Thrasher on Scan!

I popped out of the Auner station in my rifter with the intent of heading to a nearby source of skillbooks to buy Jack Dancer the Gallente Cruiser book.  He’s currently working on skills in preparation of the summer changes to destroyers and battlecruisers.  I’m getting all of his racial frigate skills (Amarr, Caldari, Gallente, and Minmatar) up to at least 4, his destroyer skill to 5, his racial cruiser skills up to at least 3 and his battlecruiser skill up to 5.  From my understanding, this will allow him to fly any destroyer or battlecruiser after those two ships are split into racial type skills.

But that’s not what I’m writing about here.

So, as I said, I popped out of the Auner station in my rifter and did a quick dscan to see if any of the half dozen pilots in the system were loitering in the neighborhood.  A thrasher appeared on scan.  Having had luck against a thrasher (not to mention his backup talwar) the previous evening, I took time to sort out where this thrasher might be.  He was at a nearby asteroid belt – probably ratting.  I turned all the knobs up to 11 and headed that way to land at zero!

When I landed, he was 30k away.  I headed towards him and turned on the afterburner.  I also remembered to turn off the overheating on it so that it would get one cycle of overheated speed, but then not burn out my web and scrambler if I forgot to turn it off later (it has happened…  several times...).  The thrasher headed my way too.  The fight was on!

My rifter had 400mm rolled tungsten armor plates but no armor repair unit.  And it was loaded with barrage ammo in the three 150mm autocannons along with a rocket launcher.  My plan was to orbit at a distance (5000 meters seemed about right) and use the barrage’s superior falloff to damage the destroyer while avoiding his 7 autocannons shooting (hopefully) shorter ranged ammo that wouldn’t hurt me as much.  If he was artillery fit and could hit me from long range while kiting around me, then it would be a problem.

It wasn’t a problem as far as kiting – he was shooting autocannons like me – and it was a very good fight.  I set my orbit for 5500 meters and we did damage to both ships.  I was generally ahead and without an armor repper it had to stay that way.  There was no way for me to catch up on any armor damage.

I stayed ahead, remembered to turn off the overheating on the rest of my modules before anything burned up, and soon the thrasher exploded in a massive fireball of death and destruction.

GFs were exchanged in local and the pilot opened a private communication channel with me to discuss the fight.  He was impressed with the tank on the rifter and I shared the fit with him.  I think the tank probably came down to range, speed, rigs, and the thrasher firing standard ammo (he was shooting rats and probably didn’t want to spend the extra isk to kill them).  While the pilot was relatively new, he seemed very knowledgeable and experienced beyond his skillpoints…

This was a much more satisfying fight against a thrasher than the previous day’s “fight”.  It was a well constructed ship and was firing seven 200mm T2 autocannons.  I felt lucky to come away with the win.