Vengeance v Jaguar

 

The hunt:

So there's this guy that recently moved to Hevrice. He's not a Tusker, but he still feels that setting up in our station is a good idea. Solo. He's probably crazy, but it's the kind of crazy I respect - you simply have to admire the audacity.

I don't know exactly what his deal is, but he certainly does not shy away from the good fights, which is probably part of why he moved to Hev. I had just undocked when I saw his Jaguar on D-scan at the sun; someone was spoiling for a fight, so I warped to zero.

I landed outside of scram range, but he was happy to close the distance for me, and we hurtled towards each other. Activating my launchers and mids, I set my orbit as close as possible. I had no illusions about getting under his guns, but the Jag's speed meant that he could disengage at will, and the closer he started in the fight, the further he had to run.

However, I changed my mind once he started trying to neut me. Instead, I tried to move to a wider orbit so that I was outside the neut's optimal. He used his control of the range to keep me close, though, and he was able to keep neuting.

Now, I vacillate back and forth about putting a capacitor control circuit or a damage rig on my Vengeance. Here, though, the control circuit was golden. While I could not perma-run my repair system, it did allow me to keep up periodic rep cycles, which kept me in the fight. Of course, juggling all my modules still required every ounce of concentration.

I overheated my repair system; if I was only going to get a few reps, I wanted them to repair for as much as possible. Then I overheated my launchers; this looked like it was going to be a straight up race.

My philosophy of frigate fighting is sustainability; I want my ship to be able to keep doing what it's doing indefinitely if I have to. I'm not that great of a pilot, and my reaction time leaves a lot to be desired, but if I can just grind the other guy down or run him out of resources I can still win. This is why I rarely overheat at the beginning of a fight (point excepted, for obvious reasons), and why I don't run on cap boosters and the like.

The Jaguar, however, like most Minmatar pilots, was operating on a "fast & furious" model, which has it's advantages to be sure; there's a reason why nearly everyone flies their frigates that way. However, if you can weather the initial storm, the performance of these ships tends to fall off over time. And so it was here.

In addition to burning out his midslots, he also ran out of cap in his efforts to neut me. This handed me complete control over the range of the fight, and also eliminated his means of escape. Moving into his falloff and beyond the range of his neut, I repaired to full and pounded his ship to dust.

2011.08.24 17:13:00

Victim: toothslayer
Corp: Guild of Assassins
Alliance: NONE
Faction: NONE
Destroyed: Jaguar
System: Hevrice
Security: 0.4
Damage Taken: 4492

Involved parties:

Name: Taurean Eltanin (laid the final blow)
Security: -10.0
Corp: The Tuskers
Alliance: NONE
Faction: NONE
Ship: Vengeance
Weapon: Thorn Rage Rocket
Damage Done: 4492

Destroyed items:

Gyrostabilizer II
Small Core Defence Field Extender I
Tracking Enhancer II
X5 Prototype I Engine Enervator
Small Anti-Explosive Screen Reinforcer I
Medium Shield Extender II
5W Infectious Power System Malfunction
150mm Light AutoCannon II
J5b Phased Prototype Warp Scrambler I
1MN Afterburner II
Republic Fleet Phased Plasma S, Qty: 106
Republic Fleet Phased Plasma S, Qty: 1020 (Cargo)
Republic Fleet Fusion S, Qty: 1000 (Cargo)

Dropped items:

Damage Control II
150mm Light AutoCannon II, Qty: 2
Republic Fleet Phased Plasma S, Qty: 212
Republic Fleet EMP S, Qty: 1500 (Cargo)

Afterthoughts:

Although the fight ended on a rather anticlimactic note - I had taken complete control of the fight - it was actually a fairly close call. Only my absurd cap regen and my module management let me outlast his overheat phase. Even then, it was a fairly close call, and there were "gfs" in local on both sides of the fight.

I also thought that we were fairly evenly matched, which probably means that he has his AFs maxed out. I look forward to our next encounter.