Black Hawk Down

Starwalker was hanging around in Heild at the deadspace complex looking for trouble. An Incursus peeked in but decided not to engage and warped away. Starwalker only had his Merlin and his combat record was not great, so he was unsure why the Incursus ran away perhaps it was just being flashy red.

Shortly afterwards a Slasher arrived - and stayed. Starwalker burnt towards it changing his ammunition to null as he expected to be kited but was hoping to avoid being pecked to death. If he could get close he would surely decimate the Slasher, so as the distance closed Starwalker tried to move in to point blank range.

Surprise! The Slasher also wanted to fight at point blank range, so Starwalker engaged scramble, web and overheated his neutron blasters. He now had the wrong ammunition selected but it was too late to change it. The incoming damage was reasonable but the ancillary shield booster easily dealt with it. In return the blasters were tearing away the Slasher shields and armour and it was clear what would happen - the Slasher exploded. Again, Starwalker missed the pod.

As Starwalker idled at a safe with his GCC ticking away, Nogusha noted that he was being kited by a Caldari Navy Hookbill in his Rifter but that it was a stalemate. He could not get close to the Hookbill and it was not breaking his tank. Nogusha was calling for help in Moclinamaud and since no one else was nearby Starwalker offered to jump clone to the region and help - he would just wait out the last few minutes of his GCC.

Whilst Starwalker was waiting out his GCC John Valentine in local noted that he could not break the tank of a Hawk and he needed help. So Starwalker joined fleet and warped in, along with another Rebel - 3D Horrorshow, in a Rifter. The Hawk pilot, Kushanar, was also calling in friends and just after Starwalker arrived so did a Slasher and an Incursus.

Starwalker targeted the Hawk first as it was probably already in the most trouble and it did the highest DPS - it went down quickly. It was now three Rebels against the two remaining ONI Industry pilots, it did not end well for them as the Slasher and Incursus withered under the combined fire.

Unfortunately, Starwalker's GCC was reset to 15 minutes but he decided that he would jump clone anyway to Covryn and head to Moclinamaud as his Hawk could active shield tank the gate fire for a short period of time. Nogusha had been waiting for a long time already and Starwalker had offered to help earlier. So, Starwalker had jumped and flown to Agoze and was only three jumps away when Nogusha's plucky little Rifter finally succumbed, after 50 minutes and taking more than 25,000 damage, when a Thrasher arrived to finally help the Hookbill complete the kill. 

It was a shame and if Starwalker had come earlier it might have been different. However, no point in speculating on what might have been as Starwalker noticed an Incursus on scan and decided to investigate. It was at an acceleration gate with a Rifter and Starwalker went in hot. However, things did not go according to the master plan - kill the two frigates - as fourteen pilots piled into the fight.

Starwalker was pointed at close range, so with no chance of escape he overheated his rockets determined to take at least one and preferably more with him. The Incursus started to run but went down anyway as the rockets went through its structure 8km away. Before he could take down the Rifter too the Griffin jammed him. Now helpless and not even able to fire, Starwalker's Hawk disintegrated and he warped his pod to safety, and returned to base.

This was not quite the outcome he had envisaged when jumping to Placid but EVE could be a harsh mistress and very fickle. Losing two Drakes and a Hawk recently may be a reason to get back into a Merlin but Starwalker was also looking to experiment a little with more expensive ships and inevitably they would be lost. 

Black Drake Down

Starwalker had been ratting in the Great Wildlands with his Drake and with decidedly mixed results. On the one hand it was easy to go and kill rats but on the other it was boring and the rewards were not great. Starwalker was there to improve his security status from 8.7, ideally to around zero.

Starwalker had entered the Great Wildlands via Khabi and 7Q-8Z2 and had noticed the two bubbles there but also no other pilots in space. He had thought nothing further about it and ratted along the pipe from there to UMDQ-6 in two separate sessions, and docking in E02-IK between sessions.

The basic approach was to go from belt to belt killing those rats with battleships, if the group had battleships he killed everything and then moved on to the next system. Those two ratting sessions totalled around 2.5 hours and netted around 27 million ISK in bounties, however, the worst part of it was that the security status only went from 8.7 to 8.4. Starwalker was hugely disappointed with the progress and considered whether he should simply ignore his security status.

Kadea Maxwell noted that the best way to raise the security status was to simply kill one battleship in each system and not return to any of those systems within 15 minutes, so perhaps do a large circuit. He reckoned it would take around 24 hours to go from -10 to 0.

Starwalker was finished ratting and then he made a mistake - he decided to return to Heild via Khabi and assumed that any likely gate camp there would not stop him as he was going out. This completely forgot or ignored the fact that it was bubbled and that fact landed him in that bubble, 70km away from the gate with a Tornado moving in for the kill.

The second mistake was to stop and fight the Tornado rather than make a run for the gate because within seconds it was a Tornado and a Hurricane and then the screen filled with lots of ships hoping to get in on the now certain kill. Starwalker had overheated the missiles and was trying to take someone down with him but he was not breaking the Tornado anywhere near fast enough as it was active shield tanked. However, the incoming damage was piling up and more firepower was arriving on the field and soon his Drake exploded.

Starwalker warped his pod away to safety but then came a third mistake. He decided that he could still exit via the same gate - if he warped to a nearby celestial and then warped down to the gate, bypassing the bubble. At least that was the theory, it was wrong or the celestial chosen was not the right choice and Starwalker re-awakened in his new medical clone in Covryn, with his other jump clone in the same station. He had also forgotten to reset his home clone station when he had jump cloned to Heild.

Two Drakes lost in two days - not good. The only good news was that during the roam that night there was some modest excitement avoiding larger gangs, chasing some targets around and playing catch me if you can with an Ishkur and Wolf at the Sun. Well there was one other piece of good news and that was killing this Condor, although unfortunately Starwalker had not got into real blaster range before it died.

Recent experience was again highlighting for Starwalker the need for speed to both get into range or to get away and that was probably the area that he had spent the least time considering beyond thinking about kiters or brawlers. What he wanted was a fast brawler with great gank and adequate tank, that was capacitor stable with good damage projection and range control...

Small Bases Again and Again

Starwalker was revisiting the question of small bases again, again. Over the last few days a lot of modules, ammunition and ships had been moved to new locations. It was boring and potentially hazardous as Starwalker still elected to move himself, via Starstepper, rather than pay for the service.

Starstepper still had the strategic base in Hek as the main (and only) base of operations for buying and supplying equipment. He still could only fly the Mammoth at level 4 and so could move cargo up to around 17,000 cubic metres but he had no special skills or ships such as for blockade running. This meant that Starstepper was vulnerable moving equipment and over the last year he had been ganked once in low-sec at a gate and recently in hi-sec. However, the risk was accepted and occasional losses tolerated as annoying but inevitable.

Over time things had changed such as the ships being flown or how they were fit and now Starwalker had jump clones, that allowed a near instantaneous move to a different part of New Eden. Similarly, moving lots of equipment had highlighted the desirability of a base in low traffic lowsec stations adjacent to highsec to reduce the risk of being ganked or running into gate camps.

For instance, Starwalker had moved his base from Eugales to Covryn because the main route in via Orvolle and Oulley was very regularly camped. Covryn was selected in preference to Dastryns because Starwalker was looking for a single station with a repair shop and medical facilities. The medical facilities allowed him to set the location of the clone vat and to upgrade the clone as needed after being podded. 

With these factors in mind Starwalker had selected three bases: Covryn (current), Fensi and Gultratren. Although, Fensi and Gultratren were not active yet as Starwalker had not flown in Kor-Azor, Genesis et al and still had a base in Heild. However, Starwalker was not keen on Molden Heath as he seemed to be usually on the loss end of a small gang such as this recent loss of a Drake. Since he was generally solo - running into a gang was never a good scenario. Being on the receiving end of a gank or a gate camp was inevitable but also that seemed to be more likely to happen in some areas rather than others.

The point about this as it related to small bases was to select bases where Starwalker enjoyed flying or wanted to visit. That really summarised why Starwalker had chosen Placid, Heimatar and Kor-Azor - they represented geographically dispersed locations, one for each jump clone. Starwalker had been in two of those areas and wanted to roam in Kor-Azor. 

The system location was also selected in conjunction with the station, in particular:

• Lowsec solar system next to hisec
• Lowsec system that was unlikely to be frequently gate camped (regularly check Dotlan and the ship/pod kills)
• Station in system with both medical facilities and a repair shop
• Lowsec system had easy access to other regions for extended roaming

Starwalker had originally been very adhoc about how to use the base: ranging from it had everything in abundance to it only had one fitted frigate ready to fly and fight. Starwalker had now moved to:

• Strategic base (Hek) to purchase and stockpile ships, modules, ammunition, consumables and equipment, with trips to resupply a base of operations
• Operational base (Covryn...) with implants (learning...), small number of fitted ships and extra ammunition and consumables (capacitor boosters..). The supply level of this base was estimated as only needing to resupply about once a month
• Ship base with one or two fitted ships ready for use but no other equipment in station. Useful when placed along roaming routes or near intersections for common routes and more than 15 jumps from a base of operations

The advantage of this approach:

1. Fitted ships immediately available for use with a return to base to resupply with ammunition and repair as needed
2. New base of operations could be setup with two or three Mammoth ship trips
3. Jump clone technology allowed an immediate move between base of operations (and resetting clone station to current base)
4. Bases tended to have less clutter or unused equipment

The disadvantages:

1. Preferences for ships and fit changed over time resulting in a base with the wrong ships or wrong fit
2. No ability to refit ships immediately
3. Regular, even if infrequent, resupply was needed and was dangerous
4. Larger ships (battlecruisers) are harder to move as they must be moved individually
5. Battleships cannot be moved like this (at least with current skills and ships)

Starwalker had been busy moving lots of items and selling all sorts of unused and likely to remain unused items, this clean up had netted over 1 billion ISK. Given that ISK was always in short supply this was a welcome increase to the wallet balance.

Rebel Roam Peri Simone FC

Starwalker had turned up in Eugales well after the regular Rebel Roam had started but Peri Simone, the FC, had put out another call for any latecomers to join in and Starwalker had joined the fleet. He was looking for something better to kill than this cyno-ship but he rarely passed up the opportunity for an easy kill.

Starwalker's Incursus was an active tanked dual repair ship with plenty of staying power and face-melting blasters. Of course, he knew that the problem with a dual repair fit was that it pretty much required a small capacitor booster and that crippled range control through the loss of the stasis webifier. However, in principle, in a small gang there was less need to be concerned about range control as ideally everyone was in close for the kill and the target would be surrounded, scrambled and webbed anyway.

That wasn't really the case with the Breacher though that the scout, Jameson2011, was chasing. It was fast at just under 3km/s and it was continually slipping out of point range - a webifier or two on it, along with a scramble would have helped tremendously. Whilst the Breacher was playing catch me if you can, a Jaguar appeared on grid and seemed to be following the Rebels chasing the Breacher. The Rebels speculated as to whether the Jaguar was there to fight or simply to observe the chase.

The Breacher though was trying to be too clever and it came too close and was caught. Once caught properly, it went down very quickly. The Jaguar was still hanging around, 200km away, and seemed to be inviting a fight so Jameson2011 burnt towards it. As the distance closed and the Rebels prepared to warp in the Jaguar warped away. Apparently it was over... until the pilot, Bodb Derg, made a comment in local that he was coming in hot.

At first, the Rebels did not believe it as he had only just warped away and it seemed suicidal for the Jaguar to take on four frigates, however, he warped back in. The Rebels went to work as the Jaguar tried to take down Brink Albosa's Rifter and the four frigates pounded away at the active shield tank.

At first the Jaguar seemed to be holding on but the dual ancillary shield boosters were running together and that only lasts for thirty seconds continuously. So when that time was up the ship's tank effectively disappeared and it disintegrated under the fire shortly afterwards, with Brink escaping in structure.

Peri Simone decided it had been a successful and eventful roam and that now was a good time to finish - on a high. So he declared the roam a success and after some lively chat and banter the Rebels went their separate ways. It had been great fun and Starwalker looked forward to more roams and perhaps starting to fly battlecruisers when in fleet.

Wolf Engages Hookbill in Plex

Starwalker was returning to Eugales in his Wolf after his null-sec roam with Kaeda Maxwell and Vincent R'lyeh. Passing through Ashitsu, he saw a Caldari Navy Hookbill on dscan. It was too good an opportunity to miss so he looked for it and scanned it down to a plex.

Warping in to the plex Starwalker saw the Hookill more than 70km away and started to burn towards it with his afterburner fit. It seemed unlikely that the Hookbill would stay for the fight as surely the Hookbill would have a hard time against a Wolf. As the distance closed the Hookbill remained in the plex.

Starwalker watched the distance close to less than 30km and couldn't decide whether the pilot, di14juni1983, was stupid, brave or oblivious. He waited to less than 20km and then started the lock, which surely would alert di14juni1983 to the imminent danger. The Hookbill engaged first! Starwalker was surprised but pleased and tried to close into point blank with the auto-cannons spitting out their venom.

The distance did not close to less than 8km and Starwalker wondered whether he should switch to barrage or simply keep firing as the Hookbill was going down nicely. The incoming damage seemed anemic and was also being supplemented by some of the rat's fire but Starwalker's shields were holding very nicely and he hadn't even started the armour repairer yet.

The Hookbill started to gain some distance and the Wolf point dropped but strangely the pilot did not automatically warp away and maybe he hadn't realised the point was gone. Or possibly the Hookbill was aligning out, however, the Wolf did its thing and the final volley blew through the remaining armour and structure to destroy the Hookbill. Starwalker was pleased with the kill but forgot to collect the loot, even though he had to wait out the GCC.

Starwalker noted afterwards that he should have tried to observe the fight directly rather than watch the overview for maintaining situational awareness, in partcular to pinpoint when the Hookbill was moving out of scramble range. Similarly, Starwalker messed up getting the pod and so he should emphasise that final approach when the enemy target was about to explode to increase his chance of getting the pod too.

18 Month Review

Starwalker had now been in New Eden for a little over 18 months. He was a reasonably experienced pilot now with just over 27 million skill points. 3 months ago, he had had good intentions of flying more interceptors and covert ops frigates and even to do some exploration. He had done virtually none of that.

Instead, he had spent time still flying T1 frigates in a new part of New Eden - Eugales, especially the Merlin, which was now a fearsome blaster boat with a cool ancillary shield booster. Starwalker was running into more faction warfare pilots, who often ran away and he had also started to fly the HAM (Heavy Assault Missile) Drake, along with a complement of drones. More than that, he had achieved his first solo battlecruiser kill and he even had two new jump clones. It had been an interesting time.

Starwalker was slowly improving, clearly experience counted. He felt that he made fewer pilot error style mistakes, although he still did make mistakes. He had trained for ships in every race and most weapon systems but he was starting to favour Caldari ships, for shield tanking and missiles. He liked the new ancillary shield booster for active tanking and coupled that with the simplicity and damage projection of missiles.

He had been flying around in the Incursus recently, the active armour tanked variety and appreciated some of their benefits, especially armour repair in null-sec. However, Starwalker was also inclined towards favouring gank over tank, despite on occasion losing to ships with really good tanks but lower gank such as the dual repair Incursus. This naturally led back to shield tankers that could use the low slots for damage modules rather than armour tanking.

Whilst Starwalker was still training drones and similar for battlecruisers he had been easily distracted by other shiny toys. Consequently, he had completed level one training for things like the Minmatar battleship and medium autocannon specialisation. There were still some distractions available such as Command Ships and other battleships and Starwalker considered just doing them first so he could then concentrate on the real combat skills needed like heavy missile specialisation and getting more drones skills to a higher level. Perhaps the real problem was lack of discipline and flitting between too many things.

Previously Starwalker had summarised his key areas of focus as ships, combat, skills and base. Perhaps now was the time to really focus:

1. Ships - focus on Caldari ships: Merlin and Drake. The Caracal might be useful as a little fun frigate killer or perhaps the Hawk. Whilst the Merlin was now a blaster boat Starwalker already had small blaster specialisation to level 3
2. Combat - Starwalker maintained better control of his modules and overheating but wanted to focus more on situational awareness and manual flying
3. Skills - focus training plan on Caldari ships, missiles, drones, navigation and fitting skills, after finishing off training for miscellaneous items (battleships, command ships and recon ships)
4. Base - two bases currently had ships, equipment and a clone: Heild and Eugales. Another clone in its ship was located at Fensi

Starwalker was satisfied with the way things were going in New Eden with only one complaint - he still had not sorted out some ISK income to fund his ship losses.

Rebels Run Into Fatal Ascension

Starwalker had missed out on an opportunity to roam within a Rebel small gang for some time and when Kaeda Maxwell setup a roam he jumped at the chance. The last time he had been in fleet with Kaeda it had been a great night with an excellent T1 cruiser battle at the end. This time Starwalker was in a Wolf.

The Wolf spat out projectiles inflicting around 250 damage per second. It was a frigate sized monster, decimating whatever was in its path. Starwalker liked ships with plenty of gank and only wished that high gank ships also had really good tanks but they tended to be glass-cannons. It was either that or compromise DPS for more tank, a perennial choice within New Eden.

Vincent R'lyeh joined in the festivities in his Republic Fleet Firetail and the gang set off deep into null-sec space. It was generally quiet until Kaeda in his Harpy laconically called point on a Jaguar. As Vincent and Starwalker warped in it was clear that the Jaguar pilot also had friends and unfortunately more friends from Fatal Ascension than the three R1FTA pilots could manage.

Fatal Ascension had come to a knife fight with guns and two to one odds, it was a massacre and almost over before it began as their gang of Hurricane, Falcon, Jaguar, Hookbill et al made short work of the Rebel's Harpy and Wolf and only the Republic Fleet Firetail managed to escape.

Kaeda and Starwalker re-shipped into Thrashers and were soon in space again with Vincent. Almost inevitably they ran into the same gang and ended up being chased by that Fatal Ascension gang across multiple systems. Starwalker found it quite exciting to be chased across New Eden and on the receiving end of tactics such as gate camping to keep people within a system. It was another new experience.

Later the Rebels tried baiting a gate camp with bubbles at the EC-P8R gate from hi-sec. Whilst the gate campers were looking for their next victim they clearly did not want to chase nearby targets, too much like hardwork and possibly risky for them. So, despite the high hopes and good intentions, the Rebel gang ended up at the starting point in Tartoken with no kills but they had had a fun time messing about with the residents in null-sec.

Drake Fights Hurricane in Fade

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.

Drake Caught at Gate

Starwalker was out in a Drake just cruising around when he was distracted by incoming messages on his mobile device. Whilst he was distracted and holding on a gate an Executioner established a lock and point.

If Starwalker had demonstrated more caution or even fear, he would have simply carried on and left the Executioner behind. However, he was interested to see what would turn up and moved towards the Executioner but without engaging and simply running his defences. Space filled as the rest of the gang arrived and Starwalker knew that there were too many ships to take on his lone Drake.

So he headed back to the gate and saw some gang members jump through just before he did. The Drake was starting to take damage but it was nothing too serious. The trouble was that as he jumped through it was getting more serious as he was locked and scrambled again on the other side. It was now that Starwalker made his first real mistake - he jumped back through the gate again.

It was immediately apparent that it was a real problem as the majority of the gang was still there. They opened fire again and by now, the Drake was down to half of its shield and had also seen that electronic warfare was being used too. Starwalker knew that bouncing either side of the gate would simply be a slow death, so he decided to engage and kill what he could before going down.

That was the second mistake - more of the gang was this side of the gate and if anything he should have tried to fight the smaller part of the gang. He engaged the nearest Kitsune and it went down fairly quickly with the heavy assault missiles battering it whilst it was being webbed. Next he locked the original Executioner and engaged that too and it too started to go down and this was when Starwalker wondered if he could escape - only the Executioner still had a point.

Starwalker overheated his assault missiles but completely forgot to use his Warrior IIs and that might have made a small difference. It was only a small chance but it should have been taken, especially as the god of ewar locked onto the Drake and its lock and scramble on the Executioner disappeared, which quickly scuttled away trailing fire. The rest of the gang held distance at 19km and it was inevitable that the Drake would not survive and it exploded into a ball of fire.

Two New Jump Clones

Starwalker was alerted to a new Jump Clone service offered by Sulieman Shouaa and wanted to take advantage of it. He had contemplated getting jump clones for over a year but had been too lazy to either get to the 8.0 standings required via missions or leave R1FTA to join Estel Arador as an alternative approach to get to those standings.

That laziness was rewarded recently when Sulieman offered a very simple service for 10m ISK per jump clone:

• Go to his location, usually in or near Hevrice
• Fleet up with Sulieman's character that has a ship with a medical bay
• Pay the 10m ISK charge for each jump clone
• Accept the invitation to create a jump clone
• Dock up, pause training and then jump to the newly created clone
• Restart training and disappear to whatever hole you came from with that clone 

Starwalker now has his original clone in Eugales and two jump clones that had been moved to Heild, Molden Heath and Fensi, Kor-Azor. This seemed like a nice spread of locations, although Kor-Azor was something of an unknown as Starwalker had never flown around that area. 

Sulieman had provided a fast and easy to use service and now that Starwalker had two more jump clones for ease of jumping to a different area he was undecided as to whether he needed more. The original intent was to get four jump clones but that now seemed excessive. So for now, Starwalker would stick with his two jump clones and enjoy the ability to simply jump around New Eden when needed.