Feeling Rusty (part 2)

The hunt:

Returning to the Hev station after my Malediction loss, I reshipped to my trusty Vengeance. I double checked the loadout and the cargo hold, and slipped back into space.

At first I had trouble finding the Bellicose and I feared that I would be denied the opportunity for a rematch. However, he reappeared after a short while; perhaps he was just replenishing his drone supply.

I warped back in on him at another belt, and the fight was on at once.

I knew he had neuts, but I didn't really care; the Vengeance is not a dancer, it's a brawler. Orbiting at 500m seemed good. Predictably, I'm neuted at once, which strangely gave me a degree of confidence; the Bellicose did not really understand how this fight was going to work.

My cap regen is just silly, so I had no problem activating any of my non-repair system mods. Using my web, I turned my attention to the drones and destroyed them with the Caldari Navy Foxfire I had preloaded. The second wave of drones received the same treatment.

At this point, we both moved into the second phase of the fight. I reloaded to Gremlin Rage to break his shield tank, and he had eaten through my shields and was hitting my armor. This meant I now had to try squeezing repair cycles out between his neut cycles, and because I'm using a Coreli repair system (as opposed to the more cap hungry, but powerful, Centi repair system) I was able to do so.

I started pummeling him with overheated launchers, but switched off the overheat once my launchers hit 50%; this was going to be an endurance fight and I could not afford to burn anything out. I also noticed that I had missed one of his drones, presumably because my targeting system had been full when I initially engaged them. I could not effectively engage it with Rage rockets, so I'd have to just let it be. The damage was low, but every little bit helped him.

The next few minutes seemed like hours; they were very, very tense. My entire focus was on keeping my modules online and maximising my my rep cycles. I didn't even notice Kaal pull up in his Harbinger and ask if I wanted help. After not receiving a response, Kaal simply parked himself next to the fight to watch.

We both entered structure together, but he had far more structure than I did. Still, my rep cycles were putting me back up into armor each time, so it was simply a matter of timing. Would his shot catch me right at the bottom of a rep cycle, or would I grind him down?

As it turns out, luck was on his side and a "solid hit" at just the wrong time turned my hull to scrap.

2011.11.06 08:39:00

Victim: Taurean Eltanin
Corp: The Tuskers
Alliance: None
Faction: None
Destroyed: Vengeance
System: Hevrice
Security: 0.4
Damage Taken: 4263

Involved parties:

Name: Siva Surya Kshatriya (laid the final blow)
Security: -3.2
Corp: Buccaneers of New Eden
Alliance: The Forsaken.
Faction: None
Ship: Bellicose
Weapon: 220mm Vulcan AutoCannon II
Damage Done: 3616

Name: Serpentis Trooper / Serpentis Corporation
Damage Done: 647

Destroyed items:

Gremlin Rage Rocket, Qty: 7
Damage Control II
Rocket Launcher II, Qty: 2
X5 Prototype I Engine Enervator
Small Anti-Thermic Pump I
Warp Scrambler II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
Small Bay Loading Accelerator II
Standard Exile Booster (Cargo)
Phalanx Rage Rocket, Qty: 564 (Cargo)
Foxfire Javelin Rocket, Qty: 600 (Cargo)
Caldari Navy Foxfire Rocket, Qty: 364 (Cargo)
Gremlin Rage Rocket, Qty: 420 (Cargo)
Thorn Rage Rocket, Qty: 600 (Cargo)
Foxfire Rage Rocket, Qty: 440 (Cargo)

Dropped items:

Gremlin Rage Rocket, Qty: 21
Rocket Launcher II, Qty: 2
Coreli C-Type Small Armor Repairer
Adaptive Nano Plating II
1MN Afterburner II
Caldari Navy Thorn Rocket, Qty: 600 (Cargo)
Caldari Navy Phalanx Rocket, Qty: 600 (Cargo)

Kaal then immediately blew away my opponent (thanks, Kaal!).

2011.11.06 08:39:00

Victim: Siva Surya Kshatriya
Corp: Buccaneers of New Eden
Alliance: The Forsaken.
Faction: None
Destroyed: Bellicose
System: Hevrice
Security: 0.4
Damage Taken: 10332

Involved parties:

Name: Kaal Redrum (laid the final blow)
Security: -9.8
Corp: The Tuskers
Alliance: None
Faction: None
Ship: Harbinger
Weapon: Heavy Pulse Laser II
Damage Done: 482
Name: Taurean Eltanin
Security: -10.0
Corp: The Tuskers
Alliance: None
Faction: None
Ship: Vengeance
Weapon: Gremlin Rage Rocket
Damage Done: 9850

Destroyed items:

220mm Vulcan AutoCannon II, Qty: 2
Medium Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer I
Medium Core Defence Field Extender I, Qty: 2
5W Infectious Power System Malfunction
Large Shield Extender II
Tracking Enhancer II
Republic Fleet Fusion M, Qty: 66
Republic Fleet EMP M, Qty: 745 (Cargo)
Gremlin Rage Rocket, Qty: 450 (Cargo)
Caldari Navy Phalanx Rocket, Qty: 450 (Cargo)
Rocket Launcher II, Qty: 2 (Cargo)
Thorn Rage Rocket, Qty: 450 (Cargo)
Caldari Navy Thorn Rocket, Qty: 450 (Cargo)

Dropped items:

Warp Scrambler II
220mm Vulcan AutoCannon II
Damage Control II
X5 Prototype I Engine Enervator, Qty: 2
Medium 'Gremlin' Power Core Disruptor I
Gyrostabilizer II
Republic Fleet Fusion M, Qty: 132
Barrage M, Qty: 958 (Cargo)
Caldari Navy Foxfire Rocket, Qty: 414 (Cargo)
X5 Prototype I Engine Enervator (Cargo)
Small Armor Repairer II (Cargo)
Rocket Launcher II (Cargo)
Republic Fleet Fusion M, Qty: 487 (Cargo)
200mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates I (Cargo)
Damage Control II (Cargo)



Afterthoughts:

As we both warped our pods away (and Kaal scooped my loot and started salvaging - thanks, Kaal!), we wished each other enthusiastic "gfs

However, I'm pretty disappointed in my performance; this fight could have easily been won outright if I had screwed up less.

1) Although I knew the Bellicose was shield tanked, I preloaded Caldari Foxfire, not Caldari Gremlin. Yes, that was mostly to shoot at the drones, but there was some shooting at the Bellicose between waves. I only needed another 500ish damage to win, so squeezing a little more dps out of that initial exchange could have won it for me.

2) I should have checked my overview rather than relying on my autotargeting system to determine if all the drone had been cleared. One drone, over several minutes, almost certainly made the difference between a win and a loss here. I'm satisfied that, after having screwed up, I did not compound my error by then trying to clear that last drone, but it should simply never have happened.

3) I did not reactivate the overheat on my launchers at the end of the fight. Killing the overheat early was fine, but I should have turned it back on when we entered into structure. Again, this would have probably made the 500 damage difference that I needed to win.

4) I did not overheat my repair system or pop my Exile pill. This was REALLY dumb. I had it in my head that this would increase my cap usage, which I could not afford. It's true that overheating my repair system would have caused it to cycle faster (which means it uses cap faster), but it makes no difference to the individual cap cost per cycle. Instead, I would have repaired an extra 20% or so, which would have turned this into an easy win. Popping the Exile would have done the same thing, with no cap consequences at all.

So, without trying to diminish or excuse my opponent's win, I really snatched defeat from the jaws of victory here. I've simply spent too much time away from the game (unavoidable) and too much time (when I am playing) freeloading in fleets. That's not strictly fair, I suppose, but fleet work does focus on a very different skill set, so I have allowed my solo skills to atrophy.

I need to do something about that. I think I'll probably spend the next month or so avoiding fleets if I can (except perhaps black ops) and focusing on those long distance solo roams I used to do so often. I'll probably die lots, and lose a ton of ISK, but if I can get back on top of my game it will be worth it.

For anyone that wants to fight a Vengeance, however, I'll point out my opponent's initial mistake, which was turning on the neuts too soon. As you can see from my bat-rep, a Vengeance can easily run everything except the repair system under neuts; the cap regen is simply that good, even without rigs.

That meant that Siva's own cap was suffering, which had consequences later in the fight, as there were a couple of periods where he must have turned off his neuts to avoid capping out. If he had not burned cap when it didn't matter, he could have kept the pressure up. Instead, he should have waited until I actually started using the armor repair system before starting the neuts.

As an aside, it seems that Lady Luck loves a fool, as Kaal was able to recover my deadspace repair system and salvage an intact armor plate. With the other loot taken into account, I'm probably actually ahead, financially.