Mining Op Fail

I've been feeling somewhat annoyed since Saturday. Dragonstar needed its mineral stock replenished somewhat so I called for a corp mining op. Since mining is - let's face it - incredibly boring and dull, and since we needed some less-common minerals as well, I thought mining in low-sec would do the trick.

So we got two of our more trigger-happy guys to be our cover, and I joined two of our miners. Off to a relatively quiet 0.4 we went. We got ourselves a nice little safe spot where we could unload as there was no station in system and warped to a belt.

We had quiet mining for all of.. oh I don't know, half an hour? Pirates came and went, we'd take precautions. The first group of hardened pirates came in and we made a strategic retreat back to high sec instead of engaging in cat and mouse games.

We listened to tournament commentaries, mined some high-sec until the pirates got bored and left, when we went back. We were there again for about half an hour until an apparently harmless pilot came in. Corp seemed neutral, his own security status seemed alright enough... in spite of his name sounding like a disease, we sort of ignored him. Until my scanner picked him up in a Scorpion. We got a bit suspicious..

.. and then he warped right on top of us and tried to scramble Feu's barge.

[ 2009.01.31 17:48:18 ] (notify) Ginger Itis [T0NE]'T.O.N.E Nebo'(Scorpion) has started trying to warp scramble "Feu dAstres [DS]'Ore Conveyor Belt'(Covetor)"

Needless to say, we scrambled to get our barges out of there in a hurry, but the damned Retriever is far from being either fast or agile. Luckily, he'd gone for one of the barges with warp stabs on. If he'd picked me first I'd have been dead. As it was, the barges all got out fine and our cover pilots distracted Ginger Itis (or whatever his name was) long enough and then broke off.

We hugged our safe spot, hoping he'd get bored of chasing our combat pilots around, but as it turned out he ended up in a staring match with one of us at the gate into high-sec.

Long story short, we called it a day. We hauled what little Jaspet we'd managed to get our hands on back to base and settled down at a high-sec belt, bringing out the Orca instead. I know I was sulking.

Definitely a bad choice of stage for my part. It wasn't a complete loss - all the ships came back intact, we did get some ore - but it was worlds below my expectations. Next time, I must plan things better.

Or bring a bigger support wing.