Pixels and Space Dust Episode V 

One of the things I ask most pilots is what they would consider their most epic fail in game. Eve.pics has shared some regrettable losses from CCP Falcon, Brisc Ruball, and other New Eden capsuleers. Now it’s time for me, Serena Anderson, to share my loss mails and to tell the story behind them. I’ll start with the oldest kill mails and slowly work towards the present, in the blog items to come.

Episode V – The 10 minute Rokh

I have always been a Caldari fanboy at heart, up until today. The overall design and appeal get to me, and I really like flying Caldari ships. Fresh into my Eve journey, I was always on the lookout for better and bigger ships. At the time I was a big fan of railguns, and I had worked my way up from the Cormorant to the Moa and Ferox. The next step up was the mighty Rokh battleship. I wasn’t particularly ‘space-rich’ at the time, so I decided to try and build it. A friend of mine was a true industrialist, and if I would give him the required materials he would build it for me.

I bought a good blueprint copy and started mining. My trusty mining barge mined for weeks on end, getting all the ore needed to build the Rokh. The last bit of the minerals I bought from the market, and I was ready to hand it all over to my friend.

After he built it for me, I fitted it with railguns and made it into a semi-decent sniper ship. I already had enough PVE ships, so I intended this for fleet PVP. My alliance was situated in Olettiers back then and gatecamped there almost every day. I wanted to use the Rokh to assist them a bit better and to get on more kill mails. The range on the railguns would be perfect and the hitpoints would also more than protect me against the stargate guns.

“I warped to them as fast as I could”

In the same week as I completed the Rokh I was just hanging in the Olettiers station. One of our guys had been killed by a roaming gang and my alliance CEO also lost a Keres. They sent out some guys and they quickly caught the enemy pilots in an asteroid field. More of my buddies undocked in cruisers and frigates to help out, and I undocked the Rokh. It’s great maiden voyage, the first PVP battle versus a couple of nasty combatants. My friends were still in the asteroid field, so I warped to them as fast as I could.

Battleships have a slow warp speed, compared to cruisers. While I was in warp, the number of pilots in local spiked. More enemy players had come in, all of them belonging to the group that had initially come into our system. My friends saw the numbers, and the extra ships on D-Scan. Two Machariel battleships and more cruisers, and were heading to the asteroid best.
As soon as I landed, all my squad mates were already warping off the field. And quickly after that, the enemy ships landed all around me.

I thought of getting away as well, but within seconds I already had a warp disruptor on me. I tried to make the best of a bad situation, but I wasn’t able to get the Rokh safely back to base.
It died heroically, fighting against impossible odds: https://zkillboard.com/kill/39714089/

A learning experience

Afterward I docked my pod back in the station. I experimented with new Rokh fittings, and after some time a bought a new Rokh and built that one as an ultra-long-range sniper. 
I haven’t lost a Rokh since that, and I’ve learned not to be so stupid to warp a battleship into a cruiser fight. It got used for a little over 10 minutes, and then it blew up…

Sadly for me, this wasn’t the only big loss mail for me. I’ll share the rest of them another time.