Vengance & Wolf v Navy Slicer et alia

The hunt:

A small gang of frigates was roaming through Hev; a Rifter and two Slicers. Only Tsubutai and I were the only Tuskers around, so we decided to trail them and see if we could divide them.

Okay, in fairness, Tsubutai wanted to divide them. I thought he was nuts, but I really wanted to see how this worked in practice.

Tsubutai was willing to bet that the Rifter was AB fit. He jumped into a MWD fit Wolf, which had fantastic resistances against the Slicer's damage type. He figured that he could lead the Slicers away from their slower companion, and then take them apart with his high dps and resistances.

While he was refitting, I followed the gang into Meutrelle, wanting only to keep an eye on them for Tsubutai. I was at a celestial, scanning them down, when the Rifter warped in on me.

He was some distance off, so I simply aligned to another celestial and told Tsubutai what was happening. I suppose I had some idea that he would be able to use me as a warp in point.

As the Rifter got closer, one of the Slicers jumped in, this time much closer - clearly he had been fed coordinates by the Rifter. I thought I could get out, but I forgot that a MWD slicer would obviously be sporting a long point. He did not need to be very close to me to stop me warping out.

Thinking it unlikely that I would be able to actually catch the Slicer, I turned towards the one opponent I could tear into, the Rifter. Pointing him and overheating everything, I went to work.

Tsubutai jumped in and began engaging one of the Slicers. Unfortunately, the gang maintained discipline and kept the focus on me. My tank failed just as the Rifter entered into structure.

2011.07.28 18:13:00

Victim: Taurean Eltanin
Corp: The Tuskers
Alliance: Unknown
Faction: Unknown
Destroyed: Vengeance
System: Costolle
Security: 0.2
Damage Taken: 3576

Involved parties:

Name: Atropeyando
Security: -10.0
Corp: Lucifer's Hammer
Alliance: Burn Away
Faction: NONE
Ship: Imperial Navy Slicer
Weapon: Imperial Navy Slicer
Damage Done: 1637

Name: Angor Mau (laid the final blow)
Security: -10.0
Corp: Lucifer's Hammer
Alliance: Burn Away
Faction: NONE
Ship: Rifter
Weapon: 150mm Light AutoCannon II
Damage Done: 972

Name: Dism0
Security: -9.7
Corp: Lucifer's Hammer
Alliance: Burn Away
Faction: NONE
Ship: Imperial Navy Slicer
Weapon: Imperial Navy Slicer
Damage Done: 967

Destroyed items:

Foxfire Rage Rocket, Qty: 23
Rocket Launcher II
X5 Prototype I Engine Enervator
Caldari Navy Foxfire Rocket, Qty: 600 (Cargo)
Small Anti-Thermic Pump I
Caldari Navy Phalanx Rocket, Qty: 600 (Cargo)
Phalanx Rage Rocket, Qty: 800 (Cargo)
Adaptive Nano Plating II
Small Capacitor Control Circuit I
Small Armor Repairer II

Dropped items:

Foxfire Rage Rocket, Qty: 69
Damage Control II
Rocket Launcher II, Qty: 3
Caldari Navy Thorn Rocket, Qty: 600 (Cargo)
Foxfire Javelin Rocket, Qty: 600 (Cargo)
J5b Phased Prototype Warp Scrambler I
Foxfire Rage Rocket, Qty: 600 (Cargo)
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
Gremlin Rage Rocket, Qty: 704 (Cargo)
Thorn Rage Rocket, Qty: 800 (Cargo)
Caldari Navy Gremlin Rocket, Qty: 600 (Cargo)
1MN Afterburner II

With my point dropped, the Rifter warped out, and the Slicers simply used their superiour speed to leave the Wolf behind.


Afterthoughts:

This fight was absolutely full of fail, and I'm pretty ashamed of my performance. We should have won this fight easily.

First, I got caught when I should not have. There was no reason for me to be at a celestial rather than a hunting safe, and there was no reason for me not to warp out as soon as the Rifter landed. While this mistake was not critical (we still should have pulled an easy win), it's starts my chain of fail.

Next, I did not call the Rifter as primary on vent. I've seen fights lost before where the team divided their fire, and this time I let it happen to us. As the first into the fight, the informal Tusker rules of engagement made me FC. I should have told Tsubutai that I was targeting the Rifter, and he would have gone down fast under our combined fire.

This, in turn, would have freed up my web and scram to possibly force one of the Slicers to stay in the fight.

Finally, my tank failed because it was not turned on. I had hit the hot key, but, as sometimes happens, Eve had dropped the command somewhere along the way. If I had been paying more attention to my modules, rather than the Rifter and my overview, I would have noticed the inactive repper much earlier than I did (about 20% armor). I could have tanked all three of them for a long time with the repair system on - possibly longer than the Slicer's cap would allow. Certainly long enough for Tsubutai and I to kill our individual targets, even without focus fire.

As I say, total fail on my part. I have months of solo training behind me, and I feel I do pretty well in those circumstances. Gang warefare has a whole additional skill set that I really need to get nailed down, though.