Tristan versus Tristan

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