Hello New Eden! I’m Nova, Nova Scottia – I began my career in New Eden with can-flipping and dueling around the Brutor Tribe Treasury in the end of May 2009. I guess for a total Noob I was quite successful, as I won 9 fights in a row never losing a single ship! Until that fateful day in Amamake…
Me and my corp-mate Naanook formed a small wolfpack with two Rifters to look for adventures in low-sec. We programmed our nav-computers with a straight course to Amamake to improve our experience and to finally get our first killing-job in low-sec done. As we travelled through Amamake before, we already had a comfortable safe-spot that was our initial destination once through the stargate.
There we started scanning the belts. Directional scanning wasn’t our second nature yet, but after a while we were quite comfortable with this extremely helpful tool. Each of us had separate belts to scan and Naanook steadily jumped to the potential targets to see if it was worth the risk of an engagement. I was in the midst of a jump, when he informed me of a Thrasher sitting in a belt. A pirate with a nice flashy-red bar in our overview. As I knew that a thrasher is bluilt to kiss your little frig until it bleeds, I first hesitated to engage this slightly more experienced pilot. Come on we are two reckless Rifter pilots! Let’s go for it!
And as we rescanned the system over and over again, resulting in no viable targets we made an effort to attack the Minmatar destroyer. We jumped to the belt within 100 km and directly engaged the Thrasher, that was about 130 km away. A huge mistake!
We closed on in quite quickly, especially because the pilot obviously had an MWD fitted but neither of us in our little wolfpack had. This should have alarmed us, but when you already tasted the sweet blood of success you can be blinded by the light. So when we were at about 20 km, the first volleys would hit my Rifter’s shield and I got warp-disrupted.
“What’s happening? Nannook can you close in on that guy?” I yelled into my comm, but Naanook had the same problem. The Thrasher perfectly kept the distance of 20 km. We got kited and the artillery cannons slowly bit through my shield and armor. Realising that my doom is inevitable and fleeing is no option, I ordered Naanook to retreat to our safe-spot. At least one of us little noobies should survive! When he had me in half structure I steadily hit the warp button, so at least my Pod was still intact when it unfolded out of that unglorious blaze that once was my Rifter.
After that incident we discussed what could have been a better strategy to nail that guy down. I looked at his BattleClinic killboard and finally realised that his loadout is perfectly selected for frigate-killing, which he does regularly. I should have looked at it BEFORE the fight. Lesson learned!
Now dear readers, we would be quite thankful if you have any suggestions on how to win such an engagement. Crucial would be to get under his guns as he fitted artillery. We came to this solution: I should have loaded a MWD, trying to kite him away. When I reached a distance of 150 km to his position, hitting warp to quickly jump to get under his guns and in web range. After that my mate could have warped in to join the frag-fest! Got any suggestions? We are open for any help my dear fellow capsuleers out there in New Eden space…
Well in the end it was another lesson that told us, that gathering intel is a crucial part of the fight. And next time it will be done before the duel, as it has slightly more effect on the situation. Fly safe New Eden. Loads of hugs and kisses from Nova!
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