Starwalker had joined the Rebel fleet leaving from Adirain in a Taranis - as an experiment. He had been thinking about the importance of speed as seen with his Hookbill. The Taranis was a dual propulsion fit so that it could chase down targets with the MWD and maintain range control with the afterburner.
[Taranis, Dual Propulsion]
Pseudoelectron Containment Field I
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II
Micro Auxiliary Power Core II
1MN Afterburner II
Limited 1MN Microwarpdrive I
J5b Phased Prototype Warp Scrambler I
Small Diminishing Power System Drain I
Light Neutron Blaster II,Null S
Light Neutron Blaster II,Null S
Light Neutron Blaster II,Null S
Small Ancillary Current Router I
Small Projectile Burst Aerator I
In short, the Taranis fulfilled the need for speed and during the fleet engagements Starwalker found that switching between MWD and afterburner was easy. The turn of speed was good in getting to the next target and the fleet successfully took down a: Caracal, Caracal and Drake playing games at a station.
The fleet continued on and Broady Dale was apparently suckered into trying to get a canister with 100m ISK at planet 9, instead he lost his Thorax and pod. In New Eden bet on stupid. Finally, the fleet engaged a small gang in a complex and claimed this Bantam and Kestrel and a little later this Hookbill. All in all, a very successful roam, in fact, the second most successful roam with 7 ships for no loss, all he had lost were his drones.
The next day Starwalker undocked his Taranis to head back to base. Along the way he noticed a Hookbill in a complex and he knew that getting into close range combat would be hard against a Hookbill but he decided to try it anyway. The Taranis was met at the warp in and was then pretty much held at 7km for the rest of the fight. Between the web and tracking disruptor the Taranis was doing hardly any worthwhile damage.
Starwalker would have released his drones if he still had them but all he could do was try to get into range by overheating his afternburner but each time he did the Hookbill pulled range again. The Taranis was slowly being whittled away by the incoming rocket damage as the Hookbill dominated the fight with range control.
Starwalker was learning a lesson, speed was key and helped with range control but it was not the only factor that determined who had range control. The dual propulsion Taranis had no counter web and so the relative speed advantage was with the Hookbill. Without range control, damage projection then became key and the Hookbill had tracking disrupted the Taranis blasters. This blunted any damage projection the blasters might have had.
Manual piloting and overheating the afterburner was the last resort and this helped temporarily to get closer and apply some damage but the Hookbill was always able to re-establish the 7km range. The Taranis was effectively helpless and inevitably was destroyed.
Starwalker had learnt a valuable less - speed did not guarantee range control. It helped but then so did a stasis webifier, tracking disruptor, sensor dampener and manual piloting. If Starwalker was unable to establish range control then he needed damage projection to either destroy the target or chase it away.
Starwalker had been flying around with his Caldari Navy Hookbill with a new appreciation for the benefits of speed in a brawler ship or at least a ship fighting in scrambler range. He was still waiting for an opportunity to confirm if he could reliably slingshot fast (MWD) kiters in an afterburner fit frigate, when he spied a Breacher on scan.
The Breacher as a Minmatar missile ship was usually fit with rockets so that probably would not be a test, until he noticed that the ship's speed was definitely indicating an MWD fit. Starwalker moved towards it and as the distance closed to less than 30km he overheated his afterburner. The intention was to try and take advantage of the Breacher overshooting its orbit range during the initial few seconds and establish a scram.
It either worked or was completely unnecessary as the distance closed to less than 10km. Starwalker wasn't sure which reason was correct but that did not stop him from engaging with his rockets. It was clear very soon that the Breacher was active shield tanked, taking advantage of its bonus and the amount the shields recovered looked like dual ancillary shield boosters.
Starwalker knew that the active tank would not last much more than 20 seconds and then the Breacher would be toast. The incoming damage was manageable and soon the Breacher was a spreading mass of debris. He tried to get the pod as well but it was away too quickly. Checking the Breacher fit revealed a MWD and scram, so Tarkathanas was always going to come in close and was really fit to catch Faction Warfare pilots, like this AFK Atron, with three warp core stabilisers.
The MWD and scrambler combination would always lose range control to an afterburner and scrambler combination and this range control gave an option for the pilot to leave the fight. That was exactly what Starwalker did when his Hookbill engaged a Jaguar 50km off the complex acceleration gate and it became 2 v 1.
The Hookbill easily established range control at around 7km, which would and did blunt the main damage from the 125mm autocannon fit Jaguar. However, the fight was still close as the shields for the both ships marched down to zero. It looked like Starwalker had the better of it when the Jaguar pilot, SUICIDAL Larsen, brought in a Blackbird or called in a fleet mate. Starwalker almost instantly lost his lock and so he aligned out, overheated his afterburner and escaped. It was good that the Hookbill had the speed to simply evade destruction in this trap.
Starwalker was cruising around in his Tristan and whilst he had aspirations to change the fit for something faster he had not done so yet. He spied a Tormentor in a complex and decided that it was fair game. It was not long before he was on grid and engaged.
The sequence of engagement was still a little haphazard, after all this time, because Starwalker was still trying to optimise the first few seconds when warping into the complex. In short, Starwalker often seemed to give commands too early or too fast and some of them got lost. He had also varied his approach from mainly clicking to using shortcut keys and clicking to then back to clicking.
The engagement started immediately as the Tormentor was simply waiting and his trap had been sprung. A Griffin arrived on grid and before long the Tristan was jammed and then destroyed. Afterwards Starwalker realised that he had wasted a few precious seconds, he should have targeted the Griffin immediately and set his drones on it. The DPS was coming from the Tormentor but the Griffin simply stopped the fight. The advantage with drones was that they would continue to attack the Griffin even if the lock was lost.
The Tristan loss was soon followed by the loss of a Merlin during a fleet fight after a long roam. It was an EVE battle where the Rebels had brought knives (T1 frigates) but the opposing fleet brought guns (T2 frigates, cruisers and battle cruisers). Given that the Rebels didn't even have an advantage in numbers it was inevitable that their little T1 frigates would become the focus of a turkey shoot. The only compensation was that this Rupture, which was first on the scene, was destroyed.
Starwalker headed back to base in his pod. He didn't mind the loss of his ship that was the nature of the beast - fortune favoured the brave, sometimes. More importantly, he now had to consider what ship to fly next as he had no other ships in station.
So he decided to bring in to Gultratren a couple of Caldari Navy Hookbills. He had flown them before and liked them but he was also wondering if a ~1.2km/s frigate had a better chance of catching a kiter than a ~1km/s frigate. A Kestrel on scan seemed the perfect opportunity to see what would happen, except it was brawling fit.
Whilst that was a surprise, Starwalker did not hesistate to send the Kestrel to the afterlife and he would have done the same for the pilot except he got away. Maybe next time he would see if the Hookbill could slingshot a kiter into range.
Starwalker contemplated his flight time and was disappointed that he had spent so much time in dock. But from time to time he had to be docked to replenish his ISK, Starwalker enjoyed his lifestyle but it did not pay for itself. Recently, he had spent very little time in space and he was missing the opportunities to get into trouble in New Eden.
However, he now had the opportunity and without hesitation he undocked in his Tristan. He had considered changing his fit or flying a different ship but when he was docked all such plans were on hold. The Tristan was still a good ship and the fit was fine, so he scanned local looking for targets and noticed a Rifter, just as his communication channel signaled a Rebel fleet had been formed and were out and about only 13 jumps away.
That was an opportunity too good to miss. He would rendezvous with them but first things first, where was that Rifter - there was some killing to be done. It was at a complex and as Starwalker warped in the Rifter was ready for combat and immediately engaged. Starwalker was a little slow getting his drones out and before long he had his small armour repairer overheated as the Rifter pounded on the Tristan's hull with its autocannons.
The DPS race was truly on as the Rifter orbited at around 1km and the Tristan was dipping into structure. But the drones and the blasters were also wrecking havoc on the Rifter's shields and once they were gone the Rifter rapidly became a wreck. Starwalker exchanged a GF, scooped the loot, repaired the structural damage and joined up with the Rebels.
The fleet headed off with Peri Simone as the fleet commander and with Kane the Black and Groggolog acting as scouts. The fleet had the usual fun and games looking for targets, chasing ships around and waiting at the sun as an open invitation. Finally in Amamake the fleet engaged another small fleet and after killing a Daredevil and Osprey they bugged out.
It had been a good night, a solo kill and a couple of fleet kills. Starwalker headed back to dock happy with the roam. Back in station he sighed as he took off his Black Jacket, he had returned to dock and didn't know when he would be able to undock again. There was still so much he wanted to do and he had so little time in space - it was truly disappointing.
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 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.
