Vengeance vs Drake

Yeah, Im totally breaking my posting rules of mwf, but Ive also been slacking and I cant sleep right now (damned sinus infection). So, earlier today, I got a bit cocky. I pimp fitted (for the most part) a pretty new Vengeance. I still hate missiles, so gatling lasers were the order of the day for weapon systems as well. I also decided against using ECM until I have the signal disruption skills up a bit more, so a dual web fit was made. Im a brick, so why dont you become one too?? Tossing on a ccc and repper bonus rig, I got my ship cap stable, and with a 177 tank. Not bad me thinks.

I toss my pretty new ship, along with several other lesser fit punishers, into my travel fit tanked Orca and head out to Chamune; up in Tash-Murkon area where I have a few scanning ships already setup from previous roams out here. I decide to go looking for a fight, and I quickly scan a drake on a gate. I warp in at 10, with the drake sitting still at 0 it looked like. With only four people in system, I at first thought he was scouting, but Chamune is a dead end system, and I had just come from Gemodi, and there were only 2 people there. And so with my amazing deductive abilities, this was a solo drake sitting on a gate and possiblely went afk. Im not pure pirate yet I guess, but I asked in local if he was afk. With no immediate reply, I targeted him and began to orbit at 6.5km. With my ship set to full speed, that brought me to roughly 7-7.5km, right in my lasers optimal range; also activating my dc2 just in case he did start to shoot me.

While I orbited, I realized we were right on top of the gate. Yeah, Im pretty slow, but with this new revelation, I thought about gate guns. So I asked in chat (to be sure) if gate guns would shoot me if I attacked the other player in a .3 system. The majority answer was "yes, but they are easily tanked." Well, Im in a t2 frigate, I didnt feel like taking on the gate guns as well as a drake's dps. So I continued my wait. All this happened within about 90 seconds, and with my wait coming to an end, the drake pilot jumped back to Gemodi. Well, ok, Ill follow because I know he doesnt have backup.

Jumping through the gate, the drake is 22km away. I fly fullspeed towards him and set orbit, while I see the flashy box appear showing me he is in the process of targeting me in the overview. I target him and set into my orbit, waiting for him to attack. And attack he did. First popping out five drones, some with EC in their names. At the time, and as of now also, I dont know exactly what they were because I havent really paid attention to drones much at all. And I still havent looked them up to figure out which kind he popped out along with his two or three hobgoblin 2's. Im just lazy like that. Anyhow, he fired up his missle launchers. He was using faction scourge missiles, which I think is either kinetic or explosion dmg, both of which for me are over 80% (with exp being the highest at 93% or so).

When I saw his drones pop out, I was like oh crap, Im gonna die and targeted them anyways. I had already tossed my webs and scram on the drake when he went flashy red, so I had to wait for the first cycle to finish before I could put the webs on the drones. Once I did that, those drones were one or two shotted. That made me extremely happy. I took out several of his drones before he pulled them back, but what I couldnt understand is *why* he pulled back his drones. Was it because I was killing them so efficiently?? How narcacisstic of me!! I very quickly saw why he pulled them back, as well as heard the worst sound an Amarr pilot could ever hear:: Capacitor Empty.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, there buddy! Im cap stable! How in the blazes did this happen?! Apparently, this drake wasnt purely setup with missiles, he had a neut or two and those EC drones? Yeah, Im thinking those were either ECM or neuting drones also. Let me emphasize this point:: My capacitor is empty. Gone. Zero Cap. WTF?!?!

This is a new experience for me, because I have never had my cap drained so quickly, let alone at all in pvp. Up until this point, I had been tanking the drakes missile damage very well. So well in fact, that I was still at 100% armor when my life energy was sucked dry from my ship. Well, now I was going to die, as I couldnt get enough cap to keep my guns and repper going, let alone my scram or webs which had been deactivated also.

In my quick thinking process, I shout in local 100 mill ransom. My ship is worth about 130-150 million in fits. Fair offer in my opinion. He replied back thirteen seconds later (read, 13, thirteen long seconds later) "Show me". Well, Im not stupid, and its taking him a nice bit of time chewing through my tank, as at this moment, I was still at 75% armor. I sent 50 mill, replying with "half now, half on escape." His reply? Oh, that didnt come for another 10-15 seconds. During this quick 15 seconds, I popped open his info again and actually looked at his bio this time, as before I started this fight, I had only read his employment history to find out his age and what corp he is in. This guy is a russian. That explains the delay in communications. Stupid Russians.

When he finally did say something, it was the tune of "50 mill now or die." Well, Im scrammed, and down to 40% armor now. I sent the second half. Apparently it was too late though, as he replied a second time as I hit the send button, "no, let it ride." Ok, what? I said no, its sent, or something to that effect. To which he replied, "I reacted too late, sorry" and my nice ship went boom.

The Report

So not only did I lose my 130 misk ship, I also lost the 100misk ransom I paid to not lose my ship or pod. I did not give this pilot a gf in reply to this chain of events and I did not accept his apology. Warping my pod to a safe, I gave a "no honor among pirates anymore" comment. Warping back to the Chamune gate to reship, my wreck was still there with no drake. I assumed he jumped over since he wasnt in local anymore, so I went back to my safe til I saw him on scan again and warped to jump home again.

This fight really pisses me off more because I paid 100 million to save my 150 million ship, in which case I lost both. I can afford the loss of both, though because I spent a chunk of change on some plex. Dont fly what you cant afford to lose, right? Anyhow, its not the loss of the fight that bothers me. Its that when I sent the first 50misk, the opponent should have turned off all missiles continueing to neut and scram me. I didnt even have enough cap to warp off. Instead, he continued beating down my armor, until I scrambled to type in the second half of the 100misk ransom. Outside of that, I feel I did well in this fight.

I was able to tank his damage until I ran out of cap pretty easily. I recovered from the dread of seeing those drones pop out and took them out systemically in an order I saw as most dangerous (the EC drones) to the least effective drones. Doing so either forced him to recall all of his drones or he lost most of them. Or he knew I was capped out. In any case, I dealt with the drones in an acceptable manner.

As for the drake itself, I got it down to about 10% shields before I lost the ability to do damage. He was dual webbed, and not moving fast at all. I dont think he was tanked much at all tbh, because he was still going about 120ish so I assume he had a mwd pusling. Maybe I could be wrong, I dont know enough about drakes as I should. Yet again, Im a slacker. However, had I not been neuted to hell and back, I feel this could well have been a fight I could have won. Chalk up another loss to biting off more than I can chew I suppose!