Saturday, July 26, 2014

Thorax of Doom!

I thought I might have more luck finding a solo cruiser outside FW regions so I jumped into a wormhole which took me to a lowsec region in the Forge. It was disappointingly empty.

I meandered my way along a lowsec chain and before long found myself at the top of the Amarr/Minmatar zone. I set a long route back to Ishomilken and started on my way, watching for potential victims in every system.

Before long I spotted a Merlin and Maller. They were clearly together but not one to be deterred by anything sensible I thought I'd have a go anyway. I was concerned about getting double webbed and not being able to reach either of them with my Electron blasters. But you can't worry about every little thing! Actually, my cunning plan was to web the Merlin back and hopefully have my Valkyries chew him down:

[Thorax, Dual rep brawler v2]

Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
Medium Ancillary Armor Repairer, Nanite Repair Paste
Damage Control II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
Medium Armor Repairer II

Stasis Webifier II
Warp Scrambler II
10MN Afterburner II
Medium Electrochemical Capacitor Booster I, Cap Booster 800

Heavy Electron Blaster II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge M
Heavy Electron Blaster II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge M
Heavy Electron Blaster II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge M
Heavy Electron Blaster II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge M
Heavy Electron Blaster II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge M

Medium Hybrid Burst Aerator I
Medium Auxiliary Nano Pump I
Medium Nanobot Accelerator I


Valkyrie II x5

As it happened, I was worrying needlessly. I followed the Maller from a gate to the Sun but actually landed on the Merlin! The Maller must have chosen a nearby celestial and I just happened to stumble onto the frigate. Maybe they were luring me to the sun and the Mallee mis-clicked. I slapped a web on the Merlin and before he knew what was going on he was toast:


I had just opened the wreck up when the Maller landed next to me. So I closed the wreck and went for him, keeping a close eye on local for any reinforcements.

I messed around a bit during this fight, interested to see how effective the close range orbit was against his guns - you can see it in the video. Sure enough, I hardly took any damage while in orbit but started getting hammered when I switched to Keep at Range, although it wasn't enough to break through my reps.

He made a mistake in not targeting my drones - a weakness of the Thorax is a small drone bay - but I didn't tell him that. I just waited patiently for his armour to drop.


Ha! He commented afterwards that he had indeed landed too late, and that their plan WAS to control range with webs on both ships. Very sneaky, these lowsec types. But I foiled them!

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