Stock of Fitted Ships Depleted

Starwalker had roamed towards Covryn when he scanned some frigates at a small complex, usually he left on the basis that he did not know whether he would find a fight in progress or a small gang waiting to destroy the next idiot coming in blind. Having idiot tendencies himself from time to time Starwalker warped in to find an Incursus, Malediction and Executioner still fighting inside.

It looked like the others had left or were destroyed. Starwalker locked up the Incursus and Executioner as they were close by and started firing at the Incursus. He assumed the Incursus would kill the Executioner given it was so close but the Executioner actually slipped away leaving Starwalker in his Hookbill to kill the Incursus alone.

The Incursus was tanking like a champion, it was partially in structure and it must have mistimed the capacitor booster reload cycle as it went from Incursus to wreck. Starwalker collected the loot and carried on, when he scanned a Coercer in another complex. He was unsure whether it was a good idea to go in but he went in anyway and was greeted by the Coercer at over 20km establishing a lock and firing its lasers. Not a good start.

Starwalker tried to get the Hookbill into a close orbit but the damage kept coming in and just as he got in to around 7km his ship exploded. He had sustained too much damage coming into range and belatedly Starwalker cursed the fact that he had not used his tracking disruptor sooner and that he had not spiralled in. If he had done both of those things then perhaps he might have got into a close orbit but he would never know.

A Merlin themed Rebel fleet left Adirain with Patrick Kasper as the FC and the fleet ended up getting some nice kills in a complex, where each of these ships pretty much arrived individually Vexor, Blackbird, Atron and Caracal. Apart from the Vexor they seemed like they all wanted to spectate at range but ended up landing in the middle of the fleet, which the fleet found hugely amusing. 

A little while later, the Rebel fleet found themselves out-numbered by another frigate fleet waiting at a small complex but after dropping loot the Rebels went in anyway. The fleet targeted a Wolf and it went down and then this Rifter but Starwalker's Merlin did not last much longer as it went down in flames shortly afterwards. The roam had been great fun.

It was less fun how he lost his next three ships. Starwalker warped into a complex thinking a fight between two Merlins might be going on - it wasn't and they easily killed his lone Merlin. Similarly, in another complex the engagement started off as a Caracal versus Caracal fight that Starwalker was winning but it ended in a 3 v 1 that saw his Caracal bite the dust. Finally, this Merlin died to an insta-locking gate camp when he was on his way to join a Rebel roam.

Those recent losses had depleted his available stock of fitted ships and so Starstepper undocked his Mammoth in Hek and delivered some more Merlins to Covryn, Lisbaetanne and Gultratren. It was an easy choice, blasters were his favourite weapon system and T1 frigates were very dispensible. He also thought that it was time to try the Harpy as it shared the Merlin hull and love for blasters. Strangely, given his predilection towards the Merlin and blasters he had never flown the Harpy.