Mistakes were made

Mistakes in Eve generally get punished.  That's part of the appeal of the game - we just need to learn from them and keep going.  But sometimes it takes some looking and thinking to realize that the mistake might not be what we think... so on with the story.


I figured I'd only have a bit of time, so I was banging around Fliet.  I figure I'll d-plex a bit and maybe find one of the Calmil guys along the way, so I hop in a Comet.  Sadly, the first couple plexes are empty but it sounds like something is going on in a medium plex on the other side of the system.  When I see that there is a Svipul involved I decide the Comet isn't going to cut it and head to reship.  I quickly jump into an old favorite - a Thorax.  Make sure it's repaired (I learned that lesson already) and undock, kick it into warp.  It's now Svipul and Condor, but I've gotten a fellow GalMil from a different corp on a conversation and his Comet comes in alongside me.  The Svipul and Condor run.  Sigh.  The GalMil fellow heads on back on his way.  I figure I'll run down the timer.

Into local comes a familiar name: hellokittyonline, who I met when I was in Rifterlings.  I pop a quick o7 in local for him and a few moments later he dives into my plex in a Stiletto.  Now I know that hellokittyonline is good - really good.  I don't think I'll get lucky enough to slingshot him in a Stilleto with me in a bulky Thorax.  I keep my drones in so he can't pick them off early and I start loading Null to test him a bit.  Right about then his buddy in a Confessor lands.  Oh, I'm all about that - switch back to antimatter.  I'm on top of the Confessor in a moment and have him scrammed and webbed, drones out and blasters running..  I don't know if he flipped into Defense mode, but it doesn't look like it's helping him.  Meanwhile my AAR is handling his dps fine.  All this has pulled down my cap, so I start up the cap booster.  I still don't know how I'll take care of the Stilleto, but he won't be able to get through my repper either.

Then my web and scram drop.  What?  I look around for the ECM jam symbol, but there is none.  However, my cap is empty - I apparently missed the voice warning.  I punch the cap booster - which has nothing loaded in it.  Oh crap.  I hopped into the Thorax without making sure it had any cap charges other than what was loaded in the booster.  I get another cycle off on my repper, but without my MWD the Confessor is pulling range which means I can't burn through that last armor of his.  I swing away in case he gets sloppy and drops his point, but it's very unlikely that hellokitty will make that mistake.  I watch the ship go down, frustrated with myself, but keep a gf in local.

What I thought I learned: I need to not leave ships in hangar in anything other than a fully-loaded state.  It's too easy to forget that you have a module that needs a script or cap charges, or enough ammo for your guns.  All those things are relatively cheap.  The one part of that which will be hard is keeping a full drone load in place, since I tend to shift around drone loads based on needs.

Then when you look at it: But when I look at my own killmail it's right there: 10 Navy Cap Booster 400s.  Five cycles should have been plenty to kill that Confessor.  Granted, I use 800s more these days, but this is an older ship.  I can only think now that I had the cap booster auto-reload off somehow.  That's not something I normally do, but I do keep the AAR off of auto-reload.  Perhaps the setting carried over from a previous ship which had no cap booster?  I jumped to a conclusion mid fight and didn't think to right-click to try to find the reload.  It disheartened me enough that I didn't keep looking for ways out, which was bad - I shouldn't have given up.

Afterword: Apparently that Svipul came back in just after I died and finished off the Confessor.  Since he still had damage from me I was listed on the killmail.  He was beam fit, which is why I was able to take him so well from close range.  Even stranger - an afterburner beam fit.  Doubly frustrating then because I feel I would have wrecked him.