Vengeance v Stabber

The hunt:

I was roaming through some of the dead end systems of Molden Heath when I spotted a Dramiel and a Stabber on D-scan. While I might have tried to hunt down the Stabber, I was not comfortable doing so with a Dram in system, and I turned back to resume my roam.

Just before I jumped out of the system, however, I received a convo from the Dram. It turns out that the Dram was from Gunpoint Diplomacy, whereas the Stabber was a 9POOL ship. Gunpoint and the Hatchery are at war, so the Dram was keen to pin down the Stabber, but so far had not had any success in doing so.

The Dram suggested that we fleet up, and I act as bait. If the Stabber tried to jump me, the Dram would warp in. I accepted his offer, but only after an explicit agreement that we were not going to fire on each other (you know what happens when you assume...).

My new fleet-mate reccomended warping to a plex entrance. It would make my presence in the system look natural, and he also believed that the Stabber was trying to ambush frigs attempting the plex.

I took his advice, and, sure enough, moments after I landed the Stabber arrived.

I had expected the Stabber to land at zero and try and break my tank ASAP; after all, the only thing I needed to do in order to escape was activate the accelleration gate. Instead, though, he landed at 20km, and proceeded to kite me.

While I could not come close to matching his speed, I knew that running a mwd was cap intensive and Minmatar ships are not known for their strong cap. So I trundled towards the Stabber, trying to run him to ground.

My main concern was the damage I would take in the process - I had zero transversal - but this turned out to be a non-issue. Whatever sacrifices the Stabber had needed to make to nano his ship, dps seemed to be one of them; he had difficulty breaking my passive shield regen, let alone my armor repper. If I had to guess, I'd say that the Minmatar long range ammo has a significant explosive component.

Being from different corps, the Dram and I were not on Vent together, so our comms were limited. I confirmed that the Stabber had jumped in and pointed me, and that I was being kited (so could not land point). I did not have time to explain my strategy - running him to ground - before the Dram landed.

Unfortunately, the Dram was afterburner fit, so although it may have been capable of catching the Stabber, it could not do so before it simply warped away.

Our trap sprung to no avail, we went our separate ways.


Afterthoughts:

To my surprise, I was in absolutely no danger throughout this fight; there was simply no way the Stabber could break my tank. I would have liked to see how long he could keep running away, though.

Of course, there was nothing to stop him simply warping out when he got low on cap, so I would probably have left my repper turned off to let him think that I was buffer fit and that he was winning.

On the other hand, this fight was a timely reminder of the dangers of being kited. I have been working on my missile skills, but a short break to bring some of my nav skills up may not be a bad idea. With perfect skills I can squeeze another 100m/s out of the Vengeance, which is about an extra 15%.