Enough
07 Jan 2016Tuts
*** Pegasi Sector, System unknown, StarDate 1.3.3302 ***In a sentence: I snapped today, turned on the pirate that was dogging me, and vaped him.
It's a fact of life as a spacer. You jump from system to system, popping into normal space again nearly inside the corona of a fiery sun. It's an incredibly vulnerable moment - your system velocity is nearly zero, you're momentarily disoriented, and you stick out like a kitten at a dog show. Sooner or later (probably sooner), some lowlife in a gunboat is going to yank you out of supercruise and start blazing away at you. Oh he'll claim he wants you to drop some cargo, but what he REALLY wants is that adrenaline spike, and maybe to poke through your ashes for jollies afterward.
I've never tried to turn the tables before. They always have the upper hand in such situations, pulling you out of cruise at a place & time of their choosing, weapons hot, and I always figured there wasn't much percentage in being obliging. Instead I learned the defensive tricks you need to break loose; lean, fast ship, directional thrusters to foil the aim, chaff to break target lock. Even better, don't get marked in the first place - drop a heat sink as you accelerate away from the star to drop your heat sig. Go around the planets, gravity wells just slow you down. Pay attention, don't overshoot the station. And if someone does hail you, saying they need help or want to talk, make like your comms are down. Don't get noticed. Point A to Point B, that's how you keep your pockets full and your skin intact.
But this one guy. He dogs me through three systems, following my high wake and taunting me about what a "big haul" I have, when I'm carrying a hold full of cheap tea that's worth maybe 100K tops. The third time, I submitted to interdiction quickly enough that my FSD will restart in plenty of time for me to hoof it - but I don't. I'm in my new Asp Explorer, the Scott Pilgrim II, which I've not only rigged up for mining & exploration hops, but I've also equipped with some decent offensive weaponry. So I flip around and start shooting back.
Troll pirate is "wanted", of course; flying a Cobra III and he's ranked Dangerous, but after the first exchange I manage to get on his six and knock out his shields with my mid-sized beam lasers. My shields are low but still up. I switch to secondary fire which is small kinetics, and part of me is amazed to see his hull start eroding away. 80%. 60%. He doglegs to the side but I'm only thrown off for a moment. 28%, and if this guy had any brains he would disengage, but instead he flips around to fire at me again.
I know this guy's shields might pop back up at any moment so I ignore the hits I'm taking and focus on efficiently returning fire instead. My shields are gone but it doesn't matter because I'm stripping his hull again. Flip upward with downward thrusters. Firing again, NO NOT RELOADING NOT NOW, I switch back to the beams even though they're for knocking down shields...
The troll transforms into an anticlimactic little poof of space dust. Not two minutes later, the Pilot's Federation is congratulating me on my new rank of "Mostly Harmless".
I am not pleased with myself; rather, I am appalled at how I allowed my frustration to make my decisions for me. I am NOT a skilled dogfighter and I have no illusions about that. Being pissed off did not magically make me better. I could have escaped easily. SHOULD have. I need to think about this.