Saturday 24 May 2014

Profit and Loss

I've just finished a particularly troublesome security mission in EVE Online that involved taking out waves of enemy ships. They were mainly destroyer class with frigates supporting, and about six cruisers. Nothing too taxing, although some of the frigate class ships, Coreli Guardian Safeguards I think they are called, were really quite hardy and took a lot of killing. By the time I was done my full compliment of drones, (a haphazard mix of Hobgoblin I, Warrior I and Hammerhead I drones), had all been destroyed and I'd chewed through over a thousand rounds of ammo. I did make almost a million ISK in bounties alone though, so coupled with the mission rewards it was fairly lucrative.

The encounter deadspace just so happened to contain a load of asteroids, including the elusive Pyroxeres which is one of the only sources of Nocxium in High-Sec space. So once I'd dealt with all the hostile NPC's, I bookmarked the site and nipped back to the station to pick up my Mackinaw in order to get back out there to hoover up some of that good stuff. Shortly after I arrived a couple of belt rats showed up so I launched my shiny new Hobgoblin II drones to deal with them. I only finished training the skill to be able to use them yesterday and this was their maiden flight, needless to say I was excited to see how they would perform compared to their tech 1 counterparts. I wasn't disappointed! They tore off at break neck speed and obliterated the first ship in one volley, the second followed swiftly after. Just as they were making their way back to the ship my first mining laser reached the end of its cycle and as it started it's second cycle there was a loud explosion and I noticed my ships shields take some damage. Before I could figure out what was happening my second laser finished it's cycle and there was another loud explosion, followed this time by five smaller ones as my shiny new drones simultaneously exploded. Two million ISK they cost me not an hour ago and now they were gone. Why were they gone?! Turns out deadspace asteroids can be booby-trapped with smart bombs and nobody told me. That's what I get for flying solo I guess. Still, I snagged about 5.5 mill's worth of ore before the server shut down for maintenance, so despite my costly loss I'm still up over all.

2 comments:

  1. Hehe, The Blockade \o/
    To the initiaded, roides in that mission are trapped and should be considered harmful - like stated here http://eve-survival.org/wikka.php?wakka=Blockade2se&show_comments=1#comments / But it's true, you don't get told that by the game, until after the first bomb blasted :)

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    1. Ah cool! That looks like a useful site. So is it just that mission that has traps or should I be wary of all encounter dead space asteroids?

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