Wednesday, September 10, 2014

I always liked the Firetail

I quite like the Firetail. I’m sure I ALWAYS liked it. Who wouldn’t like the speed, selectable damage type and all those mid slots? Only a fool!

I have been getting a bit uppity lately and chasing entirely unsuitable targets. Today’s Unsuitable Target #1 was a Thorax. When I landed in a Medium and saw him at 30 km I thought he would be rail fit and already pressing F1 to pop me. Instead, he warped out before I could get into scram range. I followed him to the gate. He loitered indecisively. A good sign.

I locked him, aligned back to a plex and aggressed before warping to shed gate guns. By the time I got back to the gate he had jumped through. Disappointing. But I followed him through when my timer expired and quickly scanned him down at a cluster of gates. I guessed which one was most likely and gave chase. I guessed right!

I shadowed him for five jumps, hoping to see him at a plex until I finally caught up to him on a gate. He loitered again. This time I gave him a bit of time to aggress me. He targeted me and launched his drones but did not aggress so I eventually did the gate gun warp again. He jumped. By the time I could hop through I had pretty much given up.

Frustrating!

But there he was, 30 km off the gate. He instantly locked me when I decloaked. I locked back and approached at an angle with afterburner. He aggressed! I moved into orbit before he could blap me and immediately set to work on his drones. I orbited at 5 km to keep my speed up and webbed the little buggers before swatting them with my guns. I kept getting mixed up with my webs, accidentally turning off the one on the Thorax.

After I had worked through a few of them he de-aggressed and starting moving back toward the gate. Uh oh. I blasted through his shield with EMP and switched to Fusion for the armor. Things were going quickly now, although the gate was getting closer. Hull! Half hull! And then he jumped out. I had forgotten to keep him webbed to delay re-approach!

Bugger.

I again waited for the infernal weapons timer, hoping against hope that he would be foolish enough to hang around. When I hopped through I immediately saw his pod on dscan, located with an Incursus. He typed in local, "Zappity, this ****** stole your kill!"

"Noooo!!!", I yelled. I was not happy. But then I got a chuckle when he typed, "Kill him for me, will you?"

So I did and then sent him the mail. Incursus: http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/killmail.php?id=23477449

Here is the Thorax kill even though it is screwed up: http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/killmail.php?id=23477438

I was annoyed to lose the mail but interested to see the fit. He was rail fit after all! He missed his best opportunities, probably through lack of confidence.

Video of the first bit: http://youtu.be/Ysmpg5jY-ik

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