Friday, January 1, 2016

Zappity's Adventures: Svipuls everywhere and subsequent thoughts

We had just finished fighting Pandemic Horde, including a nice Thanatos kill (https://zkillboard.com/kill/51012980/) and I was on my way home, pondering the state of fleet engagements. I definitely understand CCP’s desire to change things so that individual pilots are more involved. It is just boring being a line member in a fleet fight. Orbit the FC, target the red guy, press F1 and (occasionally) activate your prop mod. Pfft - hardly challenging. Removing anchoring, Keep at Range and Orbit for people in your fleet would probably help. It would spread the action and responsibility around. Or perhaps an offensive module which could disrupt other players’ orbits would be fun!

Anyway, on the way home I noticed a pair from Providence in a Svipul and Thorax, both loitering malignantly on the gate of our staging system. I swapped my Cerberus (hatefully useless solo ship) for a Svipul of my own and quickly returned.

They disappeared through the gate as I was landing but were still on the gate when I appeared in the next system. What I should have done at this point was look at the Svipul to see what guns he had fitted. But I didn't. Instead, I aligned away from them towards a safe and burned away with a couple of heated MWD cycles. The Provi Svipul rapidly pulled ahead of the Thorax. One of them (I assumed the Thorax) landed a long point which I ignored. At about 60 km from the gate the Svipul stopped and began heading back to the gate. I had overdone it. He wasn't following.

I slowly angled back towards the gate and yellow-boxed them both. That did the trick. The Svipul burned straight towards me again, intent on a juicy kill and emboldened by the presence of his cruiser buddy. When he was about 40 km away I approached with an overheated MWD. He was rapidly within scram range and I found out that it was the Svipul with the long point! He was artillery fit and therefore soon died to my magnificent autocannons once scrammed:

Svipul: https://zkillboard.com/kill/51013444/

He warped his pod away while I gave a gf in local. I assumed that the action was all over but the Thorax did not warp away. Instead, he continued burning towards me.

I quickly closed range and tackled him, too. His drones were biting into my tank but by the time I had swapped to the ‘hostile drones’ overview and started locking them up he was already into armour. He died shortly afterwards, along with his empty pod.

Thorax: https://zkillboard.com/kill/51013464/

Pod: https://zkillboard.com/kill/51013479/

I gave another gf and told them that I liked Provi. They give good fights in my experience.

I posted my l33t kills in alliance chat. A corpie responded, asking how I managed to kill the Thorax when it had two webs. I answered truthfully, stating that the main reason was that I didn't know it had two webs fitted before I tackled him. Not to mention the fact that his tank was practically non-existent.

I keep seeing Svipuls everywhere. They are a plague upon the galaxy and the time has come to do something about them. I declare them to be the new enemy and the focus of my wrath. I am determined to find a good yet engageable counter and carve a swathe of Svipulish destruction across the cluster! 

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