I have not seen the power of a Manticore first hand except for in the hands of an inexperienced pilot, and I was never impressed. Boy has that opinion chnaged.
As I was putting the finishing touches on the defenses of our Large POS, I was also mining with a coprmate. After about an hour of mining (8 cans out), I spammed the directional, saw Russian named combat probes in system and immediately warped the squad to the POS. Couple seconds later saw a buzzard appear on scanner. I also stopped the final setup and jumped my main into a the Magnate. Warped to safe spot, threw a probe and cloaked. No new sigs in system, still our two mass criticalled statics and the annoying K162 from a Class 1-3 system that was a little to active to risk the orca to close.
So I warped to the Grav site off 100km and cloaked to watch. After about 3 minutes was the buzzard appear for a second and recloak. Why would he need to uncloak? To set a BM? Pretty sure you can set a bookmark cloaked? Watching directional for the next few minutes saw him pop on directional a few more times. Very wierd for a covert to need to keep popping up like that.
Anyway, the Orca was already on way to get first cans so quickly loaded what I could and got out of there. I then made the decision to try and make a few mammoth runs to get the remaining cans. Mistake 1, was using a cargo rigged Mammoth. Mistake 2, not adding at least 2 warp stab's. Anyway made it in and out 4 times. Not so lucky on the 5th. My "logic" was that the mammoth would be able to align and be ready to warp by time a cloaked ship could uncloak and target. Wrong. Fifth trip in saw the "red" uncloak, was locked in like 3 seconds and in two shots was bye bye Mammoth. So final balance sheet was 100k m3 of crokite into my hanger, and minus a mammoth and 3 cargo rigs. Plus 25 million isk and minus a little bit more.
Needless to say I have a new found respect for the power of a properly fitted and piloted Manticore. And a lot less desire to risk ships over cans of ore. Also, I guess waiting till there is an Orca load or more might be a little too much between hauling runs.
Good news is another lesson learned in my continuing development as a W-Space player at a cost very much within my budget.
Fly Safer then me,
Mick
9 hours ago
yep Stealth Bombers are pretty nasty :-) They don't even have to target to launch a bomb and that alone can one-shot most industrials. I wouldn't risk the Orca or any other ship to carry ore back to the POS knowing that there are ships there that might be a threat.
ReplyDeleteWe once had our Orca ransomed and we realized how valuable she is to risk losing her for cargo runs... The Orca stays at the POS at all times and should go out only if you have pilots who can protect her.