I had an experience the other day that really underscored both the strengths and the weaknesses of the Vengeance. It started with a hauler entering local in an otherwise empty system.
Being familiar with the area, I knew that there was one particular planet that PI types favoured, and so I immediately warped to that Customs Office at zero. I then began orbiting the customs office at 1000m.
Sure enough, the hauler droped out of warp about 30 seconds later, but he must have warped to 20km, because he was some distance off. Equally, I was at the furthest part of my orbit, so I had about 14km to cover before he was in overheated point range.
Overheating my mids, I burned towards him. About 1000m before I could land point, however, he managed to align and warp off. I had simply been too slow.
If I had been in a Malediction, or even a Crusader, I would have been able to point the hauler, and the kill would have been mine. As it was, I was left empty handed, with nothing to show for my troubles.
Frustrated, I jumped out of the system and immediately found myself in the middle of a very large gate camp; about 20 ships of various classes.
From bitter experience I know that a camp this size always has at least one instant-lock point ship, so warping out was a non-starter. I had to burn back to the gate and hope.
Overheating my afterburner and repair system, I started back for the gate once my session change timer was up. I was instantly pointed, and soon I was the sole target of the entire gate camp. Fortunately, my course meant that I had at least some transversal velocity relative to most of the camp, but the incoming damage was staggering.
My little Vengeance weathered the storm, though, and I jumped back into the previous system with my hull intact. I don't know that I have flown any other ship that could have survived that camp.
And that's the point. That's the tradeoff a Vengeance pilot makes. He's less of a hunter, but more of a survivor than his fellow frigate pilots.
What a fun little ship.
Nice work, was it an EVE-Uni gate camp?
ReplyDeletegood call on the gatecrash :D
ReplyDeleteI don't think it was Eve Uni. I seem to remember it being either SKRUB or TORAH. My gut says SKRUB, but the location was a little off their patch, which makes me doubt my memory.
ReplyDeleteI realize this is a bit of an old post and I hope you're still reading comments. Been catching up with your blog the last few days and enjoyed reading it a lot, kinda want to climb back into a frigate myself.
ReplyDeleteAs for the scrambling, do you have your point overheated by default? This is good practice for any pvp'er and especially so while hunting. Just one cycle of overheating won't damage anything too bad and it will give you a huge range bonus.
I'm not sure exactly when I started flying with my point preheated, but I certainly do now.
ReplyDeleteOverheating my scram is something I do automitically when I enter a system, much the same way I activate my DCU.