My first love will always be the Merlin. I have successfully solo killed a wide variety of ships with the Merlin over the years, from T1 frigates right up to battleships. After 6 or 7 attempts to solo strategic cruisers, I finally managed to catch a Legion a few years back, get under its guns and tackle it in a perfect, unbreakable sort of way, but didn’t have enough dps to finish it off without calling some friends.
Ah the Merlin. One day we’ll kill them all together, my love.
Sadly, the last time I tried to solo PvP with a Merlin, I kept getting my ass kicked. Everyone seems to be flying kitey stuff these days, and I’m not as clever as I used to be about initiating fights in the most favorable circumstances. So, with disappointment, I ruled the Merlin out as my first choice to reinitiate myself in the ways of pew.
I have always appreciated missile boats, even though I haven’t flown them much. They just look so cool when all the missiles are launching. So I settled on the Kestrel
A bit of analysis of zkillboard, and I put together a fit. Rockets, scram, web, shield extender. A basic scram/web kiter. I love to brawl with blasters, but if you can’t beat them, join them, I guess. I’m officially a kitey bastard now.
I undocked from the Boundless Creation Factory and departed Hek, plotting a course for the faction warfare zone.
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| Departing BCF |
Fight 1: Kestrel 1 vs. Slasher
In Evati, I found my first customer. A young pilot by the name of “timer cute” was lurking in a faction warfare plex.
My heart thumping, my hands shaking, I warped through the acceleration gate and found timer cute sitting at 0 in a Slasher. I target locked her, orbited at 7km, fired up my AB, and with a roar of “FREEEEDOM!” that woke up my wife in the next room, I scrammed, webbed, and fired volley after volley of rockets at her.
The Slasher didn’t stand a chance. My scourge rage rockets shredded her hull in seconds. I took no damage whatsoever. Then I killed her pod and collected my first frozen corpse in years.
“Goddamn, I am good,” I thought, basking in my own PvP excellence, in the moment of post-victory euphoria. “Maybe I’ve still got it after all. Let’s just take a look at this killmail and see what kind of fit my kestrel defeated so easily...”
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| A glorious victory for the cause |
Don’t judge me. A killmark is a killmark.
Lesson learned - apparently you get a suspect flag when you warp into a faction war plex nowadays. Good to know.
Fight 2: Kestrel 1 vs. Catalyst
I found myself in Klogori, staring at a Catalyst on dscan, sitting in another plex. The pilot, big bug, was new. But I don’t trust pilot age to provide me with any useful information anymore - not since skill injectors were rolled out. I learned that lesson the hard way, the last time I came back from a hiatus.
“If I go through this acceleration gate, he’s going to murder me,” I thought. The pilot sitting in the plex gets to choose the range at which the engagement begins. As a former Merlin specialist, I have a healthy respect for what blasters can do to a kitey ship that lands at close range.
Fuck it though. What am I going to do, hunt around all day for a perfect setup? No, I’m in a cheap, disposable ship. I’m going to take chances and see what happens. I warped in.
big bug was at zero, but his reaction time was slow. I spun up my afterburner and pulled range as soon as I made contact, then shrieked a terrifying war cry and activated my scram, web, and rocket launchers. I orbited at the extreme edge of my scram range, even losing point for a little while before I made adjustments.
big bug shot back, but his blasters barely scratched the paint on my kestrel before he went down in fire, then I nabbed his pod too.
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| Death to Minmatar Republic |
Lesson learned:
If you want to bake a perfect sourdough loaf, proof your dough in the fridge overnight before putting it in the oven.
Fight 3: Kestrel 1 vs. Imperial Navy Slicer
I docked up for a bit after slaying big bug, and when I got back an Imperial Navy Slicer named after one Meck Arzi turned up on dscan in another plex.
I hesitated because I was worried that a Slicer might kill me by mwd kiting from outside of warp scrambler range. However, Meck’s zkill history reassured me that it might be worth taking the risk.
I warped in and found him near the entrance to the plex, then set my orbit to 1000, hoping that I might be able to mitigate some of his damage by making myself more difficult to track. “ALLAHU AKBAR!” I hollered, heroically mashing my F1 key.
Meck put up a brave fight but died anyway. He actually made more of an impact on my shields than either of the other targets, but I still stayed above 70%. His ancillary armor repairer kept him alive for a minute or so, but at the end of the day Meck had brought a knife to a gun fight.
My warp scrambler and webs were on him before he could turn on his micro warp drive, so he couldn’t pull away and take advantage of his superior speed to either kite or disengage. He would probably have been better served to sit 50km off the entrance to the plex, to give himself options and space to maneuver.
The Slicer exploded and Meck warped off in his pod, signaling “gf” in local.
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| RIP Meck Arzi's Slicer |
Lessons learned:
It seems that people are trying to PvP in faction war space these days without fitting any kind of point. Meck’s fit surprised me, and at first I chalked it up to inexperience - but some zkill analysis confirmed that this seems to be a legitimate trend in the fitting metas for faction warfare areas. I even dug a little deeper and found some guides which actually recommend this ridiculous idea, because it frees up another mid slot for webs.
Ok. Maybe I’m missing something. Maybe I’m more ignorant about the current state of the game than I realized. But it seems to me that finding fights is hard. I’m not going to go to all the trouble to hunt people down and then just let them warp away as soon as they start taking damage. I will be fitting points to all my solo PvP ships.
Fight 4: Kestrel 1 vs. Condor + Vengeance
My luck ran out in Avenod.
A few pilots were buzzing around in local. I decided to warp into a plex and go after a Condor. I suspected he might microwarpdrive kite me with light missiles but took my chances anyway. My previous successes had made me confident.
I might even have pulled it off. Sadina Emberstorm, the Condor pilot, was 20km off the entrance. I managed to get scram and webs on her before she could react, and fired off a couple volleys of rockets, but no sooner than I had engaged, celmi of Dirt n’ Glitter landed on grid and was all over me. I went down fast and hard.
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| GF |
Lesson learned:
Faction warfare space isn’t what it used to be in terms of activity, but it is still possible to get into some fights there.
I hopped in a Corvette and headed back to Hek to board Kestrel 2.
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