PVP
<3 ECM Drones
As a soloist I have discovered a mad, passionate love for ECM drones. Any ship that can carry a full flight of Vespa EC-600s makes me happy. They have gotten me out of more than one scrape at this point, and insured victory in others.
Take what just happened. I was roaming in Venal when I found a Tempest belonging to Re5pect of WEPRA CORP outside of the station in P-V. The Tempest immediately warped off, and I gave chase. I had just come from the gate he warped to so I thought it unlikely that there would be a big fleet waiting for me. The Tempest jumped out and I followed, finding him right inside warp disruptor range. Gleefully, I pointed him and hit the MWD as I pummeled him with Scorch while I closed into multifreq range. His shields went down almost instantly, which was bad news since it meant he was an armor tanker. But, I hoped, I might be able to get under his guns and cause him to miss a few cycles with my ECM drones while my lasers whittled away at his armor.
At least, that was the plan. Said plan went firmly out the window when the Tempest promptly stuck a few heavy energy neutralizers on me and waited for his drones to eat me up. I also noticed that he was pointing me. A ratting ‘Pest this was not!
There was only one thing to do now. I aligned for a random celestial and prayed that my ECM drones would do their job and cause him to lose point. I hit 75% armor when they did just that. Regretfully abandoning the ECM drones that had bought my ship’s life, I warped out and bounced back to a random gate. The Tempest pursued me for two jumps but was unable to catch me. The pilot was a good sport and complemented me in local, wishing me well, and I managed to make it back to H-PA in order to repair and pick up a new set of ECM drones. On the way, I was engaged by a ERROR. Curse that helpfully bumped me back to the gate after neuting me – much to his annoyance no doubt.
Success at last.
VICTORY FOR ZIM!
I have just returned home to TVN after getting my first solo battleship kill:
http://kb.epime.org/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=13156
I was hunting in Venal, and was actually feeling quite disheartened as I had seen more members of my own alliance, which doesn’t even live in Venal, than I had of actual targets thus far on the roam. Indeed, I had only left a system where some of my alliance mates were ratting two jumps before when I entered the system of D-SKWC and saw a neutral in local. “Brutal angels” was not on scan, but I saw a great many wrecks.
When using the d-scanner, it is very important to use not only direction and distance but the process of elimination. What celestial objects are NOT in range of your scan? Could your enemy be near one of them? In this case, I got lucky: there were only three belts that were not in scan range, and I picked one at random and warped to it at 0.
While in warp, I spammed the scan button as I crossed the system. I soon saw more wrecks… no control towers… and one Raven. Oh, this was too good to be true. I could only hope that he didn’t warp out or cloak up before I landed.
As it was, this poor fellow made the three mistakes that doom a ratter: he was sitting at 0 on the belt warpin point, he was not aligned, even though his cruise missiles had the range to hit across the entire belt, and he was not watching local. I landed a bare 4 kilometers from him, and was pleased to see that he had full aggro from a small battleship spawn. This really was as good as it could get: he almost certainly had very poor resists to EM, if any at all, so I might be able to finish him very quickly. And then there was my little insurance policy.
Switching from Scorch to high-damage Amarr Navy Multifrequency crystals, I pointed him and opened fire as soon as I achieved lock. I activated my stasis webifier a moment later, wanting to make sure that he was pointed before I used it in case it let him instawarp. It is worth noting at this juncture that I fit both a 24km point and a 10km scram on my Harbinger, and I used both on Brutal’s Raven, which turned out to be prudent since he had a warp core stabilizer fitted.
The bar of red denoting the Raven’s shield level dropped in large chunks with every cycle of my pulse lasers. I was hitting for over 1000 hitpoints of damage per volley – exactly what I wanted to see, as it meant that he had no EM shield resists at all. The DPS of the rats helped as well, cruise missiles slamming into him periodically and weakening his shields.
That didn’t mean I was going to leave anything to chance, however. I deployed my insurance policy, a flight of five Vespa EC-600 ECM drones, and I immediately saw the enemy Raven stop shooting the rats. He never resumed firing again and never locked me – I can only assume that my little drone friends actually kept him jammed throughout the entire encounter. I also turned on my energy neutralizer, as I had plenty of capacitor to spare at this point, and it couldn’t hurt. If he had an XL booster fitted, it might be the little bit needed to make him cap out.
As it turned out, he only had a large shield booster fitted, and his tank was not even remotely able to handle the DPS anyway. The damage slowed down a bit when I hit the 50% armor resistance wall, but even at half DPS his armor quickly dwindled. I started doing full damage again as soon as he hit structure, and only a few seconds later the Raven blew apart in that beautiful blue-white flare of plasma and spinning wreckage.
Sadly, I actually lost one of my loyal little Vespas to rat aggro before I could recall them, as the frigate rats targeted them immediately. But ECM drones are so cheap as to be practically free, and the T2 hardeners and cruise launchers would recoup the loss many times over. Proudly proclaiming my success in corp chat, I turned my Harbinger around and set a course for home, knowing that I had finally succeeded in my stated goal of ganking a ratting battleship solo.
Sometimes you get the bear. Sometimes the bear gets you. And sometimes..
…The bear slips on a banana peel and falls in the river.
So it was when I ran into a Solar Fleet gang while roaming in my Harbinger. I was in NJ4 in warp to the G9D gate, and Solar started jumping in while I was in warp to the gate. Landing, I discovered a Malediction, a couple of Stilettos and a couple of Sabres waiting for me. I wondered if this was all there was to it – a small, very very fast roaming gang. I sat on the gate and waited to see if they would all aggro me, or if one of them would be smart and hold off to pin me on the other side.
Well, to my considerable gratitude, they all aggroed me, and I jumped through as one of the Sabres tried to bump me off gate.
On the other side, I saw a nightmare list of a dozen HACs and battlecruisers. In a token attempt, I warped to a planet at 100.
My velocity indicator was at 50% when the fastest lockers acquired me and started firing. I expected to see it start to dwindle as more and more of them locked on, waiting for the little warp scrambling icon to appear next to them in my overview. Soon, every one of them was firing, and my armor was starting to go down fast.
And then I went into warp.
The Solar gang apparently didn’t put any tackle on their DPS ships… and then let all their tackle get stuck with aggro on the far side of the gate. Oops! Making safespots, I bounced around till my aggro timer ran out and logged. Not a good fight, but a lucky escape.
Sunday Morning Theorycrafting
Dual-repping Legion tanking 671 DPS while neuting 436 capacitor every 12 seconds and doing 391 DPS (for as long as your cap booster 800s last). Turn the medium neut off when your enemy is capped out and hold him down with the small.
[Legion, Dual Rep Neut]
Medium Armor Repairer II
Medium Armor Repairer II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
Damage Control II
Heat Sink II
10MN MicroWarpdrive II
Warp Disruptor II
Stasis Webifier II
Medium Electrochemical Capacitor Booster I, Cap Booster 800
Heavy Pulse Laser II, Amarr Navy Multifrequency M
Heavy Pulse Laser II, Amarr Navy Multifrequency M
Heavy Pulse Laser II, Amarr Navy Multifrequency M
Medium Energy Neutralizer II
Small Energy Neutralizer II
Small Nosferatu II
Auxiliary Nano Pump I
Nanobot Accelerator I
Trimark Armor Pump I
Legion Defensive – Nanobot Injector
Legion Offensive – Drone Synthesis Projector
Legion Engineering – Capacitor Regeneration Matrix
Legion Electronics – Energy Parasitic Complex
Legion Propulsion – Chassis Optimization
Hammerhead II x5
So, no shit, there I was: Zealot vs Loki 1v1
Yes, you read that right.
I was sitting in TVN station pondering going down to empire to pick up a Harbinger and going for a Saturday night solo roam in Venal when the presence of a Loki was announced in intel. Just a handful of jumps away, the Loki belonged to a Solar Fleet pilot named Crystal2, who seemed to be looking for solo ganks in much the same way that, well, I do in Solar Fleet’s space. He was reported to have a covert ops cloaking device, a high-survivability but low-DPS option.
It was a quiet night. I was, frankly, bored as hell. And the Loki seemed to be sticking around. I was a bit short on PVP ships and I was worried about being able to catch him. The only thing even remotely suitable to do the job in my hangar at the moment was my trusty pulse Zealot, which I fly in small gangs and is the veteran of many battles. I undocked and quickly warped to a jump bridge that would take me to within a couple of jumps of his last reported position.
I caught up with him in T-ZWA, a system at the edge of Majesta Empire space that borders that of our nearest neighbors, Morsus Mihi. Local was pretty empty, just me and him and one or two other folks who were probably docked. I warped to the far gate, QFF, wondering if he was leaving our space. As I travelled the 60 AU between gates, I saw a Loki on scan and my heart rate picked up. I knew what he was doing now: he was camping the gate to QFF and spamming his scanner, to see if anything small and lonely enough to kill came after him. He left local seconds later.
He might be running, or he might be betting that the commandship-like tank of a strategic cruiser would save him and is waiting for me on the other side, I thought. I knew that he wouldn’t out-DPS me, a considerable loss of DPS is the price you pay for the cloaking subsystem. Either way, I wanted to fight him. Intel had confirmed no other reds in the area, and my own allied forces were mostly drunk or asleep. If the fight happened it was going to be a pure solo duel at least for the first few minutes. If I could even just keep him tackled long enough for my alliance mates to wake up and get there, I’d be a hero. If I took him out solo, I’d be a legend. And if I lost, well, I’d have a story to tell.
I was oddly calm when I jumped into QFF. A tight smile crossed my face when I loaded grid and I saw him sitting there, waiting for me, just at the outer edge of optimal on my multifreqs. I decloaked, approaching him to put him in the sweet spot of the optimal on my heavy pulse lasers as I locked him up, and opened fire. I took the time to scream in intel, corp and everywhere else that I had a Loki tackled, but I didn’t really expect anyone to get there in time. It was just me and him.
His shields started to go down, but slowly. Definitely a shield tanker, with a considerable buffer and resist tank, but I expected that. The question now was whether his DPS was any good.
My shields went down in three volleys. Well, not great, but it could be worse. His DPS dwindled a bit when he got to my armor, and I activated my repper to keep things stable as I kept chewing at his shields. He was definitely doing more damage than I expected, but I was getting word that help – unfailingly roused by the promise of a T3 kill with the tackle already made – was on the way.
Then, the Loki pilot whipped out his secret sauce: a medium energy neutralizer, AKA sparkly blue death for Amarr ships. My armor repper went dark not long before my lasers did. I started trying to slowboat my way to the gate on buffer alone, but it wasn’t going to happen as the Loki had me webbed as well. Quite possibly he even had the webification subsystem as well, there’s just no way to know with these T3 ships when you’re in the thick of things.
It was just under a minute from the time when he turned on the neut to the blue-white flash of my Zealot exploding around me. I had gotten him down to a bit over half shields when I popped, which in itself is an achievement I suppose. I got my pod out and returned his “gf” in local with one of my own. The Loki pilot clearly had an excellent solo fit, a much better one than I initially thought he did. That combination of cloaking and neuting made me long for the cloaky Tengu I posted about previously – or perhaps a Legion with the neutralizer subsystem.
Happily, most of my gear dropped, too; as I write this I am on my way with it to Jita to fit out that Harbinger. This may not be the last story of the night!
A Fatal Pilgrimage, Part Two: Scream And Leap
In Larry Niven’s classic science fiction setting Known Space, there exists a race of felinoid aliens called the Kzinti. Highly aggressive and territorial, the Kzinti are the principle antagonists of Humanity. They have every advantage: they are bigger than humans, stronger than humans, have faster reflexes, are a culture totally dedicated to warfare, and have been a spacefaring race far longer than humans have. Yet the humans win every time for one simple reason – we stop and think, we plot and plan.
A Kzin, when presented with a target of opportunity, screams and leaps.
This is an instinct which is present in humans as well, albeit to a lesser degree, and it is one which a soloist must eliminate in order to be successful. One must learn to resist the temptation to pounce blindly on an enemy ship. A soloist must stalk, slowly and carefully, sometime over a period of hours, waiting for just the right moment to strike when one’s target is at the point of greatest disadvantage.
Unfortunately, upon sighting that Apocalypse I felt millions of years of evolution and the entirety of my frontal cortex melting away in a single instant. I had more in common with my cat trying to catch a moth than I did with a reasoning human being.
In short, I screamed and leapt, decloaking and siccing Hornet EC-300 ECM drones on him while my energy neutralizers did their work. This part of my gambit worked: the ECM drones ensured that he was unable to fire on me or the rats until he was well and truly neuted. I began to orbit him up close and personal, activating tracking disruptors to throw his guns off even if he did muster the capacitor needed to fire them.
At first, everything worked The rats pecked away at his armor, and my neuts and ECM drones kept them from shooting back. But I began to realize I had made a mistake in attacking immediately. The spawn in this belt was tiny, just a pair of destroyers and battlecruisers, and its damage was so miniscule that even a totally neuted battleship could hold out on raw HP alone for some time. He was going down very, very slowly.
When my ECM drones missed a cycle, the Apoc pilot ordered his drones to engage me. My Pilgrim was armor tanked and could hold out for a while, but not indefinitely. I pulled my ECM drones, confident that I had him thoroughly neuted at this point, and sent my light drones to attack his medium ones, hoping that I could destroy them and leave him totally defenseless before he brought me down. Even if he did, I was still confident that I could disengage and escape.
One of the problems with flying a temperamental recon like the Pilgrim is that you have to spend a lot of time managing not just your ship’s movements, but your modules and your cap. Pulsing the MWD and e-neuts requires a lot of hands-on adjusment, as does activating the cap booster when necessary. Orbit, transversal, capacitor, neutralizers, drones, target status, local – that is a lot of things to watch. Dividing your attention that many ways is risky and requires a great deal of practice, practice I just didn’t have, especially with my heart thundering in my ears from the adrenaline of combat.
In the end, it was forgetting to activate my cap booster at a crucial moment that did me in. I didn’t realize my neuts and repper had stopped for a few precious seconds, and before I knew it not only was I almost in structure, but this “ratting” Apoc had pointed and webbed me as well. I didn’t last much longer after that, and was sent home in my pod, kicking myself for being so over-eager and foolish.
There were so many things I could have done differently in that fight. I could have watched the Apoc carefully and followed him through the belts until he was under the guns of a really nasty battleship spawn. I could have watched my energy management better. I could have used medium instead of light drones to attack his, and maybe wiped them out faster.
Embrace your inner monkey. A human’s only natural weapon is his mind. Use it.
…And Execution (by missile fire)
The system of N6G-3C is an interesting one. It sits near one of the entrances to Venal and thus is a chokepoint for traffic, making it a logical enough gatecamp spot. But the particular brilliance of its choice lies not in its position but in the layout of the system itself. Most of the celestials in the system are clustered relatively close together, but the outbound gate on the pipe lies 20 AU away from the nearest object, well out of d-scan range.
This meant that when I jumped into the system and saw a lone member of White Noise in local, all of my warping around and d-scanning did me no good at all. I was fairly sure I had all the planets and asteroid belts covered in the course of my scans, and I had turned up nothing. At this point my best guess was that the WN pilot in local was a cloaked scout placed to monitor the movements of Northern Coalition fleets as they carried out operations against the WTF coalition’s assets in Venal, and that I would not get a fight out of him. With that in mind I shrugged and warped to the next gate in my route…
Right into the catch bubble of a Broadsword sitting some forty kilometers off-gate. I had forgotten that the next gate was not in d-scan range of a celestial, so I had no way to see if it was camped. A sensibly cautious pilot might have turned around rather than taking the risk of going through a gate he couldn’t check before proceeding. Caution is a difficult habit to acquire, especially in video gaming, when one is normally rewarded for having twitchy reflexes and diving into the thick of things.
Cursing, I aligned for the gate and turned on my microwarpdrive, knowing full well that it would be pointless to try to break a Broadsword’s tank and fully expecting that he would have backup coming in any second now. The best I could hope for was to burn for the gate and tank their DPS long enough to make my escape. The problem was that the Broadsword pilot, Econom, was even more clever than I realized: he had positioned his ship so that the shortest path through the gate would take me right past his ship. This allowed him to use a 9km-ranged warp scrambler to deactivate my microwarpdrive as I went by; a stasis webifier then stopped me dead in my tracks. At 75m/s, I would never make it the 35km remaining to the gate. There would be no escape, all I could do now is go down fighting and maybe take one or two ships with me.
Unfortunately for me, the White Noise pilots used a classic 3-ship gang setup: the gate flashed twice, and we were soon joined by fe25 in a Cerberus and Sascha Balkin in a Falcon. The Falcon ensured that it wasn’t even a fight, merely a textbook takedown after a perfect set-up. The Cerberus and the Broadsword laid on their DPS, and I was soon back in TVN station. The Broadsword’s bubble ensured that I couldn’t save my pod even if I wanted to.
I found myself longing for a Rook again, the higher sensor strength and ECM capability might have at least let me live long enough to kill the Falcon. My PVP losses were getting very expensive, but I found myself addicted to the thrill of solo roaming, and I knew that I would not give up. Plus, a reader of this blog had suggested a new Rook fitting that I wanted to try out, so it was not long before I undocked again…
The Minimal Roaming Gang, Concept…
People who are not extremely skilled soloists (or glory-mad bloggers looking for stories to tell) generally prefer to PVP in gangs if they do at all. More members in gang means more backup, greater DPS, and allowing the fleet to have a variety of specialized ships able to deal very well with specific situations. WIth the benefits and added security that travelling in large numbers provides, most fleet commanders are eager to get as many ships in gang as they possibly can. This tendency leads to the inevitable blob of thirty or more ships thundering across the sky, smashing anything unwary enough to get caught by dint of sheer numbers. While effective, it rarely results in what could be described as a fun fight unless the opposing force manages to muster similar numbers or uses a clever strategy to seize victory.
As a result, some fleet commanders prefer to limit the size of their gangs. Some even go so far as to pare down their fleet to the absolute bare minimum needed to succeed. I would argue that in order to consider a gang fully-featured, it needs to contain three ships, each dedicated to a specific role: DPS, tackle and ECM. You can get away with just DPS and tackle, but ECM is still such a powerful force multiplier that I feel it should not be ignored in any gang. A dedicated ECM ship will allow your gang to take on less well composed or well prepared fleets well out of proportion to its size, provided your ECM pilot is good enough to keep himself more or less out of harm’s way, as he will be called primary first thing.
Which three ships should be used? That depends on the sort of opposition you expect to encounter and whether you plan on roaming foreign space or camping in one spot. I would recommend the following:
- DPS: Drake, Hurricane, Harbinger, Zealot, Sacrilege, Ishtar, HAM Cerberus. Avoid battleships; they are too slow for a quick getaway, which you will need. I am leaving the Vagabond off this list because while it is very survivable, it is too DPS light for its assigned role.
- ECM: Falcon or Rook. The Kitsune is just too tiny and fragile, though in a pinch you could use it as a jammy tackler. Use the Falcon if you want a cloaky scout, a prober, or the ability to mount a cyno generator if you’re the sort of crazy person who likes to randomly hotdrop stuff. The Rook in its post-QR form can provide a nice bit of additional DPS in addition to performing its ECM duties, so some FCs might prefer it.
- Tackle: For roaming, take an interceptor or other light, fast frigate-sized ship with excellent speed and sig radius characteristics. For camping, a heavy interdictor will round out your fleet nicely. I have never flown a HIC, but I hear the Broadsword is the best all around for speed, tank and an extra bit of DPS.
Don’t worry, dear reader, I can hear what you are thinking: “But Kesper, this blog of yours bills itself as being dedicated to solo PVP! Why are you blathering on about small gangs now? You cheating bastard, I bet your next post will be all about some lame NC blobby napfest op.”
Well, you caught me. This whole post was a clever ruse to distract you from the fact that after all my bravado at the end of my last post about how I was going to go out to Venal in my Harbie and go pop some TRI, I ran right into a White Noise gatecamp. I have to credit WN with an excellent setup. They used the gatecamp variation of the three-ship gang I described above, but the spot they chose was absolutely stellar. You can read all about the ensuing battle in the next post.
Wherein I lose another Rook, this time to an Overview Glitch
I’m sorry, did I say an overview glitch? I mean the corporation, Overview Glitch. I had decided to go poking around in far northern Venal, you see, having become convinced that there were no ratters left in the Drone Regions and deciding to try my luck elsewhere. I had spent a number of hours prior to this logged into my capital alt, bashing Triumvirate POS towers in Pure Blind with my dreadnought, and I was desperate for some more solo action. Things are kind of crazy in Venal right now with the Northern Coalition finally stomping TRI for stealing a bunch of r64 moons while the NC was off killing Kenny in the south, so I thought I’d go and check out the action.
Unfortunately the action was very, very blue. I travelled thirty or forty jumps around Venal, and it was blue as far as I could see. Granted, I didn’t actually bother going to H-PA, but that’s because I knew the NC was already camping the WTF crew into the stations there anyway. So it was that I had literally just given up on Venal and turned my ship towards the Drone Regions when I saw a pair of neutrals enter local. A Crow and a Crusader landed on the gate with me almost simultaneously, and I knew then that if I jumped through they would just catch me on the other side. I waited for them to get aggro – but then as with the Zealot/Vagabond pair that killed me last weeek, one aggressed and the other did not. I figured this meant that they were scouts and there were larger ships coming to support them from behind.
With one interceptor, the Crow, aggressing me, and the other holding off, I knew that I had little choice but to stand and fight. My best chance, I thought, was to put a jammer on each Crow, align and try to warp out and get safe before their DPS arrived. While this was a fine plan in theory, in practice I missed cycles on both interceptors. After my previous luck with the Drake, I was starting to feel a little bit picked upon by the universe, and I went ahead and put all my DPS on the Crow. Unfortunately I still had Fury missiles loaded; that might be a reason to keep faction missiles in the tubes most of the time.
Even so, to my suprise I hurt the Crow pretty badly. He was forced to disengage and leave the field, but not before the gang’s DPS support, a Sleipnir, landed on the gate with us. He took me to half shields before I could put both my jammers on him. Finally, though, my ECM did its job, and the Sleipnir soon found itself out of the fight. With only a Stiletto and a Crusader left now, I began to have some hope: If I could either kill or force the interceptors to abandon the field, I might just be able to escape!
The fight raged on for over ten minutes. I would occasionally miss a cycle, and the Sleipnir would shoot me down into armor before my jammers kicked in again. Then the passive recharge on my shields would take me back up to 30% or so, and we’d do the whole thing over again. Meanwhile, I put the hurt on the ceptors, focusing on the Crow again as it returned to the field with low shields and armor nearly gone. I was holding up much better than I thought, if I could just hurt the interceptors badly enough and keep the Sleipnir jammed, they might disengage.
Unfortunately, just as I began to have hope for survival in the face of this pitched battle, the gate lit up with its brilliant blue-white glow and a new neutral appeared in local.
The Overview Glitch pilots had called for reinforcements, and an Ishtar had responded. It set its Bouncer IIs on me just as I missed a cycle on the Sleipnir, and in seconds my ship was dust and ashes. I sat by my wreck and waited to be podded, accepting the compliments of the Overview Glitch crew for a battle well fought with a certain degree of ill grace due to frustration at my repeated failures.
Returning home I spun my pod in TVN station, beginning to question the wisdom of my repeated outings and nightly losses. My industrial corp could bear the cost, but not for too long, and this was getting very expensive indeed. I was reminded why I started flying Harbingers in the first place: They are cheap and can be flown unrigged (which otherwise would double the cost of the ship). Since I had one waiting in my hangar, I knew what I would be flying next.
TRI, don’t bother to use your scanner – you’ll know what I’m flying.
I Brought Scissors, He Brought Rock
After killing the Prorator, I flew a few more systems before making a safespot and logging out to go and interact with that big room with the blue ceiling. When I eventually logged back into EVE later that evening, I was excited to continue my roam, convinced that the Prorator kill had been a good omen, and a truly big score was coming my way.
A few systems later, I find myself being hunted by a Dominix and a Drake belonging to Shadow of xxDeathxx. I had attacked the Drake while I was ratting, and had been forced to flee when the Dominix jumped into the system. Big, slow, and easy to lose, I was able to evade them. The Domi did manage to nuke my capacitor on a gate with his energy neutralizers, but the aggro stuck him on that side as I jumped through. I ran ahead a few systems and soon I thought I had lost them. Safeing up to catch my breath and take a bio break, I returned to find the Drake pilot in local.
karrrrr > 1v1?
Tempted as I was to take him up on his offer, I had learned from my experience with TRI that a 1v1 fight rarely stays that way. So I asked for a few conditions, which the Drake pilot granted. The fight would take place at a safe spot of my chosing, and the Drake pilot would stay in fleet with me so no one could warp to us. Also, local would remain empty for the duration of the fight. The Drake pilot’s e-bushido remained intact throughout the entire fight, and I honestly thought I had a pretty good chance of winning. Unfortunately, the Drake pilot neatly countered every advantage my Rook had with the following:
- FOF missiles
- ECM drones
The fight opened reasonably well; I got my jammers on the Drake before he could launch his drones. I started pounding away at him with Thunderbolt Furies, eating through what was obviously a perfectly adequate tank, and pleased that he seemed to be quite helpless. With a nervous eye on local, I began to think that I might get a nice kill out of this.
It was not to be. The first hint, and the thing that should have caused me to disengage immediately, was the FoF missiles that began to fire, much slower than the Drake’s regular damage but still enough to hurt and plenty to wear away at my passive buffer tank. But even then, I was confident in my ability to escape if it became clear that I was going to lose. After all, he could not put a warp disruptor on me, right?
Wrong. I missed a cycle and he ordered his drones to engage me. That’s when I noticed that they were Hornet EC-300s, Caldari light ECM drones. “Baaah, surely my Rook will simply shrug off their pitiful ECM jammer strength, right? I mean, it’s a recon, my sensor strength is 32!
Wrong again. The drones got a successful jam cycle on me… and then another, and then another. I was helpless, unable to fire, unable to order my drones to attack his – and I was the EWAR ship! By now of course the Drake had me pointed, and his FoF missiles kept beating my shields down. After a long, painful moment of frustration, the drones missed another cycle, and I, having aligned for a quick warpout, resumed trying to jam the drake. But no. My jammers missed the most important cycle of their brief existence, and the Drake blew me out of space.
I had to admit, this Drake pilot had expertly countered my Rook. I congratulated him heartily in local and gave him my pod, sending me home to ponder the error of my ways yet again. Though I must say that if light ECM drones can jam a recon for multiple cycles, there might be some justification for them to be rebalanced.