Determining Opponent's Fit - A Fight with a Daredevil

I had a great little solo fight in my Jaguar against a Daredevil in Syndicate a while back that I have been meaning to post about for a while. A Daredevil and a Jaguar are normally two very different ships. However for an experiment I have been playing around with using a armour repping Jaguar with some decent gank potential. Here is my experimental fit:

Jaguar, Toterra's Jaguar]
Damage Control II
Small Armor Repairer II
Prototype Armor Explosive Hardener I
Prototype Armor Kinetic Hardener I

Limited 1MN MicroWarpdrive I
J5b Phased Prototype Warp Scrambler I
X5 Prototype Engine Enervator
Small Capacitor Booster II

200mm AutoCannon II,Republic Fleet Fusion S
200mm AutoCannon II,Republic Fleet Fusion S
200mm AutoCannon II,Republic Fleet Fusion S
Rocket Launcher II,Caldari Navy Inferno Rocket

Small Projectile Burst Aerator I
Small Projectile Collision Accelerator I


This is definitely not the standard Jaguar fit. However it does achieve a nice, high resist, armour tank with good dps, good e-war, good cap while preserving great speed and agility.


However the Daredevil is a nasty ship to be going up against. Massive DPS combined with a bonus to the effectiveness of the web meant that I knew if I got tackled, I wasn't going to be going anywhere. On the other hand it usually does not have much of a tank. Of course, with my armour jag fit, I didn't have much of a tank either :(. What I needed to know was how the daredevil was fitted to so I could maximize my changes.

Fortunately I was was able to determine the Daredevil fit pretty well. I played station games with him. I turned on my MWD, let him tackle me and noticed that the MWD went off, and I was webbed. I also watched his speed that seemed to max out in the 1500m/s range. This meant he was fit with a scram, a web and an afterburner.

He shot at me a bunch of times, damage notifications indicated that he was hitting me with Neutron blasters. I also noted that he was applying NOS to me as well.

Since I was always within station dock range, and I never aggressed I was able to dock up whenever I wanted to. I now had a very good idea of his fit. Neutron IIs and a NOS in the highs. AB/SCRAM/WEB in the mids, and probably an active tank in the lows because the NOS usually is found on ships with active tanks.

I was now ready to fight him :)

I undocked and he was sitting right on the undock :(. I powered away from the undock 'fluttering' my MWD. What this means is I used the MWD but set my speed to about 1200m/s. I did not want to give away that I was speed fit. I had used it earlier while assessing his fit but hopped that he did not clue in or figured that I changed fit. Once he was out of position I docked up again.. then immediately undocked as soon as my session timer allowed. I was a nice 15 km from the target and set my keep at range to 18km. I pelted him with barrage and rockets while my MWD kept me out of range of his blasters. Once I blew through his shields and began to pelt into his armour I stopped firing... switched ammo and burnt right for him. Suddenly I was tackled and he basically sat on me at 0 while it became a DPS race. While I was committed (top speed around 30m/s while webbed), he could have disengaged at any point... however he was webbed and would have taken him about 10-15 seconds to get out of my tackle range. Since his weapons were close range only, and he would be taking fire the entire time, this was obviously not something he wanted to do.

Overheating everything it came down to the wire. I had about 30% structure left when he popped. Thanks to my earlier stripping of his shields, I was victorious. After some nice imperial navy and c-type drops I docked up, repaired and went on my way to loose my ship soon after in another engagement.

I love this game :)