Eve Online: Suicide Gank Gone Wrong

We all make mistakes in Eve, although I suspect that I make them far too often. That being said, I haven't repeated the same mistake more than once that I can recall. I haven't fallen for the "Why won't this station let me dock?" scam more than once, or the "I'm going to sit 100km away from station and wait for you to come to me, so I can drop a cyno" more than once, or the "Let's go suicide gank someone, and then fail horribly" more than once.... so far.

Three days ago, our corporation and our sister corporation merged into a one new corporation. During this time, we had to leave our old corporation and join the new one, which also meant that we had to reapply to join the alliance that we are part of. There is a waiting period to be approved and added back into the alliance, so in the meantime all of our members jump cloned out to high sec to spend a few days running errands. Reason is that we are not currently "blue" to the alliance, and since we can't dock at our own outpost, we decided to try and use our time wisely.

Two days passed and we were all bored out of our minds in high sec, trying to find ways to spice up our days so we don't die staring at our screens, accomplishing nothing. We tried running level 4 missions for a day, and for a day it was fun again, but not lucrative. The 2nd day we didn't even bother with level 4 missions anymore. I spent a few hours scanning trying to find some combat sites and relic sites to run, just to compare to ones we've been running out in null sec. The difference in difficulty and potential ISK is night and day, plus there are hundreds of people scanning in high sec, all competing for a few hundred thousand ISK. In null sec I can make 100-200 million on one Relic site. I've seen multiple covert ops scanning frigates running relic sites in high sec, and it just makes me laugh. That player could take that same ship into null sec or low sec and drastically increase their earnings. Even if they lose a ship every now and then, their profit margin will be well worth the risk.

Yesterday we were so bored that five of us decided to organize a suicide gank. Aside from shooting ninja salvagers, none of us have ever organized or participated in a suicide gank. I've read about them a few times, watched a few happen, so I attempted to devise a plan to gank someone on their way to JITA in a tech 1 hauler. We all fit up catalysts and between the 5 of us, we have about 2000 dps we can dish out. I fit a passive targeting module and a cargo scanner, so we can make sure that we don't try to gank an empty hauler. At this point, I'm sitting on one side of a gate watching and scanning ships as the approach, and the rest of our crew is on the other side of the gate ready to pounce.

This is where the problems arise. Even though everyone in our group has never been part of a suicide gank before, everyone thinks they are an expert and won't quit shouting orders and suggestions. Some members leave the other side of the gate and go try and scout other gates for suitable targets (mind you I'm the only one with a cargo scanner), and they keep calling out "ITERON V OVER HERE!" or "BADGER MARK II" , blah blah blah. It takes a few minutes to convince them that I am the only one with a cargo scanner, and I'm not going to chase down all these ships when there are plenty passing right in front of me.

To make a long story not too long, I finally found a suitable target carrying about 100 million ISK in value and auto piloting. If half of that drops, it'll cover the cost of our ships, but probably nothing more. We're really only doing this for the fun anyways, not trying to find a billion ISK cargo and an easy kill. I inform the crew that the target ship is jumping into their system now and to watch what gate they jump to when they come in then we'll gank them as they slow boat to the next gate. Meanwhile, I am jumping through too to help out. Everyone watches, and everyone thinks the target ship jumps to a different gate........ great. Everyone follows their own gates and I randomly pick one to go to since I have no clue at all (apparently they don't either).

Luck is on my side and I choose the right gate, the target is slow boating towards the next gate when I land. I let everyone know to warp to me and and that once everyone gets there we'll take him down. Someone hears "Take him down" and starts shooting....shit. Another one shows up and starts shooting because he sees someone else already shooting, by this time the first guy has blown up from concord. I decide to go ahead and start shooting hoping to still get the kill even though we don't have everyone here yet. Concord quickly pops the second ganker and then turns on me. The other two warp just in time to see me blow up, and the target auto pilot jumps into the next system. Epic fail for all of us.

Now time for some retrospective and lessons learned:

1) To everyone that hates gankers, congrats to you for getting a good laugh at our expense. Happy to oblige.

2) When you run a fleet op there needs to be only ONE fleet commander (maybe a backup if he gets podded), but only one person should be calling out orders or it confuses the shit out of the entire fleet. When 5 people are talking at the same time, all telling everyone to do something different, you're bound to fail. Even if the FC gets it wrong and everyone dies anyways, your mission has a lot more chance of success if only one person is in charge.

3) Concord was sitting on our faces when we started to attack and even though we were in a .6 system, there response time was reduced to almost nothing. Next time, we need to commit a crime and draw them away, or find a spot with no concord.

4) I really miss null sec.

5) I had a 3.5 security status before attacking the target, and lost .1 for the criminal act. Not too bad at all. I don't know if you actually lose more if you blow up their ship, but I do know you take a big hit if you pod someone. I'm hoping that once you commit the crime of attacking someone, you don't lose an additional security hit when their ship blows up. Obviously you want their ship to blow up, otherwise you wouldn't have attacked them. Two standing hits for the same act would be stupid, but I don't know how that works.

6) Aside from the epic fail, it was fun and it was an adrenaline rush. I'm not going to make a living out of it, but I wouldn't be opposed to attempting that once a month, just for shits and grins.

7) Next time, I'll probably find another location and not near JITA. There were gankers everywhere, which also meant there was CONCORD everywhere.