Cost of Experimentation and Learning

Starwalker liked to experiment a little with his ships and their fit, sometimes it seemed to work and at other times it failed miserably. Similarly, he liked to see what a ship could do in a certain situation even if that meant losing the ship that he was flying. He saw this as the cost of experimentation and learning and he had no qualms about losing ships.

Whilst he was not afraid to experiment and lose ships that did not mean that he wished to throw away ships in a useless attempt to beat the odds. It was a blurred line between what was a stupid decision and when that decision to experiment was good. The cost in lost ships was simply a necessary part of learning about ship capabilities.

Starwalker had recently lost a Breacher to a Daredevil to see if the dual tank made any real difference to the fight - it did not. When flying this Daredevil it was lost when Starwalker decided to engage an Algos, a fight he could easily have avoided. He had known that taking on an Algos with a T1 frigate was a very difficult proposition and consequently he had avoided them generally. The question he wanted answered was would the DPS powerhouse that was the Daredevil fare any better - in short, no.

The Caracal had a reputation of frigate killer with its Rapid Light Missile system and Starwalker jumped into a small frigate gang at the sun to see what would happen. He was scrambled very quickly, which shut down the micro warp drive. Without a working propulsion system all that Starwalker could do was to attack the nearby frigates. This Breacher went down along with an Incursus but despite a good tank the Caracal was destroyed.

The brawling Merlin that Starwalker was flying was just ambling away from the station scanning the nearby complexes when an Incursus arrived and docked up. A short while later it undocked and then started to pursue the Merlin. Since it was travelling just under 1300 m/s it was clear that it was afterburner fit and had speed modules fitted. It was a simple assumption from there that it was railgun fit.

At this point the decision was to stay and fight or to leave before the Incursus caught up. Starwalker decided to stay, to see if the Merlin could get in close despite the speed disadvantage. The Merlin applied some modest damage but despite overheating the afterburner the range stayed around 7km and it was not long before the Merlin was a wreck.

A far more questionable decision and one based on an invalid assumption was to engage a Harpy in a Kestrel. The intent was that the Kestrel with its dual web fit could leave the fight based on range control. This notion was soon destroyed when the Harpy engaged with its point and railguns from 20km away. Whilst Starwalker had previously fitted a Harpy as a brawler not everyone did so. Burning in with the afterburner was incredibly slow and despite briefly getting into scramble range the Kestrel was doomed.

Flight of the Heron

Starwalker had claimed to want to experiment a little with range control and damage projection. This Heron fitting was intended to take advantage of the five mid-slots to establish range control, primarily with the double web:

[Heron, StarWalker Shikkoken's Heron]

200mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates I
Micro Auxiliary Power Core II
1MN Afterburner II
J5b Phased Prototype Warp Scrambler I
X5 Prototype Engine Enervator
X5 Prototype Engine Enervator
DDO Photometry Tracking Disruptor I,Optimal Range Disruption Script

280mm Howitzer Artillery II,Republic Fleet Phased Plasma S
Rocket Launcher II,Inferno Rage Rocket
Rocket Launcher II,Inferno Rage Rocket

Small Trimark Armor Pump I
Small Trimark Armor Pump I
Small Trimark Armor Pump I

Hobgoblin II x4
Warrior II x3

It might have worked against a brawler or scram-kiter but when he scanned a Condor to a complex it was a throw of the dice as to whether it was rocket or light missile fit. He warped into the complex and it was 35km away, not a good sign. Starwalker started to burn towards it thinking it was a mistake and then that sinking sensation was confirmed as he briefly got a lock and then was damped to ~17km and lost the lock.

From there it was all downhill as the light missile damage came in and none went out. Starwalker made a desperate run for it and actually got out of overheated point range and heard his warp drive engage - just as the Heron exploded to the last missile salvo to reach its target. The first flight of the Heron had been unsuccessful but that was more an issue of target selection rather than ship capability.

Since he had only one Heron, now deceased, Starwalker undocked in his Caracal and got some surprising kills. This cyno-ship and this cyno-ship were just unlucky as Starwalker usually went out of his way to kill a cyno-ship even if they were noob-ships. This Slasher should never have been caught and was playing with fire by getting too close to the Caracal, perhaps it was bait for the Maller and Moa that came into the complex but Starwalker did not hang around to find out.

Another surprising kill was this Merlin in a medium complex that seemed to want to take on a cruiser. It stood no chance and the pilot, sidetracker, then broadcast that a Caracal was in the medium complex, presumably in the hope that someone would come and kill it. Nothing happened and so instead Starwalker collected the loot and moved on.

Much more satisfying was this Hawk and its buddy, another Hawk, that tried to kill Starwalker's Caracal whilst at the sun. Given that this 2 v 1 was two assault frigates versus an attack cruiser it didn't count in Starwalker's mind as a fight against the odds. Similarly, this Thrasher was no real fight as it was ratting and was basically ganked. 

Starwalker scanned four frigates at a medium complex and that presented a real fight.
He entered the complex hoping to kill one or more of the Enyo, Condor, Slasher and Malediction that were there. Starwalker was not sure if he would win against these odds but they scattered, except for the Enyo. After a brief fight the Enyo decided that it was time to go and he was bugging out in structure when Starwalker repeated the same mistake as previously of burning out his missile launchers.

Realising that it was over Starwalker tried to escape before the Enyo noticed that the missile barrage had stopped but the long align time allowed the Enyo to get the scramble again. Now it really was over and some of the Enyo's friends came back to get in on the kill.

Starwalker would have to stop overheating his missile launcher at the start of the fight. That worked fine for frigate engagements but he had burnt out his launchers twice in a cruiser - despite trying to stop the overheat. Hopefully this would not be a mistake he would repeat again soon, or better - ever.

Randomness of Engagements

Starwalker had been flying around New Eden in primarily frigates for nearly two years, he had joined the Black Rebel Rifter Club (R1FTA) in June 2011 and had never looked back. He still enjoyed the Rebel lifestyle and part of that was the randomness of engagements, in short, every time he undocked he had no idea what would happen.

He undocked in a Merlin and headed out towards Metropolis and soon found a system with a number of frigates in it, so he warped to the sun and proceeded to scan down their locations. It was not long before he was joined at the sun by a Republic Fleet Firetail and Starwalker lost no time in engaging it. The Firetail soon started to suffer serious damage from the neutron blasters but seemed to be doing very little damage return.

Starwalker suspected that he was being tackled by a fleet scout and hoped that he would have enough time to kill the Firetail before they arrived. He noticed a number of frigates arriving just as the Firetail was destroyed. Starwalker had no time to loot and immediately left the scene of the crime before another point could be applied. Freedom! Looking at the Firetail's dual propulsion, tackling fit he had appeared to have had some luck as it had arrived at zero and been caught immediately. If it had arrived at range it would have been a different story.

A little while later he was not so lucky, he had hoped to catch a Kestrel warping to the acceleration gate but he could not destroy it before the rest of the gang arrived and his Merlin was gone. It had been a good ship and Starwalker felt the urge for a little revenge and so he undocked a Caracal that was fit to destroy frigates with its rapid missile launchers and light missiles. Unfortunately they decided not to engage.

A Wolf and Executioner that did decide to engage had such a speed advantage that they could and did disengage as soon as it was clear that they were more likely to be destroyed than the Caracal. The Caracal had great damage projection but without any way to point the target and hold it the target could disengage at will. Eventually Starwalker returned to base with his Caracal still intact.

Over a number of months now it seemed to Starwalker that he was meeting many more faster ships, and the brawlers that he met tended to wait at a complex acceleration gate or warp-in location to catch kiters. Or may be that was just an artefact of many low-sec dwellers roaming faction warfare space looking for a fight. Something to think about.

Whilst Starwalker liked the sheer brute force of neutron blasters he also knew that without range control that damage could not be applied effectively. Without range control, damage projection took on vital importance. It would be interesting to think about and experiment with some ship fits and consider the relative importance of range control, damage projection, tank, speed and capacitor in relation to targets.

Return Journey from Rebel Roam

Starwalker had lost his Merlin during the Rebel roam and Johann West had kindly provided a blaster Incursus as a replacement. It was a good ship and the resistance, armour repairer based fit seemed perfectly reasonable. The only change that he would have made was to sport a Hobgoblin II instead of the Hobgoblin I. The Hobgoblin I choice was probably due to lack of drone skills and Starwalker remembered that these were some of the skills that he had trained later rather than earlier.

As he headed back to base he spied a Republic Fleet Firetail in a small complex and warped in. The Firetail was around 40km away and as Starwalker's afterburner fit Incursus burnt towards it the Firetail easily evaded capture with its MWD. Its artillery rained fire on the Incursus as the range oscillated between 15km and 24km. After multiple attempts to slingshot the Firetail into scramble range Starwalker gave up and looked for an opportunity to escape point.

A short while later he managed to escape and warped to the sun with Kaiirii in hot pursuit and also complaining in local that Starwalker was running from a fight. Starwalker evaded him again at the sun and docked up to repair the heat damage. Kaiirii followed up his initial complaint with an accusation of cowardice and Starwalker followed his standard practice... and ignored it.

What Starwalker took from the engagement was that he was not able to manually pilot an afterburner fit brawling frigate into scram range against a MWD fit kiting frigate. It was not just this fight but many engagements where he had not been able to achieve that. Perhaps it was weak manual piloting skills or perhaps it was not possible if the target paid attention to slingshot manoeuvres and took evasive action. In any case, Starwalker needed to rethink his approach to catching fast ships and what he would fly.

However, that would have to wait as he spotted a Heron in another complex and warped in. It was waiting for the fight and immediately locked up the Incursus and started to apply damage. Starwalker engaged, setting a close orbit and overheating the blasters. The Heron was tanking really well with what was clearly an ancillary shield booster but that would only last for twenty or so seconds.

The Heron piled on the hurt as it dropped its drones into the fight as well. The Heron was applying its damage against the Incursus armour and the small armour repairer was overheated to keep up with the incoming damage. It was a losing race. The range started to increase again to 4km as the Heron tried to mitigate incoming damage, even though it was tracking disrupting the Incursus.

The Incursus was in structure and the capacitor was dropping fast but the Heron was also in armour and had started to only pulse its shield booster. The afterburner was nearly burnt out but Starwalker had to close that distance and so he set the overheat on again knowing that within seconds the afterburner would be finished. But those seconds counted and now both ships were in structure.

The Heron suddenly exploded and it was over, the Incursus had just 35% of its structure left, lots of heat damage and the afterburner was burnt to a crisp. Good fight was exchanged in local but before Starwalker could loot the wreck a Caldari Navy Hookbill jumped in and it was an easy decision to leave immediately.

Back at base, Starwalker switched ships to the Caracal. It had been fit as a frigate killer and he wanted to get in a fight with a small number of frigates. Instead he found this cyno-ship and another cyno-ship. The extra tank on the cruiser made it very easy to kill these with no danger of dying to sentry guns.

However, the Caracal was about to meet its demise and it started with an Anathema in a medium complex. That ship died very quickly to the missile fire and the pilot must have been AFK as he could have escaped at 35km away when the shooting started. The danger though came from the Hawk that jumped in, piloted by Vivien Sureflight.

It immediately engaged just as the Anathema exploded and Starwalker opened fire with his Caldari Navy Inferno Light missiles. He would have preferred to be using the Mjolnir missiles but he didn't feel he had time to change them. In retrospect he should have taken the ten seconds to reload as thermal were the Hawk's highest resists. What Starwalker hadn't expected was how well the Hawk would tank and for how long it would continue to tank the incoming damage.

It became clear that the Caracal buffer was disappearing but the Hawk shields were still at full strength. Starwalker looked at the heat damage on the light missile launchers and noticed that they were showing around two-thirds of heat damage. So he decided to cut the heat immediately, except that it was at the start of the firing cycle and by the time the cycle finished so were the missile launchers.

It had been a long time since he had burnt out his weapons as he tended to stop overheating when they were about 50% cooked. It seemed to Starwalker that the last 50% went faster than the first 50%, although that could have been his imagination. He now had no offensive capability, all that remained was for the Hawk to chew through the rest of the shield buffer and so he waited for the inevitable end to arrive, which it did. Given how well the Hawk had tanked, Starwalker checked out the pilot and noted that she was top ranked and the last Hawk she had lost was using faction modules for a total cost of around 250m ISK.

Importance of Range Control

Starwalker had joined the Rebel fleet leaving from Adirain in a Taranis - as an experiment. He had been thinking about the importance of speed as seen with his Hookbill. The Taranis was a dual propulsion fit so that it could chase down targets with the MWD and maintain range control with the afterburner.

[Taranis, Dual Propulsion]
Pseudoelectron Containment Field I
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II
Micro Auxiliary Power Core II

1MN Afterburner II
Limited 1MN Microwarpdrive I
J5b Phased Prototype Warp Scrambler I

Small Diminishing Power System Drain I
Light Neutron Blaster II,Null S
Light Neutron Blaster II,Null S
Light Neutron Blaster II,Null S

Small Ancillary Current Router I
Small Projectile Burst Aerator I

In short, the Taranis fulfilled the need for speed and during the fleet engagements Starwalker found that switching between MWD and afterburner was easy. The turn of speed was good in getting to the next target and the fleet successfully took down a: Caracal, Caracal and Drake playing games at a station.

The fleet continued on and Broady Dale was apparently suckered into trying to get a canister with 100m ISK at planet 9, instead he lost his Thorax and pod. In New Eden bet on stupid. Finally, the fleet engaged a small gang in a complex and claimed this Bantam and Kestrel and a little later this Hookbill. All in all, a very successful roam, in fact, the second most successful roam with 7 ships for no loss, all he had lost were his drones.

The next day Starwalker undocked his Taranis to head back to base. Along the way he noticed a Hookbill in a complex and he knew that getting into close range combat would be hard against a Hookbill but he decided to try it anyway. The Taranis was met at the warp in and was then pretty much held at 7km for the rest of the fight. Between the web and tracking disruptor the Taranis was doing hardly any worthwhile damage.

Starwalker would have released his drones if he still had them but all he could do was try to get into range by overheating his afternburner but each time he did the Hookbill pulled range again. The Taranis was slowly being whittled away by the incoming rocket damage as the Hookbill dominated the fight with range control.

Starwalker was learning a lesson, speed was key and helped with range control but it was not the only factor that determined who had range control. The dual propulsion Taranis had no counter web and so the relative speed advantage was with the Hookbill. Without range control, damage projection then became key and the Hookbill had tracking disrupted the Taranis blasters. This blunted any damage projection the blasters might have had.

Manual piloting and overheating the afterburner was the last resort and this helped temporarily to get closer and apply some damage but the Hookbill was always able to re-establish the 7km range. The Taranis was effectively helpless and inevitably was destroyed.

Starwalker had learnt a valuable less - speed did not guarantee range control. It helped but then so did a stasis webifier, tracking disruptor, sensor dampener and manual piloting. If Starwalker was unable to establish range control then he needed damage projection to either destroy the target or chase it away.

Missiles Missiles and More Missiles

Starwalker had spent the last week or so flying around in a Kestrel (kiter and brawler) and he also had a Caracal too for an upcoming T1 cruiser roam. Now that the Caracal and Kestrel ship bonuses were to all damage types there was no reason to focus on kinetic missiles exclusively. That capability to select damage type was both a blessing and a curse as a recent shopping expedition to Hek had highlighted.

The original plan had been to buy the highest (T2) damage missiles for each of heavy assault, light missiles and rockets. However, after seeing commentary about explosion radius and how the faction missiles were better at dealing damage to frigates Starwalker had also ended up buying faction missiles too. The original intent was to use faction missiles for frigates and T2 missiles for cruisers and above - Starwalker still had aspirations for (solo) above class kills.

The buying spree result and therefore problem, was simply an overload of too many missiles bought - there were twelve varieties of heavy assault missiles alone:

• Rage = Inferno (Thermal), Mjolnir (EM), Nova (Explosive), Scourge (Kinetic)
• Javelin = Inferno, Mjolnir, Nova, Scourge
• Faction = Inferno, Mjolnir, Nova, Scourge

And an equal number for the light missiles (Fury, Precision and Faction) and rockets (Rage, Javelin and Faction). Missiles, missiles and more missiles - too many missiles. Of course, Starwalker recognised the absurdity of carrying around twelve missile types and knew that it could be simplified to basically carry faction missiles as the most useful against the most targets. The downside to that simplification was some loss of potential damage of using T2 missiles against larger targets.

In any case, Starwalker had bought lots of missiles but that very act had caused a rethink about damage and weapon types and Starwalker knew what weapon system he really, really liked - blasters. There were two defining characteristics that appealed to Starwalker - high damage and very simple ammunition choices:

• Short range - Caldari (or Federation) Navy Antimatter Charges or Void, if the ship bonuses included tracking
• Long range (brawler or scram range) - Null

Starwalker had already enjoyed flying his blaster fit Merlin with more than 200 DPS and the Enyo was truly fearsome at around 400 DPS for a frigate. Despite Starwalker's Caldari roots he was feeling the pull to fly more Gallente ships as natural blaster ships...

A New HQ for R1FTA

Starwalker had a modest stockpile of ships and equipment in Heild as the Rebel HQ and he heard from the leadership that Heild would become the HQ for the Black Dragon Fighting Society and R1FTA would move to Egbinger.

It was easy enough to move a few ships and one load of ammunition and consumables - and Starwalker had moved from Heild to Egbinger over the course of 24 hours. He had one lucky escape when he was caught on both sides of a gate by Gunpoint Diplomacy.

They had around 7 or 8 pilots sitting on the gate as Starwalker came through in his Caracal and he held his cloak hoping that they were on the move. They weren't but three did jump through and Starwalker had the feeling that they were now camping both sides of the gate. The cloak faded and Starwalker made a run for the gate as lots of incoming fire decimated his shield.

The XL ancillary shield booster cycled and managed to keep the Caracal alive long enough to jump back through where a Lachesis, Brutix and Hurricane waited. Starwalker decided that there was no point in holding his cloak this time and simply warped for the sun. Whether it was surprise or not the Caracal entered warp and he was almost free.

However, Starwalker did not hang around and warped to a random planet just as the three gang members arrived at the sun. The chase was on but Starwalker was confident that he could get away and he warped from there to an out gate just as the three arrived again at the planet. Starwalker gave a confident wave and smile and left system.

Whilst Starwalker escaped that gate camp his Drake was destroyed in Syndicate by another gate camp, split over the gate, when he was doing a security ratting run. Kaeda Maxwell was right - it was much simpler and easier to simply kill one battleship in system and move on. Despite that, Starwalker had lost enthusiasm for ratting his security status up or perhaps the right word was too lazy.

Rebels Chase Caracal and Incursus Fit Assessment

Starwalker had only found this hapless cyno-ship but was looking forward to the Rebel roam later. However, whilst the Rebels had gathered in Eugales for Peri Simone's regular roam his technical difficulties resulted in the roam being cancelled. So Kaeda Maxwell (Incursus), Alaric Faelen (Vengeance) and Starwalker (Incursus) decided to form an ad-hoc small gang and set off locally to see what they could find.

It wasn't long before Kaeda saw a Caracal jump through onto the gate with him and then warp to the next gate. The Rebels set off in hot pursuit. The Caracal jumped a couple of more systems and then went to a major outpost. He looked like he wanted to fight.

Starwalker was first into the complex and gave chase but the Caracal stayed outside of scram range and laid down its offensive fire of light missiles. It was clear that this cruiser was fitted to kill frigates and was evading Starwalker easily. Very quickly Starwalker had to get his active armour tank going but he was comfortably tanking the incoming damage. This time Starwalker paid close attention to the capacitor and reloaded in plenty of time.

With the other Rebels arriving it was not long before the Caracal was surrounded and pointed and Starwalker also finally established a point. The incoming damage continued for a while but it was clear that the Incursus dual armour repair was able to tank the damage and the Caracal pilot, Stalking Mantis, decided to switch targets but it was too late for him and before much longer his Caracal exploded.

Fit Assessment - Incursus Dual Armour Repair
The Incursus was a T1 frigate that was small and fast and used hybrid weapons, blasters in particular but also railguns for fighting at range. It was a good general purpose combat frigate like the Merlin and Rifter and at an attractive price point - a fully fitted Incursus was around 10m ISK. 

Starwalker had used an Incursus with a dual small armour repair fit, which exploited the ship bonus of 10% armour repair effectiveness. It's key strengths were its high DPS and strong tank and its main weakness was the lack of range control.

The high slots were dominated by the light neutron blasters, which were the highest damage short range hybrid blasters and also the most difficult to fit. Caldari Navy Antimatter Charges were used to maintain the best tracking, higher damage void ammunition also had a 25% tracking penalty. This was especially important as Starwalker's tracking skills were not at level V and there was no stasis webifier fitted. Checking the log would confirm how many misses occurred and consequently reduced DPS.

The mid slots held the traditional afterburner for low security space and a warp scrambler. The third mid slot had a capacitor booster rather than a stasis webifier because of the dual repair active armour tank. The capacitor was exhausted in just over 30 seconds of use and given that the capacitor was being used all of the time the practical time was closer to 20 seconds. A typical frigate fight would last 30-45 seconds so 20 seconds was simply too short. With the capacitor booster fitted the capacitor was theoretically stable, dependent on the number of capacitor charges in the cargo hold.

The low slots were primarily focused on the armour tank, with two small armour repairers being the key components of the tank. The small armour repairers were used in a staggered way with the armour HP being replenished at the end of each cycle or every 4.5 seconds with level V skills. This cycle could be improved further by using implants and/or drugs.

Rigs were used to add a little more armour buffer (trimark) and to enhance the repair effectiveness by 15% for each fitted nano pump. The Incursus could also field one drone and Starwalker had the Acolyte EV-300, which drained just a little (5 GJ) capacitor with each cycle (6 seconds).