And that's why rockets don't suck

I love this ship...

Today was the first solo test of my Vengeance in LowSec. I've been using it alot on the test server and even lost it a couple of times in HighSec, but I had never been in a system below 0.6 solo while flying it before this evening.

Once again I started out in Ami, and even saw my old friend Quin Yi kicking around, but I didn't really feel like getting nailed by his Catalyst again. So instead I started heading up to Pananan, where I spotted only one person in Local, Maya Babylon. A quick check of BattleClinic showed only a few kills, most of which were with other people. I fancied my chances against someone who didn't seem experienced in solo PvP, and I could only see a Wolf on D-Scan.

At this point I was quite confident at my chances on winning, as my Vengeance has killed about three Wolves on Sisi, but that was the test server, and Tranquility is the real thing.

I started bouncing between planets trying to scan the Wolf down, and at one point we warped to the same belt and then off again before either of us could stop. Eventually Maya must have gotten bored, as I had scanned him down to the sun, where he appeared to be waiting. I warped in at 100km, and saw the Wolf sitting exactly 100km away. Urgh. (I turned on my recording software at this point but forgot to put the settings on high, so I apologise for the terrible video quality in the link at the end of the post :P)

The Vengeance might be a tanky bastard, but my god is it slow. Time seemed to stretch into infinity as we slowboated at each other. I started having doubts about my chances right about now. I remembered that Minmatar Assault Frigates were often called "Super Rifters" by people in my corp, and the Rifter has a well-earned reputation as the best T1 frigate. I started to freak out a little, but stayed on course. I wasn't about to run away now.

I decided to keep my afterburner off while approaching to conceal I had it fitted (instead of a MWD for example) and Maya appeared to do the same with his propulsion. At about 30km out however, his speed jumped to from about 350m/s to over 2000m/s. I LOVE MicroWarpdrive fit frigates, because it means my afterburner and web makes me faster than them.

Yeah I want to fly this one too...

As he zoomed towards me, I pulsed my afterburner, before turning it off to prevent him overshooting me. I waited until he fired the first shot, I didn't want to have a GCC and die to gate guns again. Instead, he took the GCC about 10km away from me, and I hit on pretty much everything. His speed dropped like a stone, and I tried to stay on top of him while juggling overheat on my rep and rockets.

His shields fell pretty fast, but then I hit his armour and it was falling much slower. I realised I hadn't actually turned my nos on, and spammed it in panic. According to the overview he was webbing and draining me back, so I assumed he must be active fit, but judging by his armour readout he had forgot to turn on his rep. Heh...

My heart was almost pounding out of my chest by now (I did not want to lose another Vengeance, dropping fourty million into a frigate makes you attached to it somewhat :P) Thankfully, my rockets were taking their toll on his armour, and my rep was keeping alive for long enough that he eventually popped.

My hands were shaking too much to even try and catch his pod, so instead I simply said "gf" in Local, looted his wreck, and hot-footed it back to HighSec, with no GCC to slow me down. Gotta love forward planning :)

I checked my modules when I got back to Amarr for heat damage. Rep was at 12.5% damage from overheating, but my launchers were at 60%  O.o
Jesus. If my rockets had burnt out, I would have suffered an embarrassing end. So I think I need a higher Thermodynamics skill, as II doesn't seem to be doing much for me.

Anyway, I'm really pleased with how the battle went, and I even managed to record it (poorly) so you can be there with me!

Youtube video link



Fly safe!