You must have your wits about you at all times in EVE Online, whether exploring unchartered space or engaging in PvP. But even the most seasoned spacefarers among us can still get caught out. The true test of a pilot comes when you need to react when a plan comes unstuck, and the best stories come when you escape an ambush or another sticky situation by the skin of your teeth.
So we want to hear about a time when you came closest to meeting a terrible fate and instead managed to get outta dodge just in time. The narrowest of escapes - and in turn, the best tales - will net themselves $12. Shout out to Reilly Reese for suggesting this one in our first "suggest-a-bounty" bounty!
already paid
$60 / 72
Reward details
This reward closed to entries at 10:58am on October 24, 2023 but you can still reply, react, and join the conversation below! If you’d like to enter other rewards which are still open, click here.
When Eve Rookies first started 2.5 years ago, it was a few good friends, myself and my husband that got it going. The first few months of fleets was the lot of us heavily boxing the fleet. We maybe got one or two brave people that took a chance to join our public incursion fleets. Since I was the one primarily FCing, I was always in the claymore and my husband usually duel boxed logi.
Standard operating procedure (before we got tons of Marauder pilots that hurry to be first into a Vanguard site) was that the Claymore went first to take aggro and tank. This way any Praxis pilots who weren't as skilled wouldn't constantly get beat up on. Up until "the incident" everything went fine. Until it didn't.
Once again the Sansha were beating on my poor Claymore. I broadcast for shields. No reps. I watch my shield turn into armor. Then I watched my armor turn into hull...
As a FC, I've never raised my voice. Ever. I've had ships get Concorded in my incursion fleets. I've had several newbros get lost in a pvp fleet right before we were going to take a fight. I have people constantly shooting the pod before I call for it. To this day, the ONLY time anyone has ever heard me raise my voice on comms was when I shouted down the stairs at my husband to rep the Claymore (open voice chat).
He saved the Claymore with 3 hull left. Then he informed me that he got distracted by Discord and that's why the Claymore almost became a pretty explosion.
And that folks, has been my narrowest escape. Be careful when you say, "I wish my partner played with me..." You might lose a Claymore.
I'm just going through some old posts from while I was away in order to prepare some new curated content, and I don't feel this post got the love it deserved Kshal Aideron - it's a gem!
This actually happened on stream for me. I was in a Superior Sleeper Cache and was hacking the Remote Defense Grid in the Mine Field. On a failure, all the mines in the room detonate, dealing massive damage to your ship. I have lost ships from this before.For some reason, whether by misclick or an input not registering, my ship drifted away from the Defense Grid during the hack, causing it to automatically fail and begin to detonate all the mines in the site.
At that moment, I was certain I had just lost my ship, letting out a “Oh f**k me, bye!”. Luckily, I had consumed a Halcyon Y-5 Booster from the daily rewards, which left me with astonishingly little hull remaining instead of resulting in a lossmail.Thank CCP for those neat little boosters!
Deep behind enemy lines, I was running my infamous ShrinkWrapped fleet and we were out in The Kalevala Expanse heading from the North East corner to the Home Staging system of R10, or Rio as it is commonly known as.By entering Rio through the pipe from 74D, the standing fleet has the time to get active and rally the troops to intercept any hostile threat. We were that hostile threat.
The beauty of Rio is there are so many exit points - you can go to RQ, I2, BG, GQ, and then onward - effectively it's a 1 in, 4 out system, and you can really lose a hostile fleet if you play your hand right - ie. playing gate games, and use your aggression timers to your strategic advantage.
The worst thing about running through this area is the gate interface from QG to Rio - the Keepstar is on grid 1K km away, and a response fleet can readily drop down to engage within a blink of an eye. This night was no different.
The standing fleet had obviously had a quiet night, and this meant that snacking on some Raptors was obviously on the menu!
As with every roam that I run, these are public fleets, and knowledge of the fleet commander often gets leaked and fleet movement can sometimes be disrupted should the FC ever get caught - or headshotted.
In this instance, I got well and truly caught and pinned down by the enemy forces, so I handed command over to my second in command to lead the fleet to safety as the whole of my fleet managed to get out!
I was left stuck on a gate ping ponging back and forth waiting my timers.
Now this is where big-brain thinking comes in - i was delaying trying to catch up through choice, by design if you will - and was I specifically doing this to allow my friendly fleet to extract to safety.
Somewhat hilariously though, rather than the hostile fleet give chase for a fleet of 20 or more, which they could have easily caught, engaged and killed, the opposing force opted to try to catch a lone straggler - ie. me - which bought us all sufficient time for our fleet to get 3 or 4 systems away and into the relative safety of Etherium Reach.
Every time i crashed gate, they aggressed me, meaning that they could not take the chase to the larger target (the fleet), meaning that they were effectively stuck in system. Each time I crashed gate, I held my cloak each time for the full period, to allow any damage that I had taken as I crashed gate to regenerate, buying even more time for my fleet to get safe.
This last time, I managed to spawn on the correct side of the dictor bubble to power out of the warp disruption bubble, and miniwarp up to a mobile depot that was on grid (400k above ping).
The beauty of the mighty Raptor is it is quick - and has the ability to overheat to 7K. In this instance, I didnt even need it. Their light tackle did not manage to catch me - i was only long pointed and jammed (lolz) and I managed to power out of the bubble, break my point, and get safe, eventually catching up with my fleet to resume fleet command and lead us all home to safety!
I had been camping Frat space for a few days, and they were getting quite annoyed with my antics.
I caught a Devoter in my trap, but he didn't react in surprise like most of my victims. He immediately targeted me and activated his bubble, just as one of his friends appeared in a Lachesis. I had a feeling it was a planned ambush, and began moving my Loki to safety.
I wasn't fast enough with my Keres however. The Lachesis' bonus to warp disruption range let him tackle me as I was burning away. I managed to damp him off, finally activating warp, just as a Hel landed. You know you're doing something right when they throw a Hel at you.
So this happened a few weeks ago, sometimes I just have to get the blood pumping and feel alive while also just being lazy.
I needed to move some capital BPOs out of Jita 4-4 to place them for research, so in my usual chaotic nature I loaded them into a Council Diplomatic Shuttle and undocked...
I made it into warp and soon landed on the gate, I was then targeted, scanned then understandably red-boxed.
My heart was about to explode at this point but I managed to take the gate with 2% structure left. Needless to say that was enough adrenaline for me for awhile & in case anyone was wondering I was carrying 80b+ of BPOs.
My first time living in null, was as a renter. Going from HS to Null ore in 2009/2010, it was night and day! But it's dangerous right?! Then I realized, if you just watched local, not at all really. Swimming in all the ISK I could ever want for EoH poker at the time!
Then after some weeks or months word came. Landlords had talked too much smack, and were being evicted! Hostiles at the gates, only so much time to extract! It was middle of the week, and a handful of us pulled a late late nighter as leadership got our goods out. How close was it? We got the last haul out of system just as hostiles it local gate!
Would this be exciting to me now? Probably not. But then, when not nearly as aware of how the game worked, it was exhilarating! And that was my first EVE narrow escape.
I was hauling in a Deep-Space-Transport on autopilot as I ate my food.
Was caught as I accidentally went through a Low-Security system, a carrier and scramming ship got me, carrier neuted me out so I had no capacitor, and they were shooting me.....
Thought ah scrw it and began firing fireworks at the gang, they put "cute", "lol" in local, but eventually stopped, one said "A for Effort" and they let me go warning me to be cautious next time.
