Loss 15 and 16: Krim

It will be long...

Last Sunday I was doing some exploration. I decided to try to clear a combat site. Drones in there, no problem with Ishkur. During the fight I checked close range directional scanner frequently and I observed Combat Scanners around me. I was far from the point where the acceleration gate would drop the incoming opponent so I was checking the scanner to see what arrives and in case it is something beatable, I engage otherwise I flee. It was a Rifter. The site was clear so I moved to the next gate. The Rifter and... 6 new NPCs arrived. Ouch!

The fight has been started. Krim orbited me at around 5000 meters and he started to kill my drones. My drone skills aren't - and Krim's tracking skills were - high enough so the drones popped quickly despite the fact I put a tracking disruptor on him with tracking scripts. Meanwhile I ran my tank. I don't know how long the fight took, Krim has to know, he frapsed it. It felt minutes. Finally the Ishkur popped. The total damage taken is 12518. If we take a look at the killmail we will see that the majority (76%) of the damage has been dealt by the NPCs. I was pretty confident that without NPC help a Rifter cannot kill my Ishkur.

After Ishkur went to dust my pod has been caught. I was distracted by the NPCs and forgot the align-warp-warp-warp-... part. The usual BMC ransom question. Then I informed Krim that we know each other, we had joint kills in the past. So he decided letting me without ransom. I gave him 16M anyway, that is the cost of my implant as far as I remember. It sounded correct to pay the price of my amateur behavior at the end of the fight.

After the fight I was thinking a lot of about it. It seems obvious that the major problem was that I made the NPCs pop in by going too close to the next gate. During the fight the scanner probes were on my directional scanner so Krim has to have an scanner alt or mate. Noone else arrived to help him so without the NPCs it would be a fair 1v1.

And there goes my plan... I thought that this scenario could be copied again. Me in a combat site behind an acceleration gate. He scan me, warp in in. If it is a Rifter I stay there and try how the fight goes. I suspect a tie, because he will pop my drones, stay away my blaster range and I would be able to tank his damage. If he warps in an another ship (I mean Cane.), I simply warp away. To this plan I changed the Tracking Disruptor to web. Slowing him down is essential, maybe if I sit close the entrance point I could catch him at 1000-200 meters and from that distance my blasters could deal with him. Or not, but worth to try. This was the plan.

Lets see the application of this theory! I have made a mistake, I played bait in a non-acceleration gate site, so the I know where is the entry point part was risky, but who cares? The worst scenario is a tie, since he is a freelancer nowadays.

There were an another BMC member in the system but I thought she won't engage, Krim would think the Rifter would be enough.

Scanners arrived then a Rifter in close range scan. Here we go! He was too far away, the 5000-6000 meters as last time. OK, it will be a tie then. Drones started to pop, then... A Curse arrived. *sigh* Align to-warp-warp-warp-... So much for my tie worst case scenario. Krim explained that he thought I will call corporate help in our 1v1 this is the reason the Vivien arrived.

If we check the new killmail we will see that this time the Curse was the damage dealer, the Rifter was only a tackler. I am still confident that a Rifter cannot beat an Ishkur.

If I were lazy the last sentences would be the moral of this post. In fact I am lazy but...

I have to compare these losses with my loss against the Ishkur and the Comet. Both were blaster setups with drones, like me yesterday and I was sitting in a Rifter like Krim did yesterday. I failed to survive the encounters in my Rifter but Krim did (and with outside help he won). I have to ask the question: why? The answer is simple and I knew it before: against a blaster boat you have to keep distance. Now I have seen this in life and I can start to practice.

Bad news: the I am afraid you call for help so I call help first attitude is dangerous. As I operate mostly solo it means that from now on I will engage less. It means less fight. It means boredom. I wanted to avoid this but I cannot.
This is not carebearing. I don't care about my Ishkurs. I miss the opportunity to learn something in practice. It is a quite obvious lesson that a Rifter and a Curse beats an Ishkur and I don't need obvious lessons. The majority of my kills are the same, to be honest. A rookie in an Incursus won't beat a Rifter or Ishkur. There were only a few fights where I felt: Yes, this was good, I have learned something new, something worth the time spent! Some of these fights were win, most of them loss, and one tie.

This last two with Krim weren't that type. I have learned to be cautious, which will help me to survive... by not going into fight. And this is bad.