Starwalker had been finding some fights and kills in faction warfare sites such as this Atron and Slasher. This cyno-ship was just unlucky in that Starwalker had attempted to kill it but he had been chased off by sentry fire. When he returned there was a Machariel standing guard so he quickly left again but the cyno-ship was killed by a Loki shortly afterwards.
However, more generally, Starwalker had recently either been chasing ships that were far too fast to be caught or had to escape when he was unable to get into scramble range. There was a third alternative and that was the kiter was driven off by factors such as incoming damage, stalemate or new entrants to the fight.
The key problem for Starwalker was that he was unable to get into scramble range when he was in an afterburner fit, brawling frigate and coming up against fast or MWD fit frigates like the Condor or Kestrel. They maintained point and range control of around 16km - 24km away. He had now tried many times to slingshot ships into scramble range (10km with overheat) and whether it was poor manual piloting or not the end result was the same he either had to escape or be destroyed.
The upperhand and therefore choice was always with the faster ship as they could either stay to the bitter end or leave if things started to look bad. Starwalker had recently fought against a Kestrel and whilst the drones from his Tristan had inflicted damage the Kestrel could simply decide to leave when it was in any danger, which is what it did. This escape option would always be open if Starwalker was unable to establish a long point (warp disruption) or scramble.
The fight with the Maulus had a similar outcome to the Kestrel in that the Hawk's Javelin missiles could chase it away but without a long point the faster Maulus would dictate how long the fight lasted. So damage projection was useful both offensively and defensively but to get the kill required warp disruption. Starwalker was enjoying the Tristan but he needed more speed.
To go faster, Starwalker needed to either fly faster afterburner ships or use a MWD fit, which would mean giving up range control against any afterburner fit frigate that got into scram range. Speed was not the only factor and key factors such as damage projection and tank needed to be combined into the choice of ship(s) and fit to fly.
It was a dilemma and no matter what ship (frigate) or fit was chosen there was always a counter that would destroy it or something that would be faster or have better damage projection and so on. The key for Starwalker was to select a ship and fit based on what he expected to encounter or fight against and also was prepared to fly and lose. It was about establishing relative superiority to the potential target, which was possible. What was not possible was one frigate and fit that could beat every other frigate in combat.
Starwalker's recent experience was that he was encountering a lot of fast ships and he did not know whether a ship going around 1.2km/s was any better at doing a slingshot than a ship going at around 1km/s. In short, he would either need to spend some time looking at fast afterburner ships like the Condor and Breacher or fitting a MWD to a combat frigate like the Merlin and Tristan. Those choices did not even include some of the other excellent frigates such as the Caldari Navy Hookbill or Hawk - so many choices...
Starwalker was cruising in his Hawk and looking for trouble. He had refit his Hawk away from the previous MWD fit to an afterburner, two webs and to have slightly more tank. The basic rationale was that he needed range control when brawling and the Javelins could keep kiters away.
Recently he seemed to have run into more kiters and generally fast ships in lowsec, although perhaps that was also because he had been chasing faction warfare pilots. It seemed to Starwalker that he was far more likely to find a fight at a complex than anywhere else currently. He did scan the belts from time to time but he had found zero ratters or anything else for that matter.
He spied a Slasher at a small complex and warped in to find a... Tristan. Starwalker wasted no time wondering about the Slasher and immediately locked up the Tristan, it was soon scrambled, double webbed and taking heavy damage from the rockets. But it wasn't alone and a Rifter, Condor and a Griffin landed close by. Before they could really help the Tristan went down.
Starwalker was firing close range Rage rockets and so attacked the Rifter next, which had come in to 2km, whist the Griffin and Condor were around 15km away. This proved fruitless as the Griffin jammed the Hawk and Starwalker tried to align out to make a desperate run for it. In hindsight, he should have moved in towards the Griffin as he had one more brief window of attack but wasted those shots on the Rifter rather than the real problem - the Griffin. The Hawk was jammed again and then was finally destroyed.
Starwalker jump cloned to Gultratren and undocked his Tristan, using the fit with the web and small armour repairer. Before long he saw a Condor, piloted by Malfyrion, in a complex and warped in. The target was 20km away and so he launched his drones and tried to get closer but the Condor was going at 4.6km/s. That was so fast that the Hobgoblin IIs could not catch up and hit it. Starwalker tried to slingshot in but unsuccessfully and then after some manual flying managed to breakout of range. He succeeded but suspected that Malfyrion had burnt out his long point with all of the manoeuvers. It was a lucky escape as the Tristan was about to run out of capacitor and the ship was already in structure.
A short while later, after getting fully repaired, Starwalker's Tristan warped in to a Kestrel at a complex. The Kestrel again maintained range and Starwalker was again unable to close the distance but this time the Hobgoblin's were inflicting their thermal damage. The Kestrel called for support and an Atron arrived on the scene and started to target the Tristan and so Starwalker decided it was time to head away rather than try to slingshot the Kestrel again.
The Kestrel was deep in armour and decided to beat retreat but the Atron continued to hold point. The drones attacked the Atron and after receiving some damage it decided to leave. Starwalker had now had a second escape from a kiter but luckily got this killmail later when that Atron must have run into a Heron whilst still damaged and was then killed.
Starwalker decided it was time to return to base before one of these kiters destroyed his Tristan when he saw another Tristan when scanning from the sun. He waited at the sun and before long the Tristan, piloted by Destru Kaneda, arrived only 40 km away. Starwalker moved in with his Hobgoblins first and then tried to close into point blank range. Destru had other ideas and the distance was held around 7 to 8km and Destru had also released his Warrior IIs.
Starwalker was slightly surprised to see Warrior IIs as he had assumed that Hobgoblins were the best general choice but on later examining the Tristan's resistance profile - explosive damage was better for armour tanked Tristans. Given that Starwalker's electron blasters were out of range of the target Tristan he set to work on the drones and killed five drones. Initially, he used his web on the enemy drones but in retrospect he should have left it on the Tristan.
In the meantime, both ships were going into structure and it was going to be very, very close. Destru moved in to 5km and Starwalker switched from the remaining three drones to Destru's Tristan and also applied the web. Both ships marched towards zero structure and it looked like Starwalker's Tristan would explode first but a final lucky hit saw Destru's Tristan explode into a fiery ball of flames and his remaining warriors hung limply in space. Good fights were exchanged and Destru noted that it was the closest fight he had been in for a long time. It was the closest fight ever for Starwalker - he had just 4% of structure left.
Starwalker had one of those nights when he wished that he had not undocked. It would have been less expensive and embarrassing. A previous night he had undocked in a Hawk to the sight of a cyno-ship and decided that he would collect both the cyno-ship and the pod. This night he undocked in a Moa and noticed a Thorax on scan and shortly afterwards that Thorax was at the station only 30 km away.
Starwalker knew not to engage the yellow target - he needed to be fired on first so he contined to slowly move forward without the MWD wondering if the Thorax would engage. It started to close the distance and Starwalker overheated his guns and set his Adapative Invulnerability Field going. He wanted to conserve as much capacitor as possible before the fight and so he left his MWD off.
The Thorax engaged and Starwalker opened up the awesome firepower of the Moa's blasters. The distance closed to point blank and it was soon clear that Starwalker was winning the DPS race... until his friends joined in the form of two Tornados. Within seconds Starwalker's Moa was simply a wreck and he was racing away in his pod.
The silly thing was that Starwalker had previously seen the corporation I hope you were insured on a killmail in Covryn after they were talking some smack with a pilot that had not enjoyed being ganked by them. Starwalker had not taken the simple precaution of checking the corporation of the Thorax pilot. He could have easily done so and then seeing that his corp mates were in local, he could have guessed what would happen next and simply left.
Mildly annoyed with himself, Starwalker undocked in a Hawk and a few jumps later amused himself chasing a Maulus. It was something of a stalemate. The Maulus was far faster than the Hawk but the range of the Javelin rockets put the Maulus at risk of being destroyed and the Maulus's drones were too vulnerable to being destroyed to get a kill. Starwalker tried but was unable to slingshot him into range so eventually he gave up and moved on, especially when a bunch of frigates arrived on the scene.
Starwalker had been so busy with the Maulus that he hadn't noticed Johann West wave in local and noted that he was in an Incursus - Starwalker decided to keep a closer eye on communications. He also had some heat damage to repair so in the next system he docked to repair. Afterwards, he undocked to see Patrick Kasper in a Caldari Navy Hookbill shooting towards a Novice complex. Starwalker's Hawk could not go into that and so he headed away to the sun and thought about offering to fleet up with Patrick since they were in local.
However, before he had decided, he had started scanning from the sun as usual and noticed two Caldari Navy Hookbills at the Small complex. He immediately warped in. To his complete surprise when he arrived one of the two was Patrick Kasper. He attempted to target the other Hookbill but as he did so he realised it would be poor form to interfere with a kill. Worse, as he selected the target in his overview it switched to Patrick and so he ended up firing on a fellow Rebel. Starwalker had not made that type of mistake in over a year.
Starwalker was mortified and Patrick in the communication channel sent a message. Starwalker was even more surprised to see that Patrick's Hookbill had no damage when he had accidentally started firing. The Hookbills didn't appear to be fighting so he wasn't sure what was going on, until he read that these two Hookbills were apparently fleeted. Starwalker stopped firing as soon as possible on Patrick and simply wanted to leave. He wasn't sure if he had started firing on the other Hookbill but it was 10km away and was apparently a friendly too. He aligned back to the sun and hit warp - he had no intention of fighting friendlies.
His attention turned to the communication channel where he started to write an apology when he realised that he was still being fired on. He hadn't warped and either one or both of the friendlies had scrambled him. He was about to turn on his ancillary shield booster when his ship exploded. He should have paid more attention to getting out first and then apologising - that would have potentially saved his ship but in any case he would not destroy a friendly. Starwalker was hugely embarrassed at having fired on a fellow Rebel, the loss of the Hawk was incidental.
Starwalker had spent two years in New Eden and since June 2011 he had been a member of R1FTA. This was only his third corporation, his first was the State Academy and then he had joined Ambivalence whilst he was working out what he wanted to do. It was reading Miura Bull's blog that had sent him in the direction of the Black Rebel Rifter Club.
Many of those original R1FTA members had now moved on including Miura Bull himself but Starwalker was still there and he had no intention of leaving any time soon. He still enjoyed the frigate combat and whilst he would occasionally fly bigger ships he was happy to fly around in frigates most of the time.
Over the course of those two years Starwalker had summarised his key areas of
focus for improvement as ships, combat, skills and base. Today:
- Ships flown were predominantly focused on frigate brawlers like the Merlin. He had occasionally dabbled with kiters like the Kestrel and recently he had branched out into using drones with the Tristan. He had little interest in exploration, electronic attack ships, mining or logistic frigates. He had flown larger ships like the Caracal, Moa and Drake but that was only really occasional rather than regularly. In general he liked frigates
- Combat - Starwalker
maintained better control of range, the situation, his modules and overheating but still wanted to focus
more on situational awareness and manual flying. He suspected that he would be saying the same thing next year
- All his core skills were trained to a reasonable level and with 36 million skill points that was a lot of skills. Starwalker had no particular new ship to train for and instead was focusing on completing a small selection of level V skills and rounding out his skill set by raising those skills that were between level I and III to IV
- Two bases
currently had ships, equipment and a clone: Covryn and Gultraten with Covryn being the more important and having more ships and equipment. Both locations were chosen because they were comparatively easy to resupply from Hek and bordered hisec
Starwalker had very few goals in New Eden but one of them was to kill more times than being killed. That had started well when he was in hisec but moving to lowsec was a difficult period as he was being killed more than killing. However, he slowly learned and improved and by the Summer of 2012 he saw that trend turn positive.
Month
|
Kills
|
ISK (B)
|
Losses
|
ISK (B)
|
Efficiency
|
|
|
13
|
0.11
|
4
|
0.10
|
52.26%
|
|
|
13
|
0.29
|
3
|
0.04
|
88.01%
|
|
|
27
|
0.63
|
15
|
0.4
|
61.51%
|
|
|
14
|
0.94
|
7
|
0.18
|
83.65%
|
|
|
8
|
0.1
|
2
|
0.03
|
76.69%
|
|
|
11
|
0.17
|
12
|
0.6
|
21.73%
|
|
|
2
|
0.12
|
2
|
0.13
|
47.77%
|
|
|
36
|
1.26
|
17
|
0.38
|
76.96%
|
|
|
6
|
0.1
|
3
|
0.03
|
77.16%
|
|
|
12
|
2.22
|
9
|
0.13
|
94.41%
|
|
|
4
|
0.04
|
1
|
0.02
|
67.56%
|
|
|
2
|
0.85
|
3
|
0.03
|
96.94%
|
|
|
3
|
0.07
|
9
|
0.32
|
18.02%
|
|
|
1
|
0.12
|
5
|
0.19
|
38.52%
|
|
|
1
|
0
|
3
|
0.11
|
0.00%
|
|
|
0
|
0
|
1
|
0.02
|
0.00%
|
|
|
1
|
0
|
8
|
0.15
|
1.90%
|
|
|
7
|
0.14
|
4
|
0.03
|
80.70%
|
|
|
5
|
0.03
|
13
|
0.08
|
28.50%
|
|
|
12
|
0.13
|
6
|
0.08
|
62.79%
|
|
|
11
|
0.53
|
7
|
0.04
|
93.23%
|
|
|
3
|
0.25
|
1
|
0
|
99.60%
|
Starwalker had recently achieved his 200th kill as recorded by Battleclinic and he was ranked around 29,500. He knew that some pilots had 200 kills in a month but Starwalker was pleased anyway, especially with his limited flight time. He also noted that the two months with the highest number of kills (July and December 2012) had been when he had more flight time. Starwalker did not know what the next year would bring but he was happy to keep doing what he was doing.
Starwalker had been considering a micro-warp-drive (MWD), scram and web combination since the TESF roam to address the pesky kiters. He had a Merlin that was fit with those modules along with a medium shield extender and he had also fitted a Hawk with those modules along with two ancillary shield boosters.
[Hawk, RLMWD2ASBW]
Nanofiber Internal Structure II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II
Limited 1MN Microwarpdrive I
J5b Phased Prototype Warp Scrambler I
Stasis Webifier II
Medium Ancillary Shield Booster, Cap Booster 50
Medium Ancillary Shield Booster, Cap Booster 50
Rocket Launcher II, Scourge Rage Rocket
Rocket Launcher II, Scourge Rage Rocket
Rocket Launcher II, Scourge Rage Rocket
Rocket Launcher II, Scourge Rage Rocket
[empty high slot]
Small Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer I
Small Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer I
The rocket damage was not spectacular (~178) but the active shield tank (~369) was pretty good for ~20 seconds with both boosters going or ~40 seconds if staggered. Starwalker wasn't really sure if the fit was very good against afterburner T2 frigates but he would give it a try. The general intent was to be able to tank the damage from brawlers or kiters within scram range. Kiters within point range would likely be caught by the speed of 2.6km/s or it would be much easier to slingshot something fast.
Placid seemed to have a number of targets in space and Starwalker found:
- An Executioner that was waiting for a target to enter the complex but Starwalker made short work of the Amarr frigate. He had thought initially that the Executioner would be MWD fit but the killmail revealed an afterburner fit. That was a surprise as the pilot, LokFonRey, in theory could have tried to dictate range but he did not even seem to try
- A Magnate with four warp core stabilisiers but the pilot, Welfare Queeen, must have been away as her ship was destroyed
- A Tristan who was also looking for a fight at the complex but Starwalker ignored the Hobgoblin II drones and simply destroyed the Tristan. But he had no time to scoop the loot as he found himself chased by three frigates and a destroyer
He decided to leave the system and as he did so the Thrasher, piloted by VileDK, jumped out with him. Starwalker was immediately locked and pointed and was fired on from 20km away. If Starwalker knew what was going to happen next he would have reacted differently. As it was he fancied his chances of destroying the Thrasher and so he approached and set his propulsion going, except he had taken two hits already and he had not started his active shield tank yet. The third shot popped Starwalker's Hawk.
Starwalker had forgotten that the MWD had a signature bloom effect and he had also approached reducing his traversal to zero. Worse, the destruction of his ship had been such a surprise that he hadn't even started his shield boosters. He would need to remember that expensive lesson - his active tank was really good but his buffer tank was minimal.
Undeterred by the loss Starwalker returned to base and undocked a second Hawk and found a Navitas at a complex, which he destroyed along with the pod and collected his corpse. A while later, Starwalker returned and found the same pilot in another Navitas - so he destroyed that too and claimed his second pod and corpse.However, he didn't have it all his own way as his dual propulsion Taranis was lost within a few minutes of undocking to this Dramiel that was waiting to pounce at a complex.
Peri Simone started the Target Everyone Somebody Fire (TESF) R1FTA roam a long time ago and when the R1DER alliance was started the invitation was extended to all alliance members. This had become a regular roam where usually Peri would FC but anyone could volunteer to FC and The Strabusiness stepped up to the plate last Tuesday.
Kane the Black and Zodiac Black performed sterling service as the scouts and The Strabusiness did a good job as the FC. The Rebels would take down any larger ships that they could find or engage other gangs but on this occasion despite the odd shenanigans there was no big fight. A couple of Coercers were the fleet victims:
- Coercer piloted by Yoyomommy was sitting in a complex and got tackled. He died extremely quickly, so much so that a number of the gang were not able to get in on the kill
- Coercer piloted by Dante Vicari was playing station games and had a battlecruiser with him but when the Rebels arrived they scarpered - to the sun. This was such a common escape point that it was not a good escape location and the Coercer was caught there and then left to its fate by the battlecruiser
Starwalker had docked up in Ishomilken after the TESF roam and the following day he was returning to base when he was caught by two Condors. He tried unsuccessfully to slingshot into range but the distance never closed to less than 16km and he was unable to escape the long point so his trusty Merlin was gone. Some small compensation was had by killing this Slasher with a Tristan but as Starwalker flew the Tristan he considered whether he needed to fly a frigate with a micro-warp-drive (MWD), scram and web combination to catch those pesky kiters.
The problem with using a MWD fit frigate in lowsec was that it sacrificed range control to a frigate with an afterburner, scram, web combination. Starwalker had nearly always flown with an afterburner brawler fit in lowsec and had only really used a MWD in nullsec on the rare occasions he flew in that space. He had learned the hard way that burning out of a bubble with an afterburner was painful and getting to a target fast was needed in nullsec. In short, almost everyone used a MWD in nullsec, except perhaps for surprise value or due to ignorance of nullsec bubbles.
Using a MWD frigate within a TESF roam would be no problem and indeed Starwalker had already used one to act as fast tackle if needed. Generally in a TESF roam Starwalker had always flown with a ship that he would use solo, which seemed to be generally accepted practice. The TESF roam had always been popular within R1DER and it was largely composed of solo (frigate) pilots who came together sometimes for small gangs, so these fleets tended to be simply a collection of solo pilots looking for action together. An FC and scout/tackle would be identified and then the gang, usually composed of various frigates would head out into space.
Employing fleet doctrines, roles, ships and fits based around combining logistics, scouting (beyond +1), fleet tackle and damage dealers was largely alien to R1DER. Similarly alien was using fleet tactics such as hot drops, bombing runs, black ops or capital ship engagement. Indeed Starwalker had not actually seen a RIDER or R1FTA fleet that actually had a battleship and Starwalker was fine with that. If he wanted that experience then he would join a nullsec alliance and respond to the Call to Arms (CTA) at whatever time needed.
Starwalker liked being solo with very few real rules and with like minded people. He enjoyed the small gang culture and sometimes combining with other Rebels if they happened to be in the same area or going on a TESF roam. The composition of R1FTA and R1DER had changed over time and in particular core R1FTA members like Miura Bull, Kaeda Maxwell and Lhorenzho have recently moved on. But Starwalker felt that the core principles had remained the same
- Fly what you want, where you want, when you want and how you want
- Honor 1v1 and ransoms
Starwalker wished all ex-Rebels well and hoped to see them back in R1DER in the future.
