Sometimes I worry I'm too cautious

So as you might have guessed from the :omgsomanywords: narrative posts I've done recently, I now own a Pilgrim Recon Cruiser. And it's pretty damn awesome.

Well technically I own two of them but I'll talk about the second in a later post.

The first one is fit out for PvP. I won't bother telling you my fit because I'm still tweaking it after each fight I have to try and improve it, but basically it's got neuts, tracking disruptors, an active tank and several flights of drones. Pretty basic for the Pilgrim from what I know.

Now when you look at what the Pilgrim can do to a solo ship, it's pretty scary. I can cap out most battlecruisers within thirty seconds, even faster if they try to use guns such as lasers/blasters which need cap, or use propmods etc. The bonused tracking disruptors can cut ranges down to less than 5km or screw up their tracking to the point they're not going to hit a battleship sitting next to them. Of course, anything with drones or capless weapons is in slightly better shape, but not by much.

But here's the problem. That's what a Pilgrim can do to a solo ship.

Solo ships are bloody rare these days.

So that makes me wary when I finally find a potential target, mainly because my Pilgrim is expensive and I don't want to screw up my killboard, which is pretty bad anyway at the moment. I mean spent a good ten minutes on EVE-Kill when I was tracking that Maller, scouring his killmail history for any evidence it was bait fit, or perhaps going to murder me somehow. In my head, this is playing it safe with a potentially expensive lossmail.

However, one of my corpmates, Sarayu Wisdom says I worry too much when engaging targets. He's also a Pilgrim pilot, but he's been flying it longer than me and has a slightly different fit, to the point where any differences should be minimal. So basically we have similar capabilities and should engage similar targets right?

Wrong.

Here's an example. Wisdom and I were roaming around Kor-Azor LowSec a week or so ago. Both of us in Pilgrims, but we were in different systems scouting, and would meet up to attack things. Now I'm up in Pananan at this point, trying to catch a Bestower doing his PI runs. Wisdom is sitting just off the Ami gate in Fensi, a few jumps away watching for the local pirates while cloaked up.

TS3 Comms

Wisdom: Got a Vigilant on gate with me
Me: I'm trying to catch this Bestower, hang on.
Wisdom: Where are you?
Me: Pananan, about two or three jumps
Wisdom: *Silence*
Me: Damn it, he's got warp core stabs. He got away.... What are you doing?
Wisdom: *Still silent*
Me: Dude are you okay?
Wisdom: *Bursts out laughing* Yeah I'm fine but that Vigilant isn't.
Me: ...Are you shitting me?
Wisdom: Nope! Look it's in fleet

Vigilant

Turns out Wisdom had decloaked off gate just to see what the Vigilant would do. The Vigilant then apparently decided that engaging under gate guns would be a great idea (Wisdom isn't flashy), so he burned at Wisdom guns blazing. Wisdom disrupted his guns, neuted out all of his cap in about fifteen seconds, then stuck his drones on the Vigilant to make it go down faster. The "fight" lasted all of thirty seconds. The same thirty seconds that I spent chasing a stabbed-up Bestower.

I sulked for ages after that kill. Mainly because I would never had engaged it myself, and it bought home to me just how cautious I'm getting with my Pilgrim. Maybe I need to just say "Fuck it" and engage more often? I don't know, I see traps and cunning plans behind every ratting Legion, and I just assume that solo ships aren't solo anymore, because they never were when I was in GalMil.

Either way, I had seen that Vigilant roaming around several times before, and I never engaged it. No balls or playing it safe?

I don't know anymore.

Good luck out there guys :)