Jaguar Dies Due to Stupidity

Roaming in Molden Heath had been largely uneventful with few systems offering targets of opportunity. Starwalker was in a Jaguar and jumped into system to see another Jaguar burning away from the gate at around 40km. It was chasing a target and too far away to catch so Starwalker warped to the Sun.

However, before the warp engaged the Jaguar, piloted by Alex Medvedov, had turned around and was burning back towards Starwalker. The warp engaged and Starwalker was gone but he was looking for a fight and so he waited at the Sun. Medvedov clearly thought Starwalker would not engage and left system.

Starwalker had seen the pilot’s name before and vaguely thought he may have previously lost a ship to a pimped out Jaguar but couldn’t remember for sure and equally that didn’t really matter. Starwalker would engage again and perhaps lose this ship. Losing a ship was not a problem, especially against a top ranked pilot.

In the next system Starwalker could see Medvedov in local but couldn’t find him very quickly from his scanning point. So he decided that he would simply move on to the next system, assuming Medvedov was in station. He wasn’t.

As Starwalker arrived at the stargate, there was Medvedov. Starwalker had used the Jump command and so automatically jumped through but he assumed Medvedov would come in hot.

So Starwalker moved in a random direction to de-cloak and started to pre-heat the guns. Medvedov appeared in system 18km away and targeted Starwalker. It was on. Starwalker burnt towards him and engaged, setting the range to 1km with guns firing from 13km.

Medvedov came in close and it was clear that this would simply be a slug-fest, firing at each other at point blank range until one of the ships exploded. Starwalker noticed that his shields were going down much faster and realized that he had the wrong ammunition type loaded – phased plasma. It was the same mistake as against the Wolf.

Medvedov had no problem in hitting hard and it was also clear that he was neuting as well. Soon, Starwalker went into armour, lost all capacitor and then flashed through structure. Medvedov’s shield had dropped down to around 10%. It was not close, and perhaps Fusion ammunition would not have changed the result but it was a stupid mistake. Worse, it was a repeated mistake. The Jaguar exploded.

Starwalker escaped with his pod and back at base considered the fight and how it would have gone with Fusion. If nothing else it would have resulted in a closer fight, even if the outcome were the same. More interesting was how would the fight have gone if Starwalker were flying a Hookbill? Starstepper would deliver a Hookbill soon…