PVP
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.
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!
Well, that wasn’t SUPPOSED to be a 1v1…
There is a cliché scene that pops up in action movies once in a while. You know, the one where hero A is busy frantically fighting for his life in the next room while his buddy hero B listens to really loud music or watches TV or something. By the time hero B wakes up to the fact that there’s a fight on, it’s all over.
So it was when my old pal and ex-corpmate Felix Underwood went on a wee little roam through Venal with me. I was in my Rook, and he was in his Deimos. We passed through a great many empty systems, and as I jumped into JURU-T I was suprised to see a neut in local – ewquilibrium from WEPRA Corp. I excitedly told Felix in fleet chat (voice comms were out for both of us due to trying to not wake our respective significant others) that I had a Dominix on scan.
So far, all was well. I narrowed down the Dominix almost instantly and warped to the belt, landing right on top of him – he had been sitting at 0 on the warpin point. The setup was perfect: he had just gotten full aggro from a 3-battleship spawn, so he was already taking very heavy fire. Chortling, I stuck a two-point scram on him along with missiles, drones and ECM. I was confident of victory, between my ECM and over 800 dps between me and my friend in the Deimos, plus the rat DPS, the Domi would surely fold.
The Dominix is jammed and going down nicely, but I notice that I don’t seem to have gotten a reply from Felix. I poke him in fleet chat again, wishing he would hurry up.
Silence. Felix? Anybody home? Uh, I could use some help here…
Still nothing. Finally my jammers missed a cycle and the Domi gets drones and energy neutralizers on me. His drones aren’t hurting me terribly badly, but the energy neutralizers will eventually kill my jammers and my invul fields, so I started screaming at Felix in fleet, wondering where the hell he is.
Felix finally wakes up and warps in just in time to see my neuted, helpless Rook go poof. While I was fighting for my life… he’d been looking at the map. 
I am fairly proud of the fact that I had that Domi almost in structure despite the neutralizers. Unfortunately, without my ECM support, the Deimos turned into a Diemost as he was neuted into oblivion and unable to finish the job with his highly cap-dependant blasters.
Here endeth today’s lesson: Don’t get into a fight expecting backup without first making sure that your backup is aware that action is coming!
The Solo Ship Of My Dreams
One day, when I own my own personal dysprosium moon, I want this:
[Tengu, cloaky pvp]
Ballistic Control System II
Ballistic Control System II
Ballistic Control System II
10MN Afterburner II
Invulnerability Field II
Invulnerability Field II
Large Shield Extender II
Warp Disruptor II
‘Hypnos’ Multispectral ECM I
Heavy Assault Missile Launcher II, Torrent Rage Assault Missile
Heavy Assault Missile Launcher II, Torrent Rage Assault Missile
Heavy Assault Missile Launcher II, Torrent Rage Assault Missile
Heavy Assault Missile Launcher II, Torrent Rage Assault Missile
250mm Railgun II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge M
Covert Ops Cloaking Device II
Core Defence Field Extender I
Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer I
Bay Loading Accelerator I
Tengu Offensive – Covert Reconfiguration
Tengu Electronics – Dissolution Sequencer
Tengu Defensive – Supplemental Screening
Tengu Propulsion – Interdiction Nullifier
Tengu Engineering – Power Core Multiplier
Resists: 57.1/89.7/84.5/74.1, EHP 67,884
DPS: 394 with Rage torps and CN Antimatter @18km
Sensor strength 35
Warps cloaked and ignores interdiction bubbles.
It even looks sexy.
DO WANT.
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.
Making Safespots Without Celestials
After my last post regarding the loss of a Harbinger to a gate camp that I could not see on d-scan, reader Pater Peccavi of the Cadre Assault Force wrote in with some excellent advice:
1. If there are no celestials close to a gate, don’t warp to it blindly. Press the “Warp To” button, then press Ctrl-Space to stop your ship. This will waste the amount of cap it would’ve taken you to warp. Repeat this until you get the message “There is insufficient power blah blah blah,” this will let you get closer without having to worry about bubbles. If you still don’t make it into scanning range, rinse and repeat until you’re within 14 AU. (You can also reduce your cap with MWD, Shield Boosters/Armor Reppers, etc).
2. When you landed in the bubble, rather than trying to burn to the gate, you should have burned in the opposite direction, towards the other gate (or celestial, or what have you). The broadsword will be slow moving since its bubble is up, which will give you plenty of time to align and get away.
Absolutely true, Pater. #1 is especially valuable and something I had not previously considered. #2 would have been common sense had I been thinking straight.
This blog is only a week old but I’ve already gotten a lot of excellent advice from readers. If you have any favorite tactics you would be willing to share, please post them in the comments and I’ll write another post later on highlighting them along with some of my own.
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.
The Rook: Great Soloship, or Greatest Soloship?
My recent experiences reminded me that the Rook was substantially rebalanced in QR, and by all reports is pretty badass now. So I poked around with EFT and came up with the following:
[Rook, Solo]
Ballistic Control System II
Signal Distortion Amplifier II
Ballistic Control System II
Invulnerability Field II
Invulnerability Field II
Large Shield Extender II
10MN Afterburner II
Warp Disruptor II
ECM – Multispectral Jammer II
ECM – Multispectral Jammer II
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Thunderbolt Fury Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Thunderbolt Fury Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Thunderbolt Fury Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Thunderbolt Fury Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Thunderbolt Fury Heavy Missile
Particle Dispersion Augmentor I
Bay Loading Accelerator I
Hobgoblin II x5
22k ehp and 431 dps with all skills at V – but the real key to the beauty of this ship as a solo roamer is those two multispecs. With good skills and a bit of luck you can jam any one other recon, or multiple frigate or cruiser sized ships, while dishing out a suprisingly good deal of damage. This insulates you from the “PPPPPvP” aspect of PVP in EVE to some degree, and vastly increases the ability of the ship to extricate itself from difficult situations.
So with my fancy new hac-recon hybrid, I headed for the Drone Regions with every intention of this really, truly, finally being the time when I would actually manage to gank a ratter. Just one Raven pilot not watching local, that’s all I ask.
But it was not to be. After several hours of roaming, I headed for a station system in northwestern Malpais in the hopes that there would at least be *something* there. And something there was – at the station I found a Stiletto and a Sacrilege. I jammed both and fled, not wanting to play docking games with nasty ships like those. However, the Rook’s ECM performed nicely and got me away from the unfavorable confrontation.
A few systems later, I came upon another station system, this one under the sovreignty of Flame Bridge, an alliance whose name was new to me. This time, the residents had evidently heard I was in the area, and I found two SBs, a Crusader and a Sabre waiting for me. Finally, here was a fight that looked like it might be really fun!
As the blood rose and thundered in my ears I decloaked and activated my hardeners. Priority one was cutting down the incoming DPS, which meant jamming the stealth bombers. One multispec on each bomber did the job, and I turned my attention to the Sabre, who had just dropped a bubble on me. Even though he was moving at high speed my missiles tore into him and he just narrowly escaped in deep structure, warping out and leaving the field. By this time the Crusader had a point on me, and an Ishkur had joined him on the field. I turned my attention to the stealth bombers, glass cannons that would be easy to kill and eliminate their DPS so I could turn my ECM on the Crusader and Ishkur. I pointed one bomber, a Nemesis, and took him down fast. The other bomber I also put into deep structure before he managed to MWD out of my scram range and left the field.
Now I just had the Crusader and the Ishkur to contend with. I put a jammer on each, and pointed the Ishkur. As my missiles began to chew through his tank I thought to myself, “Well! Successful test, winning a 5v1 is not bad.”
And then, the reinforcements arrived.
My jammers went dark. I lost point on the Ishkur. My AB went dead as well. My invul fields shut down. A Curse had entered the field, and I was fucked.
The coup de grace, administered by an Armageddon, was mercifully quick. With no implants in the clone, and a “gf” in local, I sat by my wreck and waited for the medical clone jump express to take me home.
Back in TVN, I reflected on my adventure. The Rook proved the most successful of my solo roaming experiments overall, and despite both the cost of the ship and the fact that I have already lost one in battle, I think Part 7 of this series will be written with one as well. 
Curses, Foiled Again
So, it turns out you can fit a Curse out as a prober pretty well. I nano it out, with a passive shield tank, an AB and a tracking disruptor. The highs are full of medium neuts and noses, along with that precious probe launcher.
With Hammerheads, my DPS is not great, as my drone skills are a bit crap, but my hope is that between rat DPS and the neut/nos, enemy ships will quickly cap out, and the AB-nano fit will let me outrun missile DPS well enough while the tracking disruptor screws up turret ships. The only thing I have to watch out for is drone boats, right?
So thus armed I head back down to the Drone Regions. I find myself in F9, site of some of the biggest battles in the Drone Wars. It has been yet another desperately quiet trip, and not even the probe launcher is helping me to catch unwary ratters. The new scanning system is just so goddamn finicky and slow for combat probes.
Anyway, I am in warp to the XB gate when a pair of ED ships appear in local. On scanner I see them pop up at the gate… a Zealot and a Vagabond. Oh crap, I think to myself, I am so screwed. My only chance is to wait for them to aggress and jump through, then get safe on the other side.
Unfortunately, they’re smart. The Vaga aggresses and lays on the damage. After a few seconds it becomes clear that the Zealot won’t aggress. I realize that I might have a chance against the Zealot, as his weapons are cap-dependant and the Vaga’s aren’t. So I jump into XB- and hit the ‘burner, aligning for a celestial. Sure enough the Zealot jumps right after me, and he rips through my shield tank with his lasers while I neut him and sic my drones on him. I know I’m neuting his cap; indeed he should be just about dry… but no, his lasers are still firing, his point is still working… and then I realize that he fitted a cap booster rather than a sensor booster, just like I should have done when I was fighting that damned neuting Ishtar.
I am very frustrated at this point. The Harbinger is a bit big and slow to catch ratters; the Zealot, agile but a bit of a glass cannon and really hard to fit even with AWU 4. The Curse, way too fragile and neuts aren’t nearly the equalizer I feel like they should be (and hear that they once were). And probes aren’t really helping either. So what’s left? What will give me an adequate tank, acceptable DPS, sufficient maneuverability and has a little bit of an edge where both combat and survivability is concerned?
(If you say ‘Vagabond’ or ‘Ishtar’ I am going to hit you. What I meant to say was ‘what’s left *that I can fly*’.)
And then, as I pull out old EFT theorycrafting, I begin to get the glimmerings of an idea.
Epic Fail
All right, I say to myself as I undock my Harbinger from TVN station, it’s payback time. I’m feeling pretty confident, as I managed to solo an Ishtar the last time I brought a Harbie to Venal, and I’ve just finished AWU 4 so I was able to mount a bigger plate for more buffer on my Harbie. Thus armed, I set off for the journey to Venal in hopes of killing some ratters.
Which I fail to do, over the course of many hours.
Because every single goddamned ratter I saw was a stupid bloody cloaky Cerberus aligned to a POS 100km off the belt warpin point. Which is exactly how I rat.
“Fuck it,” I say. “Next time I’m going to the Drone Regions, the ratters there are total morons.”
So I went to the drone regions. And every ratter I saw was a stupid bloody cloaky Cerb, et cetera. A couple of PVPers from Ethereal Dawn engaged me, but I managed to deagress and GTFO in deep structure. I returned home with 19% structure and a big flame coming out the side of my ship. I pause briefly to kill a Manticore in P3EN.
Repairing my structure, I decided to go out again. Once again, I see a lot of empty space and ratters that I just can’t catch before they get safe. I resolve to try and shoehorn a probe launcher onto my Harbie somehow.
On the way home, I instapop an overconfident Manticore pilot who for some reason elected to engage a Harbinger solo. Very exciting, I know. A stirring battle ensued, lasting all of, uh, half a second.
For my third outing to the drone regions, I barely got as far as QFF before I encountered a lone Tempest belonging to Legion of xXDeathXx! And I had a horrible dilemma – stupid Minmatar crap, do Tempests shield tank or armor tank? Oh, the hell with it, there’s rats on the gate, maybe they’ll help, I have a decent buffer and lots of DPS.
I hit him, but not hard, and he was chewing through my armor pretty quickly. Oh, right, he’s doing the *best* damage type for my race. Man, that was pretty stupid, huh? Plus the rats decided to shoot me and not him. I immediately deagress, but not soon enough, and I lose my Harbinger.
For my final fail of the evening, I decide to go back and get my utterly beloved pulse Zealot, which I usually fly in roaming gangs and is a fantastic ship for that purpose. It’s a bit lacking in the mids to be a really viable solo ship but I decided to give it a shot anyway. I don’t feel like flying all the way to bloody Kalevala, so I take the trip to Venal, where I find a TRI pilot, Zudari, ratting in an Ishtar! Sweet! He warps to a planet, and I come in right on top of him.
Big mistake.
He drops sentries, which my pulse lasers quickly rip to shreds, dropping the incoming DPS considerably… until my lasers stop firing me because he’s in $%@%#!!#@@ neut range. He drops a fresh set of Bouncer IIs and my Zealot soon explodes around me.
Fail, fail, fail and more fail. I need to pick my targets better – but I can’t seem to *catch* any of the ratters who aren’t already willing to PVP. And my experiments with EFT have proven that there is no Amarr or Caldari ship that makes an adequate solo anti-ratter platform while still fitting a probe launcher. (That 220 CPU is a bitch).
Except… hey, what about the Curse?