Kestrel has Bad Luck then Good Luck

It was an unusual engagement with bad luck followed by some good luck. Starwalker had debated internally whether to go and fight an Incursus and Federation Navy Comet in a faction complex with his Kestrel. He guessed that if they were fighting the Comet would win and he would have a good chance against it, if it had already taken damage, however, if they were not fighting it would be over for the Kestrel very quickly.

He decided to go in as nothing ventured nothing gained and it was an entirely disposable T1 frigate. The problem was that as he entered warp he got disconnected. If those two frigates were at the acceleration gate then he was toast, assuming the warp completed, if it hadn't completed then presumably he had warped to some random location.

Starwalker quickly logged back in assuming that he had warped to a random location but he was on the acceleration gate being fired on... by an Executioner around 7km away. Some bad luck, and he guessed that it was unlikely he would survive as he was already in deep armour and a few more volleys and the Kestrel would be destroyed.

Fortunately he was using a medium ancillary shield booster rather than an extender so he still had around 27 seconds where he could mitigate the incoming damage and try to destroy the Executioner. He locked up the Executioner, started his booster just as the Kestrel entered structure and returned fire.

Fortunately he had selected Nova faction rockets and they would also be good for the Executioner. He overheated and set a close orbit, lasers had comparatively poor tracking so he was better off orbiting at 500m rather than the usual 7km. The shield booster was keeping up with the incoming damage and very soon the Executioner was in armour.

Suddenly it seemed to just melt through its armour and into structure and Starwalker initially assumed it was gank fit with no tank. The Executioner exploded just as the last booster charges were used up. The pilot, matt dillinger, clearly thought he had lost the kill and noted that he had inadvertently moved his small armour repairer rather than started it.

So perhaps some good luck for Starwalker but he also wondered whether that repairer would have made any difference to the outcome, as his experience was that a small armour repairer on its own only slowed the incoming damage it did not stop the march into structure. It would have been a close finish if it had started but Starwalker suspected the outcome would have been the same.