Vengeance vs Retribution, et ali

I had just finished a mission, and someone was looking for a 1v1. I asked what class, and he replied that hes flying a Sacrilage. T2 cruisers are a bit out of the range I was looking to fight right now, so I said nevermind. He asked what I was flying and I informed him Vengeance and offered to fight him if he dropped down to a frigate class vessel. To which he did, but it was 7 jumps away, so I had to wait. Well, wait I did!

This pilot, Yungjeff14, is in a player corp. I am in Viziam, an NPC corp. My thought process on this is that if he drops a can that I steal from, his corp can join in. If he steals my can, no one from Viziam can join in. Second thought is that this is highsec, so he may have a booster alt. To make it fair and to make sure he doesnt, fleet up. I learned the fleet up process while in lowsec, where Concorde doesnt rape your face if you attack another pilot, like in high sec where they do. This lead to me dropping a can, fleeting up with this pilot while he took the can. Well, that didnt work, he didnt go red. Oh...Fleet members can take from your can. Ok, unfleet, he dropped can, I took. Wait, shit! The whole point of this was so he took the can!

Well, he soon opened fire, going red to me. I returned fire, double webbing and scramming him. Prior to the engagemet, I warped in at 100km to planet 8 where he chose the locale, he closed in very quickly,at higher than 2km/s; showing me his one midslot was MWD. Also, he knew what ship I was using, but he hadnt known that I was using lasers. Working to my advantage *finally*, this pilot had set his resists up for rocket type damages. My lasers ripped through his shields and chewed quickly through his armor into structure. At this point, I turned off my guns and offered him a ransom, jokingly. Also, sometime during him getting into armor, he hit my armor as well, to which I turned on my repper. I am cap stable with all modules going, and he didnt have a neut or nos, so I was in no way in trouble. I turned off my repper to make him feel like he was not fighting some godlike tank.

This move had worked out ok, until I stopped attacking and asked what his ship was worth to him. I heard the armor alarms going off which snapped me out of my focus, and back into the defensive. Overheating my repper, as well as my guns, I got him deep into structure. My armor shot back up into the safe zone. Then, a second red line appeared on my overview. Well, this is what I didnt want to happen. My opponent was less than 10% structure, and a legion had just shown up as backup. I stopped orbit immediately, aligning to a celestial. I waited for a split second longer before I hit warp, because I know the lock time on a Legion onto my Vengeance is roughly 4.4 seconds with my fit and skills. (go my EFT warrior skills!) Getting out of there, hoping my lasers would finish off the dishonorable opponent as I left.

Sadly, the losers ship did not blow up. What happened afterwards was unexpected for me and I feel lucky to have survived. They chased me. At least 3 of their corpmembers were chasing me. Id jump to planets at 100km, sit for a minute to ridicule them in local for claiming to honor a 1v1, which they did not. Me taunting them for chasing after and unable to catch me probally didnt help much except to piss them off. I dont care though, they stole a killmail that I had finally won.

This is a fight I won; in both combat and afterwards in evading the reinforcements. I didnt have any safes in this system; being my home mission system and in an npc corp, I never felt the need to make any. I did everything in this fight correct except for turning off my repper, especially since Im cap stable and didnt need to do so. The opponent is similar age as me, having been born one month before me as well, so skill wise, we were pretty even. I feel cheated though, as my slump finally comes to an end and I dont get the credit for it.

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!

Flying Bricks and Other Things

Yay, Ive finally acquired enough funds to get two Vengeances with a nifty fit. I also have enough left over to fit a few punishers if I need to fall back on those. I chose to finally leave H.UNG. Several reasons why can be attributed to this choice. Things like my gameplay style basically going pure pvp now. I dont want to mine unless I really need to. Making my own riggings, ships and modules is pretty handy, so mining wont be eliminated from my gameplay entirely, just hopefully reduced.

Also, with the fall of the NC, WIDOT alliance is becoming a corp part of the GSF. Nothing against Goonswarm on my end. H.UNG's home is now somewhere out in Fade; with me in Molden Heath, I dont want to move out to nullsec again just yet. And finally, I never visited the H.UNG forums, rarely read the corp emails (due to it being mostly conversations that could have been private) and I just was not part of H.UNG. Fleet ops were often for mining and some pvp once in awhile, but I was almost never available for them, so thats an issue on my part, not theirs. Overall though, I really enjoyed being around the people of Wildly Inappropriate and Hysterically Unforgiving. Almost all of them answered questions when I asked and when completely lost, nudged in the right direction to find the info for myself. Great group of people that I learned a bit from.

Now, on the to the exciting stuff! I fought a Dramiel. I get really bored of looking for people to fight, scanning them down and such after 3 or 4 hours of roaming unsuccessfully. So I tend to ask in local if anyone wants to fight. So far, its worked out better than roaming. However, one thing that bothers me with doing this is that the opponent knows what ship Im flying and basically that Im armor tanked. They know how to prepare for how to beat me. With surprising an opponent, they dont and cant counter on the fly. So I am going to attempt in the future to be more persistant in my roaming and figure out some ways to lure people to me that I want to fight.

So with my Dramiel fight, I had shouted in local. Got an offer for a 1v1 and accepted. We fleeted up and met at a safe. After looking at this opponents history, I knew he would have a great advantage over me with skill points, being an early 2007 character. Also, being a Dramiel, I already had the attitude that Id lose against a ship like that. Fitting my best stuff in hopes of pulling something out of a hat, we began our duel.

When I warped in, I warped to zero to attempt to set range throughout the fight. Scramming and webbing immediately, I turned on my guns and nos. The Dramiel quickly chewed through my shields as expected. He hit my armor, I started my repper. My Navy crystals werent doing much to him, so I set my range to about 2k instead of the 1300. I hoped a wider arc would help. It did, but not enough to help me. So I aligned, preparing to lose my first Vengeance. Then, I popped my secret weapon that no opponent thus far has expected on my fit: ECM.

It scrambled the Dramiel's targeting on the first cycle, turning off his guns AND warp scram on me. It took me a second to notice, as my armor came back from structure, but once I did, I was quickly hitting the warp to shortcut key. Yeah, about this new UI..... If the overview isnt the focus, then shortcut keys like warp to and align to DO NOT WORK. Fun little bug, yes? Well, in the heat of combat, it wasnt. Luckily, I had clicked a stargate and with it as my select action window focus, hit the button to warp out. Also luckily, the Dramiel pilot was like "wtf, how did you get away?" in fleet chat.

Apparently, ECM is an unconvential setup and even an experienced pilot can get thrown off track. I was in structure, and Im sure he thought he was lagging when his guns stopped shooting and his target was cleared. So, ECM is a great tool, at the loss of an AB, I didnt mind.

My rifter fight was against a similar aged opponent, but he had just got back from a small gang killing a drake, so I offered to only fight to structure as he was fit for webbing and logistical stuff I spose. Anyhow, I only went ahead to fight this guy because I wanted to see if I could tank a rifters dps, and I was definately able to tank this Rifters, even though he wasnt setup for it. I popped him to structure and turned off my lasers. With lasers off, nos, web, scram, dc, and repper going, I was somewhat cap stable around 40-50%. I dont have the missile skills to take advantage of the weapon bonus of a Vengeance, but the cap stability made me feel good about my fit and will only improve as I increase my support skills.

So I quickly learned today that support skills are a massive help. The Dramiel pilot said afterwards he had maxed all gunnery skills, explaining how he deftly defeated my armor. In this fight though, I was able to control and set the range, very good for the gatling lasers, as I did not go over my optimal and into falloff range. My rifter fight was more of a confidence boosting fight after getting handidly defeated by the Dramiel, with nothing to learn here except that I need to invest some time towards increasing cap stability skills.

Great past couple days in my opinion.