Funny thing happened to me last night in PotBS. One of my society mates gave a call on Nation chat that he had tagged a 2nd Rate in the red just south of Irish Point (which is on the southern tip of Haiti). All I had nearby was a ‘Defiant’ Sleek 40-gun frigate fitted for speed, accuracy and a little bit of damage. But it didn’t seem like the bulk of the pirate nation was awake, so it was better than nothing. I was in Matthew Town, so it wouldn’t take me long to get to the fight. When I got there, the fight had been reinforced on both sides; the French now had the 2nd Rate, a Mercy, an Intrepid and a Tigre MC, rats had a Cursed Blade, Hercules Pirate refit, Trinidad and my Defiant Sleek.

Now, of the pirate ships, the CB costs 50 Marks of Victory (MoV prices fluctuate, but on Antigua that means a market price anywhere from 500k to 1M doubloons… in EVE terms, more along the lines of 200M to 500M ISK though you can always get your own MoVs through winning PvP battles, in which case it costs only time). The Trinidad costs 90 Marks of Trade (MoT prices are usually around 5k each, so 400-500k doubloons). The PHerc takes 3 Lineship Structure Bundles and will generally gost around a million doubloons. Expensive ships, right? And my Defiant Sleek cost me nothing beyond a 2-hour cooldown for the Take Command skill. It’s a free boat, because I’m a Cutthroat.

When I got into the fight, I wasn’t very far from the action. I tabbed through the targets to see who everyone else was focusing on and took a look at who in our pick-up group was taking the most damage – it was the PHerc, and he was almost down to half structure. So, naturally (to me) my first order of business was to get between him and the enemy to give him a chance to withdraw and hopefully get a repair off to stay in the fight, which I did a pretty good job of at first. At the same time, I was applying any debuffs I could against enemy targets of opportunity who happened across my firing arc. Soon, though, we got to a point where the wind and our enemies’ maneuvering forced us to turn around in order to prevent them from taking our sterns and the wind advantage. Unfortunately, that would mean temporarily presenting our sterns anyway. When faced with that situation, you generally want to wait until after they’ve all fired their broadsides at you so you know you’ve got at least 20 seconds to make your move.

Well, the PHerc miscounted and started his turn. I wasn’t expecting it to be so soon as I was still waiting for one of the enemy ships to fire, and as a result I wasn’t able to cover him and he got spiked out. The rest of the fight went poorly. We killed the Mercy, but at the expense of a much more expensive PHerc. Once it became obvious that we wouldn’t be able to win the fight, I turned my bow toward the enemy with the intent of boarding one and distracting them in order to let the other two expensive ships escape to regroup. In other words, Leroy Jenkins. The ruse was successful, I lost a free boat and saved 2 good boats. This is where the strange thing happened.

I was standing on the dock in Matthew Town, outfitting my next ship, when I got a private message from the PHerc captain, thanking me for the nice thing I did in trying to save his ship. I explained my reasoning that the cheap/free ship should always try to protect the expensive/rare ship and he seemed amazed that I should look at it that way. As if he’d never before seen anyone who thought first of how the team was going to win, rather than how I was going to win.

I’m usually on my own when I go out looking for PvP, and if not alone then it’s usually with other members of Nine Winds. I don’t often do the PUG thing, but when I have PUG’d it’s always worked out that it was with members of above-average PvP societies. Because of this good fortune, I’ve heard stories about such-and-such group being full of noobs, or so-and-so player being an asshat or whatever else, but I hadn’t actually seen the players in question commit the PvP sins they’re accused of… sins like not blocking in a group battle and being afraid of losing a free ship. But this guy’s astonishment and gratitude for my blocking spoke volumes about the sort of PvP experiences he’d had so far in Pirates of the Burning Sea.

Crissakes, Pirates, learn some teamwork!

Popularity: 1% [?]