So, in my previous post, I spent about half of it telling you about my first real solo PVP experience. There wasn't much detail, so I decided to expand the story a bit.
Shortly after running two level 4 missions in losec with my PVE Tengu, I was salvaging the wrecks in my Noctis. I managed to get to room 2 of 4 for the second mission when suddenly a Loki warped in. Due to some stupidity on my part, I had neglected to watch local, so the Loki came as a bit of a surprise. He quickly locked and warp disrupted me, so all I could do is sit and wait as my ship was destroyed. As soon as I got the insurance mail, I was spamming warp even more than before. One Noctis lost, one pod saved, and one kill right gained. I quickly docked and hid, then gathered my courage, undocked, and one warp gate and two warps later, I was in my preferred station that also happened to have my PVP Tengu, based rather loosely off of an 100mn AB Tengu fit I found on Battle Clinic.
So, in an untested, not exactly cheap, never before used ship, I undocked, warped back to where my Noctis was, and I find...nothing..Nothing but the remaining wrecks from my mission. My Noctis is truly gone, and my blood lust is fired up. I know he is still around because I actually checked local this time, but I have no idea where he is and no probes on my hull.I warp to the asteroid fields, nothing. I check the stations, nothing. Finally, I warp to a random asteroid field and sit, waiting for the Loki to come to me.
Ten minutes later, I'm reading something on the in-game browser and suddenly I see movement on my overview. He's here! But he didn't warp in, he just appeared..Of course! He was in a Cloki! He's 15Km away, I immediately lock, disrupt, web, open fire with my HAMs and run my AB, setting myself to orbit at 15Km as he locks and disrupts my ship. My missiles are tearing into his shield, but slowly, most likely a shield-tank, but he's eating away at my shield slower than I'm eating through his, 425 IIs pinging off my shields. Suddenly, after neglecting to watch local again because I totally learned my lesson 15 minutes ago, a Tengu appears. Another damn cloaked ship, but a cloaked Tengu is a weak Tengu, but my shield is now taking a decent beating. I over heat my missile launchers, missile after missile flying to the Loki to make friends with him, web is off because I'm such an obviously smart guy at PVP and I didn't even notice what the range on it was, the Loki is snuggling with my ship, and slowly the missiles are burning through their circuitry. At this point, I have tunnel vision on the Loki, and I don't even know what the Tengu is doing besides trying to kill me somehow. My assumption is that his attempt involved missiles. My missiles are crashing into the Loki, and suddenly, I broke his tank! I'm past the 33%, closer to 25%! My missiles have stopped because I forgot to turn the overheat off! ****!
I'm not going to lie, at this point I was a smidgen worried. I may have broken his tank, but my Tengu is only faring slightly better, and now I can't even spit at him because I'm pretty sure even that meager offensive ability was burnt out. I try to warp, and no luck, my heart is racing and my warp core is disrupted. But my AB still works, and it isn't exactly small. point and click, sending my Tengu away from the asteroid belt, but the Loki is staying close. I still have no idea what the Tengu is doing at this point..I think he was playing in a corner somewhere, but I'm pretty sure he was still firing at me, just from a distance, but he doesn't have any points on me. If I can get out of range of the Loki, I should be in the clear. I'm powering my Tengu away, but I'm only 5Km from the Loki, and an unheated disruptor can hit about 30Km out. I'm far from free and a Loki is usually pretty fast, maybe not 100mn fast, but usually pretty fast being Minmatar and all. Suddenly, inspiration! In a tactic vaguely similar to pushing on a short person's head so he can't hit you, I turn on my web and push him away, my AB running unhindered while he's being held away from me. My web may run out of distance before he does, but it would take him a while to get back up to speed, and by then I should be away from his disruptor range.
My tactic worked, but only because of failures on their part, not really success on mine. My tactic would have worked wonderfully, and it did, but only because the Tengu failed to have any kind pf point on me. I only had one web, if he could have webbed me, or disrupted my warp core once I was almost out of range of the Loki, or brought bigger guns (cloak Tengu generally aren't very effective on the offensive side of things from my experience.) I would have lost my Tengu. I warped out, about 1 to 1 1/2 minutes after the Loki warped in. Missile launchers are dead, my shield is sitting around 33%, more than 25% at least, but I survived an encounter that I probably shouldn't have. I check local one last time as I dock up, and find a quick comment of "Lucky bastard" from the Loki pilot. Truer word are rarely found in local chat.
As a post script, this happened about a week ago. I recently checked some kill boards, and found that the Loki pilot is seriously no joke. He had about 750 kills, to 150 deaths. Enemies of his had a 17% survival rate. The Tengu pilot was a bit less impressive, 34 or so kills to 40 deaths. Not stellar, but probably learning. Today, I sent the Loki pilot an eve-mail, telling him a bit about my situation, about how much I enjoyed the fight, and I actually thanked him from blowing up my Noctis and causing me to take part in the PVP, and giving me this story to use. He actually seems to be a pretty good guy despite blowing up my ship, and I no longer really hold any animosity to him. Turns out he wound up burning out his warp disruptor on me, which is one reason I was able to escape his grasp so quickly at just around 20Km or so. I now fully understood the "Lucky bastard" comment. I will try to be seeing him again once I have better internet and a better computer. I may not have animosity towards him, but he did blow up one of my ships. Fair is fair.
So, lessons I learned from this:
1. If going into PVP, more than one ship needs a point. This is, of course, not always the case, but for small things like this, you should have more than just one disruptor.
2. My PVP Tengu needs some work. It held it's own against more experienced people, but next time I might not be able to survive just due to a fluke. I was lucky, and I might have survived with or without it, but I don't want to cut it that close again.
3. Understand your ship. This is pretty self explanitory. For instance, I did not know how far a scram or disruptor could hit, I thought it was about 20km, but it is actually 30 or so.
4. CHECK LOCAL. I could have saved myself a lot of trouble this way, but I got a decent story out of it, so it's lower on the list.
5. Maybe try to keep a warp core stabalizer on my Noctis. At least one.
6. I'm not really all that good at PVP. I'm pretty sure I already knew that, but this is pretty much confirmation. Still, my survival means I'm not all that terrible at it.
That's all for tonight.
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