Recently, I've suffered a series of losses. Although individually unremarkable, I'm fairly alert to trends in the way I fly, and I feel that these losses, as a group, are significant.
I've already posted about this fight. Toothslayer got the jump on my Vengeance in his Sabre. Although I did not try to escape, actually doing so would have been very difficult; I'm not in a fast ship. In hindsight, though, Tsubutai is correct (no surprise there); hitting him with an overheated scram and web while burning for a celestial was my best shot.
On the other hand, this fight was one that simply escalated beyond my control. You can probably guess exactly what happened just by looking at the lossmail. Again, by the time things went bad, and the battlecruisers had landed, I was too committed to escape.
This, on the other hand, was not even a fight; just a massive fleet sitting on the other side of a gate. While I can evade casual camps as well as any frigate, that much manpower means that someone is going to have an instalock, and there is too much dps to be able to burn back to the gate, especially once the webs start landing.
My most frustrating loss is this one. I jumped into a FW plex with a Kestrel in it. He began kiting me, and then a million of his friends jumped in on us. Only a few of them got on the killmail, though, because as soon as local spiked I started burning away from the warp in; most of his friends could not reach me before the fast ones killed me. Lag got my pod, too.
The common thread here is that I was too slow to evade fights I could not win. This is part of flying a Vengeance, and I'm not complaining; all ships have their pros and cons. However, I clearly need to be more cautious, as I've lost over 60 million ISK of ships this month to situations I should have simply avoided.
Part of the problem, if you can call it that, is that I'm winning pretty much every fight that is anything remotely close to "fair". I'm taking down virtually every T1 frigate, destroyer and cruiser I meet, and most T2 frigates as well. As a result, I've grown pretty easy to bait with these ships (see the FW blob), and less alert to danger generally.
I need to do something about that, and part of that process is going to involve breaking out of the slight rut I seem to be in. I'm going to move to my upgraded fit earlier than intended - the extra cost ought to keep me alert! - and I'm also going to start testing the waters with boosters.
Equally, though, I'm going to mess about with some mwd ships. This is something I've avoided, but it's going to be a critical skill for me to master for my bomber and any interceptors that I fly. To begin with, I'll throw together some Maledicton fits and take them out for a spin. I'll also give that mwd Vengeance FNG recommended a try.
So expect the occasional departure from your regular programming.
If you dont mind the slight cross train a dual prop Hookbill may be a good idea, plenty of speed to dictate range and at least with the dual prop one an mwd when things get hairy.
ReplyDeleteMajor problem I find with MWD vengeance is once you are inside scram range you are slower than you were before (AB Fit) and that tends to mean you are more committed to the fight than before, especially if you are fighting an ab frigate.
You could try the sentinal, its a moderatly fast ship, uses amar drig skills and capulator skills, and while it dosent have much dps with drones, its great for soloing because it can newt out most frigs, and some cruisers, 1-2 trackign disrupters can put a ruptures rang far to short or slow in tracking to hit you, and with a flight of ecm drones and newts it has moderate gtfo factor.
ReplyDeleteThe biggest issue with you and MWD fits is range. As I recall, you specialize in rockets, which don't have range. You'll need to train up your gunnery/standard missiles before sliding into a kiting MWD fit. If want the MWD just to be sure you can engage, then you fit it to your vengeance and try to brute force the fight, but speed tanking will be impossible.
ReplyDeleteOne of the reasons I've been flying the Taranis a lot lately is their hulls are so cheap compared to assault frigates, electronic attack frigates, and other interceptors.
ReplyDeleteOn the gate camp, and it will not work well with instant locking, if you jump through a gate with a mwd ship, wait until your ship comes out of cloak, accelerate to full speed, and go out 250km to sometimes (on large gates) 600km and book mark it, you now have an almost instant warp.
If they don't have instant locking ships, typically in a frigate hull you get to the bookmark 100% of the time without a lock on you. Cruisers 50% of the time get through.
Also, and you probably know this... but on some camps, I've found that if you wait out your cloak (and you still have up to 30 seconds after the jump cloak) into the 2nd 30 second mark and then crash / warp some of the gang will have attention deficit disorder (so to write), and not see you right away.
You continue to learn; and I appreciate your blog. I've learned a lot from your writings.
Thank you for sharing; and I hope things work out better.
One of the benefits of flying the vengeance is that they are very cheap compared to the other AF's. Last I check a vengeance was about half the price of a jag or wolf and one a one or two million more than a crusader. As far as gate camps go, I always wait out my timer in hopes that some poor sap will jump in behind me in something bigger, shinier, or easier to catch than me.
ReplyDeleteSince you specialize in rockets, I'd also like to recommend the hookbill (caldari frig 5 should take about a week). I personally prefer an AB only hookbill though. With a coreli ab and maybe a "cheap" set of LG snakes you can go 1750m/s or 2500m/s overheated. You can then go dual web and hold them at around 8k, or one web and a td for added versitility. I.e. tracking speed disrupt a wolf or enyo, range disrupt most others. Regardless you are fast enough to bail from any fight that goes south, or keep up with ab drams.
ReplyDelete