Faction Warfare Targets

Starwalker had been grounded or at least that was what he felt like as he had spent almost no time in space in the last month. He still had his penchant for the Tristan as an alternative to his Merlin and he had now had a few more fights.

Most of those fights were with faction warfare pilots that were either really doing the complex or simply waiting for a hunter to become the hunted. Crimson StrongBlood had been looking for a fight in his Rifter but when it came down to it - he exploded quickly. The same could be said for groapadegunoi and his Slasher. Alexanderdit was in the complex but whether he wanted to fight was not really clear but whether he wanted to or not his Tristan was forfeit.

However, Starwalker hadn't had it all his own way. The first night back from his long spell away he lost this Tristan. The problem was simple enough:

• Warping in from the acceleration gate he was immediately targeted by JESSKABAL in his Caldari Navy Hookbill, who was waiting for his next target
• Rather than target the Hookbill Starwalker had managed to target the inoffensive beacon as he clicked on the target in the overview as it switched position with the ship
• Launching drones, getting up to speed, scrambling and firing his blasters took some precious seconds. Precioius seconds where he didn't notice that he had the wrong target selected
• Realising he had the wrong target selected Starwalker switched but he had now lost nearly a third of his shield
• He saw the tracking disruptor and web applied to his Tristan and also noticed that he was doing no damage - his guns could not hit the Hookbill at 7.5km with Null while disrupted. But where was the drone damage - that made up two thirds of  the Tristan's firepower?
• His drones were out but simply idle. Having drones set to aggressive and on focus fire had not resulted in them attacking the Hookbill that had now taken half the shield from the Tristan
• Belatedly Starwalker engaged the Hookbill with his drones but he knew that it was too little too late
• He aligned out and tried to escape but with a web applied by the Hookbill he had no chance of getting the Tristan out - only his pod

The fight had not gone well, Starwalker felt rusty and that he had made a lot of silly mistakes. He had been in a later fight where he had engaged a Tormentor and somehow had made the same mistake with his drones. The damage came in but very little was going out, he felt sure he had pressed "F" to engage but his drones (again) were idle. It appeared that this command to engage had been lost at the start of the battle.

These faction warfare pilots seemed to run the full range of behaviours, from those that were in the complex for itself and did not want to engage, those that were there but would engage, those that were there as bait and those that were there to kill the hunters. That classification did not include those that were AFK, warp stabilised or those that lurked 100km - 200km away just watching but would disappear if you approached. Starwalker wondered if he should sit in a complex and see what came, perhaps an interesting new tactic to try.

Whilst Starwalker had gained a little more experience with the Tristan he also realised that he liked the holy trinity of propulsion, scram and web and the shield fit that he was using did not have the web. That web gave some degree of range control and would increase the damage from his drones, which was important now that he had Drone Interfacing V. The trouble was that the small armour repairer did not seem especially effective but perhaps that was Starwalker's imagination.