A Busy Day

I lost three Battlecruisers yesterday.

A Hookbill was poking around right when I logged in. I undocked in a Cyclone, and was gonna fight it once I knew if he had friends or not. Then one of my brethren came outside in a Drake, and the Hookbill warped off.

The Drake warped to the gate, following the interloper, jumped through, and reported a Hookbill and Sabre. I was fairly sure there were more, but decided to fight anyway. When I jumped through, the frigate and interdictor were dancing around us, at about 30-60 km, and I couldn't catch them.

Plus one in system. A Hurricane shows up on scan. If that's all they have, then this shouldn't be too terrible. Hurricane lands right in front of me, and I open fire.

Some points on the video:

• I managed my capacitor fairly well during the fight; one my in injects was completely neuted away before I used it, but other than that, I think my timing was good.
• I burnt my guns out because I was too busy watching my cap/shields. I died shortly afterwards, but it still shouldn't have happened.
• I should have called the Hurricane primary from the beginning. Because if I had, it would have died, and I likely would have lived. For whatever reason, my Drake fleetmate decided to shoot the Sabre until I explicitly said otherwise. The Hurricane didn't die either: he launched ECM drones and managed to warp off when he was in deep structure. I was the only casualty.

My Drake friend logged, so I went out alone in a shield Hurricane. And of course along my route I get caught by a Stiletto interceptor. He doesn't shoot me at all, so he is just pinning me down until his fleet arrives. I try a few times to slingshot him into neut range, but it doesn't happen. I jump back home with the Stiletto very close behind.

Eventually his fleet shows themselves: the Hookbill from earlier, a Drake, and a Stabber Fleet Issue. They are sitting at our station, and I undock in a kiting Rupture to see if I can take out the Stiletto or Hookbill from afar. I warp around system a bit, but when I get good positioning on the frigates, the Stiletto is well-piloted. He approaches me at an angle, and too fast for my guns. So before I get tackled I warp back to station; doesn't look like I'll get to pick any of them off.

(It is possible that the Stiletto would simply hold at range with a point while the Hookbill came close at a very low-transversal vector, letting me blast it into debris. But once again I was afraid of the SFI, and once again we will see that it is not the kind of fit that makes the SFI really shine. I should just assume that enemy SFIs are fit like baby Vagabonds, and not a real threat.)

I tell them in local that it is just me here (everyone else is AFK). They aren't interested in station games, so they leave.

But then some people wake up. We get a little fleet together, composed of me in an armor Hurricane, a Drake, and a Rupture.

We quickly pursue them to the out-gate, isolating their Drake. We are too slow to hold tackle on it, so he warps off. But they know we are looking for a fight now.

We jump into them on the other side of the gate and start shooting. Our Drake was tanking for some time before we could follow him, but we manage to kill a Brutix, his juicy pod, and that SFI.

You can hear me at the end of the video excitedly shooting their Talos. I burnt out one of my webs and MWD, so he pulls range, and blows me up. "damnit."

I think I did well in that fight, other than burning out my modules. If I had the second web and my MWD, could I have kept the Talos pinned down such that his guns would have trouble tracking me? I have no idea.

A while later, Eebsy and I go out in armor battlecruisers to christen his new boat, and die to a gang because we had no maneuverability and no fast tackle. We tried to catch the Curse that came through first, but it was too fast even when I had use of my MWD. A few minutes later, the rest of the fleet finished us off.

Even though I lost 150mil+ ISK in ships and modules, it still was good fun, and I had some good fights.

Destroyer Denouement

Now that I am in a fresh Thrasher (part 1), Eebsy and I depart toward a different section of Syndicate.

When we get there, we find a Tengu and a Legion: both Tech3 Strategic Cruisers, both completely out of our engagement envelope.

We double back, and I ask, "How badly do you want a fight? Do you want to blow up?" Eebs exclaims positively, and I know exactly where to go.

Syndicate is split into halves by a single system that also connects to the only high-sec entrance. It is camped 90% of the time and is always active. Even if it is not, lower Syndicate is very busy during the US timezones. We march south.

The system right before FD- has two pilots in local that have belonged to NPC corps for several years. It is very likely that they are cloaked, scouting alts for whatever is on the other side of the gate.

I tell Eebs to hold as I jump in.

"Sabre, Enyo, Rifter, Thrasher, Stiletto." That fleet that is actually not terrible for us to engage.

My initial plan was to reapproach the gate, hopefully getting a few to shoot at me. Then, depending on who shot, didn't shoot, or jumped, I'd tell Eebs to come through or I'd jump back to him. I didn't notice right away that they were 265 km from the gate, but they soon warp directly to it.

The Rifter jumped out (possibly on accident), and a Retribution Assault Frigate on Eebs' side lands and begins to scram him. I tell Eebs to jump and call the Sabre as primary target.

We kill the Sabre right before Eebs blows up, and I quickly switch to the Thrasher--I know how thin they can be, and there is no way I could catch that Stiletto nor kill the Enyo before I die.

Your group of 200mm AutoCannon II is well aimed at Melissa Blick (Thrasher) 'Stallman Collapses!' <AGONY>, inflicting 440.4 damage.

My final shot takes away half of the Thrasher's armor. If I got off another two or three, then the destroyer would have been space rubble.

I wish Agony "gf", and we take the Pod Express home. Killing a Sabre Interdictor for two destroyers is nice trade (73 mil vs. 30 mil).

Thorax in a Mission

Another quick kill. I wish this guy put up more of a fight, but he was less than a month old. When I saw "Thorax" on my scanner, my eyes lit up, and I forgot to check his Employment History.

Thorax isn't a terrible ship, but it is a Tech 1 cruiser, which are pretty much the red-headed step-children of EVE. Faction cruisers (like my Stabber Fleet Issue) are better, but no where near the capabilities of Battlecruisers, pirate cruisers, and Tech 3 Strategic cruisers.

I found the Thorax in an empty system with a bunch of wrecks in the middle of nowhere. I went back to Gare to pick up my scanning ship, stayed near the gate uncloaked while landing a 100% reading on my first analysis. Recalled probes, warped home, and sat in my Stabber. The seat was still warm.

I warped to the bookmark I made of the Thorax's signature, and landed near an Acceleration gate. These gates are one-way entrances into little pockets of space called Deadspace. Players can only get there using the gates, but they can leave at any time by warping out the conventional way. Each pocket of space is called a "room". The first room of this mission was clear of anything hostile, so I approached the next Acceleration gate to enter the second room.

I land about 20 km from the cruiser, who is casually shooting the rats for his mission. My microwarp drive closes the distance very quickly, and even if he were paying attention to his overview, I doubt he had enough time to align and warp.

I launch my drones to add some firepower, but it's overkill. The SFI moves too fast for his long-range railguns to track. At least he saves his pod.

He could have seen my probes when I was scanning him. He could have been watching directional scanner with short range to indicate when I entered his mission deadspace. He could have been pre-aligned and ready to warp at the first sign of danger.

I have a video because I actually remembered to start the recording, but it isn't all that impressive.

Getting to Here

I'm a relatively new EVE player, taking the plunge about four months ago. This hasn't been my first time in New Eden, but it's the first time that I've stayed. I wrote (a naive) post about my foray, and even documented my first PvP encounter.

My first week was spent flying around low sec without much action. The remainder of my first month was spent ninja salvaging about 150 million ISK, enough to buy a set of +3 training implants, cruisers, and battlecruisers.

I stayed with a fledgling UK corp for way too long, and eventually went to RvB for some sporty PvP.

Heavily inspired by Taurean Eltanin at Flight of Dragons, I hoped to incubate in RvB and eventually break out into solo piracy. I participated primarily in fleet fights, which were a lot of fun, but not very educational.

Fleets got larger, and many station games were had. After convincing some friends to join, I started doing more duels to structure. These were learning experiences for both parties.

During these months, I had trained up Assault Frigates and began playing with the Wolf. In the last video I am piloting a Rupture because I was persuaded to join an alliance that was going to invade NPC 0.0. Even though my Cruiser skills are not where I want them, I figured I should practice with the bigger hulls for fleet ops.

I will talk about that venture in my next post.