So you think you're hot shit now, eh?

A month of slacking off from school work at least looks good some places. That's with alliance mates downing caps and adding their monstrous score to the killboard. Wew!

Killboard porn aside, I did manage to get a bit of PvP in for the day. Ulfskein Gangr needed his pod scouted to Atlar, as he worried for his absurdly large bounty. Black Claw and myself responded to his need, and were quickly underway to meet him in Heild. One jump out from Heild, I ran into a gang of a new FDN friendly alliance, consisting of an Eagle, Hurricane and Rupture. I report this to Ulf, who knows nothing of them either. I jump through, noting another Merlin associated with the gang, and begin scouting the Bosena gate. The 'gate clear' order is called, and I continue into Bosena, warp to the Oddelulf gate, calling another two FDN in local, no eyes. Ulf enters local as Black, in Oddelulf, calls a pirate leaving system, who enters Bosena on my gate.

The pirate uncloaks to reveal a Harbinger battlecruiser, the same class of ship I was piloting. Seconds pass as we lock each other up, and I receive a convo invite from the pirate. Ulf zips by into Oddelulf as I accept the convo, and Black continues on to scout his pod to his destination. The pirate requests a 1v1, citing a nearby celestial as our battleground. I accept, however while we conversed, the FDN friendly gang had arrived in system, and had warped to my gate, along with a FDN Dominix battleship. I continue to linger on the gate, drawing the conclusion that this pirate is actually FDN friendly and bait for the gang. The Harbinger pilot arrives on the gate, and I decide to jump through and warp out, as there is simply too much for me to take on even at a gate with gate gun support.

I align and warp off, FDN and friends trickling in, along with the pirate. I receive another convo from the pilot, and a duel is finally accepted, at a safespot of my manufacture. I invite the pilot to gang, create the mid-safe and warp back to it, and tell my foe to warp to me. The Harbinger arrives moments later at 9km, and violence ensues as fast as our sensors can acquire a target.

Before he arrived, I loaded my Navy Multifrequency M into my lasers, and had preset my guns and Medium Armor Repairer to overheat. With the target so close to optimal range, I unleashed my full rack of Focused Medium Pulse Lasers on him, my tackle kit soon following. Expecting a fierce fight, I start locking up his drones, and set my flight to engage his own. This sort of slugfest between two ships known for their plated gank and tank ability will be determined by who throws the most damage over time on the other, and drones are a fragile component to any ships aresenal that can be quickly erased to reduce incoming fire.

So intent on watching my drones and minding my modules as they progressively became more heat addled, I failed to consider the opposing Harbinger's status. A glance at his armor revealed just how devastating my overheating gun rack was, as he was nearing hull while I was still hovering at 70% armor. I ask the pilot for a ransom and after minor bartering the pirate warps off in structure, and I 25 million isk better off. Foundati0n and friends didn't interfere, I overwhelmingly came out the superior, and all was well.

Perhaps the greatest point to this story was realizing this was my first honest ransom from a 1v1 engagement. Thinking about what had occured, I completely agree with Biz Quick in that there should be a better mechanic for ransoms implemented by CCP, along with a killmail like system to record what occured. Sure, I could take a screenie of my wallet, but that doesn't translate well to killboards.