Overkill

Overkill happens.

Sometimes you overestimate the strength of your opponent, or someone blunders into your fleet while you are on the way to a bigger fight.

Sometimes you are fighting for something more important than 'gudfites' - sovereignty, your citadel, or your friend's tackled carrier - so you bring everything you can put into space, enemy numbers be damned.

And sometimes you send out a ping and more pilots show up than you expect.

But outside of accidents, rescue missions, and defending your structures, I don't really understand overkill. Where's the fun?

We had a C2/HS connection right before the holidays, but our connection was via a frigate-sized wormhole. Because of the mass limitations it was useless for logistics, but that didn't mean I couldn't camp the system in my Astero and hunt the explorers coming in from high sec.

After scanning everything down, I settled into wait. My first target was an Astero, which is always a rather intense matchup. I have to guess what kind of Astero I'm facing and use my mobile depot to fit my modules accordingly. I could fit for a warp-stabbed explorer, for example, only to find myself facing a neuting combat fit, so there is always sense of risk going into the fight.

In this case I made the right call, so I bagged myself an Astero, and the pilot's pod. Nice!

I then hit a noob in an Imicus who actually scrammed me back! This wasn't a fight I was in any danger of losing, but I liked the pilot's style. He kept it together well enough to warp his pod out, too, which seems unusual in w-space. I sent him enough ISK to cover his loss, and an Evemail wishing him well.

I stalked a Heron, but something must have spooked him because he bailed before actually running any of the sites he had scanned down.

Finally, I saw another Astero on D-scan. After warping to the site, I could see that he was mwd fit, and that he was running between fairly well separated cans that could not be warped to. Because of the distance I had to cover under cloak (100+ km), I needed to guess which can he would run last, so that I had the most time to get into position. Based on where he was when I warped in, thought it likely that he would end up at the 'top' can last, and I started to make my way there.

Everything seemed to be going smoothly, and I was within 20 km of the final can just as he started on the second-to-last can. I anticipated a nice little fight.

However, two more Asteros and a Sabre appear to have been camping that second-to-last can, and they promptly tackled my target and threw up a bubble. The 3v1 ran its predictable course, and it left me shaking my head.

While Tuskers do have a certain amount of 'e-honor' - the Tusker Code is rigidly enforced within the corp - that's not really what this is about. I can even accept that other people find fun different ways than I do. But in the silent world of wormhole pvp, these guys had done the equivalent of march a brass band in one wormhole and out the other.

There would be no more kills - for me, or anyone else - in that system.