Good Fights & Bad Decisions

In Orbit
My Comet "Columbo" at Zero


I'm going to start writing more, I promise. So here are some stories from the past few weeks about fights I've gotten into, win or lose. I hope you enjoy. My ship is listed first.

A Comet beating a Merlin doesn't sound like a good fight and, to be honest, it often isn't. Unless the Merlin happens to be sitting at zero inside the plex, is Blaster fitted, dual webs, and has probably taken a booster recently. Not to mention that your Comet is rail fit and not blaster fit. This was a good fight for a the first part of it, but I managed to pull range and eventually he ran out of booster charges. It is good to see the Hellcats back in the neighborhood. I told him in local that it was a worthy try. It felt like something that I would do.

This fight between a rail fit Incursus and a rail fit Comet was very, very close. I still believe I would have won this fight had I not seriously derped at the last minute. I oops clicked in space which caused my poor ship to lose all velocity and essentially become a sitting duck right at the worst possible moment. Sigh. Still we were both in low structure and it was a worthy try. Comet should win that fight... but it almost didn't.

Granted, a Firetail should lose against a properly fitted Algos most of the time. Also granted, I wasn't actually trying to solo it and it did eventually die. All I had to do was hold it long enough for help to arrive. Which would have worked except I went into the fight with only 2 or 3 nanite repair paste thingies in my armor repper, instead of the much more intelligent full amount. As you can imagine this did not end well for my poor twelve killmark Firetail. But the Algos did die.

Yes, this is the same Firetail from above while it was still alive. This is a fight that is even rarer than a "good fight" - it is what we call - an "honest fight". Which is when two of the exact same ships manage to find each other in the darkness of space and decided to engage each other. Sadly for the other guy he sorta forgot to fit a tank and went boom rather quickly. Remember kids, you usually need some kind of tank to survive in Eve.

When a Pirate chooses to engage they do so typically without knowing what they are getting themselves in for. We make decisions based on type of ship, local intel, killboard intel, age of character, and other factors. Some of which are rapidly becoming meaningless, like character age. What does it matter when you can inject yourself into anything? Point being, you have to be prepared. I had seen this Gnosis earlier and pegged the pilot. When I was docked I noticed that the pilot was also docked, so I undocked in my cloaky Stratios and waited. My patience was rewarded and the rest went down pretty easy. The scariest part of these kinds of fights is being exposed during the fight. You are mutually locked down and an easy target if a gang or fleet happens to pass by.

To be fair I'm putting this in the loss column, but I truly won this lopsided encounter. My sturdy Tristan warped in on two ships, which rapidly became four ships, and eventually became six ships in total. The funny part for me was just how hesitant they were to engage at first, even with far superior numbers. Including a Bantam, which I killed pretty quickly. I also killed the bait Incursus before the sheer numbers finally brought me down. Fun fight.

Another funny fight. So two Goons decide to attack my Algos, which is fine, but they also decide to bring along a Griffin to make things all cowardly. Now here is the funny part. I point and start fighting the Dramiel, but send my drones to the ECM ship sitting about 30k away. At any point here, the Griffin could have gotten away and saved his ship. But he stayed and let my drones kill him. Sadly without my drones the Dramiel did eventually kill my Algos, but honestly I'll take a 19m Algos loss in exchange for a 45m bling Goon Griffin every single day. One less ECM ship.

That's enough for today. I hope we've all learned some valuable lessons. I know I haven't, I'll keep doing the same old dumb things as I always do.

Yarrr!