But then...

And then there'll be another GF.  I chased Burlap Foolslap (nice name!) out of a FW plex, then to the planet where he had fled, and then caught up with him again in the plex where he accepted the fight.

My slasher wasn't  tested too much - but the chase was great fun and I ended up with a kill.  A gf.

So it goes...

Sometimes, like yesterday's excellent duel with Maksim Cammeren's mirror image slasher, you get good fights.

Then other times, like today when my rifter was destroyed by a tormentor and a griffin - the fights aren't quite as satisfying.

So it goes...

Like Looking in a Mirror...

I headed over to Floseswin to pick  up some skill books.  I was in my slasher and looking for trouble on the trip to the station of higher education.  But nothing presented itself.

I docked and injected the skills that I was looking for and popped out of the station.  A quick dscan  showed a slasher in the system and a pilot named Maksim Cammeren.  I  checked and he has been around since 2010 - so  it wouldn't be a rookie.  A target with experience.  Fine with me.

A quick scan showed the slasher in a FW site and I turned everything up to 11 on my way there.  I landed and jumped.  Maksim's slasher was waiting on the other side.

I waited for my ship to come out of warp, hit the orbit button, targeted the other slasher, and started hitting him with hot barrage projectiles.

He, on the other hand, didn't have to wait to target me (he wasn't warping to the fight) and so  got in a  volley or  two before I had my opportunity.  This will be of interest later in this  commentary.

We circled each other, apparently both comfortable with the range.  Early on, he was ahead and I went through my shields relatively quickly.  I hit the big armor repair button and started to repair the damage to my armor.  In short order I managed to catch up on the damage race and the other slasher was also into armor.

Our guns continued to smash into  each other.  My armor dipped low.  Then jumped back up with the repair.  Some hull was torn away - not to be recovered.  But then the armor was boosted and I had some breathing room.  The other slasher was experiencing similar damage and  repair.

Eventually, we were both in structure.  My capacitor was just a thin yellow line.  Would it last?  Would the repper have juice to continue?  I had some armor back, but my structure was dangerously low.  But the other slasher was in even a worse state.  I might win this!

BOOM!  I won!  Or...  Wait a minute - no, that's me in the pod.  My ship had exploded.  What a battle!

After we had exchanged GFs I noted how it appeared we were flying the same ship.  Maksim confirmed that the ships were practically identical - other than he had a better meta version of  the web and scrambler - neither of which would affect  the damage or repair.

It turned out that the enemy slasher had 43 hitpoints left in structure.  43.  I was that close to the victory!   43hp!  The time it took for me to come out of warp gave my opponent the first shot and  in the end, the victory.

What a fight!  Thanks Maksim Cammeren!

Taranis on Scan!

The taranis has always been scary.  At least to me.  The name sounds too much like "tarantula"...

When I first started playing Eve a couple years ago it was a fast interceptor frigate and I stayed away from them (especially since I was flying T1 equipped rifters that had no real chance against them). 

Last night I popped out of the station in Auner to see if there was any activity.  Sure enough, a rifter and a taranis showed up on scan.  I checked the FW sites and found the taranis (too scary!) but not the rifter.  Then I checked the asteroid belts – still no rifter.  Hmmm… Might as well give the taranis a shot.  My slasher is good against ships with guns and the taranis would probably be equipped with blasters.

I headed to the FW gate with everything turned up to 11.  And a personal sense of trepidation turned up to 11 too…

I landed and jumped.  The taranis waited at the arrival point on the far side of the gate.  The fight was on!

I hit the orbit button, scrammed and webbed him, and started spewing out barrage from around 5k.

Things went surprisingly (I might even say “remarkably”) well.  I tore through his defenses while taking a sustainable amount of damage.  I had the taranis through his shields and far into his armor while I was still comfortably sitting with shield protection.  No need for the armor repper.

Then I had him through his armor and into the hull.  Still no need for my armor repper.  He tried to flee, but I managed to keep close (as we used to say back in the 60s, "Speed Kills").

The taranis exploded!

GFs were exchanged in local and I headed back to the station to drop off the wreckage from the taranis and to repair the heat damage to my modules.  My first taranis kill.

I then went hunting the rifter.  A dscan sweep showed that he was apparently at a “safe” spot somewhere near Planet VII.  I returned to the station and switched to my scanning boat.  Out went the combat scanning probes to find the rifter.

While my exploration alt has excellent skills for finding exploration sites – Jack Dancer is barely adequate at scanning.  It took me three scans (even knowing generally where the rifter was to begin with) before I had a 100% lock.  I bookmarked the spot and went back to the station for my slasher.

I set course to the rifter to land at zero. 

When I arrived the rifter was sitting in his “safe” spot unmoving.  I destroyed him.  Then his pod popped out and since it didn’t move while I was looting the wreck – I shot it too.  Just a lesson to the new player that leaving a ship in space while afk isn’t a good idea.

It was an interesting evening all around.

Hello Seraph Minayin!

EVE System > Channel changed to Local : Orfrold
Seraph Minayin > Jack Dancer
Seraph Minayin > love your blog
Jack Dancer > Thanks!
Seraph Minayin > o7

New Merlin Does Good

I was sitting in Auner wondering what to do.  I  had spent much of the morning sneaking in modules and ships with my hauler alt and had plenty to choose from.

Maybe it's time to put together a Merlin now that I have Caldari Frigate skill up to IV and Small Blaster Specialization at III.  I sorted out the items in the warehouse, remembering to use a Miura Bull(tm) approved medium shield extender instead of the small, and soon had a neutron blaster equipped Merlin ready to face the vacuum of space.

I headed out to an asteroid belt to shoot a rat or two just to see how well the blasters worked.  They seemed to do ok - with one shot the Angel frigates were turned to space dust.  I set the orbit range to 500m because blasters have a very short range.

While shooting the rats I noticed a destroyer on scan - a thrasher.  I thought that would be a very good test of the merlin - if I could get under his autocannons, I might be able to destroy him before my ship turned to a burning wreck.  But I did not have high hopes - my frigates usually die to destroyers.

I headed to the top belt to make it easier for him to find me.  While I waited I cruised away from the Angel frigate and battleship that were guarding their precious rocks.  When the frigate got close, I destroyed it in one shot.  Nice.

Then the thrasher landed.  The pilot was named Kolt and I saw that he has been playing since 2003 and has a -9.7 security standing.  An experienced pirate.  I assumed his destroyer would be well equipped and I started making plans to get my pod out when my destruction happened.

Fortunately, he landed more than 100k away from me.  My plan was to fight up close - the closer the better - and so when he came in my direction, I kept moving away from him.  After a minute or two I decided to bite the bullet and take the fight.  I headed to the sun and figured that he would follow.  I chose to land at zero in hopes that he would do the same so that we would be very near to each other at the start of the fight. I had no hope of approaching through the barrage of 7 autocannons that a thrasher carries.

I landed and waited.

Soon I saw him on dscan and a few seconds later he landed.  3k away!  Perfect!  My only hope was to get in close.  I had noticed at the asteroid belt that his speed (4k+/sec) indicated that he had a microwarp drive - so when I scrambled and webbed the thrasher it was pretty much dead in the vacuum.  I set my orbit at 500m and started pummeling him with my hybrid charges.

Death came quickly to the thrasher.  I might have taken a glancing blow, but hardly more and Kolt's ship was soon a fiery heap of wreckage!  I scooped up as much loot as I could from the wreck (noting that it had been an arty thrasher - to explain the lack of damage to my close fast flying frigate).  But I couldn't get all the loot into my hold - 3(!) Covert Ops Cloaking Device IIs had fortunately survived the explosion and were too big to  fit.  For those I had to return in the station and head back in my own destroyer (due to the larger cargo hold) for retrieval.  It was a very fortunate drop for me...

Afterwards we had this postmortem in local:

Jack Dancer > gf
Kolt > lol pressed to zero , my bad , gf
Jack Dancer > I was hoping that might happen...
Kolt > yep i had already figured that out in warp lol

My first impressions of the blaster merlin were very favorable...

New to Eve? Here's some advice...

I recently popped out of the station in Auner looking for trouble and noticed a destroyer on scan with the pilot’s name still associated with it.  I checked and the pilot was less than a month old.

After scanning the FW sites and not finding the destroyer I thought maybe he was ratting in one of the asteroid belts.  My first scan found him.

I headed his way (warping to zero) – turning everything up to only 10 (a one month old character shouldn’t be a challenge for my slasher, even if he is flying a destroyer - so no need to go to 11).  I landed just 3k away from him and scrambled his warp engines.  The battle was short and I’m not sure that I took any damage.

Afterwards the pilot asked for a conversation and we chatted.  He started off with, “What could I have done better – I’m new.”  An excellent opening line for all of you noob PvPers out there – if you want to learn, feel free to ask whoever destroyed you.  Most of the time we’d be happy to help.

I told him that there really wasn’t anything he could have done once I landed on top of him like that.  He was doomed.  But we talked a bit about what he could have done prior to me landing on him, and I’ll mention that here (along with a couple other things I’ve thought of since then…).

1. Change the name of your ship to something other than, in my case, “Jack Dancer’s Rifter”.  “Titanic” might be a suitable name…  No reason to give people total insight on who they are attacking.
    
2. If you have a choice of asteroid belts to rat in, choose some with a bunch of other belts nearby.  For instance, instead of going to Planet II’s single belt, go to one of the 6 belts that are near to Planet VIII.  That will give an evil person a tougher time sorting out which one you might be in and maybe give you enough time to escape when he lands at the right planet, but at the wrong belt.
    
3. Don’t rat at zero.  If you land at a belt, burn away from the rats and get some distance between you and where Bad People™ like me might land.  The rats will follow you.
    
4. Use local – when you arrive at a system, check out everyone that’s in local.  If you see someone named “Jack Dancer” (THE Jack Dancer!) and he’s a member of a scuzzy bunch like the “Black Rebel Rifter Club” and he has a minus 6.5 security rating – you should be very, very careful.  A trick that I learned at the Agony Basic PvP class (I highly recommend that class!) is to click on someone’s name in local and then hit <ctrl>-A (on a Windows™ PC) to highlight everyone in local.  When someone new comes into the system, you don’t need to figure out who it is – their name will be the only one not highlighted.  You can look at their info and then highlight everyone again.
    
5. Use dscan – if you see a rifter or slasher or merlin or ? on dscan right after some low life with a very negative security status has arrived, it might be a good time to head for a safe spot.
    
6. Learn how to use dscan to your advantage by lowering the scan distance.  Change the 2 at the start of the distance (2,147,483,647 ) to a 1 (1,147,483,647) – it will cut the dscan range in half (to about 7au) and you’ll know when people are getting close.  Or take the 2 off entirely (147,483,647) and it’ll cut the range to about 1au so you’ll know when people are breathing down your neck and will arrive in a matter of seconds.
    
7. Of course, for any of these dscan tricks to work – you need to constantly be hitting the dscan button.  Every 5 or 10 seconds when you think danger might be lurking nearby.  Every 30 seconds even if you think you’re totally safe.

That’s it for now.  Anyone else have any advice for noobs to avoid Death by Pirate?