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.

You better check yo self before you wreck yo self

What's up with tacklers these days? These people fly faction frigs with no tank and engage targets that will take them out with ease.

On Saturday, I decided to finally buy myself a Tier 3 battlecruiser. Making my way to Rens, I was trying to choose between the Tornado and the Talos and finally settled on the latter. Then I opened the market window, typed "tornado" and hit "buy". Nice.

Anyway, I made my way back into lowsec through Bosboger and eventually found myself at the Gulmogorod gate in Amamake. D-scan showed some frig in III-1 so I warped there at 100. A flashy frig was indeed there and it turned out he had a bookmark right next to me to which he quickly warped and tackled my ship.

Shit, shit, shit, lock back, align to Gulm gate, overload MWD and point, shoot. Four or five more frigs warp to the tackler and burn for me. However, I am well out of scram range already and only have two long points on me.

One tackler disappears from my overview (turns out he had warped) so I switch to the remaining one and he's gone in two volleys. As heat builds up in my medium-power rack, I warp to the gate and then to a safespot.

Combat log shows this. WTF? This could maybe work against slow frigs, plinking at them from a distance, but why would one tackle a Tornado in such a ship?

Then, last night, I was out in a Cynabal when a Slicer followed me through a gate to Kurnianen. With a slight hope of getting a fight, I warped to the nearest belt at range, aligned back to the gate and waited. The Slicer pilot only followed me when his corpmate jumped in with a Hawk. However, they warped to the belt at different ranges and while the Slicer landed not far from me, the Hawk was too far away to matter.

I let the Slicer come within long point range and he happily pointed me, calling in more friends. However, by the time a Loki and a Falcon arrived, the faction frigate was already dead and I left the belt.

The killmail showed another fit with zero tank. WTF gentlemen, you are supposed to at least live long enough for heavier tacklers to take over! Oh well, can't complain really, keep engaging me.