All is Fair in Love and War!

Yay, we're at war! A second corp dec'd us and that starts today also. Been continuing our ganking of random hulks, trying to focus on the IMG guys, but they been ganking ours back if they the get chance. So its kind of a war with them, just not official.

Ive found that war in high sec is similar to living in low or null. Gotta keep dscan up, gotta watch local for hostiles, ect. I also find that people using neutral toons are extremely annoying. Not only do they get the advantages that having a second person there for intel, they also get the fleet boosts if they have any leadership skills, making a solo engagement, not really a solo engagement.

As I connected to the pod network, other corpmembers were chasing down a target. Cpt Boomstick in a Taranis and his alt repper in an Oneiros. He's obivously looking for a fight, so I convo him and see what he actually wants. Turns out, he wants a good fight like me. We're both pretty hesitant though, due to being at war and our lack of trust in the other. So I mention in fleet chat that Im going to go 1v1 him. I get denied and told to wait a bit. Im waiting in station bs'ing with Cpt Boomstick as he's chasing down my corpmates, and warping off when the blackbird jumps in each time. No intel sharing from me and him sharing his locations, just the rapport building to keep a 1v1 open as an option.

Eventually, he gets caught. Dropping into hull, his alt repper jumps in, gets one cycle off, and warps out. I had got on grid to see this happen and was only 23 KM away from the alt when it warped in. I had him locked and had clicked my t2 warp disruptor just as he warped off grid. Damn that lag! Switching targets to Cpt Boomstick, he warped out before I finished locking. I didnt catch how far away  or how fast he was moving from corpmates, so Im not sure how he got out of scram range. With this, his alt caught a timer, so he docked up and waited it out. While everyone else in fleet was getting situated to get the repper with a suicide gank as he undocked, I redocked and continued my conversation about a 1v1.

With Cpt Boomstick in an interceptor that likely had no tank, I asked what kind of ship he'd like to duel with. He didnt care, any ship up to bs. Offering Assault Frigs (because I was itching to try out my new vengeance fit) he claimed to need to jump over a few to get his ship. So, off he went. As he went on his way, I let the fleet know my plan of the 1v1. He was taking too long, so I asked if he had a BC nearby (also wanted to try out my new Harbinger fit). He did and we agreed to meet up in Ashab, but being so busy, we jumped over a couple to Oskashu or something.

This was a good fight for me, a costly one, but a good one. I engaed his Hurricane at planet 2, 20km out. He closed range quickly, and I saw he was using 425 AC's. Popping out our drones, his were obviously better being tech 2. Knowing I wouldnt be able to hit them, I sent my drones on the first one his. Not doing much, I turned them back to my main target. While doing this, I had switched back to my INMF crystals and forgotten to turn my lasers back on for a good 3-4 seconds. Fixing this issue, I ate through his shields pretty quick, but I was at about 80% armor. My cap booster kept using up its charges and turning off, so my inexperience with using them showed in this fight. I turned on my MWD trying to set range, and I did for a moment while it was running, but my stupid cap booster turned off again, causing me to eat through alot of my cap, down to 40%. I still was able to stay cap stable with all my modules going as long as the booster held out, but without it turning back on by itself, I had to keep paying attention to it; which diverted attention from keeping range and I fell back in under 3km. With his 425's doing mostly full damage at this point, I was getting low on armor while he was about 50-75%. Knowing this was a losing fight now, I aligned to a Celestial. Without looking to see which one I chose in the right click menu.

Well, It so happens that I chose to align to my current planet. So when my ship popped, with me spamming my warp out key, I didnt move. I figured it was my UI not responding as it does sometimes, so I had to click my celestial tab in the overview and click a new spot to warp to. Doing this made it so my opponent snatched my pod. Son of a bitch! Now its either ransom or lose my pod. So as soon as I saw that disruptor hit me, I asked if he'd ransom my pod or draw out the kill. Being that I honored our 1v1 by not having any corpmembers jump in (even though I had 3 nearby just in case he wanted to be tricky too), he chose to honor a ransom. I asked how much and he said 100 misk, of which I didnt have due to just buying a shiny new Providence earlier in the day.

Offering 50 misk instead, I got offered 90 as a final price. Well, thats a small price to pay to save one billion isk of implants, so I paid it, dropping my funds all the way down to 2 million isk. Yay for insurance, because that made it possible to pay the ransom. Whatever, good fights were had and we bs'd for a moment more before release of my pod was done and I warped to a gate and headed home.

I really enjoyed this fight more so than fighting in a frigate. The main reason is that it lasted long enough and wasnt at a frantic pace to make sure everything was done right and missing things that I wouldnt remember later. I was able to slow down and see my mistakes as I made them. I also do no like buffer tanking. Its nice to see those high resists and ehp, but it doesnt matter much if he can just slowly chip away at me faster than I can him. Ill be looking around for an active tanking harbinger soonish, and I think I will keep a neut instead of nos. I was able to drain him dry of cap and he claimed to be jumping back and forth from zero to barely enough to keep his modules running. So that made me happy, but with him using capless guns, it didnt matter much. I need to work on my module management and keep focus at the same time on keeping range.

All of my faction mods were gotten from LP, so those were a huge loss; and I build my own harbingers now, as long as I have minerals. So overall, this wasnt a huge loss for me, even though it may seem like it. Im sad I lost, but practice makes perfect. With the slower pace of the midrange ships compared to the small class of vessels, I think I will learn more by doing pvp in the bigger ships. Plus I enjoy them a tad bit more. Just in case though, Ive still got 5 vengeances ready to die.

Killmail

And remember: !!!!YOU CANNOT WARP TO A PLANET YOU ARE CURRENTLY AT, EVEN AT 500KM!!!!