Ironfleet Towing And Salvage

Jim Bridger, reporting in.

The Bantam, as most Caldari know, is a perfectly fine little frigate, good for zipping out to the belts in starter systems and bringing home … well, as much ore as you can reasonably mine in a frigate. Against high sec belt rats, it’s got enough combat power to get the job done, if you work at it. Barely.

In all my time in EVE, I can’t remember hearing anybody seriously talk about fitting it for combat, or using it in combat. Which means that anybody who sees one in space reflexively thinks “newbie!”

Making it [he said with an evil laugh] perfect for my purposes.

I’m a small ships guy. My whole career in EVE, I’ve spent training combat skills for fighting in small ships, destroyer and below. Not that I’ve done much combat … but that’s where my skills are.

So I decided to see what kind of teeth I could put into a Bantam.

There I was, flying through the asteroid belts in my artillery-fitted Bantam. And here’s a dude in an Exequror cruiser, with mining laser beams out and shining. I admire the Exequror hull, I truly do; it’s a large and handsome cruiser with some excellent support capabilities. This guy (one Hesselich, in the Academy of Decadence [ACADE], of the Hereticus Aegis Communis [HAC] alliance) was mining into a Giant Secure Container, but he did have some rat wrecks littered about. He also was flying three mining drones.

My tactic was as simple and ancient as they come. I relieved both of his wrecks of their goods, so that I was flashy red to him. I instructed my ship to orbit him at my optimal. I targeted him.

He targeted me and commenced firing, with what turned out to be a single laser. Presumably, he was thinking the German language equivalent of “Newb in Bantam stealing my schnitzels! Hopeless fool, I’ll teach him a lesson he won’t soon forget! Shnell!”

I hit my afterburners. I turned on my warp scrambler. I commenced launching artillery shells at him.

From there on in, it was a nailbiter, especially at first. Our shields went down at about the same pace. I was hitting him solidly, he was mostly missing, but the hits he landed were hurting.

Once we got through our respective shields, my damage improved against his armor. And I think perhaps he had a run of bad luck, as his hits became fewer.

Once he got into hull, it was over quickly:

008.12.04 18:14:00

Victim: Hesselich
Corp: Academy of Decadence
Alliance: Hereticus Aegis Communis
Faction: NONE
Destroyed: Exequror
System: [redacted]
Security: 0.7
Damage Taken: 3368

Involved parties:

Name: Jim Bridger (laid the final blow)
Security: 0.2
Corp: Ironfleet Towing And Salvage
Alliance: Tear Extraction And Reclamation Service
Faction: NONE
Ship: Bantam
Weapon: 250mm Light Artillery Cannon II
Damage Done: 3368

Destroyed items:

Expanded Cargohold II
Small Hull Repairer I
Radio S
Miner II, Qty: 2

Dropped items:

Residual Survey Scanner I
Expanded Cargohold II, Qty: 2
Miner II
Concentrated Veldspar, Qty: 5530 (Cargo)
Cold-Gas I Arcjet Thrusters
Dual Anode Light Particle Stream I

The salvage was perfectly respectable — several TII modules — but the part that’s got me wondering is in the destroyed items. Was he really running a Small Hull Repairer?

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 4th, 2008 at 10:43 am and is filed under Salvage Notes, Today In Ironfleet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.