Raid on R1O-GN - Part 1

My somewhat shallow and unsatisfactory experiences in faction war space left me feeling like I needed to try my luck somewhere else.  I do want to go back at some point, get better at taking those goodfights in plexes, and maybe play around with some of the dirty tricks I’d encountered there, like the same Punisher/Loki duo tactic that murdered one of my Kestrels. For now though, I had had enough.

I got to thinking that if I wanted to get good again, I should do it the right way. That is to say, not just blundering around falling into every trap until I gradually evolve into the guy setting the traps. Rather, I should hit the proverbial books and seek knowledge from the experts, then attempt to apply that knowledge.

A quick Google search turned up 3TEARS excellent “Null Solo PvP Bootcamp” series:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xY_u5lNkcAA&t=4s

I had gotten my start in solo PvP in nullsec back in the day flying Merlins in Syndicate, but since then hadn’t done much. A few slow roams led me to more or less give up on it. I’d never really attempted to use anything larger than a frigate that didn’t also have a covops cloak.

But 3TEARS inspired me to give it another shot and to try my luck in a cruiser. I was highly skeptical of my chances escaping even from the most casual of gatecamps in something as slow and unwieldy as a cruiser, so I settled on a Stabber. 

The mighty Stabber

I’m not sure how the Stabber compares to other T1 cruisers currently, but it used to be the fastest, most agile one. I put together a kiting fit and filled the cargo hold with various things that I thought might be useful for an extended tour of regions where there would be no place for me to dock up.

I assumed that I was likely to die the first time I jumped into a gate camp, so I decided to approach this as an exercise in trying to survive, while keeping my eyes peeled for targets of opportunity.

Objectives

My biggest frustration with nullsec PvP in the past had been that nullsec in general is a target-poor environment. Most systems are empty most of the time. It gets pretty boring to jump 100 times, just to find one guy who runs and hides as soon as you pop up in local.

So I figured that if I was ever going to make a full time playstyle out of solo PvP in null, my long term goal would be to set up shop right in the same neighborhood as one of the major alliances. That way there would be people to shoot. I could probably make a nuisance of myself by killing the lazy/afk pilots mining and ratting, see what kind of blobs they would throw at me, and play it by ear from there.

But if I was going to survive alone in a non-cloaky ship right in the staging area of a major alliance, I figured I would need good bookmarks.

So for my first mission objective, I decided to make my way slowly to the home system of a major alliance. I would take my time, and make a basic set of bookmarks - gate perches and safe spots - in every system along the shortest pipe in. I would refrain from my usual impulse to yolo my ship against every single target that I reckoned I might have a slight chance of killing, instead only taking fights I was reasonably confident of winning.

R1O-GN

Horde HQ

The staging system of Pandemic Horde seemed like a good choice. A Horde director once said a mean thing to me on the internet, so I had a legitimate casus belli.

Plus, I had been told that there was a larger war on, and Mittens had assured me that Horde were the bad guys. I may not be a loyal enough goon to re-enlist and fulfill boring fleet participation quotas, but I guess I could find my way to destroying a few evil PIPI guys where they live.

Also, it seems like the sort of alliance where there would be at least a few newbies blundering around, bumping into things, oblivious to their surroundings, so I figured I could at least manage a consolation kill or two if this turned out to be really hard.

And the icing on the cake was that Horde has open recruitment. If a little birdie or two could find a nest in their standing fleet, it would improve my odds.

So without further ado, I laid in a course for R1O-GN and undocked Stabber 1.

Stabber 1 vs Scythe + Stiletto 

All that lowsec PvP had reduced my security status to inconvenient levels, so I raced across the highsec portion of my route with faction police dogging my heels.

As soon as I hit low security space I slowed down, and began methodically moving from system to system, creating safe spots and burning tacticals off the gates.

In Paala I found my first bit of action. As I jumped into the system, I saw 30-odd people in local chat. Maybe half were blinking red or yellow. Two people quickly threw up “gfs”. My rapid assessment of the situation was that a small Pandemic Horde gang was fighting some other assholes somewhere in the system.

I remembered an old trick that I learned back in my days with Flying Dangerous. Basically the idea is this - whenever there is a fleet battle, people sometimes warp away from the action because they are taking damage and don’t want to die. If they are smart, they warp to a safe spot, or maybe to a random moon or belt. But in every fleet there are always at least one or two guys who will warp to the sun at zero.

I dscanned the sun. Sure enough, there was a lonely Scythe there. He was even kind enough to wait for me as I warped over. I locked him up, and orbited at my optimal. As I had guessed, the pilot was wounded - halfway through his armor. I activated my warp disruptor and weapons, and deployed my drones.

I knew that I had to do this quick. The guy had a fleet in system and was probably screaming for help over comms. I was gambling that his comrades were too busy fighting someone else to bail him out. But just in case, I set my dscan range to 1 AU and spammed the scan button, hoping to get a few seconds of advance notice if someone started decelerating out of warp, trying to save this Scythe pilot’s foolish ass from me. 

Sadly, it seemed the fleet battle was over. I spotted a Stiletto on dscan, so I recalled my drones and warped off to a random celestial just as he landed on grid. 

The Stiletto pilot knew their business. They watched the direction of my warp and followed, landing 20km from me at just about the same moment as I dropped from warp. I managed to warp off again before they could get point, this time shaking off the pursuit for good.

I went back to my mission of making safe spots and tacticals, and soon the enemy gang moved on. In spite of failing to kill anything, I felt good about my first fight in a Stabber. I had quickly found some action, and felt pretty happy about how smoothly I was able to disengage when it looked like things were about to go pear shaped. It was a good fight.

Beauty shot

Stabber 1 vs. Svipul

I made my way into Etherium Reach, slowly making bookmarks and evading any engagements that I wasn’t sure about. In 8KE-YS, a Solyaris Chtonium pilot by the name of Arguil McKay was in local, and I caught several glimpses of his Svipul on dscan as I went about making bookmarks.

It occurred to me that Mr. McKay was looking to fight me. When I was in the vicinity of one gate, he soon showed up on dscan. When I moved to another gate, soon enough he showed up there too.

“He’s hunting me,” I thought. “That bastard! How dare he?”

I wasn’t really sure what a Svipul could do against a Stabber. A look at Arguil’s zkillboard history reassured me that he was not likely to call for backup. He seemed to be a relative beginner who was trying to learn solo PvP. A recent Svipul loss was fitted with an afterburner, warp scrambler, and 150mm autocannons. I figured my odds of kiting him successfully were good.

I located him on dscan at the ZS-PNI stargate, so I warped to a perch 150km off, then started orbiting at that range without my microwarpdrive. Sure enough, Mr. McKay was sitting on the gate, and began burning for me.

When he got within targeting range, I burned straight away from him with my microwarpdrive, hoping to minimize his transversal velocity, to apply the most damage possible from my longer range guns while he chased me down. I unleashed my brace of Hobgoblin 2s and opened fire.

I had hoped to stay out of his warp scrambler range and kite away, but something went wrong with that plan. He moved faster than I anticipated and quickly closed range, warp scrambling me and orbiting rapidly with his afterburner. My medium autocannons struggled to track him, and none of my manual piloting efforts proved sufficient to shake off his scram. 

Fortunately, he had taken a few good hits while he was chasing me down, and my drones were effectively shredding his shields. My light missiles also were hitting him for low but consistent dps. 

My own shields were fully intact as Mr. McKay focused his efforts on shooting my drones. I have only rarely flown drone boats, and am bad at this game in general, so I was slow to notice what he was doing. When I glanced up, two of my drones were already dead. I recalled the rest, but he killed another before it could get back into the safety of the drone bay. Without drones, I wasn’t doing much damage, but he was already in low armor at that point.

I plugged away at him with light missiles, overheating the launchers, managed to graze him occasionally with autocannons, and redeployed my two remaining Hobgoblins. He killed one more of them and wounded the last (my precious drones!), but the fight had already been won. The last bit of his tank was ground away and the Svipul died.

First kill with a Stabber

Arguil warped off to the sun with his pod. I recalled my wounded drone and followed him, then helpfully podded him home.

Lessons learned: Next time, bring EMP/Mjolnir ammo to use on shield tanks. Also more Nanite Repair Paste, and extra drones.

Upon glancing at the killmail, I noticed that the Svipul had dropped a Federation Navy afterburner. As an impoverished pirate, I couldn’t afford to ignore this moderately valuable piece of loot. I went back and scooped the AB.

At this point I was down to one drone, my launchers were all heat damaged, and I had valuable loot in my hold, so I decided to head back home to Hek to get repairs, supplies, and a fresh coat of paint on the hull, before resuming my raid on Horde space.

I was feeling very happy about my first solo roam in a Stabber. Could the Stabber be my new Merlin? I don’t know, but I’m feeling a certain affection for this humble T1 cruiser already.