I've talked before about losing ships due to not maintaining the range appropriate to the way the ship is set up. Despite this, I still seem to be having trouble keeping a close enough eye on the distance between myself and my targets.
The corp has declared war on OP Wolf Pack (who had previously decced us but allowed the war to lapse). Whilst out looking for suitable people to grief last night (and not finding any) I notice wartargets passing through the systems I'm frequenting, heading towards our corp base in Akora (two wts, one in a Megathron and the other in an Abaddon). Not having fought the Abaddon previously I thought it might be interesting to see what kind of modules were fitted to it, so I jumped in my salvaging Vigil (the only ship I have fitted with a ship scanner and one that should be pretty much immune to battleship weapons) and went to look for them. When I jumped into Reisen (the last hisec system before Akora) from Ikami, three wartargets were sat on the gate, the previous two having been joined by a Drake. I took the time to activate my ship scanner and gather some intel and was happy that they were unable to damage my ship whilst I did so. After docking up and spending some time in station I thought it might be time to play some more with the wts, so I undock the Vigil once again and go looking; they've moved to the Akora gate now and the Abaddon pilot has reshipped into a Maller. I orbit at 30km and scan the Maller (I don't know much about Amarr ships, but no prop mod? Perhaps that's typical) when the Mega pilot warps in in a Tristan, which I of course also scan. Unfortunately this is my undoing; whilst looking at the scan the MWD fit Tristan is burning towards me and by the time I notice he's got me scrammed and webbed. Bye bye Vigil :)
I think the lesson here is in combat situations, don't look over scan results until you're someplace safe. Or make sure to pay attention to all targets on your overview. Or maybe it's that you should get your speed tanking, unarmed utility ship out of harms way once something its own size appears on the field.
I'll go with all of the above.
Since neither the Drake nor the Maller had prop mods fitted and the Tristan should be an easy kill, I reshipped into an artillery Thrasher. The wts had now moved to the station undock; after failing to one-shot the Tristan (sit still will you!) and warping backwards and forwards a few times between the station and a customs office, eventually the Maller landed at the customs office with me. I burned away whilst pointing it, and started shooting. I wasn't having any problems with the Maller, but I wanted to stay aligned in case one of the others was heading my way with something scarier. Unfortunately the Maller (with no prop mod) was very slow so it wasn't long before I was out of (long) point range. Not good, I didn't want him warping off. There's no sign of his friends so it's probably safe to orbit; I hit the orbit button. I'm happily watching his shields and armour evaporate when I start to take damage. Nobody else has appeared in my overview, and for a few moments I'm a bit confused. Then I notice I'm still moving straight towards the Maller... 8km, 6km, 4km... I select a celestial to align to and turn my afterburner on (overheat all the things!), but it's no use - I'm too close and my tank is too weak. Again I lose a ship to a cruiser due to range issues when I shouldn't have.
The lesson here is pretty obvious and you're probably spotted it already - my default orbit range was set at 1km and I wanted to stay out at 15km+. I think I'm going to stop using the default orbit button, it's set right 98% of the time but the 2% of the time it's not right is always the time when it really matters.
Two more unnecessary ship losses; I'm beginning to think I'll never get all this right.
This post is already getting too long, so I'm going to end it on a happier note; now my opponents think I'm a total idiot (as do I :) they're happy to engage me so it's not long before I'm able to pop the Maller. And his pod too for good measure. Neutral on the killboard for wins/losses and a positive in ISK terms if you include the implants so not a total wash. It's suprising how well combat goes when you're not screwing it up constantly :)
That's a pretty weird Maller fit tbh, but i bet that guy is pissed about his implants lol.
ReplyDeleteIts very weird for any ship to be without a prop mod, though there are cases where it can work. I've heard Kil2 and Sard Caid talk about not fitting prop mods to their armageddons, for example.
Just takes practice on the keeping range part. For example, yesterday I pulled off holding point on a Thrasher at 15km for a minute (just hitting structure as I warped out) while he and his Thrasher buddy were doing their very best to kill me. I was told to "x in comms" for warp-in, but I didn't have enough spare time to do it, because I had to focus very hard on managing my speed and range and manual piloting. Eventually the fleet landed, I gtfo, and they got one of the two Thrashers that blew up one of our fleet's interceptors before I had shown up to solo tackle that thrasher.
I would never have been able to pull that off 3 months prior to this. I just wasn't good enough. I got lots of practice though, lost quite a few ships in the process, and now I'm one of the better interceptor pilots in my alliance (I doubt I'm the best, there's always someone better, but I don't lose interceptors very often and I fly them ALOT).
So don't beat yourself up over the losses too much. It's difficult to learn from your mistakes when you don't make any.
Good advice! I'm trying not to beat myself up but I do tend to get annoyed with myself when I repeat the same mistakes... not that that stops me from doing so (in all walks of life, not just Eve). Manual piloting sounds like the way to go; I seem to prefer kiting fits to brawling fits in general (although that might be because my SP isn't rounded enough to brawl effectively - hull upgrades 5 should be my next priority I feel) so I think I'll try to fit up some cheap kiting ships and go and lose them (hopefully hilariously but that remains to be seen) in order to practice manual piloting.
ReplyDeleteGood post! I don't know if you have an alt, but using a neutral alt to scout WTs is really helpful.
ReplyDeleteSorry bout the destroyer loss but sounds like you learned something at least and got a kill in the end so it wasn't a total wash. Everyone makes derps occasionally, I still accidently cap myself out by leaving my MWD on... xD
I have an alt that can scout wts, but lack the computing power to make best use of it (my laptop can hardly run one client without melting). I've been looking for an excuse to invest in better hardware, maybe now is the time to do so :)
ReplyDeleteI've learned I'm pretty good at being dumb when playing Eve! I'm finding it interesting how I manage to completely forget even the basics as soon as I get into a combat situation (and even when I'm preparing to go and find combat!). I expect this will change as I gain experience, but I'm having fun losing ships so I'm happy for the learning process to take some time. I too find I kill my cap quite often, but it's generally my armour repper that does it to me (using a cookie-cutter Rifter fit) - when I remember to turn it on at all! :)