Scary Experience
12 Jul 2018Alice Woodstock
For the first time I was interdicted by something much worse than a pirate. I could see now that I simply got lucky not been interdicted by any commander doing community goals. I saw it on my radar, I could have tried to escape the interdiction making evasive maneuvers, but everything was too fast for me to notice. The ganker, griefer I don't know exactly the right name for this kind of commander. A scary hollow square in my radar that, until know, I was only heard of without encountering a single one. Until now I was only interdicted by pirates, that took time to scan me and get my cargo of the ship, I was never skilled enough to escape this kind of pirate but this time if it was that I could have escaped.I did everything by the book, submitted to the interdiction, boost right away trying to get the direction of the ship. Not a single word was said by the commander who interdicted me. When out of interdiction I boosted one time, selected a distant system very fast and boosted a second time. But my poor Krait didn't resist. With less then seconds my shields were gone, and in the middle of my FSD charging I was herding "eject, eject, eject..." from my ship's voice. I though a million ways of what could I've done differently, but this fragile ship could't make it. My shields ware week, but I was never thinking a 5D shields could be that week, and the hull I never saw when it was reaching zero. I simply woke up at a station near the one I was trying to reach to complete the community goal. Was a long trip passing by three systems to get the rare comodities and have my ship destroyed in mere seconds. I was scared, but still stubborn enough to try again.
My body were still hurting, and I was still shocked, I went again to Galileo station to get my modules back, my fuel scoop, my passenger cabin and my fighter bay. One more passenger mission to cover the insurance costs. With this I didn't lost any money, and despite my angry and frustration, I was expecting something bad to happen. At least I could test my ability to flee, and it still isn't good enough. Maybe if I had better shields or hull I could have escaped, but I will never know for sure since I never saw a criminal with this much firepower in my life. I got my Python back, with a 6A shield and 2 shield booster I would get a better chance.
This time get the commodities was much slower. The Python as I configured has only half of the jump range compared to the ship I was using before but still I manage to get all and deliver to Leydenfrost Dock. I did the trip two times and only a not very skilled pirate interdicted me and I escaped easily, I would never know if with this ship I could have escaped, and I though about a million ways how to do a community goal next time. Maybe reinforce my Krait, or leave this ship in a near station, changing ships to do only the last mile or try to get a guardian FSD for my Python. Was a very scary experience, but like I said, I'm always stubborn enough to try again.
Out of Character: I don't like gankers, I think they simply try to ruin the game for everyone. Pirates I'm willing to accept, despite it still seems not very fair especially to newbies. It would be easier to do community goals out of the open, at Mobius or Fleetcon server but I like the emotion of flying in the open, with much more alive galaxy with good and bad people like the real wolrd. Besides that, this way, I have more interesting things to write than simply avoid the danger.