So my corp seems to have a special place in their blood lust heart for Orca's. Two nights ago we are in the cave and there are quite a few active industrialists. We knew they were industrialists from their bios and the fact that they named their PoS's such that you could tell they were manufacturing. We also saw them out with retrievers and the likes. Well one of our corpies saw that they left the hole with an Orca. So once again we went on the hunt and camped the hole. For hours and hours we waited. Well we finally had one of our Tengu pilots that jumped in get contacted by one of the corps that was part of the alliance in the hole. They wanted us to leave with our combat ships or they would close the hole. Well that is just what we wanted them to try so that we could jump them. See my corpy decided to play dumb and explain that he was just a miner and didn't know what his friends were up to. Well they didn't bite and so ended a long night of camping for no Orca kill this time around.
The next day dawns. I log in to an empty corp and alliance chat all alone in the wormhole. Which I am pretty comfortable on my own now with. So I decide that I have some time and start to probe down the holes for a route. I find our static hole in my second signature, which is fairly quick considering the number of sites we have in whome. I jump into the Cave and find no one on scan. I start looking for the next static and find it on the first try. I am thinking this is awesome, will have a route in no time. So I jump into the next hole, which happens to be another C4. In here there is two ships on scan and 1 appears to be active. So I find a safe spot and start scanning. Now let me remind you that I am doing this in my combat ship, the Pilgrim, since I do not have a scanner ship in the hole yet. Well in this C4 I find the next static, a C5 in two or three sigs. I am thinking this is great as I never have this kind of scanning luck. So I jump into the next hole and find it has a C5 static. I can't find any ships on scan so I probe the hole down. Now I start to think to myself that this route is going to suck ass so I decide I will fly back to whome and wait for people to come online so that we can close the Cave hole and start again.
So I jump back into the C4 between the C5 and our Cave. Check scan and see nothing. I warp to the Cave hole and am oblivious to what is about to happen. As I am warping I scan again as I get closer and see a Phobos on scan! It doesn't dawn on me that this thing could be on the hole. Well "Son of a Bitch" it was with a bubble up. I land in the bubble cloaked about 20k from the Phobos. When I later thought about my next moves I want to kick myself as I make some mistakes that I will learn from in future instances. My next move is to immediately fly towards the closest point in the bubble to get out of it, which is straight away from the Phobos and the hole that now sits ~37km from me. In hind sight I should have went straight up, down, left or right and I will tell you why next. Because not 10 seconds later a Tengu lands 1700m from me and uncloaks both of us. Had I went in a different direction I would probably have been less likely to have been decloaked. 10 more seconds goes by and the Tengu and Phobos begin to lock me, another Tengu decloaks and starts towards me.
Now I needed to make a decision, either to try to make a run for it or make for the hole. Given what I was up against I decided to try to run for it. This was another mistake as I later thought about what else I could have done. What I did do was the following, I immediately hit my AB and tried to get out of the bubble. Well one of the Tengu's began to warp disrupt me, so I dropped EC-600 ECM drones and waited. At the same time I turned on my damage control and began to watch my shields slowly disappear. Now my Pilgrim is an active armor tank fit with a complex adaptive nano and good resists. So I was tanking the damage "OK", when I finally got a jam with my drones off on the Tengu that was scramming me. Just then the other Tengu began to warp disrupt me as well but he had come in close. So I began to neut him out which happened rather quickly. Now at this time there was a pivotal moment in the fight where I had neuted out the one Tengu, had jams on the other and had just gotten near the edge of the bubble. I began trying to warp off and just then the Phobos microwarp drived closer and rebubbled me. So I was stuck. Now at this point I looked at the distance to the hole and realized I would have been able to make it there since I was now almost 100km off. I decided then to try something different and brought out the dps hammerheads. I put them on the Phobos and continued to tank the dmg with my armor slowly getting lower and lower.
I made the decision to try to run because I thought my odds at getting to the hole were low given the 3 on 1 terms of engagement. Had I realized that I could tank most of the damage and last almost 6+ minutes I would have done things differently. First I could have realized that these were cloaky Tengu's and they would have had lower dps than a normal combat Tengu. So I think what I should have done is to went on the offensive and approached one of the Tengus. I could have then webbed, scrammed and neuted him out as well as dropped dps drones to go on the attack. I know with the neuts I would have had a good chance at breaking his tank if he was either active or buffered. A passive tank would have been both unique and harder to kill and I don't think I would have run into the passive cloaky Tengu type. I also could have put my tracking disruptor on the Phobos to minimize some of his dmg, even though it was a 1/4 of that of the Tengus it still would have upped my ability to survive and even brought him in close enough to have been able split neuts onto him and possibly neut him out as well.
Now this is all hypothetical but I think I could have at least taken one of the Tengu's out with me and possibly even survived long enough to have gotten to the hole, killed or come close to killing a Tengu and maybe even gotten away. The latter part I am pretty sure would not have happened but at least I would have given a good fight. Which I think I proved a lot harder to take down then they bargained for but what can you do. Except learn from the experience. I definitely plan on testing my 1 on 1 theory with my corp mates cloaky Tengu to see if I would be able to take it out and still tank the dmg to survive long enough.
So as much as it sucked losing a 200mil ship, ohh and getting podded losing 50mil in implants, I learned a lot about how strong the Pilgrim is and have a good idea of what to do in any future instances like that. Next time I hope to have more even odds and be ready to go on the attack but will definitely have more confidence in what is becoming one of my favorite ships for both looks and ability.
Later that night my corp crushed the Cave hole due to my loss and found a new route, which they were able to camp and kill a Raven that was trying to crush a C3 hole in the Cave. The dirty bastards didn't scan the last hole out so that I could get there lol. While they were doing that I decided to scan for wormholes in Amarr of all places. Hell I found one and jumped in and sitting right on the hole was a Buzzard. I uncloaked and locked him up, was even able to launch drones and send them after him before he realized what was happening but alas he jumped out. I camped the hole for a bit, even saw a Tengu log in on scan and thought I would get my 1 v 1 since he disappeared off scan and clearly was a cloaky coming to the hole to check if I was still there. Just then my corp found the low sec hole so I decided to jump out get back into whome. Which is where I am now in a shiny new Pilgrim.
Thank you all for reading and more tales to come!
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