Thorax vs Hawk

I've been spending way too much time with the indy alt on my account.  Perhaps I got turned off by the flying for hours without finding a fight.  In any case, I was glad to get back to flying Jakob and find a fight and amazing enough even emerge triumphant.  So on to the details.

Single Account Alts and Training

I think a lot of people in Eve assume an "alt" is on a second account, or maybe I don't quite have the right lingo yet.  My friends have been talking about buying characters or starting second accounts or just starting another alt on their account.  I'm not willing to put more money into Eve right now though, so that's not for me.  If I get to that magical place where I can PLEX one, sure.

So that means that when I want to get my Indy alt up to doing more T2 module production I shut down Jakob's skill tree and switch over.  The theory was that I'd do a lot of PVP around with him since there would be no penalty to losing a pricey clone.  If I had just let my alt skill that would have worked but I had to get all interested in using those new skills as soon as they rolled off the queue and that then sucked away my time.

I think even when I switch Jakob back to learning I'm going to keep PVPing him though.

Thorax vs. Hawk

So I started in Usi with my armor Thorax and figured I'd set a course for Bosena through lowsec and see if I could find any of the THC2 folks from Sugar Kyle's blog.  My plan evolved to jump into each system and do the following:
* Is there anyone on the gate?
* Is there is an Asteroid Belt in D-scan range of the gate - is anyone in it?
* Are there any FW Medium Strongholds?
* If all of the above are "No", warp to next gate, dropping a bookmark on the way

No luck with any belts, not too surprisingly.  I spotted a Kestrel in a medium plex, which surprised me, but as soon as I was inbound he warped.  But then in Oinasiken I scanned a Hawk in a Medium plex and as soon as I came in he started locking me. The fight was on.

My plan was boringly simple.  Run target down on MWD, expect to lose it when scrammed, but by then I'll be on them and dual-webbing them while providing the loving attention of my neutron blaster.  And overheat this time!

The first step of plan failed.  The Hawk ran to keep distance and I couldn't overtake him.  He slapped a disruptor on me and I was kept at 13-17km or so.  I engaged my 5 Hammerheads on him but they didn't appear to be doing anything to him.  My shield was down and armor buffer was dropping.  Bummer, sucks.  So I turned away from him, recalled my drones, and aimed for a celestial, hoping to open up enough range to slip the disruptor and warp.  The disruptor dropped but I wasn't spamming warp and I didn't get away before he was back on me.  (I heard later from the other pilot that he was overheating his AB to catch me).  So I hoped he was committed and I could yo-yo him, so I swung around and hit Approach, still with the MWD running.

Range dropped fast.  Scram on him, double web on him, relaunch drones.  Overheated heavy neutron blasters.  I hear the capacitor out warning and my MWD cuts out.  My armor is dropping hard, but suddenly his shield is half gone but his armor underneath that is more like two-thirds gone.  Boom.  Turn back, recall drones, loot his ship and hit warp before any buddies show up.

We exchanged GFs and he said something along the lines of "what happened?"  He thought I was about to blow when suddenly he blew up instead.  He was a dual ASB fit and apparently he was tanking my drones fine with one ASB until suddenly I was on top of him and punched through the single ASB.  Brutal, clumsy, no finesse - but perhaps that's what the Thorax is all about.

It was nice chatting with IHoriyoshi after the fight - I'd be glad to find him again for a rematch.  I think the Hawk vs. Thorax in general may have been a good match - I see the killboard shows his ship value as pretty much what my Thorax is.  His fit may not have been ideal for me, since he was shoring up his EM resist while my damage was all Therm/Kinetic, but his speed nearly killed me.

Lessons Learned

More Overheat! Yes, I remembered to overheat my guns this time, but I probably should have overheated my MWD on the way in and when I was trying to escape.  Probably should have overheated the webs too as soon as I got on him.

MWDs and Cap management.  I was running the MWD nonstop while I tried to figure out what was going on.  Of course if I had been AB fit I never would have caught him at all and he would have killed me from disruptor range.  I probably could have done more pulsing it, but that might be beyond what I can keep in my head right now.  I looked in EFT and what it would take to put a booster in, but that would probably mean dropping down the blasters a category.

Piloting.  Manual piloting might be another thing too much to think of right now, but when I turned back on him I really should have gone for Orbit 500m rather than approach just so I didn't whip past him and lose him.


Good fun.  Good heart-thumping PVP thrills.  This is also helping form my ideas for future plans about whether to join RVB for a bit this month, or go FW, or what.