Starwalker had fit the Republic Fleet Firetail with a gank and tank in mind and consequently had fitted it with a medium shield extender.
The Firetail had chased a Tristan in a complex, which had simply warped away as the Firetail closed in. That had meant that the Firetail was nearly 100km away from the warp in point when two Merlins entered.
The Merlins appeared to be fighting as one scrambled the other but as Starwalker approached to around 70km he could see that they were not firing at each other. Since they were also both hugging the warp-in point there was no chance to separate them. As he stopped and observed them one of the two Merlins warped away.
Decisions, decisions - was there enough time to kill the Merlin before his buddy returned? Starwalker decided to try it wishing that he had gotten a little closer than 70km. He burnt in and engaged the Merlin but the timing was terrible as the other Merlin came in very soon afterwards and with two webs applied he could not escape. The proud Firetail exploded into a million pieces of shrapnel.
A little while later Starwalker was back again in another Firetail and spied a Merlin in a another complex. He decided to go in and found the Merlin at point blank range but it was not alone, a Bantam decloaked around 18km away and then started to repair the Merlin. Starwalker had already engaged the Merlin and should have disengaged to kill the Bantam but instead he fruitlessly hammered at the Merlin and a second Firetail was destroyed.
Having suffered double trouble already in Ouelletta Starwalker ranged a little further in yet another Firetail and promptly lost it to a gate camp that was spread on both sides of the gate, he survived on one side but jumped back into more trouble on the other side and could not escape again. Starwalker returned to base in his pod and decided to relax in his quarters with his exotic dancers instead of returning to the space lanes of New Eden.
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.
Yesterday, Starwalker had passed a personal milestone of more than 100 kills in a month. On Monday, he had hit 90 kills when he had joined Patrick Kasper's themed "Firetail" roam, with a shield extender and MWD fit. The fleet had spotted another fleet of destroyers and assault frigates in a complex and whilst outgunned that was no reason to not engage.
The fleet warped in and the 2 Coercers, 2 Hawks and 3 Harpies were clustered around the warp-in point. The immediate action was to burn off to get some range and then regroup, from there the fleet flew up to get above the targets and to decide on the priorities: Coercers, Hawks and then Harpies. The rationale was simple: Coercer damage was extremely high and Hawks were easier to kill than Harpies.
The fleet, then swarmed in from above with the full knowledge that it was unlikely if anyone in their Republic Fleet Firetail would survive. The carnage began:
- Hereric Miz's Coercer had the dubious pleasure of being first and it soon exploded
- Patrick had called the next target but it was obvious that Khaos Hakomairos's as the remaining Coercer would be the next to die
- As the second Coercer went down Patrick had already called for the next target: Tujiko Noriko's Hawk and it too succumbed to the R1DER fleet. But the R1DER fleet was also getting smaller as the opposing fleet had gone to work on their targets too
- Patrick called the last Hawk as primary and to get out if possible. Tristan daCuhna found himself shipless and Starwalker warped away
Starwalker had been lucky, 9 R1DERS had entered and only he had left with his ship still intact - it had not even taken any fire. He had gotten lucky with the order of the opposing fleet's targeting, the timing of the destruction of the last Hawk and the fact that they had not spread points at the end.
Starwalker's luck continued last night as he headed back to Adirain in the same Firetail:
- Crispy Orlenard in his Incursus had engaged hoping for the best but he exploded and was too slow escaping with his pod
- Zenith Askold in his Firetail had the right fit to win the fight but had used the wrong tactics. He stayed in close when he could have used his range control and tracking disruptor to establish his superiority. Given that he stayed in close he was destroyed
- Hasim Abdul in his Merlin was looking for a fight and the Firetail struggled in the brawl to overcome his shield tank. Finally, with his Firetail in deep armour the Merlin erupted into flames. But it wasn't over as a Condor and Tristan landed and before Starwalker could escape he was scrambled. Given no choice he opened fire on the Tristan on the basis that it was closer and represented the greater danger. The Tristan proved to be very weak and exploded quickly
- What had started as a gank was now a 1v1 and Noxam Sherei decided he no longer liked the odds and ran away in his Condor. But Starwalker had the last laugh as a few minutes later the Condor was caught and destroyed, with Starwalker on the killmail
- Starwalker did not want to out stay his welcome in Flosewin and decided to move on, especially as it was getting too busy with destroyers and assault frigates. In Aset Elmi Aihaken led him on a merry chase around the system and he wondered if he was being setup for a trap. Elmi decided to fight and Starwalker took some time getting through his shields whilst scanning local but the Tristan was destroyed - no one had come to his aid. Perhaps he had just wanted a little foreplay before getting down to business
- Johannes DeRupescissa in his Slasher was doing well in the fight but when his shield buffer finally gave way he was decimated
- Starwalker had no idea what Caladri Joans was doing in a complex in a Magnate and was surprised when it engaged. The Firetail's MWD came in very handy to catch it though and once caught the Magnate duly crumpled into wreckage
In the space of 30 minutes Starwalker had had 7 engagements and killed them all - most unusual and most productive. Those 7 kills had also contributed to his personal record of over 100 kills in a month. That record had been helped by recently having more time in space and he doubted if he would be so lucky in future.
Very satisfied with the events of the night Starwalker docked up in Adirain and awoke the next morning to find that he was Top Ranked in Battleclinic. Being Top Ranked might be only temporary but he would enjoy the moment whilst it lasted.
Starwalker had been flying around New Eden in primarily frigates for nearly two years, he had joined the Black Rebel Rifter Club (R1FTA) in June 2011 and had never looked back. He still enjoyed the Rebel lifestyle and part of that was the randomness of engagements, in short, every time he undocked he had no idea what would happen.
He undocked in a Merlin and headed out towards Metropolis and soon found a system with a number of frigates in it, so he warped to the sun and proceeded to scan down their locations. It was not long before he was joined at the sun by a Republic Fleet Firetail and Starwalker lost no time in engaging it. The Firetail soon started to suffer serious damage from the neutron blasters but seemed to be doing very little damage return.
Starwalker suspected that he was being tackled by a fleet scout and hoped that he would have enough time to kill the Firetail before they arrived. He noticed a number of frigates arriving just as the Firetail was destroyed. Starwalker had no time to loot and immediately left the scene of the crime before another point could be applied. Freedom! Looking at the Firetail's dual propulsion, tackling fit he had appeared to have had some luck as it had arrived at zero and been caught immediately. If it had arrived at range it would have been a different story.
A little while later he was not so lucky, he had hoped to catch a Kestrel warping to the acceleration gate but he could not destroy it before the rest of the gang arrived and his Merlin was gone. It had been a good ship and Starwalker felt the urge for a little revenge and so he undocked a Caracal that was fit to destroy frigates with its rapid missile launchers and light missiles. Unfortunately they decided not to engage.
A Wolf and Executioner that did decide to engage had such a speed advantage that they could and did disengage as soon as it was clear that they were more likely to be destroyed than the Caracal. The Caracal had great damage projection but without any way to point the target and hold it the target could disengage at will. Eventually Starwalker returned to base with his Caracal still intact.
Over a number of months now it seemed to Starwalker that he was meeting many more faster ships, and the brawlers that he met tended to wait at a complex acceleration gate or warp-in location to catch kiters. Or may be that was just an artefact of many low-sec dwellers roaming faction warfare space looking for a fight. Something to think about.
Whilst Starwalker liked the sheer brute force of neutron blasters he also knew that without range control that damage could not be applied effectively. Without range control, damage projection took on vital importance. It would be interesting to think about and experiment with some ship fits and consider the relative importance of range control, damage projection, tank, speed and capacitor in relation to targets.
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 roaming around in his Tristan and saw four T1 frigates in a medium complex and immediately recognised Semirande as he had only recently destroyed his Atron. The default assumption was that all four frigates were together and a quick check of local revealed a number of people in the same corporation as Semirande.
Starwalker thought it was very unlikely that he could take on four frigates at once but he also wondered if the four were perhaps actually doing the complex and if so there was a chance to engage just one or two. It would be a risky choice to go in as it was equally possible that they wanted to catch something entering the complex. Indeed retrospectively he saw that they had killed a Thorax only 15 minutes before.
Whether it was courage or stupidity Starwalker decided to give it a try - no guts no glory. He warped into the complex and was met by all four frigates as he entered, they were waiting for the chance to pounce. Starwalker went for the nearest ship, the Rifter, and launched his drones. However, momentum changed the relative positions and it ended up 7km away with the Merlin and Republic Fleet Firetail being closer.
The majority of damage was from the drones but this early targeting had the effect of splitting the Tristan firepower because the blasters were out of range. Worse, the drones did not all go after the Rifter and the log showed that they seemed to split their attention between the Rifter and Firetail. Normally Starwalker set the drones to focus fire to concentrate their fire but perhaps Starwalker had switched to the closer Merlin and Firetail.
In any case, the Tristan was taking a lot of damage and was not doing enough damage in return. Given that, it was inevitable that the Tristan would succumb quickly and it did so. There was an Incursus there as well but that must have been out of range when Starwalker arrived as only the other three frigates were on the killmail.
When Starwalker reconsidered the fight he realised that he should have thought about the fight before entering the complex. To decide what he would do if they were waiting for him. Given this was a trap, his only real chance was to overheat his afternurner and speed off away from the frigates rather than engage directly. That manoeuvre was not intended to run away but to split the enemy targets. If he was able to inflict heavy damage whilst avoiding as much incoming damage as possible then he had a chance. Brawling against the odds was not a winning tactic.
Starwalker had managed to run into a gate camp (Hurricane and Curse) and died very quickly. The surprise - first gate camp in some time - had resulted in Starwalker turning on his tank but forgetting to try to burn back to the gate or generally escape. Although the Merlin's demise was sufficiently quick that it probably would not have made it. Worse, he was podded too.
Starwalker upgraded his clone from the default medical clone, paused the training queue and then plugged in another set of +3 learning implants:
Plus some additional cheap implants for minor boosts:
The total cost was around 40m ISK, which was a level that Starwalker was comfortable losing when podded. The +4 implants were just a little too expensive to lose. Undeterred from the loss Starwalker was soon out again in another Merlin.
Angron Vail noted an Incursus at his local sun in the corporate communications channel and called for some help as he thought it was with a Thrasher. Peri Simone responded that he would help and soon called point on the Incursus. Starwalker replied that he was three jumps out and that it would be all over by the time he got there.
Just as Starwalker arrived at the home system gate Peri Simone called point on the Thrasher and immediately Starwalker jumped through and warped to the sun. Peri Simone was in a Republic Fleet Firetail around around 50km away with a Thrasher and an Incursus. Just as Starwalker started to burn towards them Angron Vail returned in another Rifter.
The Incursus, piloted by Raiden Rattlehead, turned towards the new arrivals and the distance closed rapidly to engagement range. Starwalker's Merlin applied scram, web and blasters and the Incursus tanked like a champion. It was clearly another dual repair active tank fit and they were really strong.
The Thrasher had rejoined the frigate fray and was targeting Starwalker's Merlin and it was struggling to stay alive. However, the other Rebels tipped the balance and the Incursus became a space wreck. Starwalker switched target to the Thrasher as the point dropped on the Merlin and considered whether to leave to repair as the Thrasher was already damaged.
He took too long to decide and the Merlin joined the wreckage. The Thrasher though did not last much longer and it too went down in flames. Starwalker had not expected to join this fight as he thought it would be over by the time he got there but as luck would have it - he was just in time to die.
