Hoping to build on my earlier success in scanning down mission runners, I roamed from mission hub to mission hub, knowing that a scanning ship was never more than a jump or two away.
Using this technique I was able to scan down a Kestrel, and I jumped into the fight as soon as I was back in my Punisher. This was my first fight against a shield tanked frigate, and I was interested to see how it differed from fighting against an armor tank.
I was surprised to find that I was able to control the range. With no plates to slow them down, I assumed that sheild tankers would rig for speed. This was apparently not the case here, though, and I settled into a wide orbit; the extra speed would help keep his missile damage down.
His tank was impressive, and I said as much to him during the fight. I knew this would be, in part, because the local rats also do EM damage, so the Kestrel would have been a fool not to plug his EM vulnerability. For a while it seemed that I might not be able to break his tank, but as he was having equal difficulty against my armor, I stayed where I was and waited to see what the result of this apparent stalemate would be.
Then, all at once, his shield started collapsing. It was so fast that I realised the Kestrel must have been active tanked, and without a nos (and the Punisher's impressive capacitor reserves) he simply lost the cap war. Moments later, the Kestrel disintegrated.
2011.04.26 18:03:00
Victim: Brent Layton
Corp: Active Fusion
Alliance: Cold Fusion.
Faction: Unknown
Destroyed: Kestrel
System: Avair
Security: 0.4
Damage Taken: 4020
Involved parties:
Name: Taurean Eltanin (laid the final blow)
Security: -0.9
Corp: Strategic Conflicts Incorporated
Alliance: NONE
Faction: NONE
Ship: Punisher
Weapon: Gatling Pulse Laser II
Damage Done: 2258
Name: Paradise Cruise Missile / True Power
Damage Done: 1762
Destroyed items:
Small Polycarbon Engine Housing I, Qty: 3
Viscoelastic EM Ward Salubrity I
Small F-S9 Regolith Shield Induction
Sabretooth Light Missile, Qty: 19
Piranha Light Missile, Qty: 500 (Cargo)
Small C5-L Emergency Shield Overload I
Sabretooth Light Missile, Qty: 476 (Cargo)
Warp Core Stabilizer I
Dropped items:
Upgraded 'Limos' Standard Missile Bay I, Qty: 4
Beta Reactor Control: Reaction Control I
Bloodclaw Light Missile, Qty: 500 (Cargo)
Languid Phase Inversion ECM I (Cargo)
Sabretooth Light Missile, Qty: 57
Post battle review:
Another really satisfying battle against an opponent with teeth. I've been very lucky recently, as I have not found it necessary to subsist on shuttles and haulers in quite some time. We each gave each other a "gf" in local, which is unusual for a carebear. He was a good sport and I wish him well.
I'm pleased that I was able to adapt easily from fighting turrets (try to get into falloff or under their tracking, depending on the turret) to fighting missiles (maximise your speed). It's not a weapon system I have much practice fighting. Of course, the strong optimals on lasers make that fairly easy.
Lessons for the future:
Heavy use of scanning ships has opened up a whole new set of targets for me. While, as I mention in my previous post, it is no guarantee of a fight, it has certainly helped recently.
It's also worth noticing that I won that fight because my cap was better than his. In my focus on gunnery and tanking, my capacitor skills are not what they could be. I should probably work on that.
Interesting fight, and the results are about what I expected out of a Kessie fighting an Amarr ship - strongest damage vs. weakest resists doesn't tend to work out well. Nice kill!
ReplyDeleteWhether a shield pilot rigs for speed, buffer or something else depends on personal preference. I normally have at least one shield rig on my shield-tanked ships, because they're either Caldari ships that have bonuses to resists (the shield counterpart to Amarr tanks) or Minmatar ships that are already fairly fast, but fragile enough to need the extra tank. The shield nano Hurricane is a pretty typical example of that, but it often applies for any shield-tanked, non-Caldari ship (see Sulei's shield Harbinger for an example).
It's also worth remembering that shield rigs increase your signature radius, so on shield-tanked smaller ships the extra damage from the higher sig radius might actually outweigh the extra tank. (I use one shield and one gunnery rig on my Jaguar fit.)
Re: capacitor, if you want the option of training a skill that'll help while still being a proper "gunnery" skill, check into Controlled Bursts. The skill gives a 5% reduction to turret capacitor use per level - often ignored by Minmatar pilots since their guns don't use cap anyway, but for primarily Amarr or Gallente pilots (or the odd hybrid-favouring Caldari), it's an incredibly useful thing to have. It's also a fairly short train, with level 5 taking roughly a week.