Five in One Night

I pulled out of the Auner station a couple nights ago looking for trouble.  I was in a classic fit 150mm autocannon armor repping rifter (I have a bunch of them that I need to get rid of) and was hoping for a brawl - no kiting missile boats need apply.

I came across outridger33 in a slasher.  Now, I know that my slasher fit does very well against rifters - the tracking disruptor and barrage ammo combination can be lethal against ships that like to be close and personal.  But I was looking for a fight and here was an opportunity.

We circled at close range (no barrage from outridger33's slasher) and started shooting.  Things did not go especially badly for me - but as I got into his shields I noticed that they recovered almost instantaneously - he had one of those ancillary shield boosters.  OK, hopefully he forgot to bring enough cap boosters...  I continued to shoot him and he continued to shoot me - he dipped into armor a bit, but recovered the shields quickly.  I started my armor repper to fix the damage his autocannons were causing.

It looked like it could go either way.  Then disaster struck.  Or, to be more accurate, his energy neutralizer tapped out my capacitor.  Suddenly things got tricky.  I would wait for a little capacitor to come back and then hit the armor repairer.  I also tried to keep the warp scrambler and web active.  It was tense and I dropped into structure a time or two, but managed to get back some armor in time to avoid destruction.  I had a bad feeling about things...

The slasher was taking lots of damage from my guns (which don't rely on the capacitor) and as I was balancing my capacitor use, suddenly he missed a shield repair cycle.  Or maybe my guns just finally overwhelmed his systems - I'm not sure since I was a bit busy myself.  But for whatever reason, the slasher exploded!  Sweet!

I immediately headed to the station for repair (after picking up the loot from the wreck).  GFs were exchanged in local and we chatted about what might have caused the slasher's demise.

I repaired the rifter and picked up a full load of ammo and left the station looking for more trouble.

There was a moros right outside the station and I immediately hit the warp drive to get to safety so that I could sort out what a moros might be.  It wasn't in my list of familiar ships (rifter, slasher, punisher, merlin, kestrel, etc.) .  A quick search noted that it is a dreadnought.  Hmmm...  That sounds out of my league.  Interestingly, the moros docked while I was sitting a couple hundred kms away and a few seconds later the same pilot, arioch1, came out in a tormentor.  A laser firing frigate - now that's definitely in my league.

We removed ourselves from the shadow of the station guns and started our battle.  Things went well for me and the rifter and after a short while the tormentor exploded!  GFs were exchanged in local and I thanked arioch1 for reshipping for the fight.  He noted that he's such a fan of 1v1s that he couldn't pass up the opportunity.

I headed back to the station for repairs and popped out again.  On dscan I noticed a slasher and also that outridger33 was back in the system.  Time for round 2?

We met and the fight was on.  Things went much like the first one, though a bit shorter, and the slasher exploded!  More GFs in local.

I returned to the station for repairs and when I popped out I scanned down a kestrel in a FW site.  Now, I'm not a big fan of fighting kestrels - they usually have missiles, microwarpdrives, and long points and from past experience I will be just sitting there dying - unable to get close enough to even shoot.  But with three kills with the rifter already, I was fine with losing it.  So I headed for the FW gate.

I popped through and hit the afterburners to try to get close to the kestrel.  But sure enough, he was shooting light missiles from a long (20k) range and able to move plenty fast.  I did my best to maneuver in hopes of getting close - I tried to slingshot into range. It didn't work, but when I turned to try again suddenly the kestrel was screaming in my direction!  I immediately webbed and scrambled him and proceeded to circle and pummel him with my autocannons.  In short order, the kestrel exploded!

GFs were exchanged in local.  I noted that I was lucky to get close to him and Astriel Estinari said that he had screwed up.  I agreed with him...

Again back to the station to drop off the loot and get repairs (not nearly as many repairs from this fight).

And then out again looking for more trouble in my rifter.

This time I found a rifter in a FW site.  Excellent!  I headed that way turning everything up to 11 and jumped through the gate.  The two rifters began destroying each other as best as we could.  It went very well for me.  When the other rifter was through shields and into his armor a friend of his arrived in an incursus.  I continued to pummel the rifter, but also targeted the incursus.  A few seconds later the rifter exploded!

Now, at this point, I should be writing that I immediately pointed and webbed the incursus and took it down too in a fiery explosion.  But that didn't happen.  I thought I had done all that, but there was some confusion with the controls and for whatever reason I was laying waste to the incursus while not actually having it's warp engines scrambled.  When it was part way through armor, it flew away...

But, even with that miss, it was a most successful evening.  The rifter did very well against well fit opposing fhips flown by experienced pilots.  A very fun time - at least for me!