Monday 19 January 2009

Maximum Overdrive

Last week I made my first flights in a Wolf class assault frigate, a ship based on the Rifter hull but with better defensive and offensive capabilities. It has a drawback as well, lacking the third medium slot, which makes it less useful in fighting small and fast ships.
My first fight was against a Thorax cruiser. I destroyed his Hammerhead II drones and settled into a tight orbit to evade his heavy blasters, but his armour was pretty strong so I decided to overload my guns. Unfortunately, I did not turn the overloading off in time and the autocannons broke so I had to leave. Looks like four cannons break quicker than three...
A bit later I took my new ship to Lulm where I saw a Rifter in a deadspace complex. Expecting an easy kill, I jumped in. Turned out I was wrong: the Rifter, piloted by FirenDisco, was much faster than me and orbited at about 15-20 kilometres pounding me with artillery cannons. I tried to throw him off the orbit by maneuvering close to complex structures, but in vain. Soon, my Wolf blew up.
I had another Wolf ready and later on that day I challenged Tefer Bo, who was flying a Vengeance assault frig, to a duel in Amamake. The fight was very close until I overloaded my guns and repper which gave me an advantage. Unfortunately, I then tried to dock before my GCC ran out and got stuck at the docking perimeter for thirty seconds - more than enough for sentry guns to destroy my ship.
With no more Wolves left in my hangar I jumped into my good old Rifter and decided to try ganking FirenDisco together with BiggerGuns, a pilot who has just started a pirate career in the Amamake area. I equipped my ship with a microwarpdrive to be able to catch FirenDisco. But when I jumped into the same plex I realised it did not work there. Fortunately, FirenDisco was not in the first pocket and I just warped out. I apologised for wasting BiggerGuns' time and challenged FirenDisco to a duel. He was fine with that, BUT would only fight inside the plex.
There was no way I could beat him in his lair. Or was there? I checked the available reports on FirenDisco's setups and quickly figured out I could outrun him by dropping the repper and the damage control unit in favour of an overdrive injector and a nanofiber internal structure module. That is, if I overload and he doesn't. Still, the chance was there and I decided to take it.
I returned to Lulm and we quickly agreed on the duel. I found him some 30 kilometres away from the plex warp-in point and started the chase, overloading my midslots. My shield died quickly and armour was taking some damage. I checked the speed of both ships: yes, I was som 100-150 m/s faster. Come on, I've got to make it! When I was at about 40 percent armour the distance between out ships has been reduced to web range. After that, I was only taking damage from his sole missile launcher while my autocannons worked their magic in optimal range.
"Good fight," FirenDisco said in fleet comms channel.
"gf," I confirmed a few seconds later when his ship exploded.
And it really was a good fight, one of the best I've ever had in my career: a nice and strong opponent with an unconventional setup and an environment that limits your options making you come up with a special setup of your own. Nice loot, too - a Gistii B-type Small Shield Booster to partly offset my ealier loss.
Concluding the week, I managed to lose my third Wolf in a fight against a Thorax which had a pack of ECM drones. My ship was quickly jammed and destroyed.

2 comments:

  1. Sounds like an exciting fight! How many ships does the average pilot loose per week in duals and actual fights, I wonder?

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  2. I sometimes lose up to 5-6 a week.

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