Lessons From Early Fights (Part 2)

After a well-tanked Armageddon fought off my Drake, I decided I needed more tank and more firepower. I had a couple shield buffer-rigged Ravens in the hangar, so I fitted one for anti-MR work and moved it to Ruvas, my ninja testing system.

The day after the Armageddon fight, a pilot named Takens in a Raven Navy Issue decided to take shots at my Heron. It was in a Sanshas mission with no gates and he was sitting close to the warp in point. I swapped the Heron for my Raven and warped back to the mission. He was still on scan, but when I landed, he was chasing down a wreck about 40 km away. I overheated and started charging at him, cursing my ill fortune, when he immediately opened fire again. It took me 45 seconds to close to overheated point range, and he made no attempt to escape! Still, it took over a minute before I was within torpedo range. He had been pelting me with cruise missiles the whole time so he had a sizable head start on my buffer tank.

Things changed, however, once my torpedoes started reaching their target. Two minutes after landing on the field, I was in armor, but his shield tank was broken and he was dropping much faster than I was. I had closed to web and neut range, and remembered to launch a 5th drone (the Warrior II on the graph below). I burned out one of my Invulnerability Fields around this time, but the fight was effectively over. He attempted a late convo, but neglected to pull his drones. It took two volleys to turn his structure into Swiss cheese, leaving his pod beside his wreck.

Damage graph for Guyde's Raven vs Takens' Raven Navy Issue

Total fight time was about 2 minutes 40 seconds from the time I landed on the field until he popped. I started to approach him at 21:56:01 (not shown in the graph). Takens was a good sport about it all, and we ended up having a lengthy chat about PVP and aggression mechanics.

This fight demonstrated my feeling the night before: there will be situations where a PVP battlecruiser will simply not be able to defeat a PVE battleship. His damage while I was closing the gap would have forced my Drake off the field. In this case, it was thanks to the extra buffer and extra damage of the Raven that I was able to finish the fight. Continuing the lessons of the night before...

LESSON 5: A PVP battlecruiser may win many fights, but not all.

I finished the fight with two volleys left in the launchers. This was due to me being a little trigger-happy at the start of the fight and wasting 3 volleys before I was in range.

LESSON 6: Know the maximum range of your missiles. Don't waste ammo.

One final note: I used the wrong ammo type. I loaded up the EM damage Mjolnir torps, forgetting that he was in a Sanshas mission. Sanshas deal EM and thermal damage, so I could reasonably expect him to tank against those damage types. Post-fight EFT calculations showed his shield EM resistance was 55%, and his armor EM resistance was 50%. A much better choice would have been kinetic damage Juggernauts against 40% shield and 25% armor resistances. To make it simple: it took me 30% longer to kill him, because I chose the wrong ammo type.

LESSON 7: Know the mission NPC damage types, and adjust accordingly.

The Raven had been successful, but it moved like a slug. What could I fly that is strong enough to consistently kill a battleship, but quick enough for covering large distances? A new idea was forming....