Medium Turrets Tracking Frigates

Roaming through Placid Starwalker had spotted a few cruisers and battlecruisers and so he had decided to re-ship into his Moa. The Moa was fit with blasters and two large shield extenders and boasted some impressive statistics for a cruiser: 493 DPS and 47.5k EHP. Less impressive was that the capacitor lasted less than two minutes with everything going and it aligned in 8.4 seconds.

[Moa, ION2LSE]

Damage Control II
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II

Experimental 10MN Microwarpdrive I
Large Shield Extender II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Faint Epsilon Warp Scrambler I
Large Shield Extender II

Heavy Ion Blaster II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge M
Heavy Ion Blaster II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge M
Heavy Ion Blaster II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge M
Heavy Ion Blaster II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge M
Heavy Ion Blaster II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge M

Medium Core Defense Field Extender I
Medium Core Defense Field Extender I
Medium Core Defense Field Extender I

Warrior II x3

In the cargo hold Starwalker carried a web for fighting frigates and the three warriors were also there to help. As he jumped into another system a non-flashy Jaguar arrived on gate and then waited. Starwalker held cloak deciding whether to engage, he was fit to fight cruisers and he would have to be aggressed first. He de-cloaked - the Jaguar had no hesitation and engaged immediately, applying a scram, tracking disruptor and energy vampire. He was aggressed and decided to fight.

Starwalker fired back and initially had some success in applying damage but as the range closed to less than 2km his fire became ineffective and virtually no damage was being applied. A Retribution landed on grid and also started firing at the Moa too. It became clear that with the medium turret tracking and without a web he was unable to hit the close orbiting frigates effectively. He tried to align to the sun to reduce transversal but it had minimal impact, so he decided to de-aggress.

He wasn't sure if he could make it back to the gate in time as the damage was depleting his shields fast but he headed back in a desperate attempt to save his ship. As he hit low armour he was within range and hit jump but the gate denied access, the aggression timer was still running down. Starwalker was running out of structure and time and he hit jump again but with the same result, his ship exploded.

It was an object lesson in how easily a frigate could take down a cruiser by getting under the guns. Starwalker had an impressive tank for a cruiser but all that really meant was that his ship took longer to explode. Unfortunately, he had decided too late to de-aggress and he had even completely forgotten to deploy his drones, although he suspected that would have made no difference.

Need for Speed

Starwalker had been wandering around Molden Heath in his Enyo looking for targets rather fruitlessly. He was generally solo and sometimes went to Heild to see what was in the deadspace complex and to look for a fight, however, with lots of other R1DER pilots in system many potential targets probably thought he was fleeted.

Whilst that was occasionally true Starwalker spent much more time looking for solo kills and to that end he had wandered towards Metropolis when he ran into Vincent R'lyeh. Vincent noted that a small gang was heading into null-sec soon and it was Assault Frigate only. It was an opportunity too good to miss and so he headed over to Egbinger to get into fleet with Vincent, Kaeda Maxwell and Peri Simone.

The trouble with having fully fitted ships was that he had no real ability to change his fit on the fly. Going into null-sec and engagements there would generally benefit from micro-warp-drives (MWD) being fitted for the extra speed. Starwalker was about to be reminded of that lesson the hard way. 

The form up in Egbinger was with the intent of entering Great Wildlands via B-VIP9 and whilst waiting at the gate the gang was engaged by a Hurricane and Rapier. For Starwalker it was almost over before it started as he started to engage the Hurricane he was suddenly capless and without any capacitor nothing worked, including his small repairer. The Enyo was destroyed within seconds.

Undeterred Starwalker got into another identical Enyo and the small gang reformed, heading off into null-sec via Etherium Reach instead. It was a long roam with some gate games and some near misses but this Rupture was caught at one gate. Starwalker and Vincent had aggressed one side of the gate and it had jumped through into Kaeda and Peri who got point. The Rupture's drones were hurting them and were being targeted first but both Starwalker and Vincent had to wait out the timer to use the gate.

Suddenly the gate was open again and Starwalker was through and targeting the Rupture. The drones had been dealt with so he concentrated on doing a metric tonne of damage, something that the Enyo does well. Soon, the Rupture was down and after a GF in local the gang moved on, but without Vincent who had to return to base.

Later, it seemed like a major fight had gone down and capsules started to stream by in system. It was the perfect opportunity to setup a small mobile warp distruptor (bubble) to catch stragglers. Indeed it worked, as a Drake came by but it managed to jump through and although Starwalker and Peri gave chase it got away. Kaeda though had engaged the next target and called for the gang to come back to take down the Tornado.

Starwalker and Peri burned back to the gate, jumped and then burned towards the Tornado but for Starwalker it was all far too slow as he missed destroying the ship and had almost missed the pod too. The gang retreated to a perch to wait for the next target and then a Sabre and Hawk came in. Somehow Starwalker landed more than 50 km from the fight and as he slowly burned towards the Sabre it died. He then refocused on the Hawk but more of the enemy had arrived and quickly it was time to bail.

But it was too late, Starwalker had been too far away and too slow to get into the fight and once there was far too slow to get away again and had been scambled. Before long there were multiple ECM drones on the field and what damage he had been doing was stopped immediately as he lost lock. Without a lock it was all over and the second Enyo of the night went down along with the Jaguars of Kaeda and Peri.

Peri and Kaeda self destructed pods to return to base but Starwalker had implants and so the following day he headed back to Gultratren. On the return journey, he landed in one bubble and had to slow boat more than 50km at 187m/s - painful, but finally his pod returned to base uncscathed.

In retrospect, Starwalker could have done some things better:

• Have ready a defined fit for null-sec and the modules needed. Null-sec really required a MWD to burn through bubbles or get to the fighting fast. Last night Starwalker had seen the need for speed
• Engaging gangs in null-sec would likely involve engaging larger ships like cruisers and battlecruisers. He needed to consider how to fit his ship regarding capacitor warfare either decide to fit boosters or energy vampires or run the risk that his blaster boats would be helpless to energy destabilisers
• Starwalker tended to take a do or die approach to engagements and yet he could and should have disengaged earlier for both his Enyo losses. Trying to disengage might not have saved his ship but it would have been worth a try
• Starwalker liked the sheer brute force that the Enyo had but as a minor tweak to the fit should he reconsider the choice of rocket and overdrive modules

He had also recently purchased a Vengeance and completed the necessary training - he loved the look of the Vengeance, especially the embossed hull. He would start flying it soon.

Rebel Roam Peri Simone FC

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.

Hookbill Lost by All Kinds of Fail

Starwalker was in Heild looking for trouble and a couple of other Rebels were doing the same. So, they joined forces and scanned down a Jaguar to the Angel deadspace complex. Starwalker warped in at 50km and saw that the Jaguar was around 300km away. He started his Hookbill towards the Jaguar, piloted by Nergalion, but assumed that Nergalion would not stay and fight as one of the other Rebels had also warped in and disappeared again.

However, Starwalker continued towards the Jaguar and was sending messages to the other Rebels. Unfortunately, he was not paying attention to their messages and missed the caution that they could not warp to Starwalker in the complex, instead, they would end up warping to the acceleration gate. This was vital information that Starwalker had simply not read and if he had, it would have changed what happened next.

Indeed, it was the first fail of the upcoming fight. Starwalker was closing in to establish point and expected the Rebels to warp in to the fight; he was about to find out that this would not happen but one mistake was not enough to call it a fail cascade. The fail cascade really started when Starwalker made his second error and set the Hookbill to orbit at 15km from the previous 9km. It was a good distance to stay out of danger and establish a point but overlooked the fact that the short range rockets had a maximum range of 12km and probably an effective range of about 10.5km. He should have either switched to long range rockets or stay at 9km.

The Hookbill and Jaguar engaged and very quickly the Hookbill established point with an orbit of 15km, however, the Jaguar decided to reduce that to around 2km. Starwalker realised the danger and made his next mistake - overheating the mid-rack rather than just the afterburner. No fail casade would be complete without some completely random or stupid act that takes attention away from the main action.

For Starwalker, that was being distracted by checking whether the overheat could be set by using shift-click (it could) but worse than that, he then inadvertently left the afterburner and everything else on overheat. The only good news was that the Hookbill had re-established a range of around 11km and the damage had slowed. It was past the time to bring in the Rebels. 

Starwalker was not a fast typist and simply used "xx" to call in the Rebels and after that distraction he returned to the fight to be greeted with the result that the point had burnt out and the webs were close to burning out. Things were rapidly going downhill.

Starwalker decided to leave the webs on even though the point was now burnt to a crisp and the Jaguar could escape. The idea was to distract Nergalion with the applied modules and to hope that he had not noticed the point drop. Relying on hope is not a great idea. Starwalker wondered where his fleet mates were but decided to type again to let them know that his point had burnt out. The intent was that the Rebels would hurry up and arrive. One did - 432km away.

Starwalker did a double-take on the distance and thought that he had mis-read it, no, it really was that far away. Starwalker was then brought sharply back to reality by the Hookbill sirens warning that the ship was close to destruction. It was going to be all over very soon and the Jaguar was still only in shields, there was no way the Hookbill would survive unless it could warp away. The Jaguar sensing the kill was close - moved in and re-established the scramble just in time to prevent the warp. The Hookbill died - the victim of a series of horrific pilot errors.

The fail cascade was nearly complete with the Hookbill lost but Starwalker had one more loss to come - his ignorance. Starwalker warped his pod to safety and asked why the Rebels hadn't warped in to the fight. The answer - Starwalker was in deadspace and any warp in would go the acceleration gate. They also noted that they had warned Starwalker of this, and checking the log that was true.

This was the first time Starwalker had been in a fleet at a complex and in his ignorance had thought that the warp to the gate mechanic applied only after entering the first acceleration gate. Clearly he was wrong but worse than that, he had also missed the warning that he was wrong and now the fail cascade was complete.

Jaguar Dies Due to Stupidity

Roaming in Molden Heath had been largely uneventful with few systems offering targets of opportunity. Starwalker was in a Jaguar and jumped into system to see another Jaguar burning away from the gate at around 40km. It was chasing a target and too far away to catch so Starwalker warped to the Sun.

However, before the warp engaged the Jaguar, piloted by Alex Medvedov, had turned around and was burning back towards Starwalker. The warp engaged and Starwalker was gone but he was looking for a fight and so he waited at the Sun. Medvedov clearly thought Starwalker would not engage and left system.

Starwalker had seen the pilot’s name before and vaguely thought he may have previously lost a ship to a pimped out Jaguar but couldn’t remember for sure and equally that didn’t really matter. Starwalker would engage again and perhaps lose this ship. Losing a ship was not a problem, especially against a top ranked pilot.

In the next system Starwalker could see Medvedov in local but couldn’t find him very quickly from his scanning point. So he decided that he would simply move on to the next system, assuming Medvedov was in station. He wasn’t.

As Starwalker arrived at the stargate, there was Medvedov. Starwalker had used the Jump command and so automatically jumped through but he assumed Medvedov would come in hot.

So Starwalker moved in a random direction to de-cloak and started to pre-heat the guns. Medvedov appeared in system 18km away and targeted Starwalker. It was on. Starwalker burnt towards him and engaged, setting the range to 1km with guns firing from 13km.

Medvedov came in close and it was clear that this would simply be a slug-fest, firing at each other at point blank range until one of the ships exploded. Starwalker noticed that his shields were going down much faster and realized that he had the wrong ammunition type loaded – phased plasma. It was the same mistake as against the Wolf.

Medvedov had no problem in hitting hard and it was also clear that he was neuting as well. Soon, Starwalker went into armour, lost all capacitor and then flashed through structure. Medvedov’s shield had dropped down to around 10%. It was not close, and perhaps Fusion ammunition would not have changed the result but it was a stupid mistake. Worse, it was a repeated mistake. The Jaguar exploded.

Starwalker escaped with his pod and back at base considered the fight and how it would have gone with Fusion. If nothing else it would have resulted in a closer fight, even if the outcome were the same. More interesting was how would the fight have gone if Starwalker were flying a Hookbill? Starstepper would deliver a Hookbill soon…

First Null-Sec Roam Ends Badly

Kaeda Maxwell (Jaguar) and Starwalker (Hookbill) set off to roam around and see what trouble they could get into. They started in Pure Blind but were soon into Cloud Ring and then the Outer Ring.

A Rifter appeared briefly on gate and Kaeda instructed Starwalker to jump through the gate and potentially catch the Rifter on the other side. The Rifter duly came through but Starwalker had not de-cloaked yet and the targeting failed. Starwalker tried to de-cloak but it was too late, the Rifter was gone.

The roam continued and Kaeda decided that they would head to the End of the Universe – A2V6-6. It seemed like the entire pipe, that was apparently popular with ratters and those improving their security status, was largely empty. Although, strangely, there was an abandoned Velator near the YVA-F0 gate – so they ended its existence with a couple of bursts of rocket fire. Starwalker went to jump through the gate but the aggression timer was active and so they waited for the timer to expire.

Heading back down the pipe, they went into Fountain and flirted with the odd potential target like a Tengu but it amounted to nothing. It looked like they would get no action and so they headed back to Pure Blind. Then a few jumps from the end a Cynabal landed with Starwalker on the gate. The targeting failed as it simply jumped through but Kaeda was on the other side.

Starwalker jumped through and Kaeda commanded: “Burn back to the gate and hold”. The Cynabal decided it was going to fight as it targeted Starwalker’s Hookbill and opened fire. Kaeda engaged it with the Jaguar and a Hurricane and Tornado jumped through. The situation had just changed and Starwalker asked: “Shall we jump?” Kaeda understood it as warp away and noted “…I am pointed” but Starwalker had meant jump through the gate. First mistake, he had forgotten gate mechanics.

In the confusion, Starwalker thought he had heard “yes… I am pointed” or effectively get away, I will follow you or try to warp away. So Starwalker jumped. Second mistake, he did not independently assess the situation, just waited for a command.

As soon as Starwalker jumped he realized that Kaeda could not jump through the gate because of the aggression timer. And almost simultaneously, that the three ships on the other side meant that Kaeda’s Jaguar would not escape. Starwalker was on the wrong side of the gate - “Shall I jump back?” But Kaeda was too busy trying to burn down the Cynabal to respond and so Starwalker burnt back to the gate and jumped. Third mistake, it was too late to fight now.

No Jaguar, no fight, just the Cynabal, Hurricane and Tornado. It was over. Starwalker warped to the next gate. He was disappointed in himself for having left a Rebel to fight alone and that he had jumped. It didn’t matter whether he thought Kaeda was telling him to escape - he should have stayed. Fortunately, Kaeda was disappointed but philosophical about the Jaguar loss.

The reason Starwalker should have stayed was because he agreed with Kaeda’s assessment. There was a chance to take down the Cynabal, even with the two battlecruisers present. The Jaguar alone could not take down the Cynabal but the Jaguar and Hookbill had a real chance. Of course, they would die in the process but it would be a good exchange and worth trying to kill the Cynabal.

If the fight was simply lost and there was no chance that the Cynabal would go down THEN it would have been reasonable to escape. Instead, it was an opportunity missed because Starwalker also thought they could kill the Cynabal.

It was for that reason that Starwalker was disappointed and why for him the first Null-Sec roam had ended badly. However, every cloud has a silver lining and a couple of good lessons were learnt:

• Assess the situation and decide whether to fight or not yourself, especially if the situation calls for potentially sacrificing your ship
• Fighting on gates requires knowing gate mechanics, whether you will be fired on or not and when you can use them or not

Jaguar Put To Sleep

Starwalker was roaming around looking for trouble in another brand new assault ship – a Jaguar. This one had been fit like a super Rifter with a 400mm armour plate and double webbers. The intent was to catch and stop fast ships and then blast them to the smithereens. Nice and simple.

It was a simple plan and d-scan showed a Dramiel at the sun piloted by UKC. Checking out UKC revealed a good pilot with lots of kills and in the top 1000 BattleClinic killboard. Starwalker would normally move on and look for another target but no guts no glory. Also, the Jaguar was fit to catch fast ships so surely a good test.

Starwalker warped to the sun just as UKC arrived where Starwalker was and both knew that the fight was on. A few seconds later and UKC arrived back at the sun around 100km away and Starwalker burnt towards him.

The ships locked each other and then the real fight started at around 1500m with the double web applied. However, it became clear quickly that the Dramiel was easily tanking the initial damage. The Jaguar autocannons were overheated as the Hobgoblin II drones entered the fray.

Starwalker switched the attack to the closest drone and applied one web to it but just as it entered structure they were all recalled. Starwalker switched back to the Dramiel but the situation was rapidly going south. The Jaguar armour had been ripped to shreds and the Dramiel was barely scratched.

Starwalker decided to try and disengage by heading for a random location knowing that even if the ship could not make it out it was important to save the pod and the +4 set of implants. The drones were released again but Starwalker left the guns trained on the Dramiel – it would not matter whether one or two drones were destroyed the Jaguar was being injected with a lethal dose of firepower and was about to be put to sleep.

There was no chance to escape – the range was still well within scramble and as the Jaguar entered structure Starwalker hit the warp button repeatedly to ensure the pod escaped. The Jaguar exploded and the pod got away.

Starwalker knew that he had been completely owned, it was not close at all. Whilst he had exchanged a good fight in local he was simply the lamb being brought to slaughter. The Dramiel had barely shown any red at any time and certainly was never in any danger.

Starwalker noted that actual DPS was around a third of that shown in EFT. Similarly, whilst the Dramiel was putting out less DPS it had clearly demonstrated a better ability to soak up the damage. The Dramiel was obviously active tanked versus the Jaguar’s buffer tank but one key was whether more of the nominal DPS could be applied in practice such as using Keep at Range.