THE STAGE
On January 10 at 02:27 EVE time, in the system of QXW-PV in Cloud Ring, YourDread43, previously a member of ElitisOps in Pandemic Legion, lost his Avatar worth approximately 131.2B ISK.
After leaving ElitistOps on December 19, YourDread43 was looking to join Amok, a member of Goonswarm Federation. Seeing this as a great opportunity for a titan kill, Pooki Bear of GSF quickly sprung into action to secure the gank. YourDread43 was tricked, like many NPC corp titan pilots looking for a home, into jumping to the trap. As seen in the video below, (thanks to kenkezi on Youtube) the titan pilot was in fleet with the Imperium when he jumped in. The setup and details will be covered in an interview with Pooki Bear and Thomas Lear. The Imperium dropped a total of eighteen dreadnoughts and twenty one carriers onto the Avatar.
PERSONAL ACCOUNTS
While specific details of the setup were asked not to be mentioned, Pooki Bear gave TMC some comments on the kill and left the rest up to our imagination.
TMC: Although you would like some of the details unsaid, what can you tell us about this Avatar kill?
Pooki Bear: This was my twenty first successful trap thus far and it is pretty simple. He left PL, and wanted to join Amok. We set him up with a neutral cyno in Cloud Ring. He jumped in, and we killed him.
TMC: With the amount of titans dying to trickery and awoxxing, was this guy oblivious and just blindly jumping?
PB: No – he had eyes in the midpoint – but we had him convinced that the few carriers that were there, were to escort him to the second cyno. They would ‘cap him up’, so he could jump over to our ‘safe POS’ and then jump out to dock up and join Amok.
TMC: So he willingly jumped to a cyno with a fleet full of capitals to a cyno in Cloud Ring?
PB: Yep. I had him believing that it was safer to travel as a neutral, and he followed the plan straight to the kill. He was down south at “Point A”, we’ll call it. The midpoint was “Point B”, and all of our dreads were at “Point C” so that they could jump in once he was pointed.
TMC: With no dictors or hictors in the midpoint, he must have felt comfortable.
PB: Yeah, but all we really had to do was an easy trick called ghostriding. Basically you have one or more HICs in your carriers ship bay. Then when he arrives, the carrier pilots there to “escort” him simply eject a HIC, jump out their carrier, board the HIC, and point the titan. At that point it’s over and it is all killmails from there.
TMC: Did he try to DD anyone or escape?
PB: He wasn’t able to DD or go anywhere, as he was completely capped out from moving. After he came in, we called in the dreads and he fell quickly.
Amedaphus, YourDread43’s main character, was later quoted as saying “Thanks for killing my titan, now I can quit Eve Online.”
Capital ships were not the only ones heading towards the trapped Avatar. Command channels screamed down to Thomas Lear, who was the FC of an Imperium Hurricane fleet nearby.
TMC: Were you out on a fleet already when all of this happened?
Thomas Lear: We were. Jay Amazingness had a fleet out doing something and he got all giddy over comms, so I kinda knew something was up. I then heard what was happening from a holesquad guy and we started moving.
TMC: I am guessing you never made it to the kill?
TL: Yes, we never made it to the kill. We were six jumps out and he was travel fit, so he dropped like a rock. We started moving when I got word, but we didn’t want to spook the titan pilot, so we held back. When the caps went in, we couldn’t move fast enough.
TMC: I bet the subcap fleet was pretty mad. The Avatar was trapped and couldn’t go anywhere and they didn’t wait for you all to come?
TL: Yeah, people were not happy, but we got a few good kills earlier so it all balanced out. In general, people were laughing and happy that our coalition got the titan.
TMC: What did you all grab?
TL: We were out on a POS kill stratop, so we got the tower, a Snuff logistics guy who drifted out of the POS and a roaming Thanatos. None of that adds up to a titan kill, but its better than nothing.
TMC has reached out to the titan pilot and will update as his comments become available.
This article originally appeared on TheMittani.com, written by Lemba.
