Guest Post: The Midnight Sun

Best Gate Camp Ever (But me on the wrong end of it...)

So yesterday was a pretty poor day for me.

I came out of the wormhole (appropriately destabilized) in Gesh, to help a corpmate move some ships. Flying along through low-sec in a Cheetah with cov-ops cloak is rarely stressful, so I wasn't paying as much attention as I should.

Turns out I paid WAY less attention than I should, and got popped on a gate that I was just sitting at like a moron while reading my blogs. *blush*

Suffice to say, I'm annoyed with myself, not with the pirates. I know better.

So I travel on, pick up a shuttle and keep moving. I help my friend (albeit after like 40 jumps because the target wormhole closed and he had to reroute me...) and head back to base in my handy-dandy shuttle. Not as awesome as a Cheetah, but seriously, it's a pretty safe way to fly.

I drop into Udianoor in my shuttle and see a rather healthy gate camp, complete with a half-dozen wrecks. "Woah... that's not so good.." I think to myself as I take a breath and hit the warp button. My ship hurtles forward, cutting a tight corner to align and zips into warp. I let the breath out, knowing that there's almost no chance of being locked, destroyed, locked again, and podded, before I could get through the stargate and be on my way.

I drop out of warp, and there goes my shields, and armor, and structure. I'm in my pod.. Holy cow, spam the jump button! There goes my shields, armor, structure. I'm waking up in a new clone.

I'm up on my feet, staring at the screen, opening up my combat log to try and work out what the heck just happened.

Smartbomb gate-camp.

The lack of locking suddenly makes sense, my poor shuttle and implant-laden (just +3's, nothing to cry about) pod fell victim to a well laid trap involving several smartbombing ships arrayed around both entrance and exit of the system.

My hat, were I wearing one, would be off to MasterMental over at Cosmic Encounter, a well laid trap indeed. Interestingly, Dotlan shows just how successful they were, as Udianoor peaked at over 120 kills within a 6 hour span.

Suffice to say a bad day. Fortunately, I wasn't making my "Loot Run", which I performed today without incident. I can safely say I'm ok with losing some +3's, a Cheetah and Minmatar Shuttle, when comparing it to the over 1Billion ISK in assets I moved and sold today.

Fly straight, unless there's a smartbomb!