Speed is the new cool

Today I dusted off my Malediction which I had been trying to ignore until I had "AWESUMS SKILLS!1!!11!" to fly it. But I was bored, I had just lost my Rifter to a Jaguar that jumped me on a planet, and I couldn't be bothered to fit out a new ship. My Malediction was calling and I could not help but fall for her beautiful hull. I jumped into the cockpit after renaming her the "Malware". I fully expected to lose my ship but my trade alt was making me decent money and I wasn't too worried about losing 20mil or so.

To LowSec!

I started out in Amarr and took the two jumps to Ami. In an interceptor, the only targets I was sure of killing was other frigates, so I bounced around looking for some. Nothing.

Sigh... time to head further into LowSec.

It was on the gate to Fensi that I first saw Lemba, going through the opposite direction to me. I noticed the "Imperial Navy Slicer" in my overview and decided against trying to engage. I was pretty certain a Slicer could nail my interceptor, so I avoided dropping cloak too early. He jumped through and I began to explore the system. Everyone was either in a POS or in station so I soon left.

A few random jumps later I saw Lemba again, this time in Pananan. Again I decided to avoid him and look for easier targets. He bounced around the system before dropping from local, apparently unable to find a target he could engage. I quickly had the same opinion and jumped into Gademam, hoping for an miner or two to catch unawares. No such luck, but Lemba was in system AGAIN, on D-Scan along with a random Manticore, which soon cloaked. A trap? No, they were in different corps, so I was safe. Bored due to a lack of targets I began to play with the idea of engaging the Slicer. I looked through Lemba's Slicer losses on Battleclinic and found a common fit, and based my plan of attack on that.

And for those to lazy to look at the link...


Lemba's fit I guessed he had:


Medium Pulse Laser II
Medium Pulse Laser II
Small Energy Neutralizer II


Limited 1MN Afterburner I
J5b Phased Prototype Warp Scrambler I


Damage Control II
Small Armour Repairer II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II
Adaptive Nano Plating II


Small Auxiliary Thrusters I
Small Polycarbon Engine Housing I
Small Polycarbon Engine Housing I

My reasoning
He clearly aimed to mainly speed tank, and repair anything that managed to hit him with the repper, probably hoping to further reduce damage with some limited resists provided by the ANP II. However, I knew a downside of his fit was that Nanofiber Internal Structures reduce overall structure HP, so he would be squishier than a normal Slicer. Also, his use of lasers would play to my resists strengths, EM and Thermal are less effective against armour.His use of a neut would usually worry me, but I have a cap booster on my setup so I can perma-run my reps as long as I have boosters, so at most I would simply have to boost more often. Also running an armour repairer and a neut would drain his cap pretty fast, so I reckoned once I got into his armour he would have to switch off the neut to stop his tank from dying. His main advantage was speed, but Interceptors are built to kill fast stuff, and my rockets would have no tracking penalty unlike his lasers, which I assumed would have difficulty tracking me up close at over 1km/s. So I felt I had the advantage in this fight, and was confident even with my not yet maxed skills I could kill him before he killed me.

Based on this I challenged him in local to make him stick around, then pretended to back down (I'm scared of Slicers!) to give him the idea that I had a terribad fit and that he would win in a fight. Overconfidence on his part would play into my favour. (A crap attempt at psychological warfare I know, but I wanted a Faction Frigate kill really bad)

I started trying to scan him down while bouncing between planets, the usual approach. I thought I had him narrowed down to a belt at one point, but when I warped in he had already left. Damn. I flew back to a planet and started scanning again. Suddenly he dropped out of warp almost on top of me. Either by luck or design he had found me, and we both began to lock each other up. We both hit our afterburners and zoomed around each other at almost 1000m/s each. I was hopeful at this speed he would have some serious tracking issues and I was kinda right.

D-Scan led me to a belt but he had already left :(

He was missing about 1 in 3 shots, which was reducing his DPS by a fair amount. I had already switched to Nova rockets, relying on the fact he was likely to keep armour tanking. Due to me using explosive rockets, and his tracking issues, we both lost shields at about the same time. My rockets started to chew up his armour pretty fast, but his SAR II was keeping him in the fight. I'm not quite sure what happened at this point, but my armour suddenly started melting shockingly fast. I switched on both reppers and my armour jumped back up to 100% from around 48%. I assume he switched off his afterburner to save cap, and the reduction in speed increased his tracking to the point where he was hitting me consistently.

However my tank was holding and he appeared to steadily run out of cap as the fight continued. My rockets were slowly wearing him down and he soon dipped into hull. His armour would jump back up occasionally as he gained enough cap for another rep cycle, causing my attack on his hull to stop for a second, but in the end I still had the majority of my armour when his cap ran out and his repairer stopped. The next salvo of rockets made him go boom. Woop! The 'Malware' gets its first PvP kill!

Then I remembered something from EFT. My lock speed for a pod is under two seconds. My jaw dropped and I spammed CTRL-Left Click on the pod in my overview. I started locking him and I switched to spamming my warp scram. I got him. Jackpot.

Time to be ultra-pirate and demand a ransom. I wasn't sure quite how much to ask for, but I knew the implants in my head are worth about 40mil (I really need better implants). I decided to play it safe and demanded 20 mil for the safety of his pod. He paid up, and I felt like an utter badass as I let him go. We exchanged "gf" in local as I looted his wreck for any decent T2 modules. I played coy when he asked about my fit, I only revealed I was using a dual rep setup with a booster. If we meet again I want to have the intel advantage :P I bounced between planets as I waited for my GCC to run out, not wanting to lose my Malediction to station guns like I did with my first Rifter.

First ransom!!

After 15 mins, I headed back to HighSec, glowing with the happiness of a solo kill, with a great story to tell my corp, and you guys reading this blog.

In hindsight I should have probably ransomed his pod for more. Lemba is a 2009 player, so I probably could of ransomed him for nearly 100mil, especially if he had been using +5 implants. But 20mil is better than nothing ;)


Tl;dr A true GF Lemba, if we meet again, I'll be sure to give you a wave o/