I decided to try flying something other than my rifter for a change - and chose a slasher with a fit to kite and pepper my unlucky opponent with barrage from afar. So far, the plan has killed no one and I've lost three slashers...
The first was the one I previously reported losing to the sentinal.
The second was a vain attempt to kill a rupture (that's a cruiser, much bigger than my little slasher frigate) at the DED site in Heild. I was surprised (and encouraged) by how well the slasher did. I was never close to surviving, but it took a while for the rupture to kill me and I managed to target and kill a couple of his T2 drones and made him recall them to avoid my wrath. I took that as a moral victory. Eventually, I exploded. But it was a better showing than I've had in the past when drones started whizzing around.
Then there was a battle with an incursus. Since they re-balanced the frigates (all except for the rifter...) the incursus has been a beast. This one was no exception. I think there was a certain amount of pilot error involved too, since I had the set-up to do well against the blaster toting incursus. I should keep range (6km) and shoot my helpless prey with barrage. His short range blasters shouldn't hurt me as much as I would be hurting him. Dictating range has never been my strong suit - usually in fights so many things are happening and the adrenalin is constricting my eyeballs so much that it's all a blur. Same in this case. In relatively short order Seliah Alard's incursus destroyed me.
Which, in a roundabout way brings me to RvB. That's the alliance that Seliah Alard is a member of (his corp is the Red Federation). Over the weekend I joined the Red Federation with one of my alts. This alt has been roaming wormholes and NPC null sec in a stealth bomber. So, since it seemed pretty obvious that I need practice killing things - I had him join RvB.
For those that don't know, RvB includes two corps (Red Federation and Blue Republic) that are continually at war with each other. They mostly fly small ships (frigates, destroyers, and cruisers are most common) and battle in a couple systems that lie between their two headquarters. Undock, target an enemy and start shooting. Simple as that. I'm hoping that practice will help with my adrenalin management and battle awareness...
Unfortunately, my alt is specifically trained to shoot big missiles from stealth bombers - so I'm training him to shoot hybrids and also picking up the other frigate skills that I passed over when training him. But he should be ready in a couple weeks to fly frigates with T2 modules.
If the first weekend of RvB action is any indication, it should be an interesting experience. They put 10,000 fully T1 equipped frigates (yes - ten thousand) in a POS in a nearby system and gave members (both Red and Blue) the password. We could fly our pods in, pick up a frigate, fly out to a mass of other frigates, and shoot anything in sight (we were all in the same fleet to make it ok with the authorities - this was in high sec). My alt could only fly the breacher frigates which were equipped with rockets and managed to get a few kills and to lose twice as many ships. There were about 100 people active (the event started 24 hours before) and there were hundreds of frigates of all makes and models still available.
Ten thousand fully fitted frigates.
Wow.
Now back to Jack Dancer. I'll be flying rifters this month - Peri Simone of R1FTA is sponsoring a contest with prizes for the alliance members that have the most kills while flying a rifter in the month of November. What better excuse to get rid of some of the hundreds of rifters that I have piled up here and there?
I picked up my first kill today. I was at a high sec gate after taking a quick trip to Hek to see if I could catch any of our war targets out sightseeing. One of our war targets appeared in the system, so I held on the gate in hopes that they would be heading towards me. They were. It was Lilith Briggs in an atron. I've died to atrons before, but that didn't stop me from trying to catch her on the gate. It didn't work - she jumped through. But on the far side she was waiting. I turned everything up to 11 and attacked. Things went very well and very soon she exploded. GFs were exchanged in local. And I see from the kill mail that she was T1 fit - that would explain my good fortune. But a kill is a kill - both for my personal Death to Flying Things Campaign and for the Rifter Contest.
Death to Flying Things score: 17-43-1
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