SS George Gobel - RIP

I was loitering in Fasse (which is next door to my base at Ney) in the mighty SS George Gobel when I received an offer from another player (named "3200Plus") for a rifter match.  Wanting to get some PvP experience and flying a very cheap rifter that I was fine with losing in exchange for that experience, I said sure!  We warped to planet V (both of us in rifters) and the epic battle was on!

Well, maybe not epic.

3200Plus is a very experienced player compared to Jack Dancer.  He has 94 kills and only 12 losses and he's been playing Eve Online since April of 2009.  Going into the match I had 0 kills and 0 losses and Jack is just a month old.  I was definitely outclassed both in the ship equipment (as it turned out - not surprisingly) and in experience.  It showed.

I managed to stay even through shields, but then his T2 guns made quick work of my armor and I was done.  The details are here.

What did I learn?

Well, first off losing isn't painful.  The killmail puts the total price of my ship at about 450k and the insurance policy paid about 250k - so the final cost was just 200k ISK.  Almost nothing in Eve terms (especially since all of the modules on my ship had been picked up in salvage while ratting or missioning).

Secondly, I need to turn on my armor repper at the start of the battle - I realized after having my armor drop by about 30% that I hadn't even thought about turning the repair system on!  DOH!

Thirdly, I forgot about that overloading option.  No sense spending all those ISK on a skillbook and then taking time to learn thermodynamics if I don't overheat my modules.  Hopefully, I'll remember next time!

Fourthly, for now I'm happy with losing cheap ships to get the experience.  Once I have those concepts ingrained in my procedures ("Scotty!  Turn on that armor repper!  And don't forget to overheat all the modules again!"), I'll move up to the T2 equipment.  But there's no sense losing ships that cost ten times as much if I'm losing them due to noob mistakes instead of equipment disparities.  When I start thinking, "If I had a better ship I would have won that fight..." that's when I'll move to T2 gear.

New checklist for next fight:

• Turn on everything
• Overload everything
• Attack!

And on a final note, 3200Plus was a very friendly opponent and gave me some advice when we chatted after the battle.  Thanks 3200Plus!