vale of the silent
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.