Wednesday, December 18, 2013

Tough Tormentor

I strolled out of the station in Auner in my Republic Fleet Firetail with little hope of immediate death and destruction.  The only possible target in the system was in the same station - probably wasting his time playing video games or some such nonsense.  Loser.

A few asteroid belts had nothing of interest and no one showed up in the meantime, so I jumped to the next system to see if there was more activity.

In Resbroko I often find pilots.  It's a popular system for the faction warfare folks and there were a dozen in local.  I headed for a safe spot and checked the dscan.  Yes.  A victim!  There was a Tormentor in one of the faction warfare complexes.  Just what I was looking for.

I headed that way and jumped through the gate, turning all the knobs up to 11.  The Tormentor was just a few km away when I landed so I immediately hit all the big red buttons and set to orbiting the poor soul.  My guns and rockets were quickly taking massive chunks out of his shields.  “This shouldn’t take long,” I thought to myself…

Things went very well, I was quickly through his shields and then halfway through his armor.  He tried to repair his armor, but I was sure it would be a losing battle.  I turned off the heat on my guns and rocket launcher so that they wouldn’t burn out.  I wouldn’t need the extra heat damage.  “This shouldn’t take long,” I thought to myself…

Then I heard the message that I had run out of rockets.  I forgot to reload them after killing the hound stealth bomber the night before.  No problem.  I’ll just use my autocannons.  “This shouldn’t take long,” I thought to myself…

I noticed that he seemed to be keeping up with my damage more than at the start of the fight.  While I was having little problem repairing my armor – he also seemed to be doing OK.  He was having massive swings – I’d have his armor almost down to nothing then he’d pull almost all of it back.  But the trend was clear when he started to dip into his structure.  He was fighting a losing battle.    “This shouldn’t take long,” I thought to myself…

I turned up the heat on my guns to give them the extra oomph to smash through the last of his structure.  He vainly tried to repair the damage to his armor and managed to get half of his armor back.  I, in the meantime, was losing a bit more armor than I was repairing and also seemed to be getting close to my structure.  But I would prevail now that I had overheated guns and he was often in structure.    “This shouldn’t take long,” I thought to myself…

The bashing continued – his ship was dipping seriously into structure and then recovering big chunks of armor.  My armor was being whittled away and I was into structure too.  But it was just a matter of hitting him at the right time when his armor was gone and his structure low.  One good shot and he’d be history!    “This shouldn’t take long,” I thought to myself…

My structure was being depleted – almost half of it was gone.  But he also was having some serious struggles.  His structure stood at just a sliver – maybe 10% left.  But he was pulling back big chunks of armor every few seconds.  Suddenly it didn’t look like as much of a sure thing as I had thought.    “I hope this doesn’t take much longer,” I thought to myself…

I continued to batter at the Tormentor and hoped for the best.  I was clawing back armor whenever I had the chance – but it was starting to look like a toss-up on who would survive.  Then it happened.  BOOM!  The Tormentor blew up!  I survived.

GFs were exchanged in local and I picked up the meager loot thinking to myself, “I’m glad that didn’t take any longer…”  I checked the killmail and discovered that it was a dual rep Tormentor (which even with one armor repairer is a tough nut to crack) -  that explained how he was able to repair so much damage.  Definitely a GF.

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