Friday, May 11, 2012

Some things you just don't do

Things I've learned:

Don't engage a cruiser or a battlecruiser with a stealth bomber one-on-one.

I made that mistake earlier this week, when Gallente militia swarmed our low-sec rally point in Black Rise.  I was keeping eyes on a complex warp-in gate, a fleet-mate was engaged with a Rupture, getting hit hard, and pleading for assistance.

I was tired, and I'd just taken a NyQuil for a bad cough, so I was mentally primed to do something stupid.

I decloaked my Nemesis and engaged with torpedoes.

And I got cut to pieces.

I'd forgotten to turn on my sensor damps, and I'd engaged too close; I was shredded in seconds.  Once I'd docked my pod, I decided it was probably time to call it a night.

Fast forward a couple of days.  I've run a couple of missions in hi-sec to earn back the ISK to buy a new Nemesis - got lucky with "Silence the Informant" and scored an Arbalest heavy launcher, which pays for a cover-ops cloak all by itself - and I've bought the hull, cloak, and fittings, and brought them all back to Black Rise.

Then one of the old hands calls out: any corp mates in Black Rise willing to help test out a super-tanking Drake?  (It's one of our standard fits, but he's testing out how good it would be with the addition of a couple of T2 shield rigs; he manufactures rigs in bulk and can spare a couple to put on a Drake.)  I figure, what the heck; it'll give me a chance to test the gank on the Nemesis in somewhat more controlled conditions.

The test goes rather well.  We discover that the Drake can absorb a hell of a lot of damage, more than one Nemesis can throw with my skill set (with standard Inferno torpedoes, anyway; I wasn't going to waste faction ammo on a friendly); I discover that with two good sensor damps, I can chop a Drake's targeting range to less than my optimal torpedo range.  I also discover that a Dominix can get its tank broken by a Drake and a Nemesis acting in tandem.

Then the Drake throws one volley of missiles at me, just to see how well I can tank it.

One startled squawk later, it is clear that one volley of Scourge Fury heavy missiles will one-shot a Nemesis.

On the bright side, the cloak was salvageable from the wreckage, so I don't have to shell out for a new one. And I did get reimbursed for the hull, plus a little extra for the humiliation factor.

We all learned something.

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