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.

Killed by Station Sentry Guns

It was another day and Starwalker was in yet another Rifter. Hopefully this one would last longer than the previous few, which hadn’t even been scratched before being destroyed. The roam started like any other, a few potential opportunities coming up on d-scan but not at a celestial, so in a mission, at a POS or deep safe. Next!
Local popped and a Crusader arrived along with an Inquisitor and it was not long before Starwalker was the hunted. Another Rebel, Kaeda Maxwell, arrived in system in her Merlin and a quick exchange over the channel established the situation. Joining forces, the Merlin was at belt 9-2 and soon called “x” – Starwalker was in bound.

The Crusader was there and alone with the Merlin. Starwalker burnt towards the Crusader and was soon target locked but out of scramble range at around 16km. The Crusader pilot was going into armour but was keeping distance from the Rifter. Starwalker noted that the Crusader was maintaining distance at around 13km and so was still out of scramble range, even if it was overheated. So Starwalker was just about to overheat the afterburner when the Crusader disappeared. Kaeda Maxwell exclaimed that her scramble had burnt out and that had allowed the Crusader a lucky escape.

The Crusader quickly disappeared but not long afterwards a Mammoth came in. We both immediately warped to various custom offices but the search was proving fruitless. Starwalker then had the “bright idea” to check the stations – completely forgetting about the red GCC. Whilst warping to the top station Starwalker noticed that the timer was still going and had less than a minute to run. Maybe it would be OK and the Rifter would dock before taking any real damage?

Over time Starwalker had only lost frigates to a POS and no sentry guns either on a stargate or at a station had ever destroyed a ship. That was about to change. Starwalker dropped out of warp and into the sentry guns that made short work of the shiny, new and unscratched Rifter and it exploded (http://r1fta.killmail.org/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=10332911) into a million pieces.

It was another stupid mistake and another expensive lesson. Starwalker headed back to base to reship and resolved to do better. Losing ships in fights was one thing but throwing them away to sentry guns was ridiculous.