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.
Kaeda Maxwell had organised a T1 cruiser roam around Tribute, Cloud Ring, Pure Blind and Lonetrek. It started off with a Republic Fleet Firetail being caught on a gate but it died before Starwalker even got close in his Thorax. Apart from that Firetail the 49 jump roam was largely eventless until the end when it became really fun - crashing a gate camp and engaging in a T1 cruiser brawl.
Arriving at the gate camp, Starwalker along with pretty much everyone else got in on the Hurricane kill. Other members in the fleet also managed to get a sniping Moa kill but Starwalker had trouble getting out of the bubble in a timely manner and missed it but he did not miss this Blackbird. The fleet was still at the gate camp site when it was challenged to a T1 cruiser brawl. Of course it was accepted and the Rebels docked up to repair first.
It was a great fight at an agreed local planet with Kaeda Maxwell setting up his backup FCs and then calling the targets. Starwalker simply focused on the called targets Stabber, Thorax, Thorax, Thorax and Thorax and was fortunately not being targeted initially. However, that could not last and eventually it was Starwalker's turn to get shot at. His shield and armour disappeared fast and he aligned out in deep armour and almost no capacitor.
With less than 10% structure left and the last bit of capacitor Starwalker got the warp away and thought he had gotten really lucky - until he landed next to a Crusader with a Naga working with it 100km away. The Crusader couldn't believe its luck and immediately pointed his helpless Thorax. Starwalker knew it was all over and simply warped away in his pod. However, the last two remaining Rebels had won the field and Starwalker was posthumously on the last Caracal kill by Vincent R'lyeh and Tomba. The d00med roam had been great fun and the last cruiser brawl had been a good fight that was really close.
Fit Assessment - Thorax 1600mm Armour Buffer
Thorax was a T1 cruiser that used medium hybrid weapons and had more DPS and tank than a frigate but was larger and also considerably slower. As a class, whilst they could take on pretty much any frigate they were outclassed by the T2 cruisers (Heavy Assault Cruisers...) and battlecruisers. However, their price point of 5-10m ISK for the ship hull was attractive and potentially offered better value than a T2 frigate (Assault Frigates...).
The armour buffer fit was slow but tough and was able to potentially hold targets with its stasis webifier. Its key strength was its strong buffer tank of over 30,000 EHP and it still put out over 300 DPS with comparatively low skills. Its weakness was that it was slow and could neither easily catch nor evade targets.
Starwalker had only cruiser III and medium blasters IV skills, consequently the guns fitted were only a meta level 4 rather than the T2 variant. This still allowed the Caldari Navy Antimatter faction ammunition to be used but disabled the T2 ammunition option. With an optimal of around 1.4km this Thorax was a close range brawler. However, for brawling, a shield buffer gank fit would be able to put out over 500 DPS but also it only had half the effective tank. The eternal question in New Eden - more tank or gank?
The medium slots had the "holy trinity" - propulsion, scramble and web. The MWD was virtually essential for speed and the web gave some range control. Without a capacitor booster the capacitor theoretically lasted just over two minutes but practically it would be more like one and half minutes as the capacitor was pretty much always in use.
The low slots were dominated by the 1600mm armour plate along with the DCII and EANMII. The buffer plate was complemented by the resistance improvement modules, which effectively reduced the incoming damage. The two magnetic field stabilisers pushed the DPS to over 300 but even better would be to combine those with T2 guns, which would push the DPS to over 400 with level V skills.
The trimark rigs added additional armour buffer at the cost of slowing the cruiser down and the ancillary current router was necessary to boost the power grid to fit everything. The drone bay held five warrior IIs for anti-frigate work and five EC-300 electronic warfare drones for jamming targets. Starwalker had struggled to properly use the drones and during the course of the roam had only launched the drones once and had not managed them well after their launch.
The d00med roam also highlighted that the capacitor for the armour buffered Thorax disappeared very quickly with even comparatively short periods of only micro-warpdrive use, nevermind combat. Once the capacitor was empty the ship simply stopped - it could not move, defend itself or fire.
