Bad Luck Days

Sometimes a day just isn't going to work out.

Yesterday I tried out my Astero again to do some exploring in W-Space. Of course in the very first wormhole-system I entered I got jumped by a Harpy at the very first relic site I tried out. Bad luck? It get's even better, I was religiously hammering my d-scan just to prevent getting jumped, but of course the Harpy slipped on grid the very moment I was kind of busy with failing the mini-game on the second can.

In hindsight, I should have probably taken it as a warning when my first try at hacking failed because I had five virus supressors in a row. (Those things, like healing nodes, have to be taken out immediately. Healing nodes are bad enough, since they heal everything except you on the hacking grid. At least those are rather weak and won't damage you too much when taking them down. Virus supressors however make you weaker, which means more tries to eliminate nodes and more damage you take by the nodes counter-attacking. Virus supressors also hit moderately hard, so combined with your suddenly weakened virus strength, they're a pain in the ass to take down.)

So I failed hacking. My second try started to look bad too, since I was at three supressors already when I noticed the Harpy on my d-scan. By then he was already on grid with me. Ouch.

I awkwardly closed the hacking window and tried to run, since I had forgotten I wasn't in a harmless little covert-ops frigate without weapons. Then it took me several more seconds to notice my micro warp drive wasn't working because I was scrambled. Whoops! No running away here!

Finally I activated my armor repairer just as my shields were gone, used my own warp disruptor and released my drones. From that point on it was a damage race. A race I lost: Just as the Harpy's shield tank was slowly cracking, my cap ran dry and he nibbled through my armor. This was an embarrassing end to an expensive ship.

My god, my reflexes are just so bad. One of the reasons I normally don't like frigates: In the time it takes me to react, the fight is already decided. In this case, I could have won the fight had I immediately counter-attacked. But of course I had to bumble around for a minute, which cost me the fight. And mad a bad day worse.

Well, sometimes it just doesn't work out like you want.

The Astero is a nice ship and armed, not like the rather flimsy covert-ops frigates, but as pirate faction ships they're also rather expensive. Together with my fitting, that was 120-200 million ISK down the drain. Back when I started out, this loss would have given me a heart attack. Today I can just sadly shake my head at my own stupidity.

Rest in Piss, stupid little Astero railgunned to death.