Tuesday 4 March 2008

Things that go bump in the Dark

I take a long deep draw on the cigarette and breathe in, exhaling I sigh, a sigh of contentment. It's been a fun day.

Started off by setting up a Jaguar class assualt frigate, a ship I've never flown before but always meant to. It is based on the Rifter hull, my favourite and one I'm intimiately familiar with.
Thing is the Jaguar is a shield tank, a skill set I only recently became comfortable with so this would be interesting.

I undocked into the black and headed to my favourite haunt, a bit quiet with one or two aquaintances hanging about but very little in the way of targets.
After a few minutes one did enter system, a Slasher class frigate and I quickly narrowed it down to a belt and went in, engines roaring. The fight itself was unremarkable, the young pilot being no match for the firepower brought to bare.

Another Slasher was dancing around the belts and I gave chase but he was smart, warping in at different ranges and always managing to elude me. Oh well, I thought I'd go check out some other systems. I arrived at the gate out and was greeted by a Drake and Hurricane, both battlecruisers locked me and opened fire but I merely activated the jumpgate and was thrown into the next system.
Excellent, I thought to myself as I hastily headed to HQ to grab something a bit beefier than the Jag. A new Hurricane class battlecruiser awaitied me and I quickly switched ships and headed back to the gate, I was going to have me a fight, win or lose.

My systems resolved the system I had just jumped into and whilst under gate cloak I saw the marks were still there and flashing red, a sign that they aggressed me first and I would be able to fight without having to tank the Republic gate sentries. I broke cloak and decided to go for the hurricane first, the Drake has a legendary tank and would take me too long to break under the combined firepower of the two hostiles.
It proved to be a wrong choice and engaging more so but you know I just had to give it a go. The combined firepower of the Drake and Hurricane tore Karma to pieces, I warped my escape pod out and quickly returned home to grab another Hurricane, I had called ahead to my hangar crew to have one prepped and ready to roll.

I boarded the new ship quickly and made all haste back, fuzzy intel had come through that the Hurricane had left system, possibly a trap but I wanted a fight again and the Drake was a tasty target. Once again I jumped in, the Hurricane nowhere to be seen and I headed straight for the Drake, my mighty 425s spitting out EMP rounds. The Drakes tank was solid and his DPS impressive, I started overloading my autocannons to get the most out of them and his tank started to break. His friend in the Hurricane had returned and soon I was under fire from him too, my shields and armour had failed and I was venting atmosphere and fuel into the dark.
A last overload of my guns and the Drakes fragile hull gave way.
My guns had overheated and had all offlined leaving me no response to the Hurricane, his drones and guns working on my hull, I overloaded my MWD to get out of range of his web and warp disruptor and with one final burst made it into warp, 10% structure flashing on my overview. Damn that was close.

I immediately set destination to base to repair and as soon as I did I returned but the Hurricane now on it's own decided that discretion was the better form of valour and left the scene, jumping into another system and safespotting.
A good fight by my opponents and well played.

Two versus One is always tricky but are sometimes the best fights out there.

I headed home and joined a small group of locals chasing a pair of destroyers out of the local Angel Complex, they got out but I had gone back to HQ and boarded a Broadsword, I caught both pilots outside the station and dispatched them under sentry fire, popped another Destroyer whilst it was trying to loot the wrecks.

Intel filtered through that the Drake and Hurricane had returned and some locals had given chase, no news on whether they were caught.

A good day, I exhale another plume of smoke, the flickering lights of the ships systems make it dance in the dark of the hangar

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