Looking for Fights in Low and Null

I spent almost a week in Liparer trying to get some kills and failed. Every time I logged on, local pirates were either smacktalking each other while playing station games or camping a gate with too many ships for me to deal with.

On one occasion, I crossed blasters-and-lasers with one of locals in an empty neighboring system but had to retreat after my Talos took too much damage from his Oracle before we even were in point range.

Finally, last Saturday, I decided to just bait them and try to kill a tackler or two. Making myself seen to their gatecamp, I warped off to a belt and aligned to another celestial. After a while, a stealth bomber warped in and cloaked, indicating they had established my location.

No quick tackle warped in though as I kept moving away from the belt.

Then, a Pilgrim recon - who had obviously warped in to the bomber at range- decloaked some 7.5 kilometres away from me. Instinctively, I activated the MWD to burn further away before he could use a scram but he managed to put one on me anyway. Fortunately, I was at about full speed by that time and inertia carried me out of scram range.

More ships started landing next to the Pilgrim as I was burning away and, because I had held my mouse over the overview targeting them one by one, I missed an approaching Taranis. He was about 40 km away when I noticed him, too close for me to lock and shoot without ending up warp scrambled.

I warped off to my align target, closely followed by the Taranis, then to a safe to catch my breath, and then to another belt where the interceptor soon spotted me again.

This time I was position better and locked him from far away, opening fire as he was about 40 km away. The first round stripped his shield and half armour... but then my guns stopped applying any damage. He switched to manual piloting and started spiraling towards me rather than burning in a straight line. I hate when people do that to me.

The good thing was, this had slowed him down and I was able to warp off again, to a celestial where his fleetmates were still waiting for me.

Fortunately, I landed at range, got out and eventually docked.

The engagement, although anticlimactic, had my heart pumping and reminded me why I love Eve.

I still wanted blood, however, and decided to try nullsec. After positioning my cloaky Loki booster in KBP7-G and observing its three stargates for a while, I saw a lonely Coercer on the Dital gate and quickly bought and fitted a standard dualprop Taranis.

I jumped in and burned towards the destroyer who immediately aggressed me. By the end of my MWD cycle I was already in deep structure. Let's deploy drones, NO, I DON'T WANT TO SHOW INFO, I WANT THEM OUT AND FIGHTING!!! Expecting to die to the next volley, I turned on my overheated afterburner, mitigating most - but not all - of the incoming damage.

The Coercer was clawing back shield, although not quickly enough to keep up with my damage. Then his reps stopped and armour melted quickly. But I was already in 40 percent hull. Thirty, twenty, BOOM. The Coercer exploded and I warped out to a random belt, exchanging "gf's" with the pilot.

Turned out he had a medium ASB and an oversized afterburner, quite a deadly combo on a high-DPS boat such as the Coercer. I'm pretty sure I would have lost without the Loki boosts which allowed me to catch up with him quicker and them get under his tracking. Of course, I could have also tried just warping out since he had no scram but I suspect he would have fried my ship as it tried to align.

I left that Taranis in a highsec station close to KBP and came back to Kurniainen in a Talos, a decision I almost regretted last night when I probed out a Zealot in a deadspace pocket in Kurn. I was browsing my ship hangar looking for something small and fast and all I saw were cruisers and larger ships. Eventually, though,  I found a Comet which I had never used before but which was fitted and stocked with ammo.

As I came out of warp inside the deadspace pocket, I saw the Zealot about 50 km away and decided to burn straight for him, hoping to get tackle before he sniped me. I got hit by two volleys but then it was just a matter of orbiting the HAC and chewing through his defenses. I'm pretty sure the pilot had been aware of my plans and decided to gamble and see if he could snipe me.

Nice to see (non-FW) mission runners in lowsec again, such as the Zealot and the deadspace-AB Cane I killed earlier.

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.

Gangsta Trippin'

My first Taranis

I was hanging around in Hadozeko with a corpmate when we saw a Taranis on the scanner. I warped to a planet in my Wolf to scan through its belts, but then the Taranis jumped to me itself. I haven't been attacked by anyone for quite a long time now and got used to the role of aggressor so much that I was a bit lost. Still, I told my mate to warp to me, tackled the Taranis and engaged my weapons. My armour was melting quickly, but the overheated repper was doing its best and I killed the Taranis with 13 percent structure left. My mate arrived when the fight was over and helped me scoop the loot and drones which I had ignored. It was only after the fight that I realised I had RF EMP ammo loaded because I had been chasing a Thrasher earlier. That mistake could have cost me the fight, but now I know the time spent on learning Hull Upgrades V was worth it.

Roxxorz Your Vexorz

A day later, me and the same corpmate, Art Kz, were in Siseide looking for targets. I scanned down a Caracal and warped to it, but then its pilot told me we had a positive standing with his corporation so I disengaged. A few minutes later, I saw the same Caracal in another belt joined by a Rupture and a Vexor. With ten drones flying about, it was obvious they were fighting. We decided to help the Caracal pilot and sent our assault ships to the belt. The Vexor which had engaged the Caracal and his friend in a Rupture was already low on hit points, but so was the Rupture. We finished off the gallente cruiser, allowing the Rupture to warp out to safety.
A bit later we were joined by another corpmate, Azgor Khan, who brought a Vengeance class assault ship. We moved to Vard by that time and eventually scanned down a Vexor which could be in one of two nearby belts. I jumped to one belt and Art and Azgor rushed to the second one. Suddenly, just upon arriving to an empty belt, I was disconnected from the server. When I logged back in I saw my mates fighting the Vexor in their belt - one of them had already lost his Harpy. I warped to them, locked the cruiser and activated my autocannons. That's when I got disconnected again. Logging back in, I was expecting to find myself in an escape pod, but it turned out the Vexor had been destroyed. To make things more funny, I had dealt the final blow despite not being able to see it and the pilot of the Vexor was Kachak, the same guy we had ganked earlier in Siseide.
It looked like he got a bit angry with us - while passing through Vard later in another Vexor he asked me why I was helping noobs and advised me to be more careful about who I fly with. To this I say:
- Don't take it personally, I'd be just as happy to be in a gang with you,
- But if I'm already in a gang with someone I will help them and fight together with them until we agree to go our separate ways.

Gate Fights Are for Good Boys

After that Azgor left our gang, but two more guys joined us, adding a Retribution assault ship and a Manticore stealth bomber to the fleet. We travelled all the way to Hadozeko without a single kill, spending a lot of tiime chasing elusive targets. We finally found a target in Resbroko - a lonely Thrasher ratting in belt. I pointed it and told others to owarp to me so we would share the killmail. We also managed to get the pod.
We then headed for Amamake, but stumbled upon a fight on the Ardar side of Hadozeko-Ardar gate. I remember that a Typhoon, A Zealot, a Drake and a Myrmidon were involved. We targeted the Myrmidon since that would not have triggered sentry fire and it went down quickly.
Unfortunately, by that time the Typhoon switched its attention to me and the rest of the gang could not engage him due to my criminal status. Very soon I was tackled, my cap drained and angry drones were swarming around me. My Wolf exploded and I warped out in a pod. A stupid loss that could and should have been avoided. At least I should remember the lesson.