Engagement Report 6 – Dual Hull Brutix

I log in, and I find myself in Taisy, Low-Sec, with my Dual Hull Brutix. Upon my undock I notice a Deimos from the local pirates warping to M-OEE8, so I follow.

Once I jump into M-OEE8 I realize there’s about 40 C02 fellas in local, but the Deimos is alone re-approaching the gate. There are also 2 more guys from the Deimos alliance in local, but they were not on grid… Not sure if they were afk or not. While I hold my cloak, I also bring my 2^nd Brutix into a better position to provide backup and cloak him too.

Now… There is no point in engaging a Deimos at 0km on a gate. Once he’s in trouble, he’ll deagress, tank me like a boss, and jump out. I try to bait him away from the gate. I start kitting a bit away from the gate to see if he follows, but nothing… he only targets me and just sits there.

His attitude is suspicious. Usually this attitude means that people are calling for backup on coms, and so it was. Not long after, inside Taisy, a Gila shows up on scan, but does not lands on the gate! My guess is that they are also positioning near the gate to avoid long warps, but don’t want to sit on the gate to avoid being easily spotted in case I jump back into low sec, or worse, they know I have 2 Brutix and that one of them is probably cloaked. After all, I’d been in this area for some days, so it’s natural they noticed my act.

 

I would certainly take that fight. Primary the Deimos, put some ECM drones on him, and if needed, bail once the Deimos was dead/jammed using the MJD. There was a good chance I’d be able to kill one of them and then bail. Even with the Gila nearby, the Deimos did not tried to catch me. That only means one thing. They are expecting more backup.

After a couple minutes, Deimos finally tries to catch me, but at this point I already ruled out engaging him. I’m almost sure he sorted more than enough backup to deal with 1 or 2 brutix, even though the only thing I can see in D-Scan is a Gila, probably related to this Deimos. In order to make them draw out their heads, I let him tackle me 10 km off the gate. This way, they’ll come out from wherever they’re waiting in order to try to kill me. It’s a risky move… I can be bumped of the gate and killed without firing one shot, but generally, and if his backup takes a bit time to arrive, I should be able to make it out, gather enough intel and then decide if it’s a fight I can take or not.

Like expected, the Gila shows up, as well as a Dominix and a Loki. Yeah, too much… I jump out and warp station to repair. Same alliance has a couple Cynabals, a Proteus and some Logi outside. This 2^nd batch of guys were probably not trying to actively kill me, but it shows this alliance had too many active fellas right now, so it’s time to go someplace else.

While roaming in CFC space (when CFC still had space), in a system with 15 guys in local I see a Skiff in an anomaly. It’s either bait, because Skiffs have a large tank, or is an AFK miner. Only one way to find out, so I warp and aggress him.

The Skiff pilot asks for help in local and does not tackles me, so it’s not bait. Not long after, 3 bombers decloak right on top of me. I bring in my 2^nd Brutix and try to kill the bombers and the Skiff. Bombers are actually an opponent I need to worry about in a Brutix. They do lots of torpedo damage due to my large sig radius, but fortunately also die fast, as they just happened to be right into my blaster range.

I manage to kill all of them and warp off as Legion warps in. I lost my surprise advantage and don’t want to stick around. As I jump out there is an Ashimmu, Manticore and a Myrmidon chasing me too. Things get a bit blurry as I try to escape but they manage to camp Pleniers, in the severely damaged Brutix. Having low structure left, I don’t want to risk jumping into those 4 guys. All they need is a scram fitted into the Manticore and I’m dead.

Instead, I use this opportunity to repair. I go to a safe, refit, activate my Hull Repair mods and keep an eye for probes on D-Scan. I’m not sure if they’ll call for backup (they probably will) or if they’ll lose interest soon, but if I manage to split them on a gate I might be able to score some extra kills.

After 10 minutes or so I’m all repaired and ready to go! In the meantime, the Myrmidon went away. It’s only Ashimmu, Legion and Manticore. In fact, it’s the same 3 guys I just killed in bombers, along with the Skiff. This makes me think that I’m probably only facing 1 person triple tabbing. This is awesome news for me, because his attention spawn will be low low low. I can take good advantage from it.

My 1^st move was to warp at range on their gate and see what they do. The Manticore came kitting strait at me alone. Good! Just need to pour out light drones, kite towards it as fast as I can, and soon it is in my Web, Scram, Neut, Blasters, Drones range. It dies fast and I warp off. 1 less ship to worry about, but the real prizes are the Ashimmu and Legion. 

This time I warp to the gate at 0km. They are also at 0km. I jump and they follow. Good! Even before I decloak I warp in my 2^nd Brutix. Plan is simple. Primary the Ashimmu to avoid being capped out, and then see how it goes with the Legion. Once I decloak they both aggress me and I easily catch the Ashimmy. 2^nd Brutix lands and provides backup. Ashimmu gets jammed by ECM drones most of the fight and melts. Legion tries to deaggress. At this point I use the Brutix with more capacitor left to try bump the Legion off the gate. Fortunately I manage to bump him 2 times and also dies shortly after.

It was getting late, so it was time to get back to a comfortable station in Low-Sec and repair. While I was traveling I jump into the last Null Sec system in the path, and there it is, a Myrmidon sitting 0km on my gate.

Because I was in hurry to get back to a station, I did not scouted properly and jumped both Brutix at same time, thus the Myrmidon pilot saw 2 gate activations and +2 in local. There goes any surprise advantage I might have had… I hold cloak for a bit more, assessing the situation. He’s the only one in local and belongs to the same pirate group I had try to engage earlier today. The same pirate group that did not engage me until they had more than enough to win any “fight” and that had a considerable number of active people.

Ok then… Let’s burn back to gate and see what happens. I decloak Pleniers in the tank Brutix (although it was damaged from previous engagement), and he immediately aggresses… this is fishy… why would he aggress a similar ship class without knowing what the other guy in local is in? I proceed to decloak Rtb and also burn back to gate. Because Pleniers was 0km on gate, he immediately changes targets from Pleniers to Rtb and aggresses!

Seriously? You want to engage 2 Brutix with your Myrmidon?

The pilot is either very dumb, or has a backup plan. I personally prefer to not underestimate my foes and I jump out. This is all tooooooo fishy…

Once I jump out there is a “Neutral Alt” Ion Blaster Tengu waiting for me (I looked at his guns). Ohhhhh Now I get it. That explains why he aggressed me. He already had eyes on me with his Cloaky “Neutral Alt” Ion Blaster Tengu and had perfect intel on me.

So another set of decisions… to engage a Tengu/Myrm with my Dual Brutix or not? I could try pull the same trick. Focus on the Myrm, slap in ECM drones on the Tengu, and then bail once I got a jamm cycle, in case the Tengu proved too hard to chew.

Still, my spider sense was tingling hard. I’m the one that jumps onto people! Or if anything, I’m the one that drives people into thinking that are jumping me, when in reality I’m counter jumping their jump, having them realize too late that they’ve been jumped upon! Or something like that…

By living in the area for a week, I noticed those guys like to fly some T3 cyno neutral alts (checked their killboard previously). Even if I put the Cyno paranoia on the side, I’m damaged in one Brutix, my guns are overloaded to 75% and he might still have backup nearby. I had seen several small gangs from his alliance in the last couple hours running around. It was getting late, so playing the mouse and cat game and trying to find out if he was truly “alone” (I believe he could be) was not an option for me at that time.

I warp off, cloak up and eventually log off. It’s one of those fights I almost regret not taking on, but facing a Tengu/Myrm while not being 100% ready was not an option, so there’s always next time.