[AAR] The Vexor Gambit

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Vladimir Antonovich
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[AAR] The Vexor Gambit

Post by Vladimir Antonovich »

There I was in wormhole space, in my Astero, flying through our home system. I noticed a new signature spawned so I scanned it promptly and discovered it was a wandering wormhole.

I entered and reported the DSCAN findings to my comrades on Mumble: a Mackinaw and a Procurer. Guessing that they might be doing some mining, I warped to one of the two Ore Deposit anomalies and found the Procurer by his lonesome grinding away at rocks. By this point, my friends on Mumble were organizing a small PvP fleet to capitalize on these (apparently) defenseless targets. The Procurer and Mackinaw both warped back to their citadel so I went back to reship into something a little more beefy and a little less expensive: a Vexor.

This is when the action began. As I sat on the entrance to this new system in my Vexor, fellow Unista Sagittarius Griffins alerted us of a hostile fleet forming in the hostile wormhole. Just as I started to initiate warp back to our Astrahaus, a Phobos (Heavy Interdiction Cruiser) appeared and activated his Warp Disruption Field. Seconds later, an enemy Astero joined the HIC. As I had no other option, I initially decided to go out in a ball of fire, as is customary, and launched drones to put some damage on the enemy. The Vexor fit I had is a cheap but sturdy machine so I didn't mind but Sterling Boirelle reminded me that I could still jump into their system as a last ditch effort to avoid the aforementioned ball of fire.

Cheap as the Vexor is, no lossmail is better than a cheap lossmail so I took his advice and the Vexor Gambit began. I jumped into the depths of the enemy's stronghold and emerged to find a Confessor, Armageddon, and Jackdaw waiting. Despite my snail-like 8 second align time, they didn't seem to feel like locking or scramming me for whatever reason. As I slid away into warp, 2 sets of combat probes appeared on DSCAN and so the great deepsafe game began.

As I warped around, I proceded to create more than 40 deepsafes to avoid jumping back to a burned location with eager enemy ships on grid. Between Sterling and Sagittarius, I had experienced advice and eyes on the two exits in their system. It took only 20 minutes for the enemy to realize that there was no way to catch me and that my presence was going to be far more of a nuisance than any possible value my killmail could yield. The reality was simple: they could roll all the wormholes in the system and we would scan every new signature and open their system to potential invaders. This taught me that sometimes the best deterrence is to simply annoy the hell out of the enemy.

We engaged in some banter in local with the enemy and we agreed on a mutually beneficial solution: we leave safely and they return to mining peacefully. Taking a leap of faith, we went for it and found that they kept up their end of the bargain.

The Vexor lives to fight another day.



Some of the main things that I learned:
  • Deepsafes are amazing and make it incredibly difficult/annoying to catch a tenacious player, even if their align time is 8 seconds
  • Diplomacy in wormhole space is an interesting sort but this outcome is not necessarily how every encounter would go
  • Don't sit on wormholes in slow ships
  • Fly dangerously, because it is so much fun I was willing to write this AAR
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Troven Smalvard
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Re: [AAR] The Vexor Gambit

Post by Troven Smalvard »

great job getting and taking a fight, nice AAR

even better job avoiding an unnecessary loss
sometimes getting away against the odds is as satisfying as winning

hope you passed on the useful tips to the other open house guys
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Sagittarius Griffins
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Re: [AAR] The Vexor Gambit

Post by Sagittarius Griffins »

Wow I cant believe I just read an entire block of text. But I'm sure they are glad that they chose to let us leave and return to our beloved home. Otherwise Sterling (and me) were planning to annoy them for at least 5 more hours and driving them insane.

10/10 story of abduction, survival, Stockholm Syndrome, and finally, trust.
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