Fight Night

Without doubt last night was the best night of my eve career so far.

This is for two very simple reasons. The first is that I died, the second that it was my choice.

Yep., that’s right, I strapped myself into a drake, and warped into the middle of a fight, for no other reason than I wanted to. Let me explain from the beginning.

Last night whilst I was ratting, a gang of bad guys appeared in our system and headed straight for our station spooling for a fight. Having already decided that if someone came into our territory that I would drop what I was doing and go and say hi, it was with a cry of glee that I started to align for the jump gate to go and help out.

Moments later, amidst the confused chatter in alliance chat, and on vent, I managed to make out that they were sat about 20km from the station, shooting at anyone that tried to fight back.

It was around then that I came into the system, pointing my ship towards the station I hit warp, I’d set the distance to 70km, as my ship was capable of throwing missile after missile up to 60k this would put me in a nice place to sit on the edge of battle and snipe so to speak. IT didn’t go quite like that.

Just as I got to the station we had started to organise and fight back, and boy did we fight back. Missiles and drones filled my screen, crisscrossing space like a flock of birds, only these were birds that wanted you dead!

Locking on to the nearest target, a Hurricane Battle cruiser I saw that it still had full shields. Luckily I had previously been shooting drones, so all my launchers were full of Thunder bolts, missiles that deliver an EMP charge, ideal for getting rid of those pesky shields.

Now, before I go on, I’d like to point out that I knew I wasn’t going to make much of a difference in this fight, my sole aim was to last as long as possible and try to help out my alliance for a bit.

Once more unto the breach….As my first missiles slammed into the shields of the Hurricane I smiled, for the first time in the months I’ve played eve I was in a fight by choice. I hadn’t been ambushed or insta-popped at a gate, and I stood a chance of inflicting some pain.

As my second, then third volley smashed into the shields of the guy in front of me I notices two ships heading for me, not a problem, they were small……

Bad decision, as soon as they got within 20km, my engines were webbed and my warp engines wouldn’t work. I just had to hope my tank would hold against the annoying little buggers!

During this time I had go the hurricanes shields almost down. Seven or eight volleys with seven missiles in each had gone his way, each inflicting 170 damage. That’s around nine thousand damage point, all in a few minutes. It was going well.

It was around this point that the hurricane pilot must have seen me, or at least decided to take care of me. His guns started tracking me, and his two friends that were orbiting me far to fast to be shot at jammed my sensors. I was dead in the water.

Round after round from his 250mm cannons slammed into me, shacking my head and causing me to bite hard on my bottom lip. Aware that I was already dead, my ship just hadn’t caught up yet I grabbed a beer and sat back, idly hitting the warp button to the moon in front of me, just in case the scrambler lost his lock.

My ship disintegrated around me, the capacitor empty, the shields over loaded and the hull being shredded I ejected into space and tried to warp away from the melee.

Unfortunately I was already locked by several people and it didn’t take long for my capsule to become nothing more than an extremely cold grave.

I couldn’t help think that I should have served my crew better, but then, they do come free with the ship!

I woke up moments later back in the station and started to equip another drake, hoping that I could go back out and fire of another few rounds as the fight came to a close.

Un fortunately I couldn’t get my hands on any more missile launchers, or for that matter any shield upgrades. So I was resigned to sitting in the station listing to my comrades in arms’ chase away the enemy’s ships and attempt to track them out of our space.

I lost a fully fitted Drake, which I had spent around 45 million crafting, and I didn’t care. I would build another one, and do the same thing next time because I had had my trial by fire and tasted blood, and I liked it.

Be warned if you’re thinking of coming into the drone regions, I’ll be here, I’ll be waiting.

Kill mail can be seen here.

"We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France. We shall fight on the seas and oceans. We shall fight with growing strength in the air. We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches. We shall fight on the landing grounds. We shall fight in the fields and in the streets. We shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender."- Winston Churchill