This afternoon (I'm in California) I drop into a PUG match in my Phract. The match starts and I begin lumbering after my teammates. As I'm moving after them a player in a Dragon opens up on my back.
The first volley I ignore as it could be a newb wanting to see if his/her left mouse button still worked.
The second volley hits me. Now I start turning around (soo slow... How do you heavy pilots do it! I'm still trying to figure that out. Grew up in Commandos) and I get...
Another volley!
That was it! The only friendly mech was the one directly behind me and I alphaed on him. And I just kept firing at him out of pure frustration! I mean, how many times have I just walked away from an errant shot in the back? But his shooting was deliberate!
Finally, after a few seconds, I stop shooting. I didn't want to kill him, only punish him. On chat I asked "why". Just as another teammate shows up and asks "why are you shooting at each other?"
I felt like a petulant child. The teammate who was not in the friendly-firefight moves off and I proceed into the upper city. But before I leave I see the mech that originally fired upon me move off toward the edge of the plateou and just kind of stand there... until he gets hammered by salvo after salvo of LRMs. Which kill him.
I'm thinking that this was a suicide farmer. Only instead of killing himself, he wanted a teammate to do it for him. Kind of a "suicide by cop" thing, yeah?
Thing is, I don't return fire in a blue-on-blue incident. It happens, especially in the heat of battle. The random friendly walks into your line of fire and you just can't undo that trigger pull. But at the start of a match?
Usually I'm in my Commando and am scooting away before they have a chance for a second shot (if that would have been their intention) so I never know for sure if the FF was just an accident. I always have assumed that it was and acted accordingly. Even when fired upon deliberately at the end of a match...
Anyway, I actually survived that match and even got a kill! I apologized to the rest of my team for my behavior... And then the match ended.
Don't know why I'm posting this. A lot of pilots would have done the same, and rightly so. Guess I just felt like I had stepped out of character a bit and it bothered me.
End of cathartic rant. Now back to killing (the enemy).
Edited by Dasht e Lut, 23 December 2012 - 03:57 PM.