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Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Rapier kills are sooooooo sweet

After the previously engaged small gang disperses, I end up scouting around, humm known dread pilots in Tzvi but only 3 war targets. Nothing seems to be heating up so I head back to Kamela and those previously spotted war targets. This time there's myself in a Vigil and Calius in his Rapier. We spot an Amarr Rapier and a Manticore at the station in Kamela along with 2 wrecks. Eventualy after some docking-undocking, some wreck looting under the noses of the two enemy pilots in my Vigil, we manage to get the Rapier to aggress at the un-dock point as I dock up after looking like I'm going for a second ninja looting under their eyes.

After I dock up I hear Calius trying to get in position to web him (still under cloak). So I un-dock and both Calius and I get points and engage the aggressed Rapier. Meanwhile the rest of the fleet jumps in and starts burning for us. The enemy Rapier pilot however is boned. Webbed, pointed and still under aggression timer so he can't dock up. We actually manage to kill the Rapier before the other guys in the fleet get to us. I'm pretty sure everyone in the fleet is happy anyways. They are in BS mostly and a Rapier kill is a Rapier kill.

So since I'm on top of it anyways I loot the Rapier wreck. You see that True Sansha Warp Disruptor? I picked it up and will be donating it to the corp fund for militia ops. I dock up and make sure it's in station for later disposal. To add insult to injury I finish by looting that last wreck that was sitting outside the station at the start of all the fun.

The op continues. After trying to find more targets, I'm headed back to my forward base as it's after midnight local time. On my way back I hear of a rupture on the other side of a gate I'm approaching, so after seeing that the pilot on this side is a stabber and coordinating with the FC, I jump thru and get tackle. He aggresses me, the stabber pilot jumps thru with the rest of the fleet on his heels. My vigil goes up but the stabber is hammering away. Unfortunately as I'm warping away in my pod, I hear that they loose the Rupture.

This small engagement shows the importance of having good follow-on tackle to the first tackle. The Amarr have a tendency to prioritize frigates when we start the engagement. So frigates in first tackle situations have a very short life expectancy. My loss rate definitely shows this fact up. However they are T1 and fully insured. Their crews have been briefed that their battle stations are IN their escape pods. The point is that we know we're going to loose the ship (we're usually horribly surprised if we survive a fight). All we ask is that there's a follow on tackle that's solid to get the target as we're warping away in our pods. It also shows the importance of flying aggressively and boldly. We did not end up with any large fights but we did end up with good kills. Over the course of the evening I traded a Rifter and a Stabber for an Ishtar and a Rapier (still stoked about the Rapier since I put a lot of work into that kill). It was a great evening.

3 comments:

Benoit CozmikR5 Gauthier said...

Gratz man. Rapiers are usually near impossible to kill, but new Rapier pilots do help! And as for first tackle in frigs, yeah, life expectancy is short, unless you have good ECM. If the gang is quick enough though can you lay the first tackle, and as soon as the other guys lay point you warp out to the closest place you have (usually a tactical 400km off gate in my case) and come back for some km whoring :)

Letrange said...

I may try that, unfortunately follow on tackles are a little slower I think in FW than they are in BOZO

Benoit CozmikR5 Gauthier said...

There is that... oh, my blog's updated too :)