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.

Another Hawk Down

Starwalker was loitering in Heild again with intent to do harm in his Hawk. He had refitted it to be a dual propulsion fit as he was contemplating taking it into the Great Wildlands for a jaunt. Whilst waiting in the deadspace complex another Hawk appeared in the complex piloted by Kushanar and Starwalker engaged.

The ships were effectively the same so Starwalker expected that it would be a slugfest and with the last man standing the winner. Starwalker overheated his weapons and went in for the kill. The distance closed to around 3km and both Hawks were firing their missiles looking to get that kill. Starwalker's overheated missiles were slamming into the target but his Hawk was taking far more damage than its single ancillary shield booster could handle and he was quickly going into armour.

Conversely, Kushanar's Hawk seemed to be a shield extender fit and that was still comfortably in shield, although it was falling. Starwalker knew it was not looking good but he had no real tricks to pull out of the bag and so he waited as his ship entered structure and Kushanar's entered armour. It was going to end badly, the ancillary shield booster ran out of charges and Starwalker's Hawk became debris.

In retrospect, Starwalker considered what he could have done better:

• Kushanar was using faction Mjolnir rockets, hitting at the typical Caldari ship EMP hole. It was clear from the fight and the logs that this was a much more successful strategy than using Scourge Rage rockets, even with their theoretically higher base damage and 10% kinetic bonus damage
• Starwalker knew that missile damage was affected by speed, signature radius, explosion radius and explosion speed. He should have overheated his afterburner, just like he should have done against this Merlin for some damage mitigation
• His signature radius was already larger due to the use of Rage rockets, so perhaps it would be better to switch to faction ammunition
• Active shield tank could not keep up with the incoming damage and it did not last long enough, either more damage was needed or more tank
• In lowsec the MWD was more or less useless when actually engaged using afterburners. It would be better to use a dual propulsion fit in nullsec or when part of a gang and reuse that fitting space for more effective modules in solo lowsec fights

Starwalker had assumed that using Scourge Rage rockets exclusively would be better than selecting damage types, this experience disputed that. The results of this fight had an interesting impact on Starwalker's assumptions about ship selection, weapon choice and fitting philosophy and he would probably spend an inordinate amount of time experimenting with the Eve Fitting Tool (EFT).

Pilot Error Strikes Again

Starwalker was contacted by Tawa Suyo for a Rifter duel and the challenge was accepted. Starwalker considered his options and how to fit the Rifter, he decided on an artillery fit and undocked. 

Arriving at a random moon Starwalker accepted the fleet request and headed off in a random direction. The ship looked good as it burnt along at around 1300m/s and Starwalker wondered what had happened to Tawa as he still hadn't arrived.

The artillery fit Rifter had little tank but good range control, if it could start at range. Suddenly, Starwalker noticed the fleet icon moving on the right of his display and then he was target locked with the enemy Rifter only 8km away and closing fast. Worse, the damage started coming in and the shield was disappearing.

Starwalker had the overview set to "combat" so the Rifter had arrived and closed in without being seen, in short, the overview should have been reset to "fleet". Worse his camera had been pointed in the wrong direction and zoomed in - so Tawa Suyo had arrived and closed in fast, unseen until too late.

Starwalker hit, web, scramble, guns and then overheated the afterburner. It was simply too late, the Rifter was in armour even before the guns had fired their first shot, and in retrospect the afterburner should have been overheated first rather than the last. The Rifter was soon a ball of fire and Starwalker warped his pod away, very disappointed that the fight was over even before it had started.

Starwalker was getting lots of lessons but it was a lot less clear how much he was learning. He was rather hoping that this period was coming to a close and he would be making fewer basic mistakes going forward.

Journey Started in Rifter and Ended in Clone Vat

Starwalker noticed from his journal that he had accummulated some 200 mechanical datacores from an R&D agent in Tividu. Since he had no particular plans he thought he would make the journey over there and pick them up. Undocking in a trusty Rifter Starwalker set off from Heild without a care in the universe.

It all seemed to be going very well until the jump into Amamake, where a gate camp was waiting. Starwalker decided to hit warp and hope that nothing was sensor boosted, quick off the mark or wanted the Rifter. No such luck, the Legion was quick enough to stop the Rifter and before long he was hitting warp simply to get the pod away, which did so.

It seemed pointless to return to Heild in the pod and so Starwalker continued on to Tividu, where on arrival he contracted his datacores to StarStepper. The replacement Ibis was in station and so he undocked it and started to make the return journey.

Of course, the Ibis was not destined to get back to Heild as the reason Starwalker had used it was to try the Self Destruct feature. He had never used that command and wanted to see it in action; there was certainly no point in self-destructing a Rifter or better.

The countdown every ten seconds proved remarkably uninteresting and whilst waiting Starwalker thought that it might be better to be outside of the ship. Using eject was hardly any more exciting than the countdown itself and so he decided to head back to Heild in his pod.

The return journey went back through Amamake but Starwalker decided that his pod would get through any gate camp and so continued onwards. That might have been true, except a smart bombing Hyperion was waiting on gate and as Starwalker landed he was immediately sent to Heild's clone vat.

The journey had been a complete waste of time, the self destruction of his Ibis had been unexciting and whilst the 200 datacores were worth around 40m ISK, the loss of the Rifter and pod had exceeded that. The only good news was that Starwalker was back in Heild.

Dances with Wolf

John Valentine was cruising Heild in his Wolf looking for a duel and spied Starwalker in his shiny Hawk. He initiated a challenge and Starwalker accepted. Very quickly they were in fleet and Starwalker warped into a random location at 70km, just to avoid any tricks like warping to a POS or a gang location.

The Wolf was there alone - so it was a straight up duel. Starwalker moved towards the Wolf but did not engage his micro warp-drive. John Valentine effectively did the same thing so it remained unclear whether he was afterburner fit or not.

At 25km Starwalker engaged the targeting and micro warp-drive and tried to close into scramble range. The Wolf danced away and started plinking from around 18km. Despite a few attempts Starwalker was unable to close the distance. The plinking was not high damage but it was relentless small damage and continually depleted the buffer tank.

Starwalker had tried a few times to get closer with overheating of the micro warp-drive but it didn’t seem to work. By this time the shield was down to 25% and Starwalker decided that it might be time leave as he still had not opened fire and had never been closer than 16km.

So Starwalker aligned out and started to overheat, before long the distance was increasing and then he was warping away. He apparently had warped away just as the capacitor for the Wolf was giving out. Of course, just because the ship might have lost its mobility and point that did not mean it would be destroyed, as that would not stop its auto-cannons from firing.

In retrospect, Starwalker considered what he had not done as soon as he realized that the Wolf would not fight in scramble range:

• Switch to Javelin rockets that could hit out to around 20km
• Slingshot immediately rather than start by overheating the propulsion module and trying that a couple of times

Similarly, whilst buffer tanks were simple and effective their weakness was that they could not be replenished during the fight and would simply drain away over time even with only minor damage. Perhaps it was time to add another module to actively tank, even if Starwalker struggled with all the module management.

Wolf Ravages Hawk in Heild

Starwalker was loitering in Heild waiting out a GCC. The warp in to a complex had gone horribly wrong when the Rebels had arrived individually at the complex and were met by two Stabber Fleet Issues. It was not pretty and as one Rebel noted voice communications would have helped coordinate arrival.

Not content to finish there Starwalker repaired and continued to loiter in Heild. Pilot, hammerof thegods, decided to challenge Starwalker’s Hawk in his Wolf and the duel was accepted with both parties warping to the sun. As the distance closed between the Hawk and Wolf, an uninvited Thrasher arrived, piloted by Randy Leahy. Starwalker left immediately thinking it was a trap.

It wasn’t and so the duel restarted and this time the fight was really on. The Wolf started hitting from a range of around 15km and Starwalker’s Hawk continued to burn in to around 7.5km. The Wolf wasn’t content to sit still and burned out of range again despite having two webs on him. Starwalker pulsed his MWD and got into range again and reapplied the webs and scram.

The fight continued with the range going in and out of scramble. Both ships were suffering but the Wolf was suffering more and was entering low armour and then structure. Starwalker was so fascinated with the progression of damage that he didn’t notice that he had burnt out his rockets. The damage stopped and the Wolf needed no second invitation as Starwalker’s Hawk was now helpless, soon it was in structure and then exploded. The Wolf had survived with 47% structure.

Despite losing his Hawk Starwalker was happy with at least some of his performance – he had reacted to the range changes, he had applied modules and nearly won. He had lost through pilot error again, if he had simply turned off the rocket overheating a little earlier he would have won.

Hookbill Lost by All Kinds of Fail

Starwalker was in Heild looking for trouble and a couple of other Rebels were doing the same. So, they joined forces and scanned down a Jaguar to the Angel deadspace complex. Starwalker warped in at 50km and saw that the Jaguar was around 300km away. He started his Hookbill towards the Jaguar, piloted by Nergalion, but assumed that Nergalion would not stay and fight as one of the other Rebels had also warped in and disappeared again.

However, Starwalker continued towards the Jaguar and was sending messages to the other Rebels. Unfortunately, he was not paying attention to their messages and missed the caution that they could not warp to Starwalker in the complex, instead, they would end up warping to the acceleration gate. This was vital information that Starwalker had simply not read and if he had, it would have changed what happened next.

Indeed, it was the first fail of the upcoming fight. Starwalker was closing in to establish point and expected the Rebels to warp in to the fight; he was about to find out that this would not happen but one mistake was not enough to call it a fail cascade. The fail cascade really started when Starwalker made his second error and set the Hookbill to orbit at 15km from the previous 9km. It was a good distance to stay out of danger and establish a point but overlooked the fact that the short range rockets had a maximum range of 12km and probably an effective range of about 10.5km. He should have either switched to long range rockets or stay at 9km.

The Hookbill and Jaguar engaged and very quickly the Hookbill established point with an orbit of 15km, however, the Jaguar decided to reduce that to around 2km. Starwalker realised the danger and made his next mistake - overheating the mid-rack rather than just the afterburner. No fail casade would be complete without some completely random or stupid act that takes attention away from the main action.

For Starwalker, that was being distracted by checking whether the overheat could be set by using shift-click (it could) but worse than that, he then inadvertently left the afterburner and everything else on overheat. The only good news was that the Hookbill had re-established a range of around 11km and the damage had slowed. It was past the time to bring in the Rebels. 

Starwalker was not a fast typist and simply used "xx" to call in the Rebels and after that distraction he returned to the fight to be greeted with the result that the point had burnt out and the webs were close to burning out. Things were rapidly going downhill.

Starwalker decided to leave the webs on even though the point was now burnt to a crisp and the Jaguar could escape. The idea was to distract Nergalion with the applied modules and to hope that he had not noticed the point drop. Relying on hope is not a great idea. Starwalker wondered where his fleet mates were but decided to type again to let them know that his point had burnt out. The intent was that the Rebels would hurry up and arrive. One did - 432km away.

Starwalker did a double-take on the distance and thought that he had mis-read it, no, it really was that far away. Starwalker was then brought sharply back to reality by the Hookbill sirens warning that the ship was close to destruction. It was going to be all over very soon and the Jaguar was still only in shields, there was no way the Hookbill would survive unless it could warp away. The Jaguar sensing the kill was close - moved in and re-established the scramble just in time to prevent the warp. The Hookbill died - the victim of a series of horrific pilot errors.

The fail cascade was nearly complete with the Hookbill lost but Starwalker had one more loss to come - his ignorance. Starwalker warped his pod to safety and asked why the Rebels hadn't warped in to the fight. The answer - Starwalker was in deadspace and any warp in would go the acceleration gate. They also noted that they had warned Starwalker of this, and checking the log that was true.

This was the first time Starwalker had been in a fleet at a complex and in his ignorance had thought that the warp to the gate mechanic applied only after entering the first acceleration gate. Clearly he was wrong but worse than that, he had also missed the warning that he was wrong and now the fail cascade was complete.

Hookbill Dies to Thrasher in Angel Complex

Starwalker had scanned a Tristan and Thrasher to a (2/10) complex in Heild and wondered if they were missioning together or fighting. There was only one way to find out and Starwalker warped in at 70km.

There was no target ship after coming out of warp and so Starwalker burnt towards the acceleration gate and activated it. The rockets were pre-heated and as Starwalker landed there were many mobs waiting around 14km away and a Thrasher at 4km. Starwalker hit the approach and realized a few seconds later that he really needed to get some distance and so hit orbit at 9km.

The Thrasher did not wait and started hitting the Hookbill hard. Starwalker returned fire with the rockets but in the first few seconds the shields were already disappearing fast as hits of between 370 and 470 came in. Starwalker was hitting back for 225 to 280 but it was not enough and he tried to gain distance but it was simply not happening and overheating the afterburner was nowhere near effective.

Starwalker realized that he was going down and desperately tried to avoid destruction by doing more damage. He belatedly applied the webs but it was all looking like too little too late. The Thrasher shields were nearly gone but Starwalker’s Hookbill was now on fire with structure simply vanishing and Starwalker was too slow to get the pod away and that too was cremated. 

The pod loss included some +4 implants but Starwalker knew that was simply the price that he had paid for being too slow to get his pod away. The destruction of the Hookbill had happened in less than thirty seconds and the fight had started badly by landing too close to the Thrasher. It had got worse by not being able to gain distance fast enough. Of course, it appeared that the Thrasher pilot (Jaxartes) had planned that and Starwalker had fallen victim to the trap.


One question on Starwalker’s mind was why the mobs that were so close had not engaged, in asteroid belts, mobs could be 100km and still engage? Starwalker’s losing streak was continuing but at least he had gotten into a fight and that was pleasing.

Thrasher Trashed in Heild

Starwalker headed into the deep of space in Molden Heath growing disillusioned with his ability to find targets and get into good fights. Spending hours on hours searching for targets was becoming less fun.

Starwalker ruefully noted that not finding targets was not the same as being a target and not getting any meaningful kills was not the same as not being killed. Indeed, Starwalker’s Thrasher had been caught at the Heild gate.

In reality Starwalker had made a mistake, by jumping through to Heild as a Slicer and Retribution arrived at the gate. They immediately followed and were able to quickly establish point and get to around 20km away. Too far away for the auto cannon fit Thrasher to hit but not too far to be hit by the kiters.

Starwalker made a desperate attempt to get back to the gate but the Thrasher was very slow with the 400mm plate fitted. The situation was not made any better when a Republic Fleet Firetail and Crow joined the Slicer and Retribution.

It was not long before the Thrasher exploded but as was becoming normal Starwalker was able to get the pod away to safety. Starwalker reviewed the fight and knew that he should have waited for the kiters to aggress and then jump through. It might not have changed the outcome but it would split the attackers at a minimum and offered more of a chance, to either get a kill or escape.

Starwalker got back to his quarters and poured a drink – maybe it was time for holiday.