Got caught
While looking for data storage facilities in Heimatar last night, I ended up tracking down an Angel Provisional Outpost, sort of a way station for their smaller craft. Frigates and cruisers buzzed all around but couldn’t provide a real threat to the Dark Perigee II, a well-equipped passive-tank Drake and my flights of drones. After I entered their complex, the Angels sent several flights of reinforcements who never returned. I picked up what I could from their wreckage and kept going.
However, they’d built this outpost in a pocket of deadspace in low-sec, meaning I needed to keep a close eye on my surroundings to stay safe. In this sort of situation, my directional scanner is maybe the best tool I have. The non-podder ships don’t provide much of a threat, so I set the range to 1 AU and 360 degrees to see what lands close by. If a probe or (worse!) a recon ship show up, I’ll align to some warpable object and leave as soon as somebody comes into the area. This assumes I’ve reached a safe distance from the warp-in point. I’ll also align the camera drone back in the direction of the original gate and bring down the range to 15k km, scanning from time to time.
After I’d reached the last section of the complex, however, and happily let my drones and missiles clear away a large chunk of the frigates there, the scanner showed a Brutix and a Lachesis and another battlecruiser in that 15k range. At this point, I didn’t want to stick around just for the chance of an escalation, I aligned and warped out with no trouble. I guess I left a few wrecks behind for their troubles.
But when I cleared the gate into the next system, Gusandall, I saw an Ishkar and a Megathron belonging to the Mean Coalition and KenZoku sitting about 12k km away. This didn’t look good, as the Dark Perigee II’s align time won’t break any records. They scrammed and webbed me pretty quickly after I started to align to the next gate, so I targeted the Ishkar who had already come under sentry gun fire and let my drones and missiles fly.
As you might expect, these didn’t do much more than scratch his armor, not even coming close to breaking his tank, and I lost the ship. I saved the pod, obviously (how do pilots lose these at low-sec gate camps?), issuing the warp command as the hull started to disintegrate around me. I made my way back to my forward operating base in Emolgranlan and informed Vikarion of the loss.
I just hope they picked up any surviving crew after I exchanged a few friendly words in the local podder comm channel with them. Sometimes you need to swallow your pride a little, even when it stings going down.