Expensive Day Bad Day

Starwalker did not fit his frigates with faction or officer modules as he died too frequently for that to be a good idea, however, he had a day of madness and decided to fit the bling. It was an expensive day in terms of cost of modules and even more expensive in terms of losses.

The day started badly with a brand new Astero on its maiden voyage. The Wolf at the gate had followed the Astero for a couple of jumps and Starwalker was wary engaging it because of the sheer firepower that the Wolf had. However, in a moment of madness he decided to try and see whether two Corpii A-Type Small Armour Repairers could tank the incoming damage.

The range closed to point blank and Starwalker set a 5km orbit to get out of the hottest part of the fire. The incoming fire was very hot and Starwalker set the first repairer going, it was not keeping up and he started the second one shortly afterwards. The Astero armour was nearly gone and he put the overheat on both repairers but the march through structure was unstoppable. The near 200m ISK Astero exploded.

Since Starwalker was ship-less and close to Adirain he decided to move his battleship to Covryn for no good reason apart from the fact that he wanted to. The speed of the battleship was incredibly slow and he wondered whether he should just sell it or lose it soon. He noticed he was being followed by Stay Frosty and decided that their Vagabond and Stabber Fleet Issue would be incredibly hard to hit in a battleship.

They started to scramble the Megathron on the gates but missed the first few times but eventually they got the scramble. Starwalker had the decision of whether to engage or to simply burn back to gate... he made the fatal decision to engage and as he suspected the cruisers were hard to hit and easily repaired the incoming damage. The march through structure was again unstoppable and another 200m ISK ship was destroyed.

Starwalker's Vengeance was also sporting two Corpii A-Type Small Armour Repairers but when it engaged a Merlin the fight soon became a three versus one. The two Merlins and Tristan easily overcame the tank of the Vengeance and shortly afterwards it became a 130m ISK wreck.

It had been an expensive day - a bad day. In particular, the loss of the two frigates reinforced

• A dual repair tank was good against a single target but could be easily overwhelmed against multiple targets (Vengeance)
• A good dual repair tank could still be overwhelmed by sheer firepower (Astero)

Starwalker also found it difficult to judge when to start the armour tank repair and when to overheat it, he suspected that he may have started it too late on each occasion.

Harpy Destroyed by Station Camp

Starwalker had undocked in his Merlin looking for trouble and this hapless cyno-ship was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. He had warped in, fired a shot and then warped out and back again. This allowed him to kill the Magnate at leisure and when he shot the pod the sentry guns opened fire again. This Merlin had just over 8k EHP and so he had time to collect the corpse and go.

Starwalker had fitted up a nice Harpy to go with his complement of Merlins and took it out into the space lanes of New Eden. This cyno-ship was hardly a stern test of ship capability but he felt almost obliged to take an easy kill and at least it showed that it could take the sentry gate gun fire for a short while. In fact, long enough to not bother warping away before killing this cyno-ship piloted by Talia Tessony. Starwalker accidently left the system by the wrong gate and when he came back in Talia had a second cyno-ship up but not for long.

A little while later a quick directional scan of the next system revealed a Tristan and that it was ratting. Starwalker warped in to the asteroid belt and the Tristan was soon destroyed along with the pod. He docked up to take a short break in station and when he undocked he saw three ships at the undock, two Cynabals and a Talos. He decided to try to warp to the out gate wondering if he should have simply re-docked. It was an insta-locking station camp and the once proud Harpy was a ball of flames within a few seconds. He should have simply re-docked his ship and waited.

As always, the loss of a ship was no reason to stop flying and soon Starwalker was in space with another Harpy using the same fit:

[Harpy, MWDMSE]

Magnetic Field Stabilizer II
Pseudoelectron Containment Field I
Micro Auxiliary Power Core II

Medium Shield Extender II
Limited 1MN Microwarpdrive I
J5b Phased Prototype Warp Scrambler I
X5 Prototype Engine Enervator

Light Neutron Blaster II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge S
Light Neutron Blaster II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge S
[empty high slot]
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

He landed in a medium complex where a Vengeance decided to take his Harpy on and it came in to a really close orbit. Tactically that was a mistake, as the Harpy was blaster fit not railguns. The Vengeance armour tank struggled to keep up with incoming damage and then finally it gave out and the once proud Vengeance exploded. Something similar happened shortly afterwards with this Thrasher.

However, Starwalker did not have it all his own way as he landed into another complex and all three ships were just waiting for their next victim - the Harpy was soon gone. Similarly, a short while later his Merlin succumbed to a gate camp. Starwalker then spotted an Incursus and warped his Merlin into the complex. The Incursus was waiting and its first action was to gain range and start using its railguns. Starwalker tried to manually pilot towards the Incursus with an overheated afterburner but the range closed far too slowly and his Merlin expired from sheer exhaustion.

Starwalker loved the sheer firepower of blasters but kiters presented a real challenge as the blasters were a short range weapon system. He knew that trying to move directly towards kiters failed miserably, so he would try to move away and slingshot them in future. It would likely result in the loss of a number of brawlers as he had very little success to date with using a slingshot to get targets into scramble range.

MWD Merlin in Fleet

Starwalker joined the weekly TESF roam FC'd by Peri Simone. He had re-shipped into a Merlin fit with an MWD (micro-warp-drive) that enabled the ship to go super fast at the cost of increased signature radius but the primary reason was to act as fast tackle if needed.

[Merlin, MWDMSE]

Micro Auxiliary Power Core II
Damage Control II
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II

Limited 1MN Microwarpdrive I
J5b Phased Prototype Warp Scrambler I
X5 Prototype Engine Enervator
Medium Azeotropic Ward Salubrity I

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 Core Defense Field Extender I
Small Core Defense Field Extender I

Starwalker generally liked to have two magnetic field stabilisers when in full gank mode but for tackling he had replaced one of them with a damage control module. The MWD required more power grid and consequently he had used the meta 3 shield extender, which was chosen over the meta 4 equivalent due to cost. This pushed the overall EHP down to 7.2k but that was still good for a fast brawler style fit.

Daathen volunteered to scout and before long he had pointed a nice Arbitrator at a medium outpost. The fleet piled in and set to work on what seemed like an endless succession of drones but with so many ships and so much firepower available it was straightforward. Attention then inevitably turned to the Arbitrator itself and it succumbed with barely a whimper - it only took down the scout with it.

Brink Albosa stepped up to the plate and continued scouting, finding a Vengeance and Wolf at a station. The Vengeance was an outlaw and the fleet again made short work of the target. The Wolf however, was slightly more complicated as it was not an outlaw and it was yellow to most of the fleet. However, the Wolf pilot seemed to panic and appeared to randomly select a Rebel to shoot and died very quickly, primarily to the sentry guns. He posted "manger moi tute le gland", which amused the Rebels no end as they tried to work out the translation.

A Maller and Vexor were found next but they were young, inexperienced and ratting - their respective ships simply melted. It was over so fast that Starwalker only got onto the Maller kill, which was called as primary.

Mehenn having been killed earlier in an Arbitrator did not seem to have learnt his lesson and was pointed again at the sun by Brink Albosa in his Wolf. The fleet swarmed in and started to apply DPS and then Brink noted that he was scrambled and heading into structure. Peri called for the fleet to overheat all guns on the Arbitrator and ignore the drones. The Arbitrator and Wolf started their countdown to destruction and it was a race to see who would be destroyed first. The fleet were hoping to save their scout... and they did as the Arbitrator shattered into a ball of fire and its drones just stopped in space.

It had been a very successful roam. There were some other minor events like chasing a faction warfare fleet out of a plex but no further kills. Starwalker docked happy with the night's events.

A Beacon Too Far

Starwalker undocked in Egbinger in his Vengeance and there was another cynosural beacon. The temptation was too much and seeing that it was just an Impairor it was soon a wreck. The cyno ship pilot, Elektormonter, however was completely undeterred and soon he had a second cyno ship lighting up.

Of course, the temptation was still far too much and Starwalker went in again and killed the second Impairor and just for good measure he stayed to kill the pod too. He didn't have time to scoop the corpse and warped away with his ship on fire.

Starwalker wandered off around Molden Heath and couldn't believe his luck when he returned to Egbinger to find Elektormonter had yet another cyno ship lighting up a beacon. That Impairor went the way of the others and also became a wreck.

Starwalker decided to test his flags and warped to a gate and then a station - no sentry gun fire. Cool, he could leave system whenever he wanted without fear of sentry fire destroying his ship. He was just about to dock up when yet another cynosural beacon lit up. It was Elektormonter again! But this time in a Pilgrim - he was tempting Starwalker but this was a very different proposition.

At first, Starwalker decided that the Pilgrim was too tough to kill but then he changed his mind on the assumption that he wasn't completely sure and he would risk his Vengeance trying for the kill. He went in, locked it up and started firing the rockets with overheat on. Some enemy drones were launched to supplement the sentry fire but most importantly his capacitor was instantly drained. That was bad news straight away.

As he switched targets to the drones he realised that his rockets were getting seriously burnt and he hit the shift to turn off the overheat. However, he didn't wait for the cycle to complete and seeing the overheat still on he hit the shift again, which had the undesired effect of keeping the overheat on until his rockets were burnt out. With no firepower, no capacitor and too close to run it was inevitable that this shiny Vengeance would join the space wreckage.

Starwalker left in the mistaken belief that if he hadn't burnt out his rockets he could have killed the drones and then the Pilgrim, completely overlooking the obvious problem with that. There was also sentry fire and he could not stay long enough to kill it. However, in the heat of the moment and completely fixated, he was not thinking straight and he came back with another Vengeance. This time it would be different.

It was no different. He did not burn out his rockets and he did kill some of the drones but the capacitor situation was dire even with the energy vampire running. Worse, the drones kept coming - he had not checked the fact that the Pilgrim had 150 cubic metre capacity for drones. After killing the first set of drones he had targeted the Pilgrim again and hadn't even noticed the next set of drones until he started taking more damage again. The trouble was - he was already in structure from round one and round two was simply too much.

It was inevitable what would happen next and Starwalker could only curse his own stupidty but he spent too long cursing his stupidity and compounded the loss of his Vengeance with the loss of his pod too. This really was a beacon too far and hopefully he had learnt from it.

Predictability Equals Zero

Starwalker was still cruising around Molden Heath and Metropolis in his Vengeance, although he had lost this Vengeance to a Talos returning from null-sec, an epic failure to spiral in. The cyno ship, a Probe, he had killed on the return journey was hardly compensation for that loss but for some reason he had run into some cynos recently and he had killed this Velator too.

The Vengeance was much more capable than just killing cyno ships but he had yet to find a fair fight so in the meantime he would take the unfair fights too, if killing a cyno ship could be called a fight at all, but a kill was a kill.

Recently, he had seen that New Eden had various ships rebalanced and some great changes to visually track ships. He was looking forward to getting out and about in some T1 Cruisers. However before that could happen he needed to get the latest version of EFT as he liked to experiment with fits theoretically first and then take them out into the wild. Of course that would take time but Starwalker felt no urgent need to fly any ships immediately.

Meanwhile, more generally, Starwalker was finding EVE teasing and frustrating, enticing and satisfying, engaging and enthralling. Recently, he had been out solo hunting for hours and despite the odd games around gates or playing chase he had nothing to show for his efforts. And then 4 kills came within an hour, they were all cyno ships but of course, Starwalker didn't care. EVE was an unpredictable mistress and Starwalker took the opportunities as they came.

One night, he undocked in his Vengeance and there were two cynosural beacons just a few AU away. The temptation was far too great and the kill far too easy and so the rockets made short work of the Impairor and after some time for the shields to recharge the Kestrel went down too.

After waiting out GCC Starwalker went off towards Heild and just checked his map for any more cynos. There was another cyno ship in Hrober so he went there and killed the Ibis. Satisfied, Starwalker docked up in station for a break and he returned a little while later. Heading back to Egbinger he found yet another cyno up. Crazy.

Starwalker warped in and found the Kestrel there along with a carrier but the Kestrel went down fast and Starwalker warped away with most of his armour gone and because he had waited a little too long some structure was gone too. This Vengeance only had a light tank and taking sentry fire was not good for its health but then again having ships on fire was not a bad thing. Cengae bleated "epic PvP" but Starwalker ignored him, as he ignored most people in local, except to wave to fellow R1DER pilots.

Roaming Roaming Roaming

Starwalker had been roaming around Molden Heath and Metropolis in his Merlin and a shiny new Vengeance, which was a wonderful looking assault frigate. It had the traditional Amarr strengths of strong tank and good capacitor regeneration but with its rockets its damage output was lower than most other assault frigates.

Rockets did not have the highest DPS but they had the benefit of consistent damage over their range and that damage would increase if the target was webbed. Similarly, the Vengeance was able to choose its rocket damage type, hitting the lowest resists, as its bonus was to all missile damage types and rate of fire rather than the specific kinetic damage associated with the Caldari rocket/missile ships. 

This last week had been kind to Starwalker as these two helpless cyno ships became victims: Kestrel and Probe. However, the highlight was Kaeda Maxwell's roam into null-sec via Etherium Reach. A selection of enemy ships ran into the fleet and died quickly:

• Osprey - given this kill was worth over 6 billion ISK it was a complete surprise that the pilot seemed to be AFK just off the gate, just inviting the gank that followed. Vincent R'lyeh had offered to stay on the other side of the gate to catch the Osprey if it jumped through and so he waited whilst the Osprey died. He then spent the rest of the roam complaining how he had missed out on the 6bn kill - most amusing!
• Tornado - may have been just unlucky as he jumped into the gang and was only 40km away from a Stilletto with a long point. What ever the entry conditions to the fight he was not fast enough to escape and once the point was established it was all over
• Hurricane - was sitting near a station and aggressed the scout. He realised his mistake when everyone in fleet piled in and in reaction he tried to deagress - to dock up and escape - but with his drones still fighting and with the DPS on the field it wasn't going to happen
• Drake - another hapless victim to a R1DER blob  
• Cynabal - sitting 200km above the gate and the pilot must have seen the Stilletto chasing him down just as the fleet was landing on gate. Since no one expected the Cynabal to hang around and get pointed the fleet had not stayed off grid but for whatever reason Major Floor in his Stilletto did get point. Surprised, the fleet immediately burned into action and then another bling ship (but no bling fittings) went to EVE heaven
• Hurricane - pilot just seemed to be unlucky as he ran into the fleet at a gate and the DPS just simply blew him away. His ECM drones were ineffective against the sheer number of frigates in a feeding frenzy on his hull

Starwalker had tried to kill the pods everytime too but it became apparent that he was far too slow as he never even got onto one of the pod kills. It was a good roam with lots of fun in fleet and on the field. Dying In A Fire (DIAF) was not a problem for Starwalker but it was even better to have lots of kills and still have the ship afterwards. The question was could he keep the Vengeance on the return journey from deep inside null-sec?

Rebels Chase Caracal and Incursus Fit Assessment

Starwalker had only found this hapless cyno-ship but was looking forward to the Rebel roam later. However, whilst the Rebels had gathered in Eugales for Peri Simone's regular roam his technical difficulties resulted in the roam being cancelled. So Kaeda Maxwell (Incursus), Alaric Faelen (Vengeance) and Starwalker (Incursus) decided to form an ad-hoc small gang and set off locally to see what they could find.

It wasn't long before Kaeda saw a Caracal jump through onto the gate with him and then warp to the next gate. The Rebels set off in hot pursuit. The Caracal jumped a couple of more systems and then went to a major outpost. He looked like he wanted to fight.

Starwalker was first into the complex and gave chase but the Caracal stayed outside of scram range and laid down its offensive fire of light missiles. It was clear that this cruiser was fitted to kill frigates and was evading Starwalker easily. Very quickly Starwalker had to get his active armour tank going but he was comfortably tanking the incoming damage. This time Starwalker paid close attention to the capacitor and reloaded in plenty of time.

With the other Rebels arriving it was not long before the Caracal was surrounded and pointed and Starwalker also finally established a point. The incoming damage continued for a while but it was clear that the Incursus dual armour repair was able to tank the damage and the Caracal pilot, Stalking Mantis, decided to switch targets but it was too late for him and before much longer his Caracal exploded.

Fit Assessment - Incursus Dual Armour Repair
The Incursus was a T1 frigate that was small and fast and used hybrid weapons, blasters in particular but also railguns for fighting at range. It was a good general purpose combat frigate like the Merlin and Rifter and at an attractive price point - a fully fitted Incursus was around 10m ISK. 

Starwalker had used an Incursus with a dual small armour repair fit, which exploited the ship bonus of 10% armour repair effectiveness. It's key strengths were its high DPS and strong tank and its main weakness was the lack of range control.

The high slots were dominated by the light neutron blasters, which were the highest damage short range hybrid blasters and also the most difficult to fit. Caldari Navy Antimatter Charges were used to maintain the best tracking, higher damage void ammunition also had a 25% tracking penalty. This was especially important as Starwalker's tracking skills were not at level V and there was no stasis webifier fitted. Checking the log would confirm how many misses occurred and consequently reduced DPS.

The mid slots held the traditional afterburner for low security space and a warp scrambler. The third mid slot had a capacitor booster rather than a stasis webifier because of the dual repair active armour tank. The capacitor was exhausted in just over 30 seconds of use and given that the capacitor was being used all of the time the practical time was closer to 20 seconds. A typical frigate fight would last 30-45 seconds so 20 seconds was simply too short. With the capacitor booster fitted the capacitor was theoretically stable, dependent on the number of capacitor charges in the cargo hold.

The low slots were primarily focused on the armour tank, with two small armour repairers being the key components of the tank. The small armour repairers were used in a staggered way with the armour HP being replenished at the end of each cycle or every 4.5 seconds with level V skills. This cycle could be improved further by using implants and/or drugs.

Rigs were used to add a little more armour buffer (trimark) and to enhance the repair effectiveness by 15% for each fitted nano pump. The Incursus could also field one drone and Starwalker had the Acolyte EV-300, which drained just a little (5 GJ) capacitor with each cycle (6 seconds).

Hawk Down

Starwalker had lost a Crow and was now in a Hawk instead. He was experimenting with the widening choices for solo combat. He had added the micro-warpdrive for speed but was concerned that it was the wrong choice for low-sec. However, the dual webs should help a lot with establishing range control.

Starwalker soon found a Vengeance and Stabber on scan whilst cruising near the sun and started to look for them. However, the Vengeance was also looking for a fight and arrived at the sun a mere 50km away. Starwalker engaged.

The approach went smoothly and the lock, web and scramble were applied at 9km, with the rockets firing. But then the distance closed to around 1km. Whilst the range of the Vengeance made no difference to its rocket damage it was too close for what Starwalker was trying to achieve from a range control perspective. 

However, with the micro-warpdrive shutdown the Hawk was unable to gain any distance even though the dual web was applied. Experiment failed. In retrospect, simply using some math may have been better - looking at afterburner speeds before and after being webbed and the speed of a frigate

The incoming damage was soon eating through the Hawk's shield tank but the rocket's return fire was making comparatively slow progress and the Vengeance was clearly winning. To seal the deal a Stabber arrived and fired on Starwalker. It was over.

Starwalker returned to base and removed the micro-warpdrive from his other Hawk. The range dictation with the dual web was simply insufficient without an afterburner to ensure a higher relative speed.

Rebels Wreck Vengeance in Hagilur

A small standing fleet had been setup in Hagilur and Starwalker joined the fun. An earlier roam in his Rifter had been rather uneventful, except for the Cynbal that had tried to destroy him on a gate.

A few potential targets were being d-scanned and Shaggy Herring in a Vengeance was among them. The speculation was whether Shaggy was part of a small fleet or not. Whilst this was going on Starwalker had been bouncing between celestials

Starwalker decided to tempt fate after bouncing to a customs office and simply burn away from it. On many occasions that type of action had elicited a response of some enterprising local jumping in for a fight.

The Vengeance jumped in. Starwalker turned and engaged with an “x” call for backup. The distance closed to 1500m very quickly and damage was being applied to the ships by both sides. However, it was also clear that the Vengeance was easily repairing its armour. Good job that the other Rebels were there to help.

Miura Bull in his Wolf and Saftsuze in his Rifter soon had the Vengeance locked up and now the Vengeance tank was being overwhelmed. It was soon over as the Rebels wrecked (http://r1fta.griefwatch.net/?p=details&kill=2813) the Vengeance.

Starwalker had been so busy watching only the damage, a common failing, and overheating modules that he had not noticed the distance was no longer 1500m but had extended to 13km! So the pod was well beyond scramble range. Well, the Vengeance was down but the pod escaped.

Starwalker reviewed the combat log and noticed that the Vengeance had stopped firing for a while (but hadn’t realised at the time). Similarly, the damage also showed a familiar pattern of high moving to low. So maybe the key to the earlier charts had been a change of range that Starwalker had simply not noticed at the time in those previous battles but had been obvious with the Vengeance.

This all pointed to the fact that a “routine” was needed to keep track of the combat and key events. So Starwalker resolved to use ROTA next time: Range, Overheat, Tank and Attack as a device to observe the fight and react as needed.