Losses and Lessons Learnt

Starwalker had been in New Eden for well over two years but still managed to lose ships in decidedly non-clever ways. He had lost the most ships in a single month - 27 - and the losses had seen the full range from good fight to good grief, what just happened. As always, he wanted to learn something from each loss to mend bad habits, improve situational awareness or more positively to respond to the target environment with updated ship fits or new tactics.

 Losses and lessons learnt:

1. Overconfidence
• Trying to catch fast (MWD) kiters with afterburner fit ships, especially a slow afterburner fit Enyo. Recognise limitations and act accordingly - the Retribution started 200km away and it was going over 4.5km/s. There was plenty of time to leave with the ship intact
• Attacking a ship without really knowing what the ship could do. This Incursus was lost to a neuting Crucifier - those neutralisers were a complete surprise and the Incursus was totally disabled by it. The other two ships joining in for the kill did not tip the outcome of the fight, which was already lost
• Attacking a ship knowing what it could do, that it was better and that it was likely to win. For example, taking on a Federation Navy Comet in an Incursus was being extremely hopeful and similarly, taking on this Algos in a Merlin. To tip the balance in favour of victory required some tactical surprise or situational advantage, neither were present in these cases
2. Situational Assessment/Awareness
• Checking local pilots in system was a good idea to see whether any pilots belong to the same corporation. This Incursus might have been more prepared for the Kestrel at a Deadspace complex to be joined by his partner - a Merlin. Better yet, it could have taken action such as flying away from the warp-in point. The additional time for the Merlin to arrive at the fight might have made a difference
• Checking short scan for new arrivals to a fight would have potentially saved this Harpy that was winning a fight against a Jaguar but the arrival of re-inforcements tipped the balance towards destruction. Assessing the threat of new arrivals was critical to deciding next steps and when this Falcon arrived, Starwalker should have left with his Merlin immediately
• Leaving a fight was a valid course of action such as when tank was too strong, such as a T1 frigate taking on a dual repairer Incursus. It makes sense to leave whilst the going was good, leaving in good time was critical to making that escape and this Merlin left it too late. The arrival of the second Incursus was simply to get on the killmail. This Moa was unable to effectively hit the two assault frigates attacking it at the star gate and should have simply de-aggressed and left. By the time that decision was taken it was too late
3. Module mismanagement
• Not checking when a finite resource has been used up. This Incursus needed its capacitor to be replenished to allow everything else to work, the capacitor ran dry even though there were two booster charges ready to go in the capacitor booster. Without the armour repairers working the ship was totally defenceless and consequently was unnecessarily destroyed by smart-bombing battleships
• Overlooking the use of a module. This Merlin had a shield booster that was fully charged and ready to start work, except it was never used. Starwalker was so used to flying a shield extender fit Merlin that he had forgotten to start the medium ancillary shield booster

The good news for Starwalker was that he felt he was making fewer mistakes generally. He was sure that he would continue to make mistakes, especially when experimenting with new ships and fits but he would learn from that.