Harpy Destroyed by Station Camp

Starwalker had undocked in his Merlin looking for trouble and this hapless cyno-ship was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. He had warped in, fired a shot and then warped out and back again. This allowed him to kill the Magnate at leisure and when he shot the pod the sentry guns opened fire again. This Merlin had just over 8k EHP and so he had time to collect the corpse and go.

Starwalker had fitted up a nice Harpy to go with his complement of Merlins and took it out into the space lanes of New Eden. This cyno-ship was hardly a stern test of ship capability but he felt almost obliged to take an easy kill and at least it showed that it could take the sentry gate gun fire for a short while. In fact, long enough to not bother warping away before killing this cyno-ship piloted by Talia Tessony. Starwalker accidently left the system by the wrong gate and when he came back in Talia had a second cyno-ship up but not for long.

A little while later a quick directional scan of the next system revealed a Tristan and that it was ratting. Starwalker warped in to the asteroid belt and the Tristan was soon destroyed along with the pod. He docked up to take a short break in station and when he undocked he saw three ships at the undock, two Cynabals and a Talos. He decided to try to warp to the out gate wondering if he should have simply re-docked. It was an insta-locking station camp and the once proud Harpy was a ball of flames within a few seconds. He should have simply re-docked his ship and waited.

As always, the loss of a ship was no reason to stop flying and soon Starwalker was in space with another Harpy using the same fit:

[Harpy, MWDMSE]

Magnetic Field Stabilizer II
Pseudoelectron Containment Field I
Micro Auxiliary Power Core II

Medium Shield Extender II
Limited 1MN Microwarpdrive I
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
[empty high slot]
Light Neutron Blaster II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge S
Light Neutron Blaster II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge S

Small Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer I
Small Hybrid Burst Aerator I

He landed in a medium complex where a Vengeance decided to take his Harpy on and it came in to a really close orbit. Tactically that was a mistake, as the Harpy was blaster fit not railguns. The Vengeance armour tank struggled to keep up with incoming damage and then finally it gave out and the once proud Vengeance exploded. Something similar happened shortly afterwards with this Thrasher.

However, Starwalker did not have it all his own way as he landed into another complex and all three ships were just waiting for their next victim - the Harpy was soon gone. Similarly, a short while later his Merlin succumbed to a gate camp. Starwalker then spotted an Incursus and warped his Merlin into the complex. The Incursus was waiting and its first action was to gain range and start using its railguns. Starwalker tried to manually pilot towards the Incursus with an overheated afterburner but the range closed far too slowly and his Merlin expired from sheer exhaustion.

Starwalker loved the sheer firepower of blasters but kiters presented a real challenge as the blasters were a short range weapon system. He knew that trying to move directly towards kiters failed miserably, so he would try to move away and slingshot them in future. It would likely result in the loss of a number of brawlers as he had very little success to date with using a slingshot to get targets into scramble range.