Perils of Stupidity

Starwalker had been planet-side for a couple of weeks and had missed the excitement of the war declaration with Eve University, although he had contributed to the war effort with ISK. He found his trusty little Merlin still docked with the burn marks from its last dance with death. It was good to be back.

 

Undocking in the Merlin Starwalker slipped into the black of space looking for his next fight. He wandered over to Eugales and then down to Agoze and Ouelletta. The controls seemed sluggish and he made a mental note to have the ship serviced when it was docked, perhaps the last fight had left more than a few burn marks.

A cynosaural beacon suddenly appeared on scan and the temptation to go and blast it was too much, Starwalker warped in to zero and found a Condor along with an Archon. Starwalker decided to engage immediately and overheated his blasters but forgot to get his damage control unit cycling. The Condor went down fast but without any protection from the sentry guns the Merlin was having new holes added to its hull.

Starwalker had aligned out quickly but it was too late, with the next shot the Merlin exploded just before it could warp to safety. If the DCU had been cycling Starwalker knew that he would have survived as his blaster boat put out some horrendous DPS but as a glass canon it was very vulnerable to being shattered. These were the perils of stupidity - it could result in silly losses.

It was not all bad as Starwalker knew that the ship was lost, it was only a question of when but clearly it would be better to lose it in a fight than to stupidity. However, he did remember that Lhorenzho had commented that shooting cyno ships was dicey in T1 frigates as sentries could easily spoil the getaway. That was not the lesson here, the lesson here was to turn on the tank before engaging the cyno ship. Since sentry guns could easily destroy a frigate - speed was of the essence. 

Starwalker also needed some more T1 frigates as that was his last one in station. Before making that new purchase it was also worth considering whether his next Merlin should use a more standard shield extender fit or perhaps try a new module - an ancillary shield booster. Decisions, decisions, decisions.