Messing with the Mission Bears Part 1

Yesterday I went on my first scanning session to search for missioners. I quickly fitted up a Magnate for the job and headed over to Penirgman. I had been reading forum posts on the best techniques for finding them, and alot of posts lamented that by the time you had a 100% signal on a missioner, they had already warped out. I only had basic scanning skills (III in most things), and I was worried that I would never catch anything.

I reached Penirgman and warped to a moon to begin scanning. I didn't want to sit outside a station with probes everywhere and give the game away. I started scanning for ships and soon realised a problem. I had literally over 150 hits with a whole system scan. There was no way I could single out a mission runner through all this. I ran over to the forums again and checked the posts.

Oops. I forgot to create a custom filter to scan down battleships.

Made new filter and hits dropped to around 50. Still quite a few too many. I moved my probes away from stations to avoid picking up any battleships waiting on station. A small cluster of battleships appeared "underneath" the system. I chose one at random and began scanning it down. It was far easier than I expected, and I had a 90% signal within eight minutes or so. I dropped the scan range down to 1AU and instantly got a 100% signal. I pulled my probes, saved the location and warped to it.

Oh hai

My first mission bear was Nekron xD. He was flying an Apocalypse Navy Issue, but within minutes of me landing on grid he warped out. How odd. I salvaged all the large wrecks I could get my hands on, but he still hadn't come back. I was speed tanking the remaining rats so it was no problem to wait, but I got bored and warped back to station to drop my loot. I then headed back out to scan down a new person.

About ten minutes later I had another 100% signal, this time on an Armageddon. I warp to the mission, only to discover the mission gate was locked and I need a "R.S Officer Passcard" to unlock it. Sigh. I open contracts and check what's available. There's one in system for 12 mil, or one two jumps out in Amarr for 30k. I went for the 30k one obviously.

I get back with the passcard and pray he's still in there. Jackpot!

Y U SALVAGE IN A BATTLESHIP

"Rightism" however, was salvaging as he went. Damn, I would need to loot a wreck as it got tractored past me. I set myself up between him and a wreck and waited while it flew towards me. Click "Loot all". Bam, stolen goods aboard and I aligned to the station. I seriously did not expect him to engage, he was a 2007 player and should know better than to...

Oh it's on now...

Oh he just shot me.

I warp out and grab my Arbitrator, full to the gills with neutralisers, tracking disruptors and a cap booster. I felt ready. I warped back to the mission. He was still there!

He was also 60km away. And I had forgot to fit an afterburner or MWD in my excitement. I had a web instead. Derp. I had given the game away at this point though, so I burned towards him at about 360m/s. This was going to take a while. It wasn't until I was 45km out though that he actually seemed to notice me flashing on his overview and locked me. He launched drones and waited. I crawled closer.

At about 42km his drones started flying at me. A mixed flight of Hobgoblin IIs and Acolyte IIs. I launched my Warrior IIs and hit the enemy drones with a web. They dropped fast. Rightism launched another flight of drones, this time with two mediums and three lights. I didn't see the mediums at first, as they lagged behind slightly, so they did a surprising amount of damage to my buffer before my Warriors made them explode. I was barely 30km out when he launched an Ogre II, a Beserker II and more light drones.

Seraph vs the bottomless drone bay

Jesus christ how big was his drone bay?

My Warriors seemingly had little effect on his heavies, despite the ease with which they tore apart the light drones. His heavies were tearing through my buffer scarily fast but I had almost killed one and I hoped the DPS would drop swiftly if it went down. I aligned but stayed on grid. Ogre II was at around 50% armour and mine was around 10%. Too close. I pulled drones and spammed warp as my armour broke. My Damage Control was saving my hide, but my hull was falling fast...

That is basically no hull at all

I warped out with 4% hull while in full panic mode. At first I thought I had lost my ship when it stopped for the "warp boost", but seeing her flying through space while burning a smoke trail made me happy as hell.

Emotions for pixels. Who'd of thought it.

I checked over my loot from the two missioners. About 8 armour plates and a random assortment of chips and broken capacitors. Not a terrible haul. Plus it showed that missioners get very upset if you steal from them.

Crap I did wrong
- Should have fit a propulsion module. No AB/MWD on a PvP fit is an unforgiveable sin
- Didn't bother to actually check what drones I had. If I had taken Valkyrie IIs, I probably could have murdered the heavy drones before they evaporated my buffer
- Forgot to switch out resistances for EM/THERM damage. That Ogre was doing insane amounts of damage to my thermal hole
- Forgot to turn on my tracking disruptor early, and I'm pretty sure he got in some lucky shots with his main guns because of this

But overall I made a few million and learned some important lessons. Next time, I'll try and actually kill something :P

Tl;dr Scanning for lols and profit is good fun