local he says “UNV sucks!”. As I warped on top of his shuttle though, he warped out of system and I haven’t seen him since. Special shout out to the newbs of UNV – you all ROCKED and I am proud to stand up with all of you as part of the UNV Navy, now taking the fight to the pirates who would think of us as victims.