Starwalker had enjoyed the regular R1DER roams: Peri Simone's TESF (Target Everyone, Somebody Fire) and Patrick Kasper's Super serious roam of rules and regulations (name pending), which seemed to have resolved to being named the prosaic Monday Night Roam. Generally, the TESF roam was bring a frigate and the Monday Night Roam was themed around a particular ship or tactic such as Droneswarm. Both were great fun.
In addition to those two roams Patrick had started a regular suicide ganking roam and last Friday it was based out of Jufvitte. All of the ships (Catalysts and Thrashers) with fittings and ammunition were supplied and most importantly - scouts. It was a very successful night as various Hulks and Mackinaws were destroyed, along with an assortment of mining barges (Covetor, Retriever and Procurer). Mining ships destroyed tallied to over 3 billion ISK, not including the pods. Whilst Starwalker was keen to get pods too he was far too slow and only managed to get one pod kill the entire night: Sylcyon.
This podding was despite the fact that he had just made another attempt to raise his security status, primarily on the basis that his recently acquired shinier ships would not be very vulnerable to gate camps. He had also rationalised that occasionally farming the clone soldier tags for security status would not be that hard or boring. He started the Jufvitte suicide gank roam at -0.5 and was -3.4 at the end of the night, with the podding being particularly penalised by CONCORD.
Starwalker had come to the conclusion that unless he reformed his character there was no chance he could keep his status above -5 for any protracted length of time. It was clear, going below -5 again was inevitable and so he would need to fly his shiny ships soon and lose them in fights or simply accept the risk that some of them would be destroyed to an inglorious gate camp.
Starwalker only had a Merlin left after losing this Kestrel to gate camp and this one to a Merlin. It was his current favourite ship as Starwalker liked the sheer firepower that the Merlin could bring to a fight. Its tank was reasonably good for a brawler and when attacking cyno ships it was clear that the shield resistance helped to mitigate sentry gun damage, much better than the default resistances seen in the Kestrel.
Starwalker favoured damage over tank and that was reflected in his Merlin fit that employed two magnetic field stabilisers, cranking out 223 of kinetic and thermal damage with Caldari Navy Antimatter.
[Merlin, MSE2MFS]
Micro Auxiliary Power Core II
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II
1MN Afterburner II
J5b Phased Prototype Warp Scrambler I
Stasis Webifier II
Medium Shield Extender II
Light Neutron Blaster II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge S
Light Neutron Blaster II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge S
Light Neutron Blaster II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge S
Small Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer I
Small Hybrid Burst Aerator I
Small Core Defense Field Extender I
It was a good brawling ship and easy to set the orbit to 500m and unleash hell. It was also able to deal with cyno ships quickly and get away - sometimes on fire. Starwalker undocked and given that this was now the third attempt to get to the TESF (Target Everyone Somebody Fire) roam in Eugales he was determined to not be distracted. The only thing that would stop him would be a gate camp.
Starwalker got to Eugales and was pleased to join the roam, something he was rarely able to do given its regularly scheduled night. The roam itself was FC'd as usual by Peri Simone with Kane the Black (Merlin) and Kohana Maxwell (Arazu) scouting. It was good with some nice kills:
Starwalker enjoyed the Merlin but was thinking that the Kestrel might make another good T1 frigate to fly. He needed to buy some more ships, as he deliberately kept very few fitted ships at any one time, and the Kestrel would be on the shopping list.
