Popping My Cherry

So I got my pod popped for the first time this morning.

I did a bunch of stupid things, but I know what I did wrong. . . well, at least some of the things I did wrong.. . .so I should be better off for it.  Part of this post is to write it out so it hopefully sticks a bit better.

It all began last night.  I kind of moved out of our home base in Fountain because I was promised more PvP and a better market if i moved to another system.  I wanted to buy a Maelstrom so that I could join in some of our Alpha Fleets and opened the market to hunt around for one.  Big surprise, there were no Maelstroms for sale in our station.  The closest was a few of systems away, however, I wasn't sure if I could even dock in that station because it was a Serpentis station and I have a very bad standing with them.

No one seemed to know in the alliance channel, so I decided to just jump on over there and see if I could.  Being a complete moron, I took my most expensive ship there  (Mistake #1).  Why I didn't jump into a throw away Rifter, I have no idea.  But I went out in my overpriced Hurricane, Barbie.  I really like the name Barbie and am sad that the ship lasted such a short period of time.. .  oh well, there will be more stupid names that I like.

Anyway, I make the first few jumps and then realize that I am no longer in the "our" space; everyone in local is orange, so I feel like I am in a little bit of trouble and should have turned around right then (Mistake #2).  Headstrong and stupid, I warp around, create a safe spot, get to it and start scanning.  No one is on the gate I want to go to so I just jump right over there and warp into the final system.

No gate camp here but it is still enemy territory, but, at this point, it is very safe to just jump to the station if you are allowed to dock there.  I shouldn't have done so, but I got lucky and it did allow me to dock, which is a big relief.  In the station everyone is orange, so I am scared shitless for when I have to leave.  I get called into watch a movie at this point so I just log.

This morning at around 10:30 EST, I get back on my character and, despite seeing the guys speaking some Russian looking language in chat, think that this is probably a good time to get out (Mistake #3).  Although, if they are Russian or some other eastern Europe country, it is probably mid-day to early evening Saturday. . .prime time.  Stupid stupid.

I undock and see no one outside of the station.  I pull up my scanner and do a quick scan of the gate.  No one on it, perfect. . .so I warp to it.  However, as I am warping to it a bad guy must be warping there as well. . . and we meet on the gate.  Not wanting to fight him on his home turf and not really knowing much about what ship he was flying (Mistake #4, I should have at least made a mental note of what ship he was in so I could have thought about it after) I just jumped through the gate and he followed me, hungry for the kill.

On the other side of the gate I try to warp immediately, but I see him come out of cloak and immediately target and warp scramble me.  "Oh fuck, I am screwed" however, I figure I can survive his blasters long enough to get back to the gate and warp out and then immediately warp back to the station as he will be stuck on this side of the gate for having aggressed me.

As I am desperately running for the gate, I see three little blue guys warp right onto the gate.  Friendlies, awesome!  The guy who was attacking me, seeing that he is ridiculously out number, warps off.  If I had played it right, I would have had him locked already and when I saw the guys I could have dropped a warp scamble on him and gotten the kill (Mistake #5).  I give a wave to the guys, o/, thank them for saving my ass and then, stupidly, continue on my way instead of heading back to the station (Mistake #6).

Sitting at a safe spot I wait for my shields to recharge before I move on.  Satisfied with their level, I scan the gate I am jumping to and it looks empty.  So I jump to it at 0ms.  The problem is that I think I was more than 14 AU away from the gate and so no ships at the gate would be seen (Mistake #7) AND jumping blind to the gate AT ZERO FUCKING METERS, is absolutely idiotic (Mistake #8).

Of course, I come out of warp in the middle of a bunch of oranges.  I manage to jump through the gate immediately but they follow me and quickly get a tackle on me no problem. I am going down for sure at this point. . .at least, I don't know what I could have done to get out of it.  Assuming I stand no chance I start spamming warp to the next gate so that when my ship blows, at least I will get away with my pod.  However, for some reason, it does not work and I get targeted and popped.  I am sure I made a mistake here, just not sure what it is quite yet (Mistake #9).

The worst part about it is that I didn't move my medical clone to the new base. . .so I was sent ALL the way back to where I started (Mistake #10) and have to take the 30+ jump trip back out to our base in Fountaing.

I figure I will make some kind of fast, cloaking rifter for the trip back out so that I am hard to tackle and so I can get their quickly.  I am just definitely going to properly scan gates this trip.

Well, hopefully I will take the lessons I learned here forward into the game.