Fly Fast, Shoot First, Do or Die

Starwalker was cruising around Heimatar, with a new attitude - fly fast, shoot first, do or die. It was overcoming risk aversion with more fights and Starwalker was looking for a fight, same class or above class.

He found it in the form of a Wolf in Aliette, piloted by Hogaarr. Starwalker checked the Battleclinic killboard and Hogaarr had lots of kills so this was not an easy fight with a Rifter against a Wolf. Previously, Starwalker would have simply moved on but this time was different.

Starwalker went to a customs office, to be easily found, and started to d-scan for the Wolf location. No need. The Wolf arrived on scene about 50km away. Starwalker started to burn towards the Wolf and wondered if it would possible to get under the guns and do some damage.

Setting the auto-cannons and rockets to overheat the Rifter targeted and engaged the Wolf, setting the range to 600m. The range closed but only to around 1800m and the auto-cannons from both ships spat death at each other. The Wolf shields melted away but the armour was much tougher and Starwalker realized his first mistake – Republic Fleet Phased Plasma.

This ammunition choice was fine for T1 ships but nigh on useless against a Wolf. It was too late to try and change the ammunition and Starwalker could see that the Rifter armour was being riddled with bullet holes. It wouldn’t be much longer. This was when Starwalker realised his second mistake – he hadn’t tried to overheat the afterburner to close into 600m. The Wolf was dictating range and had kept the Rifter from getting under its guns. The Rifter started to burn.

Starwalker aligned out with the Rifter in flames and started to spam the warp – not to save the ship but to save the pod. The shiny new Rifter, now riddled with holes and on fire, exploded into a ball of fire and was no more and out of the dying flames the pod emerged and raced away to safety.

Starwalker had lost another ship – to be expected, every ship would have a fiery death. So what about those other factors for risk aversion?

• Killboard, another loss – so what?
• Target selection, above class fight so not an easy kill but some lessons learnt – so good outcome
• Sense of loss – around ISK 9 million, so not so bad. Lost a ship, sure but that was lost anyway it was only a question of when and how

The pod docked in the home station and Starwalker realized that he had no more Rifters to lose. Well, time to buy some more then and maybe it was time to see what else would look good in flames.