But yesterday, again, I was reminded strongly why I play this game. Twice. And both times it involved one of my favorite little ships, the Daredevil.
I'll dispense with the build up, needless to say I went out hunting yesterday determined to get into some good fights. In typical Rixx fashion, because it was Monday and Monday and I don't see eye to eye, it started out slowly. I just missed a few kills, warped in late, or arrived out of range, the usual. I had decided to take out the new Jaguar and see how she did. All morning was frustration, even though I did manage to get on one kill. That wasn't good enough since I really didn't contribute much more than tackle. It wasn't until I decided to go home for awhile that things got more interesting.
I was sitting at a gate waiting to jump through when a Red entered the system with me. It was just us so I decided to wait and see if he came to the gate and what he was flying. Scan showed a Daredevil approaching. Hmmm. At this point I was honestly unsure if my Jaguar could take him or not, I only started flying the ship two weeks ago and hadn't really had a chance to test it out much in real combat. No time like the present. But would he engage me?
He landed about 40k from the gate and started towards it. Suddenly the blinky yellow started and we were off to the races. Letting him get started first turned out to be the difference in the end, but there wasn't much I could do about that, he held the tactical advantage. The fight lasted a long time as we both pounded into each other. I got ahead of him at first, so I held off overheating for a moment. My Gisti booster was churning away and my cap was more stable than I anticipated, although soon I'd have to start managing that. Once he started getting his groove down my shields starting taking serious damage and he rapidly caught up to me. My low sig radius was helping, but not enough, so I started overheating my guns. Boom! We both went into structure... this was going to be very close. But he caught the perfect moment and landed a blow between my booster cycle and I exploded. His Daredevil was into 80% structure when I blew up. (You don't get that story from looking at a kill mail.) Turns out I picked on a guy who has 3,800 kills and only 170 losses. LOL.
Awesome fight though. So pod express home and log off for awhile.
When I return I decide to head back and get some more kills. I was going to take the Dramiel, but Corporate shenanigans at the gate caused my poor Dramiel to go into armor and I didn't want to wait for reps. So I got into one of my Daredevils instead. We'd put a small Corp gang together, Cane, Harbi, Scimitar and my Daredevil to go get into some trouble. I was scout and eventually I jumped right into a medium sized gang of bad guys. Mostly BC with some tackle and a Falcon. A little much for us to engage with on their terms, so we decided to see if we could turn the tables on them.
In that situation, it is important to lure the enemy into engaging you on your terms, not theirs. This isn't easy and involves significant risks, but it works more often than you might think. Of course, since I was in the Daredevil, the main responsibility for baiting the baddies would fall to me. I love that.
So I cross jumped them a few times and let them try to catch me and eventually I got into another system alone with a Taranis. I was in a safe spot and he was on a gate. Now, you know his buddies are on the other side of the gate waiting to jump in. He knows that also. So you need time to kill him. The strategy? I warped to the gate at 100k and started orbiting. The idea here is to lure him out for a fight. If his buddies jump in they can't warp to him to help since we're only 100 off, so they have to boat out. By the time they get into range he'll be dead. That's the theory anyway. It started to work and the Ranis took the bait, sometimes things do go your way. He engaged and we dueled it out. He almost got thru my shields but he took the worst of it and exploded right on time. I'm not fond of his fit, the repper in my opinion on a Taranis doesn't do much. It slowed me down but the outcome wasn't in question, not with a web and a scram on my dd.
His buddies had jumped in, my buddies had jumped in and we all started trying to find an advantage. We managed to catch a Myrm off from his gang and almost had him down when the rest jumped on us. I had a Raptor into structure when the damn Falcon made me lose my point and the Raptor got away (!). A Rifter had my buddy LD pinned down and I swooped in and saved him. Doing so put me in range of their gang however and being in a faction frigate isn't an advantage when the bad guys out number you. They all put their Warriors on me and despite the Scimi repping my shields I couldn't break away in time and eventually exploded. But the rest of our gang managed to get away and that's what counts.
So 2-2 on the day, a Jaguar and Daredevil lost to a Atron and a Taranis killed. Not the most glorious cause for happiness certainly, but if you think that, then you don't know me very well. I had 2 great fights yesterday, one I barely lost to a great pilot and one I won in a great situation. The buzz is still with me this morning.
This is why I play Eve.