Pushing My Luck

GOOD FIGHT...

A Tusker, Easy Target (that's his name, not my description of the Tuskers), showed up in Kurnianen on Friday flying a Hawk assault frigate. I have not fought any AFs after the recent buff and was willing to try so I undocked my Thrasher.

After moving between belts and cross-warping once, we met at the top belt, about 10 kilometres from each other. I burned for the Hawk with overheated tackle and guns and he quickly tackled me back, shuting down my microwarp drive.

As we started trading blows, it became apparent the fight was a close one. Although at first I seemed to be a bit ahead in the damage race, Easy was slowly moving away from me, lowering my autocannons' DPS while his rockets continued to do the same damage.

In the end, however, the Hawk exploded with me at 18% hull. Turns out, Easy used the extra mid slot for range control rather than tank, sporting two webs.



...AND EPIC FAIL
On Sunday night, with Kurniainen and the neighbourhood hit by an Incursion, I decided to check out Providence in a Taranis, a ship I haven't flown for quite a while.

I travelled from KBP7-G to Y-MPWL (two hisec entry systems) without fights, only dodging a frigate plus recon gatecamp once, and created tactical bookmarks that will allow me to roam the area in bigger ships in the future.

In Y-MPWL, I warped to the hisec gate at range from an anomaly rather than a celestial and thus avoided two strategically placed drag bubbles. The gate was camped by a Sabre and a Harbinger. As I made another tactical, the Sabre moved around the gate so that he could bubble me and I decided to try and separate him from the battlecruiser.

I warped straight into his bubble, aligned away, hit MWD and sat perfectly still, allowing him to scram and web me. I guess I just clicked in space too early, while I was still technically in warp. Confused and disoriented, I then tried to AB away rather than brawl and promptly lost my ship and pod. How 1337 of me.

On Monday, however, I saw an evemail from Blake Zacary who told me he had killed the Sabre and nearly got the Harb. So, I ended up performing a successful suicide tackle \0/

Looking at the Sabre fit, which has roughly the same DPS as my Taranis with twice the EHP, I guess I would not have killed it in my dualprop interceptor anyway, if I'm wrong please tell me.

P.S. Just found out that Taranis is not only the Celtic version of Thor but also a British military drone.

Trigger Hippie

I've podded people too much lately. It has become an instinct to lock a pod after a ship goes boom. But I really should think more about what I do after that.
The first case was a young Drake pilot running a mission in Siseide. Oblivious to scan probes, he let my mate pinpoint is location to which I then jumped in my Hurricane. I landed a bit too far away so the Drake warped out but soon he returned to the mission site and I got him. We were the only pilots in the system at the moment. I destroyed the Drake, managed to catch the pilot's pod and started negotiating a ransom. My victim was a bit slow with his replies, probably contemplating my offer, and finally said something like "bleh k". At that point I noticed local spike and, being a paranoid that I am, decided a rescue mission may be on its way. I one-volleyed the pod just as its pilot was typing, "wait a sec, I'll transfer the money". Argh!
I felt really bad about the whole thing and sent some money to the guy along with apologies.
The second case took place in Olfeim, a lowsec dead-end frequented by carebears. I spotted a Thrasher in a deadspace complex and went after it in my Wolf. As I engaged the destroyer, a Hawk assault frigate jumped in and started locking me. I quickly finished off the Thrasher, podded its pilot and overloaded my midslots to catch the Hawk. It was a long fight as he kept moving away and I was using short-range ammo, but in the end he died too. With adrenaline rush preventing my brains from working properly I quickly podded the Hawk pilot as well. WHY?!!! I should at least have tried to ransom!!!
Finally, I had a fight with Venom Orchid of the notorious Hellcats. I spotted her Rifter in Amamake's III-1 and started approaching in a Rifter of my own. She accepted the implicit duel offer and we were soon circling each other, shooting and repping. I won the fight (Venom said she was a bit slow with overloading her guns and actovating the repper) and again instinctively locked the pod. I didn't really want to pod Venom and started looting her wreck while thinking about my options. I mean, it's not every day that you get to have a sexy pirate chick next to you, scrambled and defenceless... Oooh the perverted fantasies!
"GET OUT!" a warning from my fleetmate, Leeloo Malaquin of Genos Occidere, brought me back to reality as a Pilgrim recon ship showed up next to us, probably after warping to Venom's wreck. I warped to a safespot as he was locking me, saved by the fact that he went after Venom first. Again, I felt like a dumbass for letting some random guy pod Venom, although she didn't seem to be upset with that.
WTB podding management courses.