Bait Pros

It was early yesterday evening and I was double checking my Thorax fit for a roam Kynric, the Sky Fighters CEO, had said he wanted to do that night.  I was checking my fit because my alternative 'fill in the time' project was "finish setting up your damned PI already, Karen, you need the income!" but the initial PI set up is a pain in the ass and I was putting it off.  Again. >.>

Now, Kynric himself has labeled Sky Fighters as a small, scrubby C2 corporation.  It is largely true, especially compared to where they were a couple months ago - a much smaller base of active pilots, flying cheaper ships (I saw some of the pre-split Sky Fighters corp fittings, and OMG.  Just... OMG), but having a lot of fun doing it.  One thing that hasn't changed, though, is the corp's cultural emphasis on scouting, on having the intel advantage, on being the eyes in the darkness of w-space.  We map huge chains of wormholes on Siggy, crossing k-space systems and finding ways to get everywhere.  And we all have cloaky alts, and like leaving them around to watch things - so we can see things, like a Proteus approaching a high sec hole and jumping into a system down our chain, then moving into its POS.

The roam plan went on hold, and we quickly hashed out a plan to bait it out over coms.  The pilot was still online, and had hopped ships a couple of times, indicating an active player that should (according to the player's kill board) be paying attention to d-scan and be willing to take the right bait.  The first thought was to bring in a drake, like some high-sec diver, but the lack of combat sites in system quickly led to that one being rejected.  Next up: go mine in their ore site.  "Anyone have a retriever?" "..." Nope.  A few of us had ventures in the home system, but those can be hard to catch, making it less appealing as bait; I was about to volunteer to try with my venture anyway when Kynric decided he may as well send his alt over in a Skiff.

I like the Skiff.  And the Procurer.  It has been ages since I've used one, but in my first month, when I was mining in high sec to buy my first Drake, I used a Procurer.  I like the tank, and because it's always bait few people would mess with them. >.>  And so here we were, with the Bait Skiff, mining someone's ore site.

The rest of the fleet assembled, and we waited to hear how it was going.  The Proteus was still online, still active.  Someone else logged in at the POS, and we saw an Anathema, a Helios, even a Redeemer.  THAT had us drooling a bit... if the Redeemer came out to play along with the Proteus, it would be fun.  Sadly, it looked like nothing would bite.  Kynric had filled a jetcan with ore, and although we were giving him crap over it, I drug out a Misasmos and went to pick it up.  Maybe that would make it seem more legitimate and they'd pounce.  Even as I started heading towards the chain, scouts reported that the target pilot had gotten a Procurer of their own and sent it to the site.  Counter bait!  Of course, we didn't take it; we wanted them to think we were just one guy mining from high sec.

Sure enough, as my Miasmos entered warp towards the site, the Proteus pilot warped off, reshipped into a Flycatcher, and warped back towards the site.  Huzzah!  We both landed on grid.  It bubbled us.  Kynric's Skiff kicked out drones and 'defended' itself, and the rest of the crew got ready to swoop in as soon as the rest of the targets in the hole responded.

Except, they didn't.  Kynric's drones chewed through the Flycatcher, putting it into armor, and it tried to break off; we ended up uncloaking a Rapier to snag it and keep it from getting away.  The Flycatcher exploded.  My Miasmos exited system.  The Rapier recloaked.

The pod went back to its tower, hopped back into the Proteus, warped off and cloaked.  "Great.  The guy just got owned by a Skiff, hopefully he's pissed enough to come back.  A Proteus can totally take a Rapier."

We waited.  And waited.  And nothing.  I brought my Miasmos back, scooped the second jetcan, salvaged the Flycatcher's wreck, and still got no response.  We called the op to get on with the roam.  Guess he wasn't taking any more bait after that.