Battlecruiser Experience So Far

Starwalker had now flown Drakes for the last couple of months and his experience so far had been that five were killed in gate camps and one was killed in a fight. That was not a great record and certainly not one that he wanted to see repeated.

Starwalker's Drakes had died in gates camps in:

• Syndicate - twice
• Molden Heath - once
• Great Wildlands - once
• Placid - once

The trouble with dying in gate camps - it was simply just the loss of a ship with no real fight involved, which was both frustrating and disappointing. Battlecruisers fitted with T2 modules were around 90m ISK and the Drake insurance (9m ISK) payed out 45m ISK. Assault ships were around 40m ISK with a T2 module fit and with insurance (3m ISK) payed out 9m ISK. T1 frigates were typically around 10m ISK and insurance was negligible. So net losses for each ship type were around

• Battecruisers - 54m ISK
• Assault Ships - 34m ISK
• T1 Frigates - 10m ISK

If Starwalker was going to lose a ship in a gate camp then losing a T1 frigate was far better than losing anything else but also some gate camps could not be bothered to kill the small fry and were looking for something bigger and shinier. Whilst Starwalker would still fly battlecruisers another reason to focus on T1 frigates was that Starwalker also wanted to try out the new frigate attack ships, especially the Slasher and Condor.

The key question for Starwalker was what he would replace his Drake losses with in terms of new battlecruisers. He was gravitating towards trying out the Hurricane as it was faster than the Drake and it could potentially deal better with frigates, whilst still putting up a good fight with same class ships.

He still had his strategic base with its small stockpile of battlecruisers so it was not a question of going to the market and buying more ships - yet. What was definitely true was that his wallet was better able to handle the losses from frigates rather than battlecruisers and in the end it always came down to - only fly what you can afford to lose.

So, Starwalker would probably spend more of his time in frigates and occasionally fly battlecruisers. In reality, he liked flying frigates more with their speed and agility and the losses hurt less, especially those from gate camps.