Warfare & Tactics

Accidents happen, ships are cheap, experience is not.

Keep going.

pretty much this.

Suggestion

Incursus + scram/web/AB + Rails = win

Awesome work, and congrats. Some words of advise:
Right when the box turned red, launch the drone and sick 'em. It's not much but it helps negate some of his eventual rep...or starts being those shields so the action will begin for real. Don't activate the armor repper until you're about the lose shields...it takes some time to guess the timing and it's all based on incoming damage, but you could save yourself a booster easily by practicing this. Yeah, it's just one booster, but if you're like me you only fill the needed boosters to last a typical fight...and sometimes you'll run dry for a few seconds before the fight ends.

I eagerly await the video

Oh, I forgot to mention, but he also had a bounty on him. I got 1.1m of it from killing him (not much obviously, but it's better than the vast majority of battleship rats ). Not only that, but I found a bug in the bounty system!

Entry #4 - Friday 7/12/2012

I won another fight! This time felt even more satisfying - a fight against an opponent I've wanted to pop for a while, and one that I could much more easily have lost.

My normal roam around Placid ended in Intaki, and I saw nothing. When I went to leave Intaki, a flashy-red Punisher from Anshar Incorporated - that's Milo Caman's corporation - landed on the gate just as I jumped out. Anshar are Serpentis bastards in character but generally good guys IRL, so I thought the prospect of a goodfight was pretty high. I jumped back in and began looking for it

I admit I was a little timid about engaging at first, because I noticed there was a Griffin and Corax on D-scan (and on grid at the station we were hanging around at) for a while, but the pilot of the Punisher, Jev North, kindly opened up a novice FW plex in the system, which meant that the only backup she'd possibly be able to bring in would be the Griffin, and given that I was fairly certain she'd be just as much after a goodfight as I was, I figured she might not bring it. I eventually warped in just before she did, popped my drone and got ready.

Don't let the frigate size fool you - Punishers are tough SoBs. Getting through even the shield on that thing was hard enough because I was using Void, and Jev was smart - she was keeping range. I realised that my Hobgoblin II was doing most of the damage and took the chance of switching out to Null to get more consistent DPS. Then I hit armour, and the damage just... stopped. The armour tank on that thing amazed me, but as I had assumed, it was purely passive - it wasn't being restored. Meanwhile, every time her lasers hit me I'd lose 2/3rds of my armour, and a double helping of cap boosters plus reload time only just gave me enough cap to last until the next cycle. I tell you, I was worried.

Then suddenly she stopped being able to maintain range, I started getting in close and the damage went up. It wasn't a quick thing, but her armour just went down and down while mine stayed maxed. I had to chug cap boosters like candy to keep myself from capping out, but the DPS remained consistent and she went into structure. At six cap boosters to go, she popped. I dropped "good fight" in local, scooped the loot and ran to my home station.

Conversation with Jev afterwards revealed that she burnt out her AB trying to keep range, and after that she couldn't keep up. She was banking on me running out of cap boosters before she ran out of hitpoints, which I admit was dangerously close to happening given that I hadn't restocked since my fight with the Incursus a couple of days ago.

I'm going to give it to Jev that she was most certainly the more skilled pilot in this engagement, and she fought really well. I won primarily on account of the ludicrous staying power this Incursus fit has. I did get a bit better with my module timing this time, though, and kept calm - didn't hit my armour reps until my shield actually depleted, and had the presence of mind to switch to Null after I realised that Void wasn't getting me anywhere fast.

Props to Jev for giving a really good, edge-of-your-seat fight, and props to the whole of Anshar for giving me helpful advice in local afterwards.

And trying to sell me drugs:

Milo Caman > You considered using Std. Exile to compliment the performance of your Incursus Andreus?
Andreus Ixiris > Is this a sales pitch?
Thaddeus Malukker > Maybe.
DeadRow > Smooth, Milo, Smooth.

I went in knowing I'd be very likely to lose -- the Punisher is a neat ship, but in the configuration it was in, I simply wouldn't be able to overwhelm or outlast the tank on a dualrep Incursus, which I suspected you were flying. I've been taking very unlikely odds lately, just to see how far I can get. Bad habit, I know. Makes for interesting fights though.

Your description is just about spot-on. I knew I'd be toast as soon as I'd get into blaster optimal range, so the idea was to keep you on the very edge of scram range and see if I could last long enough for you to either slip up on managing your tank, or run out of cap boosters. Unfortunately I found I couldn't keep range for long without overheating the AB.

I could have disengaged at several points, and probably should have, but that wouldn't have made for a good story, would it? So, for 3:20 actual time and seemingly forever subjective time, I traded heat damage and armor buffer for range, and ended up flaming out.

Slightly frustrating, but good scram kiting and heat management practice, at least.

General advice - I find Void to be very situational. Up close against small targets, you might actually be better off with Antimatter; on the whole, Null will give you adequate DPS and far greater range flexibility, which is not a luxury when you only have a scram for tackle.

Just a thought on this...

PvP in EVE is far less about "me, myself and I vs all comers". It's about working in a team and learning how to work with them. Interdependence on roles, tasks and functions of a unit.

If you really want to learn how to do it, pick a role for a group and focus on that. The better you are at a given role, the better you will perform.

With respect to "diversification" - try and focus but be ready and able to shift. Simply work 1 until you are comfortable at it then pick another one for a bit. There is cross functionality involved (such as a recon ship) but learn 1 at a time -- *IN A GANG*.

Soloing happens but you'll find that trying to solo is a hell of a lot more frustrating than rewarding. At least while you are messing around in a gang, you can chat with the others there as you look/wait for targets to show.

Much kudos to OP for taking the time to find good solo fights and gaining valuable experience. I tried that too, but it was too much time searching and too little time fighting for my taste. As a result, I will always suck at 1v1 PvP and that isn't likely to change, ever.

Don't forget to overheat, overheat, overheat. Guns, tackle, reppers. Especially in a frigate vs frigate brawl that will not take long, it's really effective.

A guide can be found here and another one here.