Ships I Fly - The Punisher

Ever since hearing about how great an autocannon Punisher is from a lecture I heard from eve university, I have wanted to try one out. A Punisher is a very sturdy ship with a naturally strong armour tank, plus a significant bonus to armour resistance. Being an Ammarian ship it has a large capacitor, and a bonus to capacitor usage of lasers. Obviously this means that it is best fit with Autocannons ;).

Although lasers have certain advantages, autocannons lack of capacitor usage, combined with easy fitting, means that a Punisher can fit a massive (for a T1 Frigate) buffer tank + an effective active tank. The EVE FNG blog has a great post discussing fitting autocannons on a Punisher and why it is superior to lasers. His posts and ravings about the Punisher are why I started looking at them again in the first place.

Using his fit as a baseline I have made a few changes to make it more effective with my particular skills. Here is my fit:

[Punisher, Toterra's Punisher]
Damage Control II
Small Armor Repairer II
Adaptive Nano Plating II
400mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates I

1MN Afterburner II
J5b Phased Prototype Warp Scrambler I

125mm Gatling AutoCannon II,Republic Fleet Fusion S
125mm Gatling AutoCannon II,Republic Fleet Fusion S
125mm Gatling AutoCannon II,Republic Fleet Fusion S
Small 'Knave' I Energy Drain

Small Ancillary Current Router I
Small Auxiliary Nano Pump I
Small Projectile Collision Accelerator I

I choose to go with the 125mm AC II instead of the 150mm for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I feel that tracking is the most important characteristic on small, close range weapons (idea for a future post) and without a tracking bonus I felt the punisher would benefit from the 125s. I have also enhanced the tank with a Nano Pump, which increases the active tanking of by 10%. This combined with the punisher's 25% resist bonus makes for a tank of well over 50dps per second. Even without the NOS it can run for a minute and a half.

Looking at it over I felt that there were several weaknesses of this fit. Firstly, it is slow and lacks agility. With a 5.4s alignment speed and top velocity of 814 m/s this ship is not going to win any races. Also the lack of additional e-war could be an issue. A webber in particular would be highly desirable.

So I took this bird out on a few low-sec solo roams. The first ship I engaged was an Ishkur. It is a bit unfair to test out against a T2 frigate but, it was the target of opportunity. I immediately started pluggging away at his drones. Knowing that my tracking was not going to be the best I was not surprised that the damage was slow, however it soon became apparent that there was not damage whatsoever. Checking my overview revealed an indicator that I was being track disrupted.... not a good thing. I quickly switched my guns over to the Ishkur, where started to do damage. I also adjusted my orbit to minimize angular velocity (I wasn't getting under his guns so no point in trying). However I had wasted 40 seconds of time, and a chunk of my buffer tank on the drones and I wasn't going to make up the difference. Not long afterwords I blew up and my pod fled for greener pastures.

Not a great start. Time for a second try. For the next several night I flew this ship looking for targets. An Omen (ammarian cruiser) was my first target and provided me with my very first successful ransom. Even as slow as a punisher was, it was able to get under the guns of the Omen. I also engaged and defeated several armour tanking T2 Fit Rifters. The two Rifters each could have escaped (they were faster + had me webbed), however for some reason they continued to sit there and orbit me even after entering structure. As I have noted before, most pilots will continue with their initial plan and not modify or run when things change. Under these circumstances, a Punisher can easily out-last a Rifter in a straight up slug-fest.

It was a later engagement that revealed the disappointing side to the Punisher again. I had scanned down a Dramiel and a Jaguar from different corps at a belt. As I suspected they were going at each other full bore when I arrived. Both their ships had entered armour once I achieved lock. I quickly took a couple pot shots at the Dramiel to both whore the killmail, and to ensure that it would go down before escaping. However I aligned my ship to the Jag and, quickly switched my guns once it was obvious the Dramiel was going down.

Normally a Jaguar would eat a T1 frigate for lunch, however this Jag was now entering structure and if I could just hold it there it would die real quick. Regrettably he did the obvious, lit his afterburner and fled. If I had been in a Rifter I would have been able to catch up, and I would have probably webbed him. In a Punisher .... no chance. KILL DENIED :(

So to summarize, the Punisher is a great little ship with a hell of a tank. However it is a one trick pony. It won't catch anything that wants to escape and if things go south... time to get your pod ready to flee.

In short .... it is no rifter.


P.S. Several more great entries in the cheapfleet challenge... but we still need more. See here for details.

Destructoid Review of - EVE Online: Commissioned officer edition

Destructoid (a gaming website) recently posted a review of the EVE Online: Commissioned officer edition box. The reviewer did a pretty crap job. As is often typical with reviews of EVE reviews he took the trial, got confused, got bored, died, didn't understand what was happening and eventually quit the game leaving a review riddled with factual innacuracies (somehow his shuttle contained all his assets and was blown up mid-warp). As can be expected the 156 comments on the review show a blend of EVE fanbois hating the review, mixed with a few people who actually had a similar experience and went back to WOW.

Now I am not saying that it was a good review. Rather the review and the comments reveal a real problem with the game. As much fun as it is to laugh at EVE's steep learning curve, it is new players that give the game life. If they are bored or frustrated then they will simply quit and move on. Most players start on a free trial anyways so there is no investment lost for them.

The Commissioned Officer Edition is an example of everything that is wrong with the way EVE tries to help new players. The main advantage to it is that it comes with an implant that boosts attributes and learning. However the implant only works for a month. If the implant is destroyed you can petition a GM to get it replaced.

That is right... CCP ships a new player friendly feature that likely requires petitioning a GM to use. What a great way help lower the learning curve.

P.S. Several more great entries in the cheapfleet challenge... but we still need more. See here for details.

YARR! My first Ransom :)

While running through low-sec I cam across an Omen sitting at a planet in Vitrauze...

[ 2011.02.21 05:56:42 ] Serivous > how much?
[ 2011.02.21 05:56:56 ] Toterra > 10 million
[ 2011.02.21 05:57:26 ] Toterra > 15 seconds yes or no
[ 2011.02.21 05:57:30 ] Serivous > teach me to stop paying attention
[ 2011.02.21 05:57:35 ] Serivous > money has been sent
[ 2011.02.21 05:57:49 ] Toterra > have a good doay

YARR!

God I love this game :) Are there any other games out there where this sort of thing is even possible?

P.S. We have now two entries in the cheapfleet challenge... looking for more. See here for details.

Contest - Toterra's Cheapfleet Challenge - Frigates

*NOTE THERE HAS BEEN A DELAY IN MY JUDGING-GIVING OUT AWARDS. MY INTERNET IS DOWN. I SHOULD BE BACK UP IN A COUPLE OF DAYS TO ANNOUNCE AND REWARD THE WINNER*

When I started playing EVE one of the best resources out there was the Cheapfleet Challenge contest on Battleclinic. Basically it was a competition for the best fittings for T1 frigates, destroyers and cruisers, using affordable Meta-3 using and lower gear. It gave me a great starting point for various fits that were affordable and much more effective then my early fail-fit attempts.

Unfortunately their fits are rather old at this point. I think that it is time for a new 'Cheapfleet Challenge'.

Here are the rules:

• This contest is for T1 frigates only. (if there is interest I will do larger ships later)
• Toterra will be the only judge and decision will be final. I will take into account any comments positive and negative from other players about fits. Both fits for fleet and for solo work will be evaluated. If there are a lot of entries I may look for additional judges.
• One entry per character. If you are making a change then mention it at the top of the post.
• Fit will be evaluated for it's PvP ability. I do not care about PvE.
• Any module > Meta-3 will disqualify the fit.
• No Rigs.
• No Faction Frigates.
• If two identical submissions, the first one qualifies. Later submissions are disqualified. <--New
• Grand Prize will be one empire faction frigate from the same faction as the winning fit. (hookbill, firetail, comet or slicer). 
• Five 5 million isk prizes will go to honorable mentions, one for each of the following categories (note I changed this on Feb 19):
• best e-war
• best tackler
• best gank
• best ship to bring to a fleet
• best ship for solo work
• Contest will end on March 15, 2011 at midnight EST. (the ides of march)
• Prize will be contracted to winning character from Jita 4-4 by March 22, 2011. 
• Comments on fits are very welcome

Post a comment in the comments portion of this blog post containing the following

Your character name (to receive the prize if winning)
Brief description of the fit (200 words or less)

Fitting in EFT export format as seen elsewhere on this blog

The following metrics (Assuming all lv 5):
EHP :
DPS :
Speed :


For example here is what a posting should look like

Toterra

This is a fit for a Breacher. It works best against another solo frigate that has been fit for AB/SCRAM with short range weapons (like 90% of the pvp frigates out there). Set the keep-at-range to 16,000 m, turn on the disruptor and pelt away. If you can hold range and they can't hit you they will eventually die. It can also be a great tackler / scout for a fleet.

[Breacher, Cheepfleet Breacher]
Capacitor Power Relay I
Capacitor Power Relay I

Catalyzed Cold-Gas I Arcjet Thrusters
J5 Prototype Warp Disruptor I

TE-2100 Standard Missile Bay, Piranha Light Missile
TE-2100 Standard Missile Bay, Piranha Light Missile
TE-2100 Standard Missile Bay, Piranha Light Missile
[empty high slot]

[empty rig slot]
[empty rig slot]
[empty rig slot]

EHP: 1497
DPS: 48
Speed: 2783 m/s

Incarna... All this work when we just want to play Poker

CCP just released the first devblog discussing what is coming with Incarna gameplay. I am almost impressed. Like the character creation process it involves fantastic technology. Unfortunately, like the character creator, it is more a demonstrator of the technology rather then part of the game. The problem is that no matter how good looking the graphics are, it is totally irrelevant if it does not add to any game play.

In the first iteration coming to tranquility this summer (read fall), we will be able to walk around the 'Captains Quarters', whatever that is. The 'Captains Quarters' will provide much of the functionality we currently see from menus and the like. For example we will be able to do things like clicking on a wall to call up the Planetary Interaction interface.

Is this a good thing? I don't really know, but I never felt like the current interface to start doing planetary interaction was a problem. Rather it was the whole planetary interaction interface that caused carpal tundral syndrome and destroyed mice.

The other problem, the the reason I call this a technical demo, is that it is basically a single-player environment. You will not be able to interact with other avatars like you can do in other MMOs. I understand that this is just for the beginning, and in the future (don't hold your breath so it may be a while) you will, but it is pretty sad that CCP is finally giving us Avatars without actually letting us interact with other Avatars. 1990 called and CCP seemed to answer the phone.

Assuming EVE continues to be the massive cash cow for CCP driving tens of millions of dollars of development, and computer graphics technology continues to improve, I can see Incarna being interesting ... eventually. However I can't say that the current devblog is all that encouraging. CCP seems overly fascinated with fancy graphics technology and does not seem to care about gameplay issues and what makes EVE a success. Go and play minecraft for a bit. That game has a graphics engine that looks anything but realistic, but gives exceptional gameplay. CCPs Incarna is trending in the opposite direction.

Lets face it, if we can't shoot each other in station, at least let us play poker.

Flashy Red is the New Blue ;)

YARRR!!!

So I have now successfully joined a pirate corp. Should be a lot of fun. The corp is called 'The Tuskers' and is probably pretty familiar to most EVE bloggers out there thanks to Rifter Drifter and others blog from past and present bloggers (See the Tusker pack sidebar). Actually it is kindof odd. Agony (the last corp I was in) had only a couple of active bloggers. Whereas the Tuskers seams to be filled with them despite having a fraction of the membership. Interesting trend.

Anyways, The Tuskers is what is considered a pirate corp. In EVE pirates generally refers to Low-sec PvP corps. While both 0.0 and lowsec has PvP, it is generally only the low-sec that is considered pirates. The reason for this is quite simple. Low-sec PvP is really bad for a pilot's security status. Even before joining while flying around looking for fights my status dropped from a nice 3.5 to a 1.1. I am sure within a few weeks or less I will be sitting at -10.0. No more hi-sec for my main soon.

Obviously this results in some interesting changes. No longer bound by the Rules of Engagement that Agony has I am able to partake in all sorts of unethical mischief. Having said that we still do have a 'Tusker Code', similar to many other pirate corps. It enforces that we do things like honour ransoms and not be dicks in local. All of which contributes to a healthy low-sec culture.

Another impact of being in low-sec is the different game mechanics that I am going to have to learn. I nearly lost a Rifter the other day by flying near a gate soon after killing someone. The guns on the gate are not just for show! Much to learn indeed.

Anyways, I am off to go plan some shopping. Most of my junk is stuck down in 0.0 hoping that someone will move it at some point. But I am heading to Jita to put together a half-dozen ships and get them shipped out to the Tusker home base..... This may be the last time I make it to Jita without interference in a long, long time.

The advantage of unusual fits

I had an interesting fight the other day that highlighted the importance of non-conventional fits. As said before I am in the process of changing corps. As a result I am running pretty lean. My collection of ships and modules is sitting in a 0.0 system waiting for a someone to accept a contract to ship it out. Meanwhile I have been flying around in a simple Rifter, trying to get familiar with low-sec mechanics.

Anyways, I came across another rifter from the corp I am currently in the process of applying to. I decided to engage him. When engaging another solo rifter it is a pretty safe bet that it has something like the following fit:

[Rifter, Typical]
Damage Control II
200mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates I
Small Armor Repairer II

1MN Afterburner II
J5b Phased Prototype Warp Scrambler I
X5 Prototype I Engine Enervator

Small Nosferatu II
150mm Light AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet Fusion S
150mm Light AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet Fusion S
150mm Light AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet Fusion S

Small Projectile Burst Aerator I
Small Projectile Collision Accelerator I
[empty rig slot]

This is a great setup that can handle ships of all sized. It does good damage, and can hold itself together in a fight. I fly this setup regularly. Having said that, I am a big fan of the shield rifter. I have earlier commented on my MWD fitted shield rifter. However of late I have been running a similar setup, but with an afterburner and tracking enhancer instead of a MWD and nanofibre.

The main advantage to this shield rifter is that it is unusual. This is a huge advantage when engaging another rifter. 99.999% of the time the enemy will start shooting either RF Fusion or Barrage. Both ammo types are effective against armour, but no so effective against shields. Couple this with the large EHP buffer that the shield provides and the natural repping of the shield, and you have an easy fight on your hands.

What made this last fight interesting was that my opponent had the same idea. He was also flying a shield rifter. Except his was equipped with an energy neutralizer to further make a mess of the cap hungry small armour repairer on a typical rifter. In this battle both pilots had the same assumption. We were both flying ships that we figured could easily kill our opponent. In the end the battle dragged on and on as we realized that we just were both shooting the wrong ammo. Since I was setup with a bit more damage than him and a bit better buffer he entered structure about the same time I entered armour. His neut managed to silence my scrambler and he fled just before I managed to finish him off. We both switched to more appropriate ammo and went back at in a minute or two later, and I manged to come out ahead in a much faster battle.

Good fight all around. Anyways, the point of this whole post is that by going with non-conventional fits you have a great advantage. Both of us had non-conventional Rifter fits. They were not strange EFT warrior fits, nor were they super rare, just not what one typically expects. As a result we both were super confident going into the battle that the enemy would be setup wrong against us. As it turned out we were both right.

Here is my Afterburner Shield Rifter Fit:

[Rifter, 125mm shield ab]
Damage Control II
Gyrostabilizer II
F-aQ Phase Code Tracking Subroutines

1MN Afterburner II
Medium Shield Extender II
J5b Phased Prototype Warp Scrambler I

125mm Gatling AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet Fusion S
125mm Gatling AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet Fusion S
125mm Gatling AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet Fusion S
[empty high slot]

Small Projectile Collision Accelerator I
Small Core Defence Field Extender I
Small Core Defence Field Extender I

Frigate vs Cruiser - Strategies

One of the more interesting 1v1 battles out there is a cruiser vs a frigate. From the point of view of an outsider it should be obvious who wins. A cruiser has both the firepower advantage and an advantage of being able to take a lot more damage. However the reality is that these battles are a lot more interesting then you would think. For me the first cruiser vs frigate battle I was in was way back in a DOS game called  'Ancient Art of War at Sea'. In that game sea battles were fought between 1800 era ships of the line, battleships and frigates. Battleships were slow and hard hitting. Frigates were fast and nimble, but not very powerful. Ships of the line were in between. Since these ships could only fire sideways a fast frigate could maneuver so that the larger ship could never hit it. By dashing in an out a frigate could, given a lot of time, eventually take out a larger enemy ship. Eve is similar. Frigates can use their speed and small signature radius to avoid damage from larger ships. However in EVE, the larger ships have some countermeasures. Drones, energy neutralizers being the most important. The most important thing however is to go into a fight with a plan.

Lets look at what weapon systems a cruiser might have that are a threat to a frigate. In order of ease to mitigation we have:

1. Guns: In most cases if the cruiser's guns can hit the frigate with anything close to full damage, the frigate is going to die. The trick for a frigate is to make a cruisers guns useless. This involves using a combination of high angular velocity and a low signature radius so that the cruisers guns can not track the frigate. In most cases this is going to involve getting into point-blank range, paralyzing the target, while orbiting as fast as possible on afterburner. The medium guns on most cruisers just can't hit an afterburner equipped frigate that is orbiting it. The cruiser will typically try to get range and kite the frigate, which breaks the orbit and crashed the angular velocity. Ergo it is important for the frigate to scram (take out the MWD on most cruisers) and if possible webify (further kill the speed) the cruiser so that it is unable to do so. Remember that a Warp Disruptor is pretty useless here as it does not shut down a MWD and most cruisers with a MWD are faster than a frigate with an afterburner. If the frigate fields a MWD as well, then it suffers from a sig radius bloom effectively making the cruiser's guns track 5x as fast. The exception to this is an interceptor. An inty may want to use it's high MWD speed and relatively low signature radius to mitigate damage.

2. Small Drones: Most cruisers have largish drone bays stuffed with light drones. It is pretty typical to face 5x Warrior II or 5x ECM drones. Either case is a big problem. #1 priority for a frigate is to start dealing with those drones once they are launched. The good news is that frigate guns can usually kill 5x Warrior II before it's tank fails, however it does take a lot of concentration so be ready for it. ECM drones are a different and possibly worse problem. Not only do they prevent you from firing your guns, but they also shut down you scrambler and webifier. All of a sudden the enemy can start manouvering, pull range and then kite you with warp-disruptor range. Death is soon to follow.

3. Energy Neutralization: All frigates have a capacitor disadvantage to cruisers. Energy Neutralizers allow a cruiser to suck the capacitor of a frigate dry. Even for frigates that don't use cap for weapons (autocannons and missiles), no cap means no afterburner, no warp scrambler, no stasis webifier and no armour repper. One way of avoiding neutralizers is to keep range. Unfortunately that is not usually an option (see point 1). Really the only way of dealing with neutralizers is NOS. A small NOS should suck enough cap from a target ship to at least power the scrambler and afterburner. As for repping.... forget it.


4. Stasis Webifiers: If there is one thing that a small ship fears... it is the Stasis Webifier. If the enemy can land a couple of these on you... the whole advantage of being small and fast goes out the window. This is why minmattar recons are so feared. One common 'Fishing' technique for a cruiser is to fit two webifiers. This pretty much locks down a frigate making it easy prey to medium sized guns.

5. Missiles: Missiles do damage with very different calculation than turrets. A small ship can reduce damage from a missile thanks to signature radius and speed, however it is pretty much impossible to drop the damage to zero and still be in a position to do damage in return. Also cruisers have the ability to fit assault missile launchers which are basically frigate based weapons with a higher firing rate. Assault missile Caracals are devastating to a frigate.

The good news for the frigate is that with careful target selection and effective piloting it is possible to successfully kill cruisers. The bad news is that if a frigate can not mitigate the 5 weapons listed above, a frigate will die very very fast.

EVE Online Blog Pack -- I am in!! ... and other changes

One of the goals that I had when I started blogging was to make it into the CrazyKinux's EVE Online Blog Pack. After some initial writing and hopes I realized that this was going to take a while. Soon I began writing mostly just because I wanted to get something off of my chest. My original goal of getting into the blog pack was largely forgotten. That is until there was a recent post where he was looking for submissions. A few days later and I am now in :). Mission accomplished.

So what does this all mean?

For one it means that I will probably get a few more readers. That is a nice thing. However it also means that I have a responsibility to actually put some effort in. God help me I may even need to proof read some articles.

Anyways, big thanks to CK for adding me to his list. Big thanks to my readers for continuing to follow me talk about EVE PvP, even when it was clear I had no idea what I was doing.

In other more personal news, I have decided to leave Agony Unleashed. Having flown with them for a year in a half I have decided to try something new in EVE. It is hard to leave a group of friends I have been with for so long. The really are a great bunch of guys (and a few girls). I wish them all the best.

If at first you don't succeed, try, try again

So in my last post I talked about taking an active tanked Cyclone into battle. Results were a little disappointing. In two tries it got hit with neuts twice, making for two losses without even a single kill. For my next attempt I tried fitting the Cyclone with kiting in mind. This is what I came up with:



[Cyclone, Wannabe Vaga]
Tracking Enhancer II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II

Large Shield Extender II
Y-T8 Overcharged Hydrocarbon I Microwarpdrive
Warp Disruptor II
DDO Photometry Tracking Disruptor I, Optimal Range Disruption
DDO Photometry Tracking Disruptor I, Optimal Range Disruption

425mm AutoCannon II, Barrage M
425mm AutoCannon II, Barrage M
425mm AutoCannon II, Barrage M
425mm AutoCannon II, Barrage M
425mm AutoCannon II, Barrage M
SV-2000 Assault Missile Bay, Flameburst Light Missile
SV-2000 Assault Missile Bay, Flameburst Light Missile
SV-2000 Assault Missile Bay, Flameburst Light Missile

Medium Core Defence Field Extender I
Medium Core Defence Field Extender I
Medium Projectile Collision Accelerator I


Valkyrie II x3
Warrior II x2



My goal with this ship was to engage another battle-cruiser or cruiser, and hold them at 20km range or so while slowly pelting them with barrage. Using my superior speed and maneuverability I should be able to hold range on most targets larger than a frigate. Yes, my dps was crap, however with the 2x tracking disruptors I felt that I could potentially drop enemy damage down to 0. I also had a bunch of defender missiles in cargo so even a missile firing drake would find itself doing far less than the expected amount of damage.

After a few systems I found myself camped in a station in Curse by a Sleipnir, a Rifter and a Drake, with a Falcon cloaked on grid. After un-docking a few times, and re-docking once they locked me up and put on the hurt, I went to go make some dinner. When I came back they were still there. There was another agony gang operating about 10 jumps away. I dropped in their channel and they seemed busy with other, juicier targets. So I bought 4 stabs in station fitted them and warped off.

Problem was that I wanted a fight and was felt silly to be running away from one, even one that I had no chance of winning. I knew from earlier that the Rifter was fit with a warp scrambler, and had seen it top out at well over 2k per second. This would have killed my speed. With me being unable to move the Sleipnir would be able to put down enough damage that I would have been dead in a few seconds. And the Drake just added to it. The Falcon would have jammed me so I wouldn't even have been able to fight back. OTOH I could simply run away. I knew this, they knew this... so what was the next step.

The Sleipnir pilot convoyed me asking me to settle an argument with the rifter pilot about whether I had a rack of WCS or if they just failed at tackling. After a minute or so this turned into a request for a 1v1. First I wanted to try against the Drake pilot. He chickened out. So instead I offered against the Sleipnir. This would hardly be a fair fight. A Sleipnir is like a Cyclone... on steroids and bionic implants. After providing some assurances to the Sleipnir pilot that this was not a trap... he agreed.

I figured the fight would likely be over in seconds. I was wrong. It became a 6 minute long slug fest.As soon as I landed on him I pulled range out to 20 km. Then I targeted my guns and missiles onto him, but most importantly, also my tracking disruptors. His first volley tore into my shields but after that he was doing very little damage. His drones started to attack and I placed my drones onto him hoping to take them out.

Here is where I did a few mistakes. Rather than shoot my assault missiles at his ship I should have sent them after his drones as well. Also, since I had 3 medium drones, they could have still gone after his ship leaving my 2 warriors and my 3 assault missiles on his drones. Instead I kept my assault missiles plugging away at his shields while it took forever for his drones to die. Also while he was cycling his drones in and out as they started to take damage, I was not. This would have made it harder for him to take my drones out.

After several minutes of this my drones were gone, but he still had several drones in the air, now slowly being taken out by my missiles. Meanwhile my shields were failing under attack from his drones and the occasional hit from his guns. He was able to rep his shield whenever it went down, although his cap was running low and I was starting to get some traction against his armour. In the end it was not enough. A last burst of overheating as my armour quickly was ripped to shreds was not able to make enough of a difference. Once he hit my pathetic amount of structure I quickly died.

All in all I am very happy with how well things turned out. If I had better e-war skills, fit 2x TE instead of one and stocked  8x warrior IIs or ewar drones then things could have gone differently. As it was this was not a battle I was ever likely to win. GFs all around. Respect for honouring the 1v1 on both sides and my pod limped home.

For some reason I still love the cyclone despite having lost 3 of them without a kill. I will definitely be trying these out some more in the future.