Megathron Navy Issue bites the dust!

The Megathron Navy Issue that I've had for about two years was finally destroyed last night. In a strange sort of way I became attached to it, a constant companion during the good times and the bad.

Stupidity was my co-pilot on that fateful mission. A level 4, Worlds Collide, about 5k LP and a few million ISK. A mission I had done solo many many times. I was distracted, I was not concentrating and the mission bit hard.

Upon entering the mission I veered right, destroyed the ships to unlock the gate and gain some extra bounty. When I entered the next room it puts you in the middle of the enemy NPC's, they started to agro against me which is fine. My fatal mistake was not to concentrate and destroy all the frigates first. In a Battleship Frigates take a long time to target, 15 to 20 seconds sometimes, though this can be improved if desired. I targetted the Cruisers and Battlecruisers, gained all the agro and started blasting away with the 425mm Prototype Railguns. However the Frigates came upon me quite quickly, webbed and warped jammed the ship and then the problems started coming thick and fast.

When a Battleship is webbed it goes slower, the enemy can now hit you harder, your damage taken increases, normally panic starts to raise its ugly head.

So I've now realised the problem, about 8 Frigates orbiting me, my guns are useless against them, taking large amounts of damage from all enemy ships. I re-target the drones against the Frigates but ultimately their are too many and the ship is lost with only one Frigate left warp jamming me.

It is now a recovery operation. Head back to home base and pick up the salvaging ship, a Myrmidon, put a packaged Shuttle in the hold and head back to the mission system two jumps away. In my haste to try and warp away I was not able to bookmark the location of my wreck as my pod warped away immediately upon the destruction of the Battleship. So my plan is to warp to my wreck using the Shuttle, bookmark my wreck, talk to the agent in the adjacent system and intentionally fail the mission leaving my wreck and NPC wrecks, my drones etc, and take it all back to my home system. This all happens without any issues, I gather the surviving loot from my destroyed ship, use the on-board salvagers in the Myrmidon upon my wreck, and then salvage and loot the destroyed NPC ships.

So the lessons to be learned from this are as follows. Don't become complacent, missions can still bite and Frigates will bring about your demise more often than not.