Gallente frigates were a common sight in faction warfare space, the prime hunting ground for a fight. Spotting an Incursus in a complex was not unusual and it was even more common that it would be rail-gun fit rather than blaster fit.
Starwalker was in his Breacher and knew that taking on an Incursus would be a tough fight. When he warped in he found the pilot was Nogusha, a top ranked pilot in Screaming Haybusa and a former corporation mate in R1FTA. The fight hadn't started yet but it had just got harder, no rookie mistakes from this pilot.
Nogusha had selected his spot and the engagement began at his preferred range of around 7km. Starwalker had set a close orbit but he had no speed advantage to close the gap, even with an overheated afterburner. He launched everything at the Incursus, his Caldari Navy Nova rockets and his pair of Warrior IIs. The railguns were quickly forcing the Breacher to repair the incoming damage and his medium ancillary shield booster was doing a good job.
The Incursus too was suffering and its small ancillary armour repairer was clawing back the damage but not enough as the damage slowly worked its way towards the structure. The Breacher though had run out of capacitor charges and Starwalker had started his small ancillary armour repairer. The two ships went into structure together but the Incursus was belching more flames and the race to destruction ended with the Incursus exploding and the Breacher with 50% of its structure left.
The Breacher was a flaming mess but it had survived. Good fights were exchanged and both pilots acknowledged that it was a tough fight and close.
Starwalker was roaming around Metropolis in his Breacher when he scanned an Incursus in a complex. The Breacher arrived to find the Incursus waiting. Starwalker was using his favourite fit that was based on fitting both the Medium Ancillary Shield Booster as well as the Small Ancillary Armour Repairer.
The one recent change he had made was to change the shield rigs for another missile damage rig. General fitting wisdom decried dual tanks but on occasions it was a useful addition to the ship's defence. Starwalker had reached the point where he made up his own mind about a fit, he felt he had earned his stripes going through the levels of understanding:
- Copied a fit, not really understanding why that particular combination of modules were used, their strengths and weaknesses
- Fitted a ship with a general understanding of the ships and modules and fitting rules but not exploiting the ships strengths and/or mitigating weaknesses. Using general fitting rules such as
- Fit modules to fight at a certain range (close, scram or point)
- Fit weapons of all one type/range
- Fit MWD and warp disruptor or afterburner and scrambler
- Fit either an armour or shield tank
- Use zero or one fitting module such as an Auxiliary Power Control or CPU Upgrade to enable a particular combat fit
- Fitted a ship understanding why the modules are selected or not selected, complementing the ship's bonuses and the purpose of the fit
Starwalker considered a dual tank justified on this ship and he was confident that he would destroy the Incursus. As he engaged though a Slasher and Rifter also landed at zero and he made an almost instant decision to switch targets as the Incursus had only just recently entered armour.
Whilst Starwalker had no reason to believe that this was a three versus one situation he assumed that it was and decided to kill the ships in an order of "kill-ability". It was a term he had heard when Kil2 and Kovorix had discussed the order of target selection:
- Slasher - as an attack frigate it would likely have the weakest tank and the Incursus would have the strongest tank
- Rifter - it would be next purely because the Incursus would be last
- Incursus - it was the most dangerous ship because it had a combination of good damage and a strong tank
It was always a hard decision to switch targets but Starwalker did and also tried to maintain range by heading towards the Slasher. It worked as the range from the Incursus increased to around 5km and the Rifter was about 7km away. The Slasher went down quickly and then the Rifter was targeted. The medium ancillary shield booster was overheated and working full time but was running low on charges. As the Rifter went down the shield booster ran out and Starwalker started the armour repairer and could finally focus on the Incursus.
Starwalker pulled range and the Incursus damage dropped dramatically, the armour repairer had saved the Breacher. The Incursus was toast.
It had been very satisfying and Starwalker was please with the fight and fighting three at the same time had been a really good experience. Sometimes the kill-board time on fights seemed like they were more than one versus one but targets simply arrived in quick succession. One example, this Executioner came into the complex where Starwalker was waiting and it was nearly dead as this Slasher arrived and it died as well.
Starwalker had a penchant for brawling frigates and liked to roam in low security space. The engagement envelope was somewhat limited - generally other brawling frigates. It was possible to catch bigger prey in a frigate such as a battleship but that was a rarity. Similarly, generally avoiding point range kiters (Slicer, Condor...) was advisable unless they could be caught such as at a warp-in point.
Usually Starwalker avoided the Griffin on the basis that being jammed permanently throughout a fight was no fun. However, drones changed the equation significantly because they would continue to fight irrespective of whether their mother ship was jammed. This became important when Starwalker's Tristan entered a complex and chased the Incursus that was there.
Within seconds of the fight starting a Griffin entered and Starwalker quickly locked it up and sent the drones after it - just before he was jammed. Luckily he had been fast enough, the drones were doing their work on the Griffin and Starwalker concentrated on trying to get out of range of the Incursus.
The drones were destroying the Griffin and for some reason it decided to stay and die rather than run, probably to help the Incursus get the kill but it did not work. The Griffin went down and with targeting restored the Tristan's blasters and drones went back to work on the Incursus. The Incursus exploded and the 2v1 was over.
Starwalker had been helped by the fact that the duo were newer players but what was satisfying was that tactically he had reacted quickly and with the right response. He had seen that the greatest danger was from the Griffin and that it needed to be neutralised immediately, he had then tried to keep as much range as possible from the Incursus to reduce the blaster damage.
Whilst drones could be easily destroyed the benefit of drones was that they:
- Would be able to continue to fight even if the mother ship was jammed
- Would operate over a significant range from the mother ship, in particular against point range kiters
- Some point range kiters would fit their ship to achieve a speed of well over 4km/s to outrun the Hobgoblin IIs
- Warrior IIs had lower damage but were significantly faster and could catch most point range kiters. Consequently, Starwalker carried 5 x Hobgoblin IIs and 3 x Warrior IIs
Starwalker fitted his Tristan for scram range fighting as when he ran into a kiting (MWD) Tristan fighting at point range he simply destroyed the drones. A few times now he had effectively chased off a Tristan because its offensive capability had been destroyed. Whilst those fights had not resulted in destroying the kiting Tristan the more important point was that Starwalker's brawler frigate had not been destroyed.
Murphy's Law was often stated as "Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong". The classic case for any pilot in New Eden was meeting the hard counter to whatever ship was being flown or being in the wrong type of ship for the available targets. Sometimes you just wanted to be in a different ship.
There are plenty of other Murphy effects such as:
- Starting a module or at least believing that to be true and you notice later the module is not operational
- Flying into an engagement with the right ammunition loaded for that target and on arrival finding that ship has left and another ship is there, for which the wrong ammunition is now loaded
- Seeing a pilot in one ship and then realising a short while later that they have changed ships when you engage them. This Slasher died to a Rupture but Starwalker initially thought he was about to start fighting a Thrasher and he only noticed his mistake when the cruiser drones started to attack
Starwalker had his fair share of those experiences and was feeling like he wanted to be in a Slasher when he had met a Republic Fleet Firetail. He was actually chasing a Rifter but so was the Firetail and both hunters had landed together. Whilst it had turned out to be a very close fight his Breacher had been destroyed.
He had thought the same thing about being in a Slasher when taking on the Incursus in a Breacher but given that the Incursus pilot had backup in the form of a Malediction the outcome would have been the same in either case.
Sometimes Murphy was not in sight, it was simple stupidity such as when Starwalker was in a Slasher and had decided to take on a:
- Hawk that was non-flashy sitting on the gate. The Hawk took the opportunity to take on the flashy Slasher and Starwalker could easily have simply jumped out of the danger zone. The Slasher was not well equipped to take on a Hawk but he just wanted to see what would happen; would the speed of the Slasher mitigate the damage from rockets? It would not; that result was entirely predictable and there had been no need to test it out for real
- Kestrel that had chased Starwalker into a complex and his Slasher could easily have escaped by warping away immediately or outrunning the Kestrel. However, he wanted to see what would happen against the lower level of damage from the Kestrel, compared to the Hawk. Once it was clear that the speed and armour repairer were insufficient it was too late to run
Starwalker already knew that the Slasher tank was miniscule and that the fit used with the tracking disruptor was not effective against rocket, missile and drone ships. Completely unnecessarily he had also proven that for himself.
The Slasher had been successful against a Thrasher and Retribution but Starwalker had not had it all his own way. He had seen a Republic Fleet Firetail and had mistaken it as artillery fit, worse he had not corrected that mistake as the close range damage came pouring in. The Slasher had very little buffer and was soon a simple space wreck.
It was not long before Starwalker was in another Slasher and not long after that when he saw an Incursus in a complex. The Slasher ammunition was changed to Republic Fleet Fusion, the tracking speed script loaded into the Tracking Disruptor and overheat for the small armour repairer and the auto-cannons.
Ready, Starwalker entered the complex to find the Incursus waiting. Immediately he selected an orbit of 500m and applied the scramble, web, guns and disruptor. The Slasher tucked into a close orbit and the Incursus started to take damage.
At first the Slasher was orbiting and there was no incoming damage, so Starwalker assumed that he had guessed correctly that it was fitted with railguns. The Incursus entered armour but also repaired the damage. Whilst it had seemed to be going well to start with there was incoming damage and the distance between the frigates increased to just over 2km.
The Slasher was into armour and Starwalker assumed that the Incursus was getting some lucky hits in. He started the armour repairer going but the situation was deteriorating quickly as the armour was suddenly gone and the repairer was not keeping up with the damage. The Incursus was fitted with railguns and he was surprised at this range that those guns were hitting so well.
The problem for the Slasher was that it had virtually no buffer and as it dipped into structure it was soon unrecoverable and the Slasher exploded. Reciprocrat had clearly managed to reduce the transversal velocity. In retrospect Starwalker wondered - if he had overheated his afterburner whether that would have made a difference. He would not know from this encounter as it had already been lost but he would have to find out.
Starwalker had joined the Black Rebel Rifter Club (R1FTA) because of Miura Bull and was disappointed when Miura left for new pastures. When Miura started a new corporation, the Screaming Hayabusa, Starwalker had briefly considered leaving R1FTA but had decided to stay where he was.
After nearly three years in New Eden Starwalker had never clashed with Miura Bull in combat, that changed when he warped into the complex chasing an Incursus - it was piloted by Miura Bull. The usual pleasantries were exchanged - lock, scramble and fire - and the fight was on.
Starwalker was in his experimental Kestrel fit that favoured tank and gave up range control, relying on the range of rockets to hit and an overheated afterburner to stay in scramble range. Whilst the tank was impressive it was still vulnerable to a well flown kiter - Radzak87 had maintained a range of 23km or so and simply worn down the tank, it had taken over 15,000 HP to destroy the Kestrel but the end was inevitable.
The Incursus was hitting extremely hard and the Kestrel's shield buffer tank was going down but in return the Caldari Navy Nova rockets were stripping away chunks of armour. The Kestrel suddenly bit deep into armour and Starwalker decided it was time to play his ace - the medium shield ancillary booster. It started repairing the shield damage but perhaps it had been started too late - the Incursus was now tearing at the Kestrel's structure.
However, the Incursus was also in deep trouble and despite the repair work it was going into structure too. The slugfest continued for another few seconds and then the extra shield repairs for the Kestrel tipped the balance as the Incursus exploded. Good fights were exchanged in local and Starwalker took his loot to station and to repair a badly damaged Kestrel that was spewing flames behind it.
A railgun Incursus was not a high damage frigate but the weakness of the Kestrel firepower is apparent from the graph where the rockets are averaging around 50 DPS, which is not much more than a kiter. The increased DPS from the Incursus corresponds to when Miura pulled range and the subsequent decrease was Starwalker overheating the afterburner to get closer.
Maintaining scramble range may also have been helped by Miura trying to stay in range to get a final volley through Kestrel structure.
The euphoria was short-lived as Starwalker decided that a Deimos, Cynabal and Republic Fleet Firetail must be fighting, he had seen the Firetail warp to the empty medium complex and no other pilots were in the same corporation and they had all arrived at different times. Unfortunately when the Kestrel landed there was just the Cynbal and Deimos... waiting. The Kestrel could not survive this type of cruiser abuse and it too was destroyed.
Starwalker periodically checked Battleclinic and top solo pilots for their fits, that was how he knew about Loren Gallen and that he was ranked the number 1 pilot in New Eden:
He had also seen that he flew and lost mainly the Incursus, at least recently. The fit was very standard with neutron blasters and an armour tank. So when Starwalker saw Loren Gallen in local and found an Incursus on scan it seemed very logical to link the two. The next logical thing was to be easily found, in his shield tanked blaster Merlin.
Sitting in a complex a little away from the warp-in point seemed like an obvious invitation and soon Loren Gallen was there too, in an... Incursus. Starwalker started to burn for the Incursus and was going to simply brawl. He wanted to see how the fight would go and whether Loren Gallen would pull any range tricks.
As the range closed to around 12km the Incursus opened fire and Starwalker had a sinking feeling that he was about to be kited by a railgun Incursus. However, the incoming damage was very minor and the range closed to a point blank slugfest, with the Merlin slugging away like a champion.
The Incursus was doing comparatively little damage in return and the thought crossed his mind that he might actually win this fight. The Incursus armour repairer was kicking in and the armour seemed to be going down very slowly, too slowly. The Incursus had switched ammunition and was now applying the hurt.
Soon the Incursus was winning the DPS war as the Merlin's shield gave way and the Incursus was still only in low armour and not in structure. The Merlin was finished, and the Incursus smashed through the last bit of structure to grab victory. Good fights were exchanged and Loren sportingly noted that it was close but Starwalker knew better, he had been convincingly beaten in a straight up brawl.
The tale of the tape showed that Starwalker had gotten off to a good start because Loren had incorrectly guessed that the Merlin was rail-gun fitted. However, the Incursus had managed to survive the onslaught and absorb nearly 4,600 points of damage, which must have required Exile or something similar to not even enter structure. The Merlin had taken nearly 4,300 of damage and had been destroyed.
On entry to a system Starwalker received a call for help from fellow Rebel Cutter Sense, who was chasing a Hawk in his Atron. Starwalker was in his gank fit Merlin.
[Merlin, AB2W]
Damage Control II
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II
1MN Afterburner II
Faint Epsilon Warp Scrambler I
Fleeting Propulsion Inhibitor I
Fleeting Propulsion Inhibitor I
Light Neutron Blaster II, Void S
Light Neutron Blaster II, Void S
Light Neutron Blaster II, Void S
Small Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer I
Small Anti-Thermal Screen Reinforcer I
Small Hybrid Burst Aerator I
The idea behind this ship was simple - brute force; catch the target, hold it close with the dual webs and blast it in the face up close and personal. The downside for this fit was that it epitomised the glass cannon and if the target could weather the initial storm then the Merlin would not survive under fire for very long.
Starwalker entered the complex and the Hawk and Atron were nearly 100km away, so he started the slow burn towards them. Before he had gone very far a small gang had jumped in behind him and an MWD fit Incursus was approaching very quickly. For some strange reason when he tried to warp away he was unable to and so he decided to go for the Incursus.
The Incursus was in a tail chase so as it reached 15km away Starwalker turned his Merlin towards it and engaged. He knew that he only had a few seconds before the rest of the gang arrived and the Merlin would be destroyed, so he had to make those seconds count.
With the blasters overheated and some implants the Merlin was putting out close to 300 DPS and as the range dropped to around 1km those blasters tore away the shields and started on the armour. The armour repairs started but they were not keeping pace with the incoming damage and as each second passed the blasters worked their way further into the Incursus structure.
The Incursus was on fire as rest of the gang arrived and they were trying to save their comrade by killing the Merlin faster than it was killing the Incursus but it was too late - the Incursus exploded in a blaze of glory followed shortly afterwards by the Merlin.
It was a little while later when Starwalker looked at the killmail that he had gotten a nice surprise revelation. It was a dual armour repair fit.
[Incursus, Takeda Kashada's Incursus]
Damage Control II
Small Armor Repairer II
Small Armor Repairer II
'Refuge' Adaptive Nano Plating I
Limited 1MN Microwarpdrive I
J5b Phased Prototype Warp Scrambler I
Small Electrochemical Capacitor Booster I,Cap Booster 100
Light Neutron Blaster II,Void S
Light Neutron Blaster II,Void S
Light Neutron Blaster II,Void S
Small Ancillary Current Router I
Small Anti-Explosive Pump I
Small Auxiliary Nano Pump I
On previous occasions when he had tried to kill a dual repair fit Incursus he had simply not been able to. Typically those (T1) frigates had hit for somewhere between 150 and 200 DPS, perhaps a little more with overheat. This time was different, in short, the Merlin firepower had overwhelmed the Incursus active tank and that was important to know as this was perhaps the strongest (T1) frigate tank and comparable to some of the T2 frigate tanks.
This knowledge was then used to take on what appeared to be another dual repair Incursus but with a different result - the loss of a Merlin. It was not a dual repair fit, presumably the extra armour buffer, combined with the afterburner speed allowing more damage mitigation made the difference. The only good thing was that another Incursus came in to get in on the kill and killed the offending Incursus.
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:
- 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
-
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
- 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.
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:
- Upgrade his clone to avoid losing skill points the next time he was podded
- Pause the training queue to plug-in implants
- Plug-in a set of implants
- Basic set of +3 learning implants to speed up training by about 10%
- Zainou 'Deadeye' Small Hybrid Turret SH-603 for +3% small hybrid turret damage
- Eifyr and Co. 'Rogue' Evasive Maneuvering EM-703 for +3% agility
- Zor's Custom Navigation Hyper-Link for +5% speed bonus
- Inherent Implants 'Lancer' Gunnery RF-903 for +3% rate of fire on all turrets
- Zainou 'Deadeye' Rapid Launch RL-1001 for +1% missile launcher rate of fire
- Restart training queue
- Get into another ship and insure it
Starwalker usually accepted duels without really considering whether the pilot was looking for a genuine 1 v 1 or looking to gank another sucker. Similarly, he rarely ever checked whether they were a top ranked pilot or not - no point in having preconceptions about the pilot. However, Starwalker had found through experience that generally it was 1 v 1 and it was his ship that usually ended up being destroyed when a pilot requested a duel.
So when Rakkanar requested a fight he thought briefly about whether he wanted to lose another ship... and then went to the sun and waited. Rakkanar arrived in his Incursus and Starwalker burnt towards it in his Merlin, until a Bhaalgorn arrived - also a member of the Shadow Cartel and so he warped out. Rakkanar had a few choice words for the Bhaalgorn pilot who had apparently come to watch.
Starwalker came back after the Bhaalgorn disappeared and the dance of death was on. He engaged and moved into close combat with the neutron blasters overheated. The Incursus clearly wanted the same type of fight and the two sluggers slugged it out. There was not much finesse at this stage as the range was perfect. It was do or die and unfortunately for Starwalker his Merlin exploded first. The Incursus still had 20% of structure left. It was a good fight and the Merlin with its medium shield extenders and two magnetic field stabilisers had taken a top 50 Battleclinic ranked pilot to near destruction.
However, that was not the only fight at the sun as Starwalker joined a Rebel fleet that was already out on a roam. It had been quiet in the space lanes of Verge Vendor but in Loes a Tornado had been spotted and it was dancing around the system teasing the Rebels. Meanwhile a few Rebels decided to kill an Incursus at a novice complex, which took longer than expected and some suspected the use of links. Peri Simone decided that it was time to stop chasing the Tornado as he seemed to have friends and so he warped the fleet to the sun, inviting combat.
Eventually the Tornado, along with a couple of friends each in an Incursus arrived at the sun looking to fight. One of the pilots was the Incursus pilot killed in the complex and he soon lost another Incursus. The Tornado was pointed as well and it too was destroyed. The other Incursus knew what was next and added its wreckage to those of its comrades. Then drullir, who had already lost two Incursi, came back in a third and that was destroyed as well. The B O R G had tried to assimilate the Rebels and failed - resistance was not futile.
After the roam had finished Starwalker headed back to base in his Merlin. He spotted an Atron in a novice complex and warped in. The pilot was clearly waiting for a fight and engaged immediately. The range started at around 4km and rather than closing to 1km it increased to 6km, so Starwalker overheated his afterburner and closed in.
The Atron pilot, Zoe Fishpants, responded by increasing the range again and it became clear that he wanted to stay out at around 6km. For Starwalker the surprise was how well the Atron's active armour tank was keeping up with the damage when the Merlin was at 1km. Whenever Starwalker used an armour repairer it seemed to always be a losing battle but the Atron was repairing nearly all of the incoming damage. Later, that repair was helped by the range control established at 6km.
It was clear that Starwalker's Merlin was suffering and so he headed out in a straight-line with the intent of escaping. Briefly the point dropped but he was not spamming warp and before he could warp the point was re-established. From there the inevitable end came and the once proud Merlin was reduced to space wreckage.
Afterwards, Starwalker saw that Zoe Fishpants was a top ranked pilot and didn't feel quite so bad about losing his Merlin to an Atron. It was also clear that Zoe had established range control and despite Starwalker's web, overheating his afterburner and some speed implants he was not able to get in close. Whilst Starwalker had fit the Merlin for gank and it did over 200 DPS that was meaningless if it could not be applied. It was the Atron establishing range control that had won the fight.
Starwalker had lost his Merlin during the Rebel roam and Johann West had kindly provided a blaster Incursus as a replacement. It was a good ship and the resistance, armour repairer based fit seemed perfectly reasonable. The only change that he would have made was to sport a Hobgoblin II instead of the Hobgoblin I. The Hobgoblin I choice was probably due to lack of drone skills and Starwalker remembered that these were some of the skills that he had trained later rather than earlier.
As he headed back to base he spied a Republic Fleet Firetail in a small complex and warped in. The Firetail was around 40km away and as Starwalker's afterburner fit Incursus burnt towards it the Firetail easily evaded capture with its MWD. Its artillery rained fire on the Incursus as the range oscillated between 15km and 24km. After multiple attempts to slingshot the Firetail into scramble range Starwalker gave up and looked for an opportunity to escape point.
A short while later he managed to escape and warped to the sun with Kaiirii in hot pursuit and also complaining in local that Starwalker was running from a fight. Starwalker evaded him again at the sun and docked up to repair the heat damage. Kaiirii followed up his initial complaint with an accusation of cowardice and Starwalker followed his standard practice... and ignored it.
What Starwalker took from the engagement was that he was not able to manually pilot an afterburner fit brawling frigate into scram range against a MWD fit kiting frigate. It was not just this fight but many engagements where he had not been able to achieve that. Perhaps it was weak manual piloting skills or perhaps it was not possible if the target paid attention to slingshot manoeuvres and took evasive action. In any case, Starwalker needed to rethink his approach to catching fast ships and what he would fly.
However, that would have to wait as he spotted a Heron in another complex and warped in. It was waiting for the fight and immediately locked up the Incursus and started to apply damage. Starwalker engaged, setting a close orbit and overheating the blasters. The Heron was tanking really well with what was clearly an ancillary shield booster but that would only last for twenty or so seconds.
The Heron piled on the hurt as it dropped its drones into the fight as well. The Heron was applying its damage against the Incursus armour and the small armour repairer was overheated to keep up with the incoming damage. It was a losing race. The range started to increase again to 4km as the Heron tried to mitigate incoming damage, even though it was tracking disrupting the Incursus.
The Incursus was in structure and the capacitor was dropping fast but the Heron was also in armour and had started to only pulse its shield booster. The afterburner was nearly burnt out but Starwalker had to close that distance and so he set the overheat on again knowing that within seconds the afterburner would be finished. But those seconds counted and now both ships were in structure.
The Heron suddenly exploded and it was over, the Incursus had just 35% of its structure left, lots of heat damage and the afterburner was burnt to a crisp. Good fight was exchanged in local but before Starwalker could loot the wreck a Caldari Navy Hookbill jumped in and it was an easy decision to leave immediately.
Back at base, Starwalker switched ships to the Caracal. It had been fit as a frigate killer and he wanted to get in a fight with a small number of frigates. Instead he found this cyno-ship and another cyno-ship. The extra tank on the cruiser made it very easy to kill these with no danger of dying to sentry guns.
However, the Caracal was about to meet its demise and it started with an Anathema in a medium complex. That ship died very quickly to the missile fire and the pilot must have been AFK as he could have escaped at 35km away when the shooting started. The danger though came from the Hawk that jumped in, piloted by Vivien Sureflight.
It immediately engaged just as the Anathema exploded and Starwalker opened fire with his Caldari Navy Inferno Light missiles. He would have preferred to be using the Mjolnir missiles but he didn't feel he had time to change them. In retrospect he should have taken the ten seconds to reload as thermal were the Hawk's highest resists. What Starwalker hadn't expected was how well the Hawk would tank and for how long it would continue to tank the incoming damage.
It became clear that the Caracal buffer was disappearing but the Hawk shields were still at full strength. Starwalker looked at the heat damage on the light missile launchers and noticed that they were showing around two-thirds of heat damage. So he decided to cut the heat immediately, except that it was at the start of the firing cycle and by the time the cycle finished so were the missile launchers.
It had been a long time since he had burnt out his weapons as he tended to stop overheating when they were about 50% cooked. It seemed to Starwalker that the last 50% went faster than the first 50%, although that could have been his imagination. He now had no offensive capability, all that remained was for the Hawk to chew through the rest of the shield buffer and so he waited for the inevitable end to arrive, which it did. Given how well the Hawk had tanked, Starwalker checked out the pilot and noted that she was top ranked and the last Hawk she had lost was using faction modules for a total cost of around 250m ISK.
Starwalker was heading to Eugales for the regular fleet roam - TESF (Target Everyone Somebody Fire). However, he had to return to base (Gultratren) to collect another ship after losing his first Kestrel to a gate camp in Aubenall. It was his own fault because he had been lazy and not checked:
- The waypoints to look out for any hotspots when he had set the route through hi-sec to reduce the overall number of jumps
- The map looking for evidence of a gate camp
- His avoid system setting in auto-pilot for Oulley, due to it being regularly camped
He had another Kestrel fit as a brawler and was looking forward to seeing what it could do. Starwalker liked the Kestrel for it potential surprise value given the commonality of Merlins, Incursi and Rifters. He was expecting to stay out of the range of blaster ships and simply brawl the Rifters and similar. He set off on his second voyage with the Kestrel.
The first opportunity for a fight came when a flashy red pilot, Aj Oguntunde, was loitering around 25km from a gate in his Incursus. Clearly, he was looking for a fight as anyone could engage him as an outlaw on a gate, without fear of taking gate fire for the aggression. Starwalker needed no second invitation and engaged.
He had the perfect approach and was able to overheat everything and establish an orbit at around 6km. The Incursus tried to close the distance and a little manual piloting was able to gain range again. The Incursus was repairing its armour but was losing ground as the rockets smashed in. The Kestrel's shield disappeared and it had dipped into armour but when the range was maintained the incoming damage dropped. It was tense, but then the Incursus went into structure and exploded into a satisfying ball of fire. Good fights were exchanged and Aj Oguntunde noted that he had under-estimated the Kestrel - good!
Starwalker was very pleased with himself and not a little over-confident when he saw a flashy Merlin on a gate a few jumps later. However, the Merlin was literally on the gate and when Starwalker landed they were only ~4km apart. With his over-confidence flowing freely Starwalker engaged and regretted it almost immediately as he lost 50% of his shields within the first few seconds. It had taken those few seconds to start moving, lock, scram, fire and over-heat but those precious seconds were the difference between life and death.
Starwalker tried to gain range but it was not fast enough and Jev North piloting the Merlin was able to close the distance again and that finished off the Kestrel as it tore apart. Starwalker was still trying to manage his modules and piloting rather than aligning and escaping and that delay cost him another pod. He woke in Gultratren, where he had started, and had to do the usual:
- Upgrade the clone to retain skill points
- Stop training to plug-in augmentations
- Plug-in the implants, primarily learning to speed up training
- Restart the training queue
He had one fitted ship left - a Merlin - he undocked to head to Eugales yet again...
Starwalker had not tried out the new Condor and Slasher yet but he had just fitted out a Condor for some flight time and experimentation. He liked the idea of the speed, strong capacitor and four mid and high slots. It would be interesting to see how it performed in the wild.
Starwalker undocked in Covryn and noticed an Incursus on scan. They were good combat frigates and it would be a real test to see how the Condor would do against one. The scan revealed that it was at the deadspace complex and Starwalker warped in.
The Incursus was more than 50km away but continued to stay in the area and so Starwalker burnt towards it in his Condor. It was likely to run away but even at just over 1.3km/s it seemed to take a long time to get there. It didn't run.
Starwalker engaged with his rockets and applied his scram, neutraliser and tracking disruptor and the dance started. It was soon apparent that the Incursus was active tanked and the Condor was struggling to break that tank. And so the dance went on and on with Starwalker reloading his rockets and having to turn off the overheat to avoid burn out.
And it went on and on. Starwalker wondered whether he would run out of ammunition before getting the kill and then suddenly the Incursus armour stripped away into structure and it was all over - the Incursus was now a wreck. The pilot said that he had hit the wrong button and the killmail would show that it had taken nearly 10k of damage. Starwalker was so surprised that it had finished that he missed the pod but at least he could still loot the wreck.
As he went to the wreck he saw a Tristan arrive over 100km away and considered whether he should go for it immediately. However, he needed to let his shields recharge and repair the heat damage to his rockets and neutraliser, and so he warped to a safe.
As the shields returned to full health Starwalker decided that he would not wait out GCC to repair the overheat damage and warped back in. The Tristan was now 300km away and so he burnt towards it. The Tristan wanted to fight and Starwalker set his orbit to 5km and went in with rockets blazing. The Tristan was weak and very soon it was struggling for survival.
Starwalker approached as the Tristan burst into flames to get the pod. The pod appeared and he quickly tried to lock it - he got it. This was the first time Starwalker had caught the pod in a long time and he savoured the kill and scooped the corpse into his cargohold, a grisly momento of the kill.
The maiden flight of the Condor had been good and resulted in two kills. Perhaps the targets were not that tough but frankly Starwalker didn't care. He was pleased to have the kills and to have got the pod. He liked the Condor's speed, neutralising capability and damage projection with rockets but he also wanted to try out the Slasher.
Starwalker now had very few fitted ships at stations and no Slashers. So the first task was to define the Slasher fit and then buy and get a couple of those ships and fittings to a station. The recent spike in PLEX prices had netted a cool 1.3 billion ISK for two PLEX and so Starwalker could buy a lot of fitted T1 frigates with that.
Starwalker was hanging around in Heild at the deadspace complex looking for trouble. An Incursus peeked in but decided not to engage and warped away. Starwalker only had his Merlin and his combat record was not great, so he was unsure why the Incursus ran away perhaps it was just being flashy red.
Shortly afterwards a Slasher arrived - and stayed. Starwalker burnt towards it changing his ammunition to null as he expected to be kited but was hoping to avoid being pecked to death. If he could get close he would surely decimate the Slasher, so as the distance closed Starwalker tried to move in to point blank range.
Surprise! The Slasher also wanted to fight at point blank range, so Starwalker engaged scramble, web and overheated his neutron blasters. He now had the wrong ammunition selected but it was too late to change it. The incoming damage was reasonable but the ancillary shield booster easily dealt with it. In return the blasters were tearing away the Slasher shields and armour and it was clear what would happen - the Slasher exploded. Again, Starwalker missed the pod.
As Starwalker idled at a safe with his GCC ticking away, Nogusha noted that he was being kited by a Caldari Navy Hookbill in his Rifter but that it was a stalemate. He could not get close to the Hookbill and it was not breaking his tank. Nogusha was calling for help in Moclinamaud and since no one else was nearby Starwalker offered to jump clone to the region and help - he would just wait out the last few minutes of his GCC.
Whilst Starwalker was waiting out his GCC John Valentine in local noted that he could not break the tank of a Hawk and he needed help. So Starwalker joined fleet and warped in, along with another Rebel - 3D Horrorshow, in a Rifter. The Hawk pilot, Kushanar, was also calling in friends and just after Starwalker arrived so did a Slasher and an Incursus.
Starwalker targeted the Hawk first as it was probably already in the most trouble and it did the highest DPS - it went down quickly. It was now three Rebels against the two remaining ONI Industry pilots, it did not end well for them as the Slasher and Incursus withered under the combined fire.
Unfortunately, Starwalker's GCC was reset to 15 minutes but he decided that he would jump clone anyway to Covryn and head to Moclinamaud as his Hawk could active shield tank the gate fire for a short period of time. Nogusha had been waiting for a long time already and Starwalker had offered to help earlier. So, Starwalker had jumped and flown to Agoze and was only three jumps away when Nogusha's plucky little Rifter finally succumbed, after 50 minutes and taking more than 25,000 damage, when a Thrasher arrived to finally help the Hookbill complete the kill.
It was a shame and if Starwalker had come earlier it might have been different. However, no point in speculating on what might have been as Starwalker noticed an Incursus on scan and decided to investigate. It was at an acceleration gate with a Rifter and Starwalker went in hot. However, things did not go according to the master plan - kill the two frigates - as fourteen pilots piled into the fight.
Starwalker was pointed at close range, so with no chance of escape he overheated his rockets determined to take at least one and preferably more with him. The Incursus started to run but went down anyway as the rockets went through its structure 8km away. Before he could take down the Rifter too the Griffin jammed him. Now helpless and not even able to fire, Starwalker's Hawk disintegrated and he warped his pod to safety, and returned to base.
This was not quite the outcome he had envisaged when jumping to Placid but EVE could be a harsh mistress and very fickle. Losing two Drakes and a Hawk recently may be a reason to get back into a Merlin but Starwalker was also looking to experiment a little with more expensive ships and inevitably they would be lost.
Starwalker had turned up in Eugales well after the regular Rebel Roam had started but Peri Simone, the FC, had put out another call for any latecomers to join in and Starwalker had joined the fleet. He was looking for something better to kill than this cyno-ship but he rarely passed up the opportunity for an easy kill.
Starwalker's Incursus was an active tanked dual repair ship with plenty of staying power and face-melting blasters. Of course, he knew that the problem with a dual repair fit was that it pretty much required a small capacitor booster and that crippled range control through the loss of the stasis webifier. However, in principle, in a small gang there was less need to be concerned about range control as ideally everyone was in close for the kill and the target would be surrounded, scrambled and webbed anyway.
That wasn't really the case with the Breacher though that the scout, Jameson2011, was chasing. It was fast at just under 3km/s and it was continually slipping out of point range - a webifier or two on it, along with a scramble would have helped tremendously. Whilst the Breacher was playing catch me if you can, a Jaguar appeared on grid and seemed to be following the Rebels chasing the Breacher. The Rebels speculated as to whether the Jaguar was there to fight or simply to observe the chase.
The Breacher though was trying to be too clever and it came too close and was caught. Once caught properly, it went down very quickly. The Jaguar was still hanging around, 200km away, and seemed to be inviting a fight so Jameson2011 burnt towards it. As the distance closed and the Rebels prepared to warp in the Jaguar warped away. Apparently it was over... until the pilot, Bodb Derg, made a comment in local that he was coming in hot.
At first, the Rebels did not believe it as he had only just warped away and it seemed suicidal for the Jaguar to take on four frigates, however, he warped back in. The Rebels went to work as the Jaguar tried to take down Brink Albosa's Rifter and the four frigates pounded away at the active shield tank.
At first the Jaguar seemed to be holding on but the dual ancillary shield boosters were running together and that only lasts for thirty seconds continuously. So when that time was up the ship's tank effectively disappeared and it disintegrated under the fire shortly afterwards, with Brink escaping in structure.
Peri Simone decided it had been a successful and eventful roam and that now was a good time to finish - on a high. So he declared the roam a success and after some lively chat and banter the Rebels went their separate ways. It had been great fun and Starwalker looked forward to more roams and perhaps starting to fly battlecruisers when in fleet.
