Switzerland Bound!

My wife and I are heading to Switzerland tomorrow for a couple weeks to visit our daughter and her family. I'll update a blog at monnaz2013.blogspot.com - but it'll probably be more of a family visit than a fantastic travel adventure...  Fair warning.

As for Eve spaceships - you're all safe until I return (Angron Vail will hopefully sleep easier).

Au revoir!

"wtf jack"

I've read about Adirain on several of the R1FTA blogs, so I headed over there and snuck a dozen frigates into the station with my hauling alt.  Time to look around a new neighborhood.  There were even a couple people in local from our corp and alliance.

I poked around a bit.  Set up some safe spots and observation points around the gates.  A few undock spots to get out of the station fast.  The usual thing.

Then I flew around a bit.  This isn't a Faction Warfare area - so there aren't any FW sites to catch people.  Just the usual asteroid belts and stations.  I scared a 3 day old player in a venture when I landed near him - but he flew off immediately.

A bit later I spotted a procurer at an asteroid belt.  Actually at one of several asteroid belts all bunched up around the 4th planet in the system.  I zipped over to safe spot that I had set up just for this situation - in the middle of the belts so that I could look at them and find my prey.  There he was!  And now there was a thrasher protecting him!

I turned everything up to 11 and warped to zero.  Given the choice when I landed, I decided to hit the closer target - the thrasher.  I targeted, scrambled, webbed and orbited.  He tasted the fury of my 200mm autocannons!

Amazingly, I wasn't taking any damage in return.  It was like he wasn't even shooting back!  Some protection for the miner he turns out to be!

I continued to pummel the unlucky opponent!

About then, with my teeth clenched and eyes squinting into thin slits (my usual attitude during battle!) I noticed that maybe something wasn't quite right.

No, something wasn't quite right at all.

I looked (finally!) to see the name of the pilot I was shooting (on arrival I just saw "procurer" and "thrasher" through my red blotchy vision) and it came as a shock to see that it was Angron Vail.

Oh oh.

Angron Vail is also a R1FTA member.  A corp mate.  A killer that I've always looked up to as amazingly competent (as opposed (and this situation is again evidence) to my lack of skills).

In local I saw words that sent waves of nauseating embarrassment through my being...

     Angron Vail > wtf jack

What a great first impression in this new system!  GAH!

I immediately turned off my modules - but by this time (as I was starting to destroy his armor) Angron Vail had turned his attention to me (of course, he had been shooting that stupid procurer - not protecting it!).  That allowed the miner to escape (totally my fault) along with what might have been a tasty ransom if he had caught the pod.

With the thrasher's attention on me - my slasher exploded.  Rightfully so.

I, of course, fell all over myself apologizing in a private chat with Angron.  He  was gracious, though mostly confused by my bizarre actions.  We had some fun in local about the situation too.

And I certainly learned a lesson about being sure of who I'm shooting before going in with autocannons blazing...

Sorry Angron!

The Little Slasher That Could...

I popped out of the station in Auner to see what was available as targets for my Slasher.  The FW plexes were all empty and there was just a Thorax cruiser on scan.  I checked all the usual spots (FW plexes and asteroid belts) but didn't find him.  That's odd.  So I hauled out the scanning boat (a Cheetah) and headed for a safe spot where I could launch my probes without them being seen.

I dropped off the probes and after a couple scans had a 100% lock on the Thorax.  I figured it was too slow (I'm not especially good at probing out ships) and that the Thorax would be spooked.  But I headed back to the station to switch back to the Slasher.  I changed the script in the tracking disruptor to be a tracking script instead of the usual distance script that I use against frigates.  I figured that speed tracking would be my savior rather than keeping out of range of the cruiser's guns.

I headed for the Thorax to land at zero.  Now this is exciting!

I landed and found a gate.  Hmmm...  He must be running a mission?  Whatever!  Onward!

I passed through the gate and landed about 20 k from the Thorax.  With my afterburner overheated I headed his way.  Success!  I had him scrambled and webbed.  All my modules were locked on and I was doing some damage to his shields.  I was taking no damage at all.  His guns weren't tracking me as I circled close.  I switched from barrage to phased plasma since I was at close range and continued to work through his defenses.

It was slow work.

But eventually I was into his armor.  Still without taking any damage (other than my overheated modules - I remembered to turn the heating off so they were going to survive).  I slowly worked my way through his armor and then hit his hull.

It was slow work.

But not dangerous.  I took no damage.  After a few more seconds the Thorax blew up!

I scooped up as much of the T1 loot from the wreck as I could hold and  headed back to the station with it.  I repaired my glowing hot modules and then went back for the rest of the loot.

Nice.  My slasher destroyed a cruiser!  Wow!

So, once I unloaded the rest of the loot I headed out of the station again and checked dscan.  A Rupture.  Another cruiser!  I scanned him down to an asteroid belt and immediately headed there!

I landed on top of him and hit all the right buttons to have his engines scrambled and my guns hitting him.  Things went much like the Thorax with one big difference.  When I was most of the way through the Rupture's shields he tossed out a variety of drones.  I think there were two warriors, a hornet, a hobgoblin and one hammerhead.  All T1.  I targeted the warriors - they're the most dangerous since they are fast enough to keep up with my slasher.  I took the web off the rupture and onto the warrior.  It blew up.  I then targeted the second and it blew up too.  Then back to the Rupture.

I was taking damage.  A distressing amount of damage actually.  My shields were gone and my overheated armor repper was trying to hold back the damage to my armor.  I figured that I would try to take out the Rupture, but it was getting real scary.

I was now into structure.  My armor repper would sometimes grab back enough to keep damage from my hull for an entire cycle - but other times the armor was gone and the hull took more and more damage.

A sliver of hull was left.  And a small chuck of armor.  Then the armor was gone.  But the hull held out until the next armor repping cycle.

The capacitor was also dangerously low.  To the point that there were only a couple dots left.  If that turned off my repper, I was a goner.

But the Rupture was in dire straits too - it was as bad off as I was.  Red everywhere.  A sliver of hull left and  an armor repairer that was trying to keep up with the damage from my 200mm autocannons.

Who would blow up first?  I had my escape destination picked and had the mouse hovering over the "warp to" button for when my pod needed to make the emergency trip.

Then!  Nothing.

The rupture was gone and I was being pummeled by the angel rats that infested that asteroid belt.  I checked and realized I was in one piece - so the rupture must have escaped.  Did my capacitor run out and the warp scrambler turn off, letting him loose?  Did he somehow get distance from me while I was messing with those drones?  A mystery.

I headed back to the station with smoke billowing out of my Slasher my structure was at 8% - about 25 points of structure was all I had left.  One more shot would have killed me.

At the station I decided to post the Thorax kill to the R1FTA chat channel.  I opened up the in-game kill list and I was amazed by what I found!  Not just the Thorax, but also the Rupture!  The Rupture was listed as a kill!  I had killed him and didn't realize it!  \o/

I headed back to the asteroid belt and sure enough - there was the wreck!  I looted it (two trips again).

While neither of these cruisers were expertly fit or flown by grizzled veterans - they were great fun to catch with my little Slasher.  And two cruiser kills in the span  of 12 minutes made for a memorable evening...

The Slingshot

So, there had been some activity in Auner during the evening and I had a couple kills already.  It was getting late, but I checked again just to see what was happening.  I spied a kestrel in the FW plex (where there were already two wrecks of my creation).  Hmmmm...

I headed back to the station and picked up a slasher that I had put together a couple weeks ago and named "Missile Boat" just for this sort of situation.  I had used my rudimentary building skills to replace the tracking disruptor that I usually have on my slasher (which would be useless against a rocket/missile firing ship) with some modules that might be more useful.

I ended up building a shield slasher (for speed) that was equipped with a Miura Bull Approved Medium Shield Extender II.  I blew the dust off the slasher and took it out to face the missile spewing kestrel!

Things started very badly and I was afraid that the third wreck in the FW plex would be my slasher.

My plan, like always, was to orbit at about 6k and pepper my unlucky opponent with barrage ammo.  Usually, with the tracking disruptor, my unlucky enemy is helpless and his guns with short-range ammo are missing me.  But with rockets/missiles it's a different story.  They always hit.  But depending on the target's size and speed, they might hit for a lot less than their total damage potential.

So, like I said, I hoped to orbit about 6k away from the kestrel at high speed to cut down on the damage.  But, very cleverly, Kini Koni (the kestrel's pilot) had put some distance between himself and the warp-in location.  He was 20k away and immediately had me held down with a warp disruptor.  He started hitting me with missiles that have plenty of range for this sort of situation.  I'd been in this spot before (against kestrels) and had died.

The only real hope for me is to slingshot back towards the kestrel - a complicated maneuver that I've had mixed (mostly bad) success with in the past.  But rather than continue to lose my valuable shields to the missiles that were taking them apart (my attempts to get close to the kestrel weren't working and I was stuck at about 20k away from him - definitely outside my autocannons' range) - I decided to try the slingshot maneuver.

I picked a spot in space pretty much in the opposite direction from the kestrel and with the afterburner boosting my speed headed away from him.  This gives me two options - if I get far enough, I'll be out of his warp disruptor range and can warp  away freely.  Or, and this is what I tried, once he's following me at a good rate of speed in order to keep up, I suddenly turn and head right at him!

When I thought the time was right, I hit the "approach" button on the console and turned my ship around!  The kestrel's navigation system wasn't able to turn around fast enough to keep range and in just a couple seconds I warp scrambled his engines and activated the web to slow him to a crawl.  Success!

Kini Koni graciously said "gf" in local at this point even though I hadn't even damaged half of his shields.  But I was orbiting at full speed while he was almost motionless and his missiles couldn't keep up with me.  Victory was mine and shortly after the kestrel exploded!

The slingshot had worked and there was a third wreck in the FW plex - and it wasn't  me!

But then...

And then there'll be another GF.  I chased Burlap Foolslap (nice name!) out of a FW plex, then to the planet where he had fled, and then caught up with him again in the plex where he accepted the fight.

My slasher wasn't  tested too much - but the chase was great fun and I ended up with a kill.  A gf.

So it goes...

Sometimes, like yesterday's excellent duel with Maksim Cammeren's mirror image slasher, you get good fights.

Then other times, like today when my rifter was destroyed by a tormentor and a griffin - the fights aren't quite as satisfying.

So it goes...

Like Looking in a Mirror...

I headed over to Floseswin to pick  up some skill books.  I was in my slasher and looking for trouble on the trip to the station of higher education.  But nothing presented itself.

I docked and injected the skills that I was looking for and popped out of the station.  A quick dscan  showed a slasher in the system and a pilot named Maksim Cammeren.  I  checked and he has been around since 2010 - so  it wouldn't be a rookie.  A target with experience.  Fine with me.

A quick scan showed the slasher in a FW site and I turned everything up to 11 on my way there.  I landed and jumped.  Maksim's slasher was waiting on the other side.

I waited for my ship to come out of warp, hit the orbit button, targeted the other slasher, and started hitting him with hot barrage projectiles.

He, on the other hand, didn't have to wait to target me (he wasn't warping to the fight) and so  got in a  volley or  two before I had my opportunity.  This will be of interest later in this  commentary.

We circled each other, apparently both comfortable with the range.  Early on, he was ahead and I went through my shields relatively quickly.  I hit the big armor repair button and started to repair the damage to my armor.  In short order I managed to catch up on the damage race and the other slasher was also into armor.

Our guns continued to smash into  each other.  My armor dipped low.  Then jumped back up with the repair.  Some hull was torn away - not to be recovered.  But then the armor was boosted and I had some breathing room.  The other slasher was experiencing similar damage and  repair.

Eventually, we were both in structure.  My capacitor was just a thin yellow line.  Would it last?  Would the repper have juice to continue?  I had some armor back, but my structure was dangerously low.  But the other slasher was in even a worse state.  I might win this!

BOOM!  I won!  Or...  Wait a minute - no, that's me in the pod.  My ship had exploded.  What a battle!

After we had exchanged GFs I noted how it appeared we were flying the same ship.  Maksim confirmed that the ships were practically identical - other than he had a better meta version of  the web and scrambler - neither of which would affect  the damage or repair.

It turned out that the enemy slasher had 43 hitpoints left in structure.  43.  I was that close to the victory!   43hp!  The time it took for me to come out of warp gave my opponent the first shot and  in the end, the victory.

What a fight!  Thanks Maksim Cammeren!