Smartbombing Battleships

Peri Simone was leading his regular TESF (Target Everyone, Somebody Fire) roam, from Adirain this time and a motley collection of frigates headed off into the space lanes of New Eden seeking targets of opportunity or fun and kills. It seemed like a quiet start to the roam when a Typhoon was spotted in Agoze, piloted by LadyShu.

The Rebels swarmed in with their dozen frigates but the Typhoon was not alone and soon the grid was being shared with a Scorpion, Cynabal, Vexor, Cormorant and another Typhoon. The Rebels had just brought a knife to a gun fight and were severely outclassed. Starwalker tried to get away in his Merlin but he didn't make it.

With some Rebels having lost their ships the fleet reformed in Vey and continued on to Maut. Starwalker had reshipped to an Incursus as his nearest available ship. He had not flown a dual repair Incursus for some time due to its lack of range control, even though it had an excellent tank and a very good gank factor. In short, this fit could not hold a target and relied on the target staying in range to the bitter end.

The Rebels were waiting on a gate as the scout did his thing in the next system when three battleships arrived. Patrick Kasper pointed out that they had no guns and consequently were probably smartbombing battleships. To a small fleet of frigates this represented a significant danger as smartbombs were easily capable of destroying frigates and pods very, very quickly. Their key tactic was to be in very close range. The usual counter-tactic in this situation was to orbit outside of smartbomb range (up to 6km).
 

In addition, the Rebels were in jump range (<2.5km) of the gate and it was possible that the smartbomb could hit the gate, which would then retaliate against that battleship. Peri Simone called the target and the Rebels went to work on Nivie Chryl's Tempest. The combined firepower of the frigates and some friendly fire brought down the Tempest. Peri called the next target and Starwalker moved in closer to establish a 7km orbit.

More friends of the battleships arrived and Peri called for the fleet to get out. Starwalker aligned to the sun and hit warp but nothing happened - his armour repairers had depleted the capacitor and in all the excitement he had not noticed. However, now that everything had turned off the capacitor was recharging and as he spammed warp the warp-drive went active. Starwalker was not pointed - he would escape... However, the warp-out was not instantaneous and before he warped his ship was destroyed by the next smartbomb wave and his pod followed almost immediately afterwards.

Back in Covryn in a basic clone, Starwalker went into his usual routine:

1. Upgrade his clone to avoid losing skill points the next time he was podded
2. Pause the training queue to plug-in implants
3. Plug-in a set of implants
1. Basic set of +3 learning implants to speed up training by about 10%
2. Zainou 'Deadeye' Small Hybrid Turret SH-603 for +3% small hybrid turret damage
3. Eifyr and Co. 'Rogue' Evasive Maneuvering EM-703 for +3% agility
4. Zor's Custom Navigation Hyper-Link for +5% speed bonus
5. Inherent Implants 'Lancer' Gunnery RF-903 for +3% rate of fire on all turrets
6. Zainou 'Deadeye' Rapid Launch RL-1001 for +1% missile launcher rate of fire
4. Restart training queue
5. Get into another ship and insure it