Hunting the hunter

He was out there, watching me, studying me, waiting for his moment to strike and score an easy kill off of me. It's a funny feeling, being nearly certain you are being watched, but unable to do anything about it. For him, this should have been as easy as reaching into a box of chocolate and taking out something sweet and delicious.

This time though, he would be sticking his whole arm into a bear trap.

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It began with me in my Enyo, sitting inside a Gallente Medium Outpost in the Eha system running down the timer to help the Gallente Federation keep control of the system. War targets were nowhere to be see when Keisuke Fujiwara appeared in the Local channel. Friendly pilots in system immediately began scanning trying to find him, but came up with nothing.

I brought up and looked at Keisuke Fujiwara's employment history.... any information is power. He made for an interesting read. He was in the NPC Faction Warfare corporation for the Caldari, that infamous famous haven for noobs. But he was a much older pilot than I, having been created and presumably training since 2008, as well as having 2 tours of duty in the hi-sec Red vs Blue war. And yet he was in the NPC FW corporation?

I quickly decided that he must be somebody's alt account, almost certainly used in a cloaked up covert ops frigate to keep eyes on enemy activity. I pushed him out of my mind and resumed running the plex,  lazily checking d-scan to see if he would make a mistake and be visible. The plan resumed.

And then the plan fell apart most unexpectedly. D-scan picked up a Pilgrim-class Force Recon Cruiser on scan, within 14 Astronomical Units. I quickly reduced down to within 5% of that and discovered that he was less than 1 AU away from me.

I got nervous and called into voice comms. "Hey are any of our guys in a Pilgrim?". The answer came back negative and so the adrenaline began flowing. I paid close attention to every inch of my screen, knowing that if the enemy was in a pilgrim, I would be lucky see anything was amiss for more than a fraction of a second.

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The Pilgrim is a nasty ship to face on its own terms. Packing a covert ops cloaking device, it can warp around systems while invisible, has heavily bonused energy neutralizers to render a ships offensive and defensive systems inert, has good damage from drones and strong armor, often with a local armour repairer to patch up damage during a fight.

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Any cloaked ship in EVE will decloak upon getting 2km or less from any object in space, such as the acceleration gate for entering a medium complex such as the one that I was in. The Pilgrim began cloaking while in warp, but for a fraction of a second I saw a little flash of red in my overview display before his cloak cycle completed and he vanished.

I had spent most of the previous month in similar Force Recon ships, hunting inside medium complexes the same way that this Pilgrim pilot was doing. I knew that he wouldn't know that I saw him for a second, and that this gave me a possible way to turn the tables.

But first, my Enyo was not a good ship to face him in. Too little armor, and the guns relied on it capacitor. I report the Pilgrim in voice comms, and then warped to the Eha station while we discussed what to do. Finally, a plan came together. I knew that often, when I was stalking someone in a medium plex, they would warp off when nervous, but then come back for greed. You could make an easy  15-30 million ISK defending them. I had to look greedy.

I would return in a Stabber-class light cruiser while Vexor-class drone cruiser piloted by Djazic from the Level Up Corportation would wait in a neighboring  system.I quickly entered the plex and began thinking about how to not look suspicious to him, having just changed to a bigger ship that did not rely on capacitor for its weapons.

First, I moved to a spot just 4km away from the warp-in point to the complex, and then turned my ship around to face the warp-in . Bringing my ship to a halt, I now looked like a close-ranged brawling ship waiting to ambush someone coming into the plex.

We waited, waited waited for over 3 long minutes. I started questioning myself. Was he out there, watching? Did he warp out cloaked and was somewhere else, while I sat there glued to my display, looking for the moment of warning I would have when he decloaked. Was I making Djazic waste his time? I apologized to him, but he dismissed it, saying that he didn't mind waiting for a possible Pilgrim kill.

Sometimes, your plans go wrong because of something unexpected. Someones, though, something unexpected makes your plan go exactly right.

In this case, a friendly Vexor from a different militia corporation warped into the complex, paused, turned around and warped out. I quickly turned this to my advantage by sounding as harmless as possible. Typing a message in local chat to him so that the Pilgrim pilot could see, I thanked the Vexor for letting me keep the LP from the plex, rather than sticking around so that it was split between us. Now I didn't look like a pilot hunting a Pilgrim..... it looked like all that I was interested in was the LP from the plex.

Then things got even more right and opportunity knocked on my face. The friendly Vexor responded back in local chat, saying that he only came in to see if I was the war target in system. I immediately shot back a response saying "I think the war target is in a deep safe (spot). I haven't seen him on scan since he entered". Now I looked blissfully unaware of the pilgrim.

Keisuke Fujiwara must have felt very confident now, because seconds later he decloaked. I immediately targetted him, and charged to close the range completely with my Microwarpdrive. Calling on Djazic to come back into Eha and hit the plex, I turned on my warp scrambler, guns and missile launchers and waited. 

Surprisingly, despite having me webbed and warp scrambled, the Pilgrim was only gaining distance on me very slowly. My capacitor was also lasting much longer than I thought it would. but time was still against me. My shields were failing fast and my armour was not enough to take much of this pounding.  But the Pilgrim was not having an easy time of it either. I had managed to blast through his shields and was chewing hard through almost half his armour, despite his armour repairer. And somehow, I was now managing to close the distance to him.

By now, help was landing on the field. A friendly Tristan-class frigate landed a stasis web on the pilgrim and so my stabber began closing the distance again. My shields had just failed and the Pilgrim landed another cycle of neuts, nearly killing my capacitor complete. "Djazic where the hell are you, he'll kill my cap in less than 10 seconds and then I'll drop point!" I nearly screamed into comms.

Djazic's reply was music to my ears. "I'm landing on field now". A few seconds later he called out that he had point on the Pilgrim. With my armour half gone and and the Pilgrim now doomed to die from Djazic's Pilgrim, my job was done and I warped out. Even before I landed back in real space, Djazic announced that the Pilgrim was destroyed, and that they got his pod too.

http://zkillboard.com/detail/31007699/

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This kill puzzled me. How was I always able to not only keep the Pilgrim in range when I was webbed and scrammed, but also have enough capacitor to keep him warp scrambled?

The answer partly came from looking at his fit. Without a cap booster, he would have struggled to keep his armour repairer running as well as his afterburner and his neuts. The very slow rate at his which his 2 neuts drained me also testified to him having relatively low recon ship skills. Maybe level 1 or 2 rather than the 4 or 5 you should have if you want to solo in any recon.

In short... I think that the Pilgrim lost the fight because he managed to run out of capacitor himself and could not get away!