War on Mission Runners

In the ongoing PTS campaign War on Mission Runners I haven't seen much action lately. My probing ships sitting scattered and unused in stations with complicated sanitary conditions where my usual ship hangars were first transformed into an ugly dude with a moustache (and it wasn't Saftsuze!) then later into a scary door that never opens. The longer I look at it the more I'm scared of what's behind!

Tracking disruptors don't kill people, guns kill people!

Anyway. All weekend I was busy losing expensive ships: My first faction fit Slicer, my experimental Jaguar and worst of all a bunch of my beloved Rifters. That left me with only my Firetail which is a gift from Doctor Genocide who gave it to me for no reason! Also I secretly suspect he's no Doctor at all cause he tends to kill people and cats rather than ... ehm ... doing academic stuff ... like reading the newspaper and ... ahm ... wearing glasses. So that Firetail was all I had left - I down fitted it somewhat to make for a less embarrassing lossmail and I set sail for unknown shores.

After some poking here and some fine spelunking there I found two Dramiels in Gulmorogod, one of them piloted by the known conscientious objector Angel Rodriguez. I know these guys are supposed to be fragile so I set course to a planet to scare him straight. We met there and yada yada yada, I warped out in hull and barely alive.

The second Dramiel was still in a mission. Angel and one of his corp mates were trying to talk him into a 1v1, but he wouldn't. Also there were a lot of sisters on scan. I decided to give it a try myself, and I docked and changed into a probing ship littering the system with another five Sister's probes. The target in the mission was very nervous now, warping between safe spots I couldn't get 100% lock on him. But eventually the other pirates left the system and he returned to his mission. After maybe 20 minutes of waiting and probing (Angel and other people passing by made him leave the mission every time!) I had him. I changed back into my Firetail of ... Utter Destruction warped through a few gates ... and found myself 40 kilometers from him. D'oh! But fortunately he engaged!

Now why am I telling you all this? Well, I read this excellent blog post the other day. And while it's true that belt PVP is the foundation of my low sec activities I think that hunting mission runners is what puts piracy into ... hmm ... whatpiracyisallabout. Belt PVP is mostly consensual, I mean, come on, who except for a few rookies rats or mines in low sec? Nobody, that's who!

Probing missions is much less frequent and since probes are in the overview by default (thanks for nothing CCP!)  it is much harder to do. I love the preparation and the suspense and all those stupid assumptions I'm making while moving my probes. And when I get one, it's so much more rewarding!

GF everybody!