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.

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.

Drake Bubbled in Syndicate

Starwalker had jumped from Gultratren to Covyrn to wander around Placid and Syndicate looking for a fight but he had not reckoned on being blobbed in a bubble. He had gone down a path in Syndicate that was effectively a dead end in his Drake and had started the return journey without having found anyone flying in space. Just because he hadn't seen anyone flying in space did not mean that he was alone though.

The joy of nullsec is that the local residents will have their communications operational and go for complete overkill at a gate. The Drake came back into a system and at the out gate found a Zealot 15km away. It had been very quiet but with six in local Starwalker wondered if it was simply bait. As he started to burn towards it a Jaguar arrived at the gate locking him and the Zealot started to fire.

Starwalker decided that this was bait, it was not going to end well and that there were probably more on their way, so he burnt back towards the gate and jumped. He thought he had been clever until he found that he had jumped into a bubble and many more ships. He wasn't sure if they were waiting for him or not and wondered if the Jaguar, which hadn't fired, would jump through and hopefully panic and drop cloak first.

However, the Jaguar was with this fleet and Starwalker knew that it was all over. He could not make it back to the other side and he was very unlikely to take anything down fast enough with this much firepower on the field. He burnt away from the majority of the ships and targeted the nearest ship a Rupture. It didn't matter, within seconds he was blown up. The pod quickly followed and he resurrected in Fensi - he had forgotten to reset his home station.

There was nothing in Fensi as it had all been moved to Gultratren, so he slow boated back to Covryn in his capsule and reset his home station. At least the next time he was podded he would wake up in the right station, one with implants and ships.

Drake Shake

Starwalker was wandering around Placid in his Drake with a heavy assault missile fit. He had recently flown a couple of heavy missile fits, primarily for ratting and whilst the range was good in that context the DPS was a little on the low side for his taste. The HAM Drake had much better DPS - around 500 dependent on fit and level 5 skills.

Starwalker entered Eugales and found Jameson2011 hanging around in system and so Starwalker joined fleet and they both headed out looking for trouble. It was not long before two Hookbills - Sun and Moon were spotted. There was a short debate as to whether it was a trap as there were quite a few in local but before that conversation was finished Jameson2011 said warp to me! Clearly he had already decided whether to engage or not.

Starwalker arrived at the scene with Jameson2011's Comet chasing the two Hookbills - they were all around 90km away and moving far faster than a Drake. Fortunately the speed meant that it was not long before they were at 150km away and Starwalker warped again to Jameson2011. He landed a few kilometres from the nearest Hookbill but before he was properly out of warp they were moving away and by the time he had locked and tried to establish point they were out of web and scramble range.

From there the fight shifted as the Hookbills had now killed the Comet and were orbiting Starwalker's Drake at around 24 km. Starwalker was on the defensive and he had to shake off the Hookbills. He shifted to Javelin missiles with a theoretical range of around 28km (at level 5) but they seemed to be largely ineffectual. Originally Starwalker had thought that the Javelin reached out to around 22km but after checking it was clear that they were within range of the Hookbills but that the damage level was so low that it was simply not effective.

In theory the Javelins were doing around 300 DPS so Starwalker was a little surprised that the Hookbill could shrug off the damage as easily as it was. Small signature radius would be an important factor but perhaps its speed was also reducing the effective damage significantly. Checking the logs later showed that only around 10 DPS was actually being applied, an important point about damage projection - what was real versus the theoretical.

In any case, there was a real danger of being kited to death unless Starwalker could shake these Hookbills and so he tried to time an overheated run of his MWD to escape. It failed and he had to turn overheat off again or risk becoming more or less stationary. He then remembered that he had not let loose his Warrior IIs and so he launched them. At first they also appeared ineffective, until he realised that he had not actually set them yet to engage the target.

Starwalker knew he had forgotten to launch drones before but he also wondered how often he had done that in the past - launched the drones and then left them there idling in space. However, this time it seemed that the distraction with the drones worked and the Hookbill's point dropped and Starwalker did not hesitate to warp away, leaving the drones behind. He then warped to random locations to seal his escape and finally he set off back to base.

Starwalker discussed the fight with Jameson2011 afterwards and it appeared that his assumption about the effectiveness of the damage projection of the HAM Drake was mistaken. He had clearly been kited around 24km by a frigate and whilst he was able to land some hits they were clearly not enough to drive the kiter away. In the absence of chasing the kiter away with firepower he had not been able to get away through manual piloting and it was only the drones that had helped him to escape.

It looked like the metagame, at least in this case, was driving Starwalker to favour speed over damage projection and he would have to consider that when selecting and fitting ships. He was also aware that a number of his Navigation skills were still at level 4 - in particular Acceleration Control (5% speed boost). He would need to correct that soon if he wanted to place more emphasis on speed.

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.

Losing Streak Continues

Starwalker was losing his stock of ships fast. The Rebels had a small battlecruiser roam on and there was a Hurricane, Drake and two Rifters in fleet. It may have been wiser to actually have a battlecruiser fleet plus a scout but the Rebels set out anyway from Heild.

They got as far as Bosena, one jump away, where there seemed to be a few targets of opportunity and so the Rebels moved to a safe and started looking more closely. Whilst this hunting was going on the scout managed to lose his Rifter to a Thrasher but returned in an Enyo instead. Meanwhile the other Rifter had gone to the next system to see what targets were around. 

A Talos then appeared nearby, the Rebels had been scanned down and were being engaged. The decision was to fight and the Hurricane, Drake and Enyo went to work just as an Oracle and another Talos joined the fray. With three tier 3 battlecruiser on the field, the scales had tipped towards Gunpoint Diplomacy.

The fleet commander made the call to disengage - if possible - as it was clear the fight was going South but it was too late for the Hurricane and Drake as they went down in quick succession. Starwalker got his pod away and made his way back to Heild. For him the roam was finished as he had no other battlecruisers locally.

In retrospect, Starwalker felt that his heavy missile damage was under-powered. That was not because his missile skills were inadequate but because the missile damage was generally lower as a long range (70-80km) weapon system. He also forgot to engage with his Warrior II's, although that extra damage would not have changed the outcome.

Black Drake Down

Starwalker had been ratting in the Great Wildlands with his Drake and with decidedly mixed results. On the one hand it was easy to go and kill rats but on the other it was boring and the rewards were not great. Starwalker was there to improve his security status from 8.7, ideally to around zero.

Starwalker had entered the Great Wildlands via Khabi and 7Q-8Z2 and had noticed the two bubbles there but also no other pilots in space. He had thought nothing further about it and ratted along the pipe from there to UMDQ-6 in two separate sessions, and docking in E02-IK between sessions.

The basic approach was to go from belt to belt killing those rats with battleships, if the group had battleships he killed everything and then moved on to the next system. Those two ratting sessions totalled around 2.5 hours and netted around 27 million ISK in bounties, however, the worst part of it was that the security status only went from 8.7 to 8.4. Starwalker was hugely disappointed with the progress and considered whether he should simply ignore his security status.

Kadea Maxwell noted that the best way to raise the security status was to simply kill one battleship in each system and not return to any of those systems within 15 minutes, so perhaps do a large circuit. He reckoned it would take around 24 hours to go from -10 to 0.

Starwalker was finished ratting and then he made a mistake - he decided to return to Heild via Khabi and assumed that any likely gate camp there would not stop him as he was going out. This completely forgot or ignored the fact that it was bubbled and that fact landed him in that bubble, 70km away from the gate with a Tornado moving in for the kill.

The second mistake was to stop and fight the Tornado rather than make a run for the gate because within seconds it was a Tornado and a Hurricane and then the screen filled with lots of ships hoping to get in on the now certain kill. Starwalker had overheated the missiles and was trying to take someone down with him but he was not breaking the Tornado anywhere near fast enough as it was active shield tanked. However, the incoming damage was piling up and more firepower was arriving on the field and soon his Drake exploded.

Starwalker warped his pod away to safety but then came a third mistake. He decided that he could still exit via the same gate - if he warped to a nearby celestial and then warped down to the gate, bypassing the bubble. At least that was the theory, it was wrong or the celestial chosen was not the right choice and Starwalker re-awakened in his new medical clone in Covryn, with his other jump clone in the same station. He had also forgotten to reset his home clone station when he had jump cloned to Heild.

Two Drakes lost in two days - not good. The only good news was that during the roam that night there was some modest excitement avoiding larger gangs, chasing some targets around and playing catch me if you can with an Ishkur and Wolf at the Sun. Well there was one other piece of good news and that was killing this Condor, although unfortunately Starwalker had not got into real blaster range before it died.

Recent experience was again highlighting for Starwalker the need for speed to both get into range or to get away and that was probably the area that he had spent the least time considering beyond thinking about kiters or brawlers. What he wanted was a fast brawler with great gank and adequate tank, that was capacitor stable with good damage projection and range control...

Drake Fights Hurricane in Fade

The recent loss of the HAM Drake at the gate was no deterrent to getting out and about again in another HAM Drake. Starwalker decided that now was the time to head off into null-sec and see what trouble he could find. He set off from Eugales and ended up in Fade where he was finding that the Goonswarm space was sparsely populated.

Starwalker was alone in a system when noticed that he was joined in local by another pilot who seemed to be in a Noctis. So he decided that this might be an ideal opportunity to do some ratting to improve his security status, gain some modest income and possibly lull the Noctis into a false sense of security or alternatively to bait this local to have a go at the "ratter".

Landing at a random asteroid belt Starwalker set about destroying some of the Serpentis ships and scanned again for the Noctis but the pilot left local. How disappointing... until the same pilot returned in a Hurricane, now that was much better. Luckily Starwalker had nearly finished the four Serpentis ships and so when they were destroyed he approached a wreck hoping that the Hurricane would jump in - it did.

Starwalker immediately engaged the Hurricane, locking, scrambling and firing with the heavy assault missiles overheated immediately. The Hurricane closed in to point blank range and Starwalker was concerned that he might lose a DPS race to a shield Hurricane. This time he remembered to use his Warrior IIs to add a little more damage and he also tried to get a little distance to reduce the damage slightly from the autocannons.

The Hurricane stayed close and was also neuting, the Drake's capacitor was being drained away fast and its shields were nearly gone but the Hurricane shields were depleting fast too. Starwalker tried to gain some range again but soon the capacitor was empty and his web and scramble dropped. He thought that the Hurricane might decide to leave now as it had entered armour but the Drake was also in deep trouble. The Hurricane stayed - so it would be a fight to the death.

The two battlecruisers slugged it out with both going into structure. Starwalker had to stop overheating his missiles and only narrowly avoided burning them out. As the two battlecruisers circled each other in flames the Drake delivered the final blow and the Hurricane exploded. It was a good fight and Starwalker's first solo kill in a battlecruiser; he collected the loot. 

Unfortunately, Starwalker was now some distance from Eugales and this encounter had left his Drake in flames with no way to repair. It would be a dangerous return trip where he was especially vulnerable because of the damaged condition of the Drake. Starwalker headed back thinking about ship selection and fittings.

This experience highlighted for Starwalker that he really wanted to have an active tank rather than buffer, speed or resistance. It also seemed that with a shield tank a close fight almost forced a repair between battles or else accept the fight with the damaged armour/structure. The trouble with armour damage was that there was no way to repair the armour in space, so being able to repair in station was only possible in low-sec, in null-sec that repair would not be available. 

These factors pointed towards fitting ships with an active armour tank, except that they were certainly out of fashion but possibly more importantly they lacked the speed of shield tanked equivalents and tended to have lower DPS. More input for ship selection and fitting.

Drake Caught at Gate

Starwalker was out in a Drake just cruising around when he was distracted by incoming messages on his mobile device. Whilst he was distracted and holding on a gate an Executioner established a lock and point.

If Starwalker had demonstrated more caution or even fear, he would have simply carried on and left the Executioner behind. However, he was interested to see what would turn up and moved towards the Executioner but without engaging and simply running his defences. Space filled as the rest of the gang arrived and Starwalker knew that there were too many ships to take on his lone Drake.

So he headed back to the gate and saw some gang members jump through just before he did. The Drake was starting to take damage but it was nothing too serious. The trouble was that as he jumped through it was getting more serious as he was locked and scrambled again on the other side. It was now that Starwalker made his first real mistake - he jumped back through the gate again.

It was immediately apparent that it was a real problem as the majority of the gang was still there. They opened fire again and by now, the Drake was down to half of its shield and had also seen that electronic warfare was being used too. Starwalker knew that bouncing either side of the gate would simply be a slow death, so he decided to engage and kill what he could before going down.

That was the second mistake - more of the gang was this side of the gate and if anything he should have tried to fight the smaller part of the gang. He engaged the nearest Kitsune and it went down fairly quickly with the heavy assault missiles battering it whilst it was being webbed. Next he locked the original Executioner and engaged that too and it too started to go down and this was when Starwalker wondered if he could escape - only the Executioner still had a point.

Starwalker overheated his assault missiles but completely forgot to use his Warrior IIs and that might have made a small difference. It was only a small chance but it should have been taken, especially as the god of ewar locked onto the Drake and its lock and scramble on the Executioner disappeared, which quickly scuttled away trailing fire. The rest of the gang held distance at 19km and it was inevitable that the Drake would not survive and it exploded into a ball of fire.

Crow Engages Drake

Starwalker had sold his data cores on the way back from the suicide ganks near Kador Prime. It netted around 13m ISK and had hardly been worth the effort. The only positive from that trip was that it had placed him near Kador Prime.

Returning to Ishomilken in a Crow was reasonably fast but Starwalker was considering selling the Crow as although he liked the speed he wanted ships with more gank. He jumped into system to see a flashy red Drake loitering 25km away from the gate. The pilot, GaRDoN Cezar, was likely to be bait as local had 10 pilots - far more than usual.

Starwalker looked at the pilot and then looked at his Crow. It was possible to kill a Drake with a Crow if it was not well fit and its tank would succumb to the mediocre damage coming in, however, that was unlikely to be the case here. The sensible decision was to leave but Starwalker was feeling ambitious and wanted to see what would happen. He locked up the target and fired.

The Drake seemed to be active shield tanked or had a good regenerative tank as the initial damage, whilst very modest, was simply absorbed and disappeared. The Drake decided it was time to stop playing and released a flight of Acolytes.

Starwalker had only occasionally fought larger ships and their drones and had not fared well. This time was no better, he had killed the first three and nearly had the fourth down but he was into armour. He still had Javelin and Spike loaded and that did not help and he cursed the fact that he had not changed to close range ammunition earlier.

It was not going to end well and Starwalker knew what was coming next, so he aligned out just as a heavy missile from the Drake shattered what was left of the Crow. Another Drake arrived as Starwalker's pod sped away and its pilot, Icuwarrior engaged. He was the lucky recipient of the R.E.V.O.L.U.T.I.O.N blob and he felt compelled to rather pointlessly complain about it in local. 

The Crow was gone but Starwalker was not unhappy. He had not really expected to take down the Drake and he was already considering his next ship. 

Impact of Drake Price Spike

The Drake price over the last few months had spiked dramatically:

Starwalker had intended to fly the Drake next and had trained Battlecruiser V but given the price rise though it had now moved to a less affordable level as Starwalker fully expected to lose many more ships.

Whilst flying a battlecruiser would be postponed Starwalker was definitely enjoying flying around in the Crow and given what was happening with ship prices he guessed that he would continue to fly around in frigates for a while longer. The Crow price had seemed to remain reasonably static:

However, Starwalker was also considering flying more of the T1 frigates, for example, he had never flown a Tristan and it looked like a fun ship. The issue as always was that he would need to do some more training, in particular Small Hybrid Turrets. Most of Starwalker's skills were in missiles and small projectile turrets. So much training and so slow!

Review of Recent Ship Losses

Starwalker sipped some Quafe and sat down at the Neocom console. It was time to consider recent losses and what could be learnt from them. The current tally was 20 ships lost and 7 pods:

Type	Total Losses 10Aug11	Solo	Small Gang 2-5	Gang 6-20	Gate Camp	Sentry Guns
Ship Losses	20	4	5	0	3	8
Capsule	7	3		1	3
Losses	27
Frigate	Rifter	4	4		2	2
	Probe					1
Battlecruiser	Drake				1
	Before R1FTA		1			5

In looking through the loss record Starwalker noted some observations:

·         In general solo combat, there was only one real loss – when fighting against a Myrmidon battlecruiser in Arnon (0.6) using a Rifter. That was probably being too ambitious but also showed that Starwalker:

o   Did not focus on prior intelligence i.e. gathering information before engaging the target

o   Did not focus on drones when in combat

·         Two solo Rifter losses were during a war declaration

o   Taking on a Thrasher was simply too ambitious

o   Getting caught travelling back to the warzone by a Merlin and the same Thrasher

·          The 2 Rifters and 1 Drake killed in gate camp losses reflect life in lowsec. It is dangerous and gate camps can appear anywhere with pipes having an obvious appeal for easy kills. However, Starwalker tended to freeze and react poorly to the situation, so there was an insight:

o   Use the gate timer to decide whether to warp away to nearest alignment point or burn back to gate to jump back through after the gate timer has expired

o   Remain aligned and if the ship does not escape try to get the pod away (spam warp liberally if needed)

o   Turn down graphic settings to avoid the lag associated with ship destruction

·         The POS and Sentry Gun losses were ridiculous mistakes – lesson learned

·         The small gang losses are characterised by acting as a tackler to a Taranis and Rupture and consequently taking a high risk when the ship is not fitted as a tackler with a good tank. However, there were other possible outcomes in both cases:

o   Keep point until the rest of the gang arrive and if the ship is in trouble then burn away rather than stay until the bitter end

o   Be much more flexible and respond to the situation such as use of changing range or even ammunition type

·         The fight against the two Tuskers in their Rifters resulted in a loss during the first combat with the pair of Rifters and a second 1v1 duel was a straight loss with an easy win for the Tusker. The duel in particular highlighted that micro management of modules and reacting to the situation is not a strength

·         The last small gang loss was responding to a call for backup. Responding to a call for help is no problem, it was not reacting fast enough to the situation i.e. no fight in progress – get out fast

Starwalker realised that he was risk averse when solo and reckless when in a gang or at a minimum showed poor judgement about when to try and leave a fight. Equally, Starwalker was slow to react to a situation, new information or changes such as when ganked in Amamake or the duel. Experience would help but Starwalker also needed to sharpen up, use information and realise that in many situations there were only seconds for a decision. Those seconds would be the difference between having a ship to fly, leaving in a pod or worse still waking in a clone vat.