Another lucky kill

Real Life has prevented me for any concerted effort at solo PvP.  I had planned on spending a few hours roaming around lowsec, but then noticed an interesting class on hunting players in wormholes which I sat in on for an hour or so.

Suitably inspired, I jumped into the same Tristan as my previous roam and went out for a look to see what sort of trouble I could get into on a Sunday night.

I made a quick tour of nearby systems, which were pretty quiet.  I noticed a Tristan on scan in one system, followed a Claw into another (but lost him immediately) and jumped into another system to see an Incursus near my gate.

I quite fancied taking on an Incursus, so when I thought I saw him activate the gate, I uncloaked, burned back and jumped through...no Incursus pilot in local.  Hmm, perhaps he warped out straight away? Only that Tristan in local at the mo.

I burned back to the gate, jumped through to an empty system. hohum.  With pickings few and far between I decided to go back to the Tristan system.

Still only the one pilot in local, looks like he's at a small plex so off I go, took the gate, pre-activated scram and kept an eye on local for any incoming.

I land about 5K off him, activate scram, release drones, he targets me and opens fire.

I notice my scram is not on him, though he has his on me, so I activate mine again, stick on my webber for good measure, send in the drones and open fire.

My shields go down a lot quicker than his so I pulse my repper when my armour starts to go, my drones & guns continue to eat through his shields, I think I may have made a mistake to have set my repper to pulse rather than continuous as my armour almost completely disappears, only to recover back to about 50%.

Range is still good, cap is fine and I'm aware that trying to redo my repper settings mid-fight may not go well so I concentrate on activating it again as soon as a cycle ends.

This time my structure dips to about 50% before my armour recovers to about 25%, his armour is pretty low now, but I think he's got me...I desperately fire off another repair cycle, realise I should have been overheating guns & repper when there's an explosion on screen. Bugger! I spam the warp button to the first celestial I can click on my overview...so close, then I realise that my pod has armour & shields and modules :) It wasn't me who blew up http://killfeed.eveuniversity.org/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=366217

I dropped a gf in local which was reciprocated, then went back for my drones before heading back to base.

Things I thought about / remembered afterwards;

1) I didn't check my safeties again, which may be why my scram didn't take first time (or I may have tried to activate it whilst not quite out of warp)
2) I think he may have redboxed me first
3) For short lived frigate fights, may make more sense to not pulse my repper as it's likely that the fight will be brief (one way or another)
4) Remember to overheat at the start! (and to take it off if no needed or to prevent burnout)
5) Remember to scoop the loot (even if it's not massively pricey, every little helps)
6) There is never a six
7) I was using an overview without drones on it, whilst fighting a drone boat (which wasn't an issue this time, but it could well be if /when I move up to bigger ships or small gangs).  I have the overview setup, just didn't switch to it.

So although I came out on top this time, it was more down to luck than planning :)

Tristan #1
2 kills

Did somebody say Tristan?

Decided there was no time like the present, so jumped into a Tristan and set off for nearest lowsec FW system to see what trouble I could get into on a fine Tuesday night.

What I probably should have done was refresh myself on the layout of the surrounding systems in space (or at least glance at Dotlan) so that I'm not sat there thinking, hmm which gate was the 'bad' one again?

Anyway, there were three in local and I spotted a Navitas at a large FW complex so I piled in, activated scram on the Navitas (who just sat there), released my drones and clicked for my default orbit.

Then realised that my scram wasn't running and the Navitas wasn't locked and seemed to be slowly moving away, my drones idling in space.

I tried to lock him up again, noticed the message about my safety settings being on, clicked the green light, clicked the yellow light, tried to activate scram on him again with no luck, safeties were still on green and he was now about 18K away.

Then clicked the green safety light, selected yellow, then ticked the yellow confirm box, then realised my default orbit was set at 40K and it was me moving, not him. Set a closer orbit, locked him up (finally) and sent in the drones...I think he was dead before I'd even managed to land my scam.

Turns out it wasn't even fit !

So although it was a pretty rubbishy kill, it did mean that I managed to get my setup sorted...eventually.

Tristan #1
1 kill

Been a long time

What have I been doing sine 17th November last year?  Real Life got busy, I kept my skills training and dabbling in a bit of industry / PI with alts but wasn't logging in as often as I'd like.  My training was all over the place as I kept seeing new things I wanted to try, then finding that my skills sucked.

Around the end of the year I even contemplated jacking in EVE altogether, I'd paid both accounts up already (Zebulon for 12 months, my alt account for 6 months), but set them both to expire when that time was up. I was mostly playing Elder Scrolls : Oblivion (for the first time).

EvE just wouldn't leave me alone though and after some useful discussions around skills etc (particularly the Magic 14) I'm back on track, my accounts wont expire and I'm in EvE almost everyday.

I now have a solid Dominix setup for running L4s, all my alts have moved to Nullsec with their PI and one of them is also training up for nullsec exploring.

Zebulon is jumping between campuses, though my home is still Solitude I now have a few ships at the Lowsec, Highsec and Nullsec campuses and try and spend a bit of time at each.

I also took part in some big fleet ops bashing some POCOs which was great fun as well as very useful experience of operating as part of a large fleet.

However, it's now about time I got back to some PvP, particularly as we're constantly at war and I'm aiming to take part in the Lowsec & Nullsec campuses.

To that end I recently bought and fitted 20 Tristans and dropped them in my staging system of Stacmon.  I have a few different fits and will see which fare best.

I've gone with Tristans as I do love drones and have sunk most of my skill points into them, though I also have a bunch of Incursus, Merlins and Algoses if I fancy a bit of a change.