New Eden gives and takes away. On any single day Starwalker has no idea whether it will be filled with good fights, easy kills, losses or long fruitless hunts. He had set out in Caldari Navy Hookbill confident that this ship had good range control capability by virtue of its speed and web.
[Caldari Navy Hookbill, Double MSE]
Micro Auxiliary Power Core I
Micro Auxiliary Power Core II
Medium Shield Extender II
Medium Shield Extender II
1MN Afterburner II
J5b Phased Prototype Warp Scrambler I
X5 Prototype Engine Enervator
Rocket Launcher II,Scourge Rage Rocket
Rocket Launcher II,Scourge Rage Rocket
Rocket Launcher II,Scourge Rage Rocket
Small Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer I
Small Bay Loading Accelerator I
Small Core Defense Field Extender I
Starwalker had also elected to fit this ship with a double medium shield extender. Normally he opted for gank over tank but he was feeling in an experimental mood and wanted to try it out. This cyno-ship was hardly a test but it did show that the tank was very capable against the sentry fire. The Vengeance spotted in a complex would be more of a test and Starwalker decided to engage.
The Hookbill established range of around 7km and hammered away with its rockets but quite frankly the Vengeance seemed to be tanking the damage fine. Starwalker was considering whether to leave when a Talwar jumped in and immediately targeted his Hookbill. It was time to leave.
Starwalker aligned to the sun and overheated his afterburner but instead of gaining range he ended up moving closer to the Vengeance. He had not actually checked their relative positions first and this mistake allowed the Talwar time to establish a secondary point. The Hookbill's rockets were redirected to the Talwar but it was a futile attempt to take one down with him and the Hookbill exploded.
A short while later Starwalker was out in his Tristan and killed yet another cyno-ship.
[Tristan, 200mm SAAR]
Damage Control II
200mm Reinforced Steel Plates II
1MN Afterburner II
J5b Phased Prototype Warp Scrambler I
X5 Prototype Engine Enervator
Light Neutron Blaster II,Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge S
Light Neutron Blaster II,Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge S
Small Ancillary Current Router I
Small Auxiliary Nano Pump I
Small Trimark Armor Pump I
Hobgoblin II x5
Warrior II x3
He had elected to redefine this build with more tank on the basis that it was too slow to establish range control. Therefore the intent was to tank the incoming damage whilst the drones did their work. The Merlin on scan at the complex would be a tough customer but Starwalker warped in anyway. The Merlin simply tore through his shields and overwhelmed the small ancillary armour repairer. The Tristan tried to gain some range but failed and it was wrecked by sheer firepower overcoming the tank, even with a T2 200mm plate providing some buffer.
Undeterred, Starwalker undocked in his Hawk, which also sported a heavier tank than usual with an MSE and medium ancillary shield booster. He found this Algos - ratting, which was the first ship he had found and caught ratting in a long time. Finally, he decided to return to base and just as he was about to dock he noticed a Navitas on scan at the medium complex, it was perhaps the same Navitas that he had chased earlier and had taunted him in local.
Whilst Starwalker had ignored the taunts then he had remembered the pilot's name and when he warped in it was indeed the same pilot. The Hawk landed on top of the Navitas and it was destroyed very quickly - it wasn't even fitted with any modules. The pilot, Laila Vemane, cried "noooo" in local and Starwalker smiled to himself.
Starwalker was still out and about in the Tristan and strangely the ship was growing on him even more. He had fought a Daredevil in an outpost and actually it had run away to avoid destruction. That was the problem with no range control, targets could simply decide to disengage. Of course, sometimes range control did not even matter, this cyno ship was killed easily as there weren't even station guns.
Whilst hunting in Metropolis another Tristan came up on scan and Starwalker guessed that it was Denfior in local. The character was an outlaw and top ranked on Battleclinic he knew that it would be a difficult fight if he took it. The target Tristan arrived at the sun over 200km away and it was Denfior. Denfior then warped to an outpost and Starwalker decided not to follow as it would give Denfior a small advantage when Starwalker came out of warp.
Starwalker expected Denfior to return and that patience was rewarded, as expected, with the target Tristan some 150km away. Starwalker burnt towards it and noted that it was a MWD (micro-warp-drive) fit. As the distance closed, he launched his Hobgoblin II drones and then went through the engagement cycle - lock, scram, guns and neut.
The fight was really even and as Starwalker's shields slowly dropped the Denfior's armour repairer was working like a champion. Starwalker was fighting at 500m and had forgotten to change the ammunition to Caldari Navy antimatter but it was too late now. He checked the heat and the afterburner was fine he checked it again what seemed like a moment later and it was burnt out. That was not good.
The shield was gone and Starwalker was entering armour but Denfior was entering structure, although his armour repairer was still working over time despite the neut. Starwalker then noticed that he had lost a drone and relaunched a Warrior II to replace it. Both ships were in structure but Denfior was amazingly still repairing and then Starwalker ran out of ammunition. He had not refilled the magazine before the fight and now it took endless seconds to reload.
Both ships were marching down to zero structure but Starwalker's ship was going to explode first - it was in slightly worse condition and more importantly, was not repairing. It had burnt out its afterburner and so was suffering more damage too. The end seemed inevitable and Starwalker aligned out and then shortly afterwards his ship exploded. This had been a very close fight but it was Starwalker that warped away in his pod and close did not really count in New Eden.
Whilst Starwalker did not know if he could have won the fight he had decided that there were some areas where he could have done better:
- Stop overheating the afterburner after achieving the close orbit. It was not needed at that point and resulted in his 500m orbit actually achieving around a 2km orbit, which was close to the optimal range for null ammunition
- Given that he had null loaded, anticipating a railgun fit, that range was not too bad but overall lower DPS than possible. What was a problem was not reloading the guns before the fight. He had used ammunition against the Daredevil and had not reloaded. Whilst this turned out to be a longer fight than usual or expected that was no excuse to not have a full ammunition load
- Starwalker had not really watched when he had lost a drone and so he had only replaced it after he had noticed. Drone management was definitely an area for significant improvement
Starwalker undocked his Tristan and decided to get out and about in it - Syndicate seemed a good location to head towards. He entered Syndicate via MHC-R3 and in the very next system jumped into a mini-gate camp of an Ares and Tornado. Their plan was clearly very simple, Ares to lock and scramble and Tornado to blow the target away from range, however, they seemed a little slow or AFK as Starwalker warped away.
Starwalker decided to warp to a nearby celestial wondering if he could split the gang and kill the Ares. He had never tried it before but he was feeling like it was time to give it a go. The trouble was that he was in an afterburner fit Tristan, hardly a fast high DPS ship. It didn't matter, he would try anyway and aligned to a new celestial at roughly 90 degrees to his original warp and then burnt towards it at his top speed of just under 1km/s.
The Ares arrived on the scene and clearly was giving the Tornado directions who arrived a little later. In the meantime Starwalker activated his plan such as it was - get in fast and kill the Ares. The Ares was soon locked up and scrammed with lots of damage being inflicted by the Hobgoblin IIs but then the first round of Tornado artillery landed and that hit took Starwalker's Tristan into structure. He set his armour repair going almost as a reflex but knew that the next hit would spell destruction. Could he kill the Ares before the second round? The Ares seemed to recognise that it was in trouble as it entered structure and was clearly running away when the the Tristan exploded.
Starwalker headed back to Covryn wondering if he should have stayed with the shield extender fit but he knew that in this case it didn't really matter, he would have died in either fit. So, he re-shipped into another Tristan and noticed a cyno ship 22km from the station undock. He wandered over to say hello with the compliments of Caldari Navy antimatter and the sentry guns opened fire. The Tristan had to leave almost immediately as the tank seemed incredibly flimsy in the face of such firepower.
However, it was an opportunity to test whether the sentry guns would continue to fire at Starwalker's Tristan when he warped back in - they didn't fire and the cyno ship went down without another murmur. The pilot, binary spaceman, felt compelled to offer congratulations to Starwalker for killing his cyno ship and some comment about elite PvP. In return, Starwalker thanked him for his co-operation in establishing the mechanics for sentry gun fire. That knowledge was used to kill this cyno ship a little while later - without having to leave on fire.
Starwalker undocked in Egbinger in his Vengeance and there was another cynosural beacon. The temptation was too much and seeing that it was just an Impairor it was soon a wreck. The cyno ship pilot, Elektormonter, however was completely undeterred and soon he had a second cyno ship lighting up.
Of course, the temptation was still far too much and Starwalker went in again and killed the second Impairor and just for good measure he stayed to kill the pod too. He didn't have time to scoop the corpse and warped away with his ship on fire.
Starwalker wandered off around Molden Heath and couldn't believe his luck when he returned to Egbinger to find Elektormonter had yet another cyno ship lighting up a beacon. That Impairor went the way of the others and also became a wreck.
Starwalker decided to test his flags and warped to a gate and then a station - no sentry gun fire. Cool, he could leave system whenever he wanted without fear of sentry fire destroying his ship. He was just about to dock up when yet another cynosural beacon lit up. It was Elektormonter again! But this time in a Pilgrim - he was tempting Starwalker but this was a very different proposition.
At first, Starwalker decided that the Pilgrim was too tough to kill but then he changed his mind on the assumption that he wasn't completely sure and he would risk his Vengeance trying for the kill. He went in, locked it up and started firing the rockets with overheat on. Some enemy drones were launched to supplement the sentry fire but most importantly his capacitor was instantly drained. That was bad news straight away.
As he switched targets to the drones he realised that his rockets were getting seriously burnt and he hit the shift to turn off the overheat. However, he didn't wait for the cycle to complete and seeing the overheat still on he hit the shift again, which had the undesired effect of keeping the overheat on until his rockets were burnt out. With no firepower, no capacitor and too close to run it was inevitable that this shiny Vengeance would join the space wreckage.
Starwalker left in the mistaken belief that if he hadn't burnt out his rockets he could have killed the drones and then the Pilgrim, completely overlooking the obvious problem with that. There was also sentry fire and he could not stay long enough to kill it. However, in the heat of the moment and completely fixated, he was not thinking straight and he came back with another Vengeance. This time it would be different.
It was no different. He did not burn out his rockets and he did kill some of the drones but the capacitor situation was dire even with the energy vampire running. Worse, the drones kept coming - he had not checked the fact that the Pilgrim had 150 cubic metre capacity for drones. After killing the first set of drones he had targeted the Pilgrim again and hadn't even noticed the next set of drones until he started taking more damage again. The trouble was - he was already in structure from round one and round two was simply too much.
It was inevitable what would happen next and Starwalker could only curse his own stupidty but he spent too long cursing his stupidity and compounded the loss of his Vengeance with the loss of his pod too. This really was a beacon too far and hopefully he had learnt from it.
Starwalker was still cruising around Molden Heath and Metropolis in his Vengeance, although he had lost this Vengeance to a Talos returning from null-sec, an epic failure to spiral in. The cyno ship, a Probe, he had killed on the return journey was hardly compensation for that loss but for some reason he had run into some cynos recently and he had killed this Velator too.
The Vengeance was much more capable than just killing cyno ships but he had yet to find a fair fight so in the meantime he would take the unfair fights too, if killing a cyno ship could be called a fight at all, but a kill was a kill.
Recently, he had seen that New Eden had various ships rebalanced and some great changes to visually track ships. He was looking forward to getting out and about in some T1 Cruisers. However before that could happen he needed to get the latest version of EFT as he liked to experiment with fits theoretically first and then take them out into the wild. Of course that would take time but Starwalker felt no urgent need to fly any ships immediately.
Meanwhile, more generally, Starwalker was finding EVE teasing and frustrating, enticing and satisfying, engaging and enthralling. Recently, he had been out solo hunting for hours and despite the odd games around gates or playing chase he had nothing to show for his efforts. And then 4 kills came within an hour, they were all cyno ships but of course, Starwalker didn't care. EVE was an unpredictable mistress and Starwalker took the opportunities as they came.
One night, he undocked in his Vengeance and there were two cynosural beacons just a few AU away. The temptation was far too great and the kill far too easy and so the rockets made short work of the Impairor and after some time for the shields to recharge the Kestrel went down too.
After waiting out GCC Starwalker went off towards Heild and just checked his map for any more cynos. There was another cyno ship in Hrober so he went there and killed the Ibis. Satisfied, Starwalker docked up in station for a break and he returned a little while later. Heading back to Egbinger he found yet another cyno up. Crazy.
Starwalker warped in and found the Kestrel there along with a carrier but the Kestrel went down fast and Starwalker warped away with most of his armour gone and because he had waited a little too long some structure was gone too. This Vengeance only had a light tank and taking sentry fire was not good for its health but then again having ships on fire was not a bad thing. Cengae bleated "epic PvP" but Starwalker ignored him, as he ignored most people in local, except to wave to fellow R1DER pilots.
