Another One Bites the Dust
03 Mar 2020Chillswitch Engage
Bright blue flashes on the horizon, not unlike the flame of a bunsen burner being suddenly extinguished. I look to the source of the lights and see a wing of three ships, one Anaconda and two Cobra’s that just dropped from supercruise. Perhaps juicy targets? Or maybe just some authority vessels patrolling the vast expanse of asteroid mining fields. I scan one of the Cobra’s as his wingmen scan me. “Ship scan detected.” my onboard flight computer tells me. To the fresh and green commander in his new Sidewinder, this would undoubtedly instill at least partial panic and perhaps a fumbling of the controls to low, or even high wake it out of there regardless of their wanted status or cargo. But alas, I am in a Diamondback Explorer with a clean status and only repair limpets in my cargo bay. So I smirk and let them finish scanning me. “Another useless spacer! My children will go hungry again tonight” is their response to being a clean citizen with no valuables. A flair for the dramatic, but it seems to be the norm with these pirates.
Off to my right and slightly above me I spot another wing made up of three eagles. I find my luck has turned when a cursory scan reveals them to be authority vessels heading in our direction. It does not take long for them to scan the Anaconda and open fire. Brilliant lasers shone against the dark contrast of the open universe around them as ships began taking evasive actions around each other. By this time I have already deployed my hardpoints and targeted one of the Cobras, having previously been taking my time to line up and wait behind him for the battle to start.
I let my multi cannon spin up and start shooting before I let loose with my burst lasers as well. My patience has paid off because now, after a solid 6-second burst of my cannons and lasers, his shields are offline and I am having no trouble keeping on his tail and from him being pointed at me. 4 PIPS to engines and 2 to weapons are usually the best combination in an active dogfight. The trick is to use your thrusters and boost to stay lined behind them and only shoot them as they turn when they are a bigger target, lest you risk a head-on attack.
A few more vessels have joined in to claim their bounties on the pirates, so the tide had turned considerably in our favor. I saw my shields being picked at by the other two bandits but not enough to be of concern, for now anyway. With the new help, the Cobra I was chasing had ticked down to a lowly 10% health, letting me gleefully ram him with my shields still intact and watching his ship spin-off and explode in the distance. A notification pops up for a 50k CR bounty claim as I target the larger Anaconda. His hull was still at 75% and the other cobra at less than 25% so I quickly targeted him instead and poured some shots into him to stake my bounty. You see, no matter how many ships took part in destroying them or how much damage you actually did, you all got the same amount for the bounty. So it literally paid off to simply finish off a ship when they were already low on health. I enjoyed a one on one challenge, sure. But I also enjoyed making money and staying alive more, so I generally opted for the latter.
With my shots now sunk in and his hull at 5%, I again re-target the Anaconda as another notification for a bounty claim pops up from the freshly destroyed Cobra. His hull at less than 50% now, his large ship made easy pickings for my cannon drilling into his flank. My ship’s computer tells me a frameshift drive charge is detected but it is already much too late for him, six ships now all firing on him as he desperately tries to boost away and escape the mass lock. Within seconds, his craft explodes in a fiery explosion and cargo scattering everywhere. 112K bounty claim, not bad. Another one bites the dust.