During a fight: adapt to the enemy or die

Those who are able to adapt and change in accord with the enemy and achieve victory are called divine.
-Sun Tzu

Last night I had a very nice little solo fight. I was in my Claw and took on a Dramiel. After dancing with him for a bit I eventually engaged him on a gate. To be honest I didn't think I had much of a chance. A Dramiel is a deadly ship. Basically it embodies everything you could want in a frigate (tracking bonus, falloff bonus, damage bonus) and adds in three drones, a faction ship tank and un-godly speed. To even have a chance I figured I had to engage him at point-blank range and hope for the best. I loaded my best anti-shield ammo (RF Phased plasma as I had not brought along EMP) and hoped for the best.

As he power-approached me on a gate I knew the fight was on. Instantly I activated everything but my armour repper. Within seconds both of us had lost shields. This was a little odd. I figured that he would have a shield extender. But as he hit armour two things happened.. One, I stopped doing any damage. Two he started repping his armour. Rather than a shield buffer tanked ship I was against an active armour tank. Very interesting

This is where the title of the article comes in. No plan ever survives first contact with an enemy. Time for a new plan. After checking the icons on the overview it was apparent that he had a tracking disruptor on me messing with my tracking. Even my fast tracking 125mms autocannons were not able to keep up with a fast moving ship so my DPS had dropped to zero :(. Meanwhile he was still hitting me with his guns, and his three drones. There was no way my SAR (small armour repper) could keep up to that onslaught. I needed to cut the angular velocity between us and do it quick.

I aligned for the sun and started motoring in a straight line*. This gave him a harder target to try and orbit. Thanks to my scram his speed advantage was cut significantly. I soon started to pull a couple km of range on him and angular velocity fell. My guns started doing damage again. Things started to shut down on my ship as I started to run out of cap. We were both using NOS on each other to power the armour repper, but we were both likely dry at this point so it was no use. At this point he should have reacted to my change in tactics. His plan of track-disrupting me was no longer effective, but he still had an advantage of speed and range. He should have started to kite me at this point. His ship had a fall-off bonus, plus his drones work at range, plus he had a warp-disruptor, so he could have moved to 10km and just waited for me to pop.  At the very least he could have warped away (my scram had capped out and so had his disruptor). Instead I managed to keep him between 2000m and 3000m, well within both of our fall-off range. Quite likely however he was having similar cap problems as me so instead he continued to try and maximize angular velocity which played to my strengths.

I had a slight advantage of higher resists, a tech-2 repper (no cap though), and a larger buffer. He had more overall DPS (thanks to the drones) but was shooting RF EMP which was fighting against my highest resistances. In the end my choice of going with Phased Plasma because I had no EMP decided it. I was in 40% structure as he popped. GF all around I looted and then limped to high-sec to repair my burnt out afterburner.

The moral of the story is to have a plan at the start of a fight, but pay attention. When things change either adapt, or run. Look at the icons on the overview showing e-war effects and note what is being done to you. If they loose point, and you are about to loose a 100m isk ship... then run. There were lots of things I was ready to react to. For example. if he had tried to kite me at 15km, I would have switched to his drones.

*Note: The other option at this point would be to approach gate so that his orbit would crash into the gate, killing his velocity both transversal and angular.

Shameless plug - Claw fit on Battleclinic

I put up the Claw fit that I described earlier onto battleclinic.com. There were some very similar fits up there, but nothing quite the same. If you like it please give it a +1 rating.

Standard Solo PvP Claw

A Rusty Roam

I know it has been quite a while since I last posted. TBH with a new baby playtime has been very limited which has meant that I just haven't had the inspiration to write anything. Skill training online is far from exciting.

However, yesterday I had a bit of time for a nice roam. I grabbed a Claw and headed out into the wild blue yonder. Unfortunately targets were light to say the least. After racing through Curse I decided to check out the land of major alliances and paid a visit to first Querious and then Delve. Expecting to find some big blobs (this is the land of thousand vs thousand battles is it not) I ended up finding almost nothing. Eventually in NPC controlled Delve a Harpy and an Armageddon started acting interesting. Figuring that with a bit of luck I could isolate the Harpy I managed to engage it at a distant planet.

A Harpy is an interesting Assault ship. With as much as a 50% damage bonus to four hybrid turrets, it can deal one hell of a punch. I believe that it is the highest dps AF in the game. On the downside it doesn't tank as well as a Jaguar or an Ishkur. Still, to my claw, it represented quite a threat.

I choose to try and get nice and close and get under his guns. Probably a foolish idea (a webber would have pretty much fracked this plan up too much). As I started my orbit fighting for transversal it was a little scary seeing my shields blasted off within seconds. I consoled myself that I had an armour tank so the shields didn't matter as much. In anticipation I cranked on the armour repper before the shields even dropped. Armour reppers act at the end of the cycle so I was confident by then I would need the repair. Fortunately his fit was unconventional. Instead of a webber he was dual prop. As a result I slid under his guns nicely, and once there his DPS dropped to a trickle. Meanwhile my tracking bonused 150mm AC II were pummeling him.

At this point I have to admit to an embarrassing mistake. For some reason seeing a Harpy I thought harpy = blasters = gallente = armour tank = woops. As a result I was shooting RF fusion ammo, far from ideal against a shield tanked ship. However once his shields finally did crack his armour and structure were obliterated in moments.

Picking up the loot I docked in a nearby station. I placed everything up for sale cheap (This ship was not coming home) and headed out again to see what more trouble I could get in.

Solo PvP Dead??? - Epic Solo Roam by Corpmate

So after my last post about solo PvP I thought I would try and prove that it is all alive and good. Unfortunately my 3-week old baby is not cooperating in me playing so I decided to enlist the help of my corp. I created a small contest awarding 100m isk to the best Solo PvP kill between August 15th and September 15th. Well the contest is not over but it is all but decided. One of Agony's best Solo PvPers is a guy named Altaieere. Although barely even a year old he is the terror of the space lanes. What makes Altaieere so good is his knowledge is his situational awareness. I have often flown with him in fleets and he always knows where our enemies are hanging out, and seems to be able to predict their actions ahead of time. Usually flying a amour tanked / repping Rifter he has taken down everything up to and including battlecruisers. A few days ago he decided to go on a little roam in something a bit more fierce than a Rifter.... a Claw.

Al Claw is a nasty little ship. Faster and tougher than a Rifter it also packs a bit more of a punch. The only downside (and it is a biggy) is only having two midslots. Here is a typical Claw fit for solo work...


So anyways, this Altaieere kid started a nice little solo roam around Providence leaving death in his wake. According to the killboards he started with killing a Crusader in H-GKI6. Nice but nothing special. Then he moved on to F-YH5B where he found an Ishtar (Gallente Armour HAC) at a Haven which he quickly dispatched followed almost immediatly by engaging a Taranis which he also killed! He had to deal with a Sabre as well but managed to get away from that one.

Here are his comments on that kill:

killed the ishtar at a haven saw this taranis and sabre on scan, i warped they landed, they chased... I needed time to rep and had to split them up by warping to celestials at dif ranges.
once repped i warped to a 100 off one, sabre landed 100 off taranis landed near meh, fight engaged kited him a bit i bled into structure, he popped i warped!

Very Nice but he is just getting warmed up...

Moving on into 6-OQJV he found a Nice Tengu and a Raven. Now personally I would not even think of engaging both a T3 cruiser and a BS with a single interceptor, but I am not as crazy as my corp-mate. Here are his words:

found them at a haven... scrammed tengu (who i checked had aggro) raven warped off, i started killing tengu, raven warped back.. Tengu popped , overheated scram got raven we shared agro and i got him

Unfrickenbelievable!!!

Half an hour later he is in GA9P-0 taking down two Crusaders (first, second) and another in H9-J8N. Here are the comments about the GA9P fight:

this fight was toughest, 2 crusaders, vengance and arazu on top of me... No webs meant i can get away at the end of the fight... i was in 50% structure and then drake tengu landed so i decided to bug

So to recap... a one year old character in an interceptor manages to kill 4 interceptors, a HAC, a T3 Strategic Cruiser and a Battleship over a 3 hour long period. Amazing!

Ships I fly - The Jaguar - Redux

There was a very interesting fit linked to from one of the comments. Sard Card (of the occasionally updated Broadside bog) suggested I look at the fit from Alex Medvedov. This is the fit that Alex typically uses:

[Jaguar, Alex Medvedov's Jaguar]
Shield Power Relay II
Shield Power Relay II
Gyrostabilizer II

Gistii B-Type 1MN Afterburner
Medium Shield Extender II
Faint Epsilon Warp Scrambler I
Fleeting Propulsion Inhibitor I

200mm AutoCannon II, EMP S
200mm AutoCannon II, EMP S
200mm AutoCannon II, EMP S
Rocket Launcher II, Gremlin Rocket

Small Core Defence Field Extender II
Small Core Defence Field Extender II

What is interesting about this fit is that it is an AB fitted Jaguar with a heck of a passive shield recharge rate. Regretably I don't have the fitting skills (or the money) for it but came up with a reduced version of this ship swapping out a Shield Power Relay for a Power Diagnostic System, T1 rigs, and a T2 AB and took two of them out for a spin last night. I lost both of them to small blobs. It was nice having both a decent tank and the reacharg. In the first engagement against a Stabber, Rupture and an interdictor I was amazed at how long my shields lasted with about 25% shields. The peak recharge rate was doing wonders for my survivability.

However, I had a couple of issues taking advantage of this fit. Primarily the tracking is not very good. Without the Rifter tracking bonus the 200 mm Autocannons can be gotten under with a Claw as I found out. In the second encounter I engaged first one, then several interceptors simultaneously. Although I managed to nearly take down the claw it was able to get under my guns, and then when I tried to pull range to lower transversal, it got away in structure. This was compounded by a Tracking disruptor put on me by another interceptor which made my tracking worse. However I feel in a Rifter, or even with 125 mm guns I still could have been doing damage.

Anyways, it is an interesting fit that, once I have a few more skills, I will explore further. It is actually the first AB Jaguar fit that really appealed to me.