Merlin Intercepted Atron

Starwalker was cruising in his usual afterburner fit Merlin when he spied an Atron at a complex. Soon he was warping in looking for the kill. The Atron was around 30km from the warp-in and when it engaged it maintained a range of 18km to 20km. It was kiting in point range and was clearly MWD fit given it was going well over 3km/s. 

Starwalker decided it was time to try some tactics and he broke the point and warped to the sun at 30km. The intent was to catch the Atron at the sun assuming it would warp-in at range. The tactic failed as the Atron warped in still 40km away. 

 

The Atron seemed too cautious for this chase-me type of tactic to work so Starwalker decided to engage anyway and see if he could get in range with manual piloting. The slingshot manoeuvre was tried twice but it was not quite enough and the Atron continued to plink away.

Starwalker had recently seen BlakPhoenixx explain an interception based on turning towards the target's flight path. So, he watched the Atron and guessed where its orbit would take it and turned sharply to that location. It was something like a 90-120 degree turn rather than 180 degree turn for a slingshot and... it worked. 

This manoeuvre had exploited the flight path of the Atron and suddenly the Atron was in scram range and from there it was simply annihilated. Starwalker was ecstatic, it was the first time he had successfully pulled off that interception manoeuvre. He would definitely be trying that one again.