Starwalker only had a Merlin left after losing this Kestrel to gate camp and this one to a Merlin. It was his current favourite ship as Starwalker liked the sheer firepower that the Merlin could bring to a fight. Its tank was reasonably good for a brawler and when attacking cyno ships it was clear that the shield resistance helped to mitigate sentry gun damage, much better than the default resistances seen in the Kestrel.
Starwalker favoured damage over tank and that was reflected in his Merlin fit that employed two magnetic field stabilisers, cranking out 223 of kinetic and thermal damage with Caldari Navy Antimatter.
[Merlin, MSE2MFS]
Micro Auxiliary Power Core II
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II
1MN Afterburner II
J5b Phased Prototype Warp Scrambler I
Stasis Webifier II
Medium Shield Extender II
Light Neutron Blaster II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge S
Light Neutron Blaster II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge S
Light Neutron Blaster II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge S
Small Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer I
Small Hybrid Burst Aerator I
Small Core Defense Field Extender I
It was a good brawling ship and easy to set the orbit to 500m and unleash hell. It was also able to deal with cyno ships quickly and get away - sometimes on fire. Starwalker undocked and given that this was now the third attempt to get to the TESF (Target Everyone Somebody Fire) roam in Eugales he was determined to not be distracted. The only thing that would stop him would be a gate camp.
Starwalker got to Eugales and was pleased to join the roam, something he was rarely able to do given its regularly scheduled night. The roam itself was FC'd as usual by Peri Simone with Kane the Black (Merlin) and Kohana Maxwell (Arazu) scouting. It was good with some nice kills:
Starwalker enjoyed the Merlin but was thinking that the Kestrel might make another good T1 frigate to fly. He needed to buy some more ships, as he deliberately kept very few fitted ships at any one time, and the Kestrel would be on the shopping list.
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.
The Black Rebel Rifter Club is now part of an alliance - The Devil's Tattoo. The boss Miura Bull had this to say "This isn't going to be an alliance in the traditional sense of the word. There will be no new strange corps joining or plans for any other alliance behaviour or anything that strays from our roots of a 'not giving too much of a fcuk attitude'. Essentially it will be as you were for the most part. The main reason for this alliance formation is to facilitate a feeder corp." The feeder corp is named Black Dragon Fighting Society [BDFS].
Starwalker liked R1FTA and would remain in the new alliance as he hoped there would be no undesirable changes. Almost by default the first alliance event was the regular roam that Kaeda Maxwell had organised, although given no current real members for BDFS perhaps that first real event would wait for another day.
The roam set off from Eugales with Peri Simone performing +1 scout duties. He located a pair of Tengus and pointed one but before the Rebel fleet could arrive on the scene he was in his pod and the Tengus were leaving. However, the main action was with a Hurricane and Loki on a stargate. The Hurricane aggressed the T1 frigate fleet and the fight was on.
The Rebels focused on the Hurricane, piloted by Unidentified Player, and poured their combined DPS into its tank. Before long the Hurricane was in armour but more ships had arrived in the form of a Proteus and Loki. Starwalker had no idea what was going on but as the Hurricane started to go into low armour he remained on this target even though he was twice jammed out of the fight.
However, even more ships had arrived and Starwalker was suddenly taking a lot of damage but rather than trying to flee he stayed on the Hurricane to hopefully get the kill. The incoming damage was too much and he could do no more - his Merlin exploded. He decided to leave immediately to avoid being podded and didn't know whether the remaining Rebels had gotten the Hurricane - they did.
Although looking at the killmail it was only achieved with a little help from Kmelx and friends. However, Kmelx's friends - Sparkus Volundar and Tycser - were also on Starwalker's lossmail, so apparently they were simply wading in on the fight. The good news was the Hurricane was down and so Starwalker returned to base content with the kill.
Darkstar Pownyouall or perhaps DARKSTAR POWNYOUALL was in a Wolf in Tama as Starwalker entered system in his Merlin and warped to the Sun. Very quickly a Vengeance, Enyo and Jaguar arrived on the scene and Starwalker warped away to a nearby gate.
A very short while later the Jaguar and Vengeance pilots exited through that gate in their capsules. Starwalker did not know it at the time but it turns out that Darkstar had taken out the Vengeance and Jaguar.
Starwalker scanned down a Rifter at an asteroid belt and warped in. The Rifter was 30 km away and ready for visitors, it disappeared before he could scramble him. However, the Enyo from earlier then jumped in at around 10km away and Starwalker hit the warp button just as Darkstar arrived in a Wolf.
Turning his Merlin around Starwalker warped back to the belt but the fight was already over. Darkstar, alert from having lots of frigates jump him in the last few minutes locked up the Merlin and fired before realising his mistake. No real harm done and so given that the action was finished Starwalker warped away again with nothing to show for his efforts.
Darkstar, however, was not finished and a short while later he called in Starwalker to help kill a Hurricane that he had pointed in another belt. Not one to miss out on a fight Starwalker arrived in his Merlin and helped to destroy the Hurricane, although it was clear that actually no help was needed as Darkstar was clearly going to solo it.
Starwalker waited out his GCC and nearly got the same Rifter pilot a second time in the asteroid belt but he was simply too slow. So he headed back to base, happy with the kill and admiring the skills of the killing machine that is Darkstar Pownyouall.
