Awesome.

Well! I wouldn't have expected to have some good stories to share again already, but it has been a pretty awesome day.

First of all my newest tool of the trade got delivered to Hevrice: A sparkling Crusader. Holy smokes it looks good. Two symmetrically aligned main compartments, which are housing gigantic thruster units and the technology for the ship's weapon systems and other electronics. Between them sits the minimalistic compartment for the crew, which is also containing the capsule. Everything is wrapped in polished golden metal, featuring blood red colour patches and glimpses into the vessel's innards. It just might be the ship you'd be most inclined referring to as "she", a true femme fatale, but I for one am just not that old fashioned (you may notice I'm tempted, though). Come to think of it, nothing you would expect from Amarrian engineers.

But the Crusader isn't just looks; it's a tough competitor, too. It is the second fastest interceptor, only surpassed by the Stiletto, slightly ahead of the Ares. But other than the two, it packs a much meaner punch and isn't made of tinfoil. It would be my personal #1 if it weren't for the Taranis - can't beat brute blaster force, one more mid slots and two small drones. Actually corpmate Suleiman Shouaa claimed otherwise, but I can't see at least the fit I'm flying win against a Taranis of mine.

Now, moving on to some after action reports!

The moment Fadeaway is embraced by the dark voids of space for the first time, onboard scanners reveal a Tristan nearby. A quick check with local coms confirms the pilot to be a couple of months old, apparently having hardly any combat experience. Awesome.

A narrower scan angle suggests that his position must be within another cluster of asteroid belts. I warp to a safespot closer to the cluster and keep scanning. There he is, top belt. I leap in.

My interceptor comes to a halt, but isn't able to intercept anything. Did he move? More scanning points to a moon, but no Tristan there either. I warp to the planet to give my scanner a better look from there. Oh hey, there it is! It's 100km away though and the pilot makes the wise decision to cheese it.

Apparently he intends to leave Hevrice through the Jovainnon stargate. This guy behaves like he's got some business in lowsec, so I trail him for a bit. Through the gate he goes, I follow. Jovainnon is a very compact system, so he moves on to Aeschee. He may try to lose me there - the system spreads widely and there are more ships in space.

I delay my jumps a bit longer to make him think I lost interest - an attempt to make him less aware of my presence in Aeschee's crowded local coms. It doesn't seem to work, he still keeps hopping around like some lass covered in- well, he hopped around a lot.

He takes a break at the gate to Adirain before he makes the jump. Again I wait before I go after him, but he is still sitting at the gate regardless. I decide to have played his game long enough and jump straight back into Aeschee again, about to look for another target elsewhere. Screw him.

At least that's what I want him to believe. Thirty seconds later I'm back in Adirain, the Tristan is nowhere to be seen on my tactical overview or scanner. His pilot still is in the system though. I cross my fingers and select the top belt of the densest cluster as my warp destination.

Yes, yes and yes! Point, pew and 'splode!

Upon pointing his pod as well, being the nice chap I am, I invite him to a conversation regarding the price for his life. I am in fact so nice that I ask him whether or not he might want to save it before I suggest a nominal fee. There is no response from him, I let my lasers answer for me.

Ah, an excellent display of a hunter and his prey. No faction loot in all of New Eden could give me more satisfaction.

The roam didn't end there, though.

I drop off my loot and go observe Adirain a bit longer. After the system refuses to give me any more targets, I head for Aeschee again to check some of its other adjacent systems. I however notice something rather interesting on scan: a Cyclone battlecruiser. It has not been renamed, the young pilot and his interest in Essence's lowsec is known to me.

Half-hearted I scan the belts - he surely must be on a mission. Nope, he is not, so I make haste to the asteroid belt he's in. His heavy guns have no hope of ever hitting me, his dronebay for some reason is not in use. Bottom line: he doesn't stand a chance.

I strive to be even nicer than before and give him an opportunity to keep both his ship and his life. There again is no response, but luckily my lasers again have plenty to say.

The fee of 50 million ISK might have been a tad bit steep, but the "I won't get to see some awesome fireworks"-tax just doesn't come cheap in cases like these.

Thar She Pews

After somewhat of a slump, things are starting to look good again - first of all my ISK efficiency. I didn't score some faction loot or a juicy ransom, but there has been more loot money than insurance payouts.

Speaking of targets - the belts somehow seem to see more visitors again. I don't know if it's coincidental, but they came back around the time Adirain got to see a little less of a certain nuisance: "Bundschuh" - former members of Chains of Chaos - often used to camp the stargates to highsec and has barely been seen outside of Adirain. I like to think that The Tuskers are at least one of the reasons they seek their tiresome business elsewhere. Either way, good riddance!

Better luck finding targets is one thing, but the one thing that really bugged me was my recent lack of concentration when engaging them. As you may have read in my previous update, arrogance and poor judgement led me to lose ships in some embarassing ways. I was flying ships I had become very familiar with every day, coming out on top rather often. As a result, I ignored very much possible "What if?" scenarios, didn't consider exit strategies or just made very avoidable mistakes during the combat routine.

Playing on high stakes didn't seem to work that well anymore - defeats in Taranises looked just as amateur as lost Incursuses. I had to think of something else to straighten up again.

To sum it up, flying an Incursus all the time felt mind numbing and flying a Taranis rather supports hybris than helping to get rid of it. I needed new ships, ships I was unfamiliar flying, ships I needed to get used to.

The obvious choice was the Rifter. I didn't want to go for the obvious choice. Rifters are too darn good anyway; I might have gone into fights saying "Whatevs, I got a Rifter, he's got nothing on me, Imma go Kirith on his ass" and then I would have died horribly once again.

What else then?

How about cruisers? Fighting in a Thorax is a heavy hitting fun frenzy each and every time, but when I roam in it, I miss the speed with which frigates cover several systems within a few minutes. Sitting and waiting makes me feel bored sooner than jumping between systems, boredom makes me do stupid things.

So, frigates... Competitive frigates other than Rifters. Merlin? Tristan? Ew, rockets. Punisher? Well, what else is there? Nothing is what, so Punisher it was.

Tailoring a fit I could be satisfied with proved to be really hard with this Amarr vessel. Even when I had found something that should work, I could immediately think of a dozen reasons why it absolutely won't and that failure will be imminent on the very maiden voyage. Perfect.

On the first few roams I was on the edge on each gate jump, on every new ship on scan and I was putting some serious strain on the onboard scanner. That familiar, almost embracing paranoia was back.

The first kill didn't involve a tough fight, but it was in Adirain - the "old" Bundschuh-infested Adirain. I was able to make haste with what you barely could call loot as one of their ships entered the belt. I'm not saying I wouldn't have checked my overview in time if I had been flying an Incursus, but who knows; maybe I was already paying better attention than in recent days.

Well, granted, not all the time...
As I was looking for a more serious test some days later, I scanned down two very young Rifter pilots in an asteroid belt. The strategy here would be to take them down quickly, so in I went and engage them with overheated guns I did. They in turn had me webbed and were fighting back. Good for them, but soon one of the Rifters exploded. They both didn't do much damage given their few days worth of training and inferior weapons, so his friend was soon to follow. Except he did do no such thing. My guns stopped firing. They were displayed with neat little red rings of death around them. Cue the profanities.

Alright, you don't get back on the horse right away. The loss was my own failure and no reason not to give the Punisher a real chance to finally prove itself.

Before a real opportunity arose however, some fellow pirates asked for assistance in taking down a Drake in Lisbaetanne. I agreed to add a bit more firepower to the three HellFleet Rifters. The Drake went down after a while without much problems. However, I realised that I needed more staying power. The Punisher doesn't exactly do a good job outrunning larger weaponry, so I had to go back to the drawing board  and readjust my fit.

The easiest solution was of course an armour repair system. First all new lasers, now more complicated capacitor management - very well, one more good reason to pay attention.

And what can I say, the revisited package works like a charm. First to notice was Eviwyn, one of the participants of the Drake kill the day before. Finally I got her to attack me for once - always has been reluctant before when I was out in my Incursus. Weird. Anyway, it provided just the right challenge to get used to the new repair unit a bit. The fight also proved to me that with more practise, I'll be able to take on more expensively fitted Rifters, whose pilots may be prepared better.

Another nice engagement took place at the Hevrice stargate in Jovainnon, where a Merlin was so kind to attack me. Thank you, Sir, don't mind if I do.
All qualities of the Punisher became apparent during this fight: The Merlin's damage was negligible while I was able to cause serious damage beyond blaster range and the little damage his rockets could cause was patched up easily.

Bottom line, I like the Punisher so much that a Crusader will soon be on its way to Hevrice.

You obviously see a pattern here, but I've got just the thing to avoid the same trap of overconfidence and daily rut I got caught in before: I am currently training Minmatar Frigates V. Got to maintain variety some way, and we have already established above that there is no other choice in the frigates segment.

Plus - at least just once - I wanna go Kirith on their asses.

A Change of Pace

By now you might know that my favourite choice of ship is the Taranis. So far I have owned three of them, all of which sooner or later degenerated into very expensive debris scattered across space. I already could have another one up and running, but certain issues detained me from doing so.

Each Taranis was shorter-lived than its predecessor. The reasons were poor judgement, recklessnes, increasing arrogance and plain awful piloting on my part. The loss of Skyhook I wasn't a particularly tough or costly one, but it could have been prevented by noticing my fleetmates earlier, thus getting the hell out in time. No reason not to get a new one yet, though. Skyhook II was again neatly dispatched by a squadron of small drones, deployed by a Celestis this time. Neither did I get my intel straight by checking the pilot's lossmails, nor did I listen to my instincts when he didn't move an inch while I was closing the gap of 50km between us.

Well, Skyhook II still lived long enough to pay for itself, so no reason not to replace it immediately. And no reason apparently to shape up one's piloting again either, right?

I'm sure you see where this is going... What followed was the most atrociously bad fight I have ever fought. I've never once lost a ship in a way like this. I went in there knowing my target had merely one month of piloting experience. I didn't realise only his three medium drones were damaging me, I didn't realise that he was sucking my cap dry, at no point did I realise that I maybe should finally overheat my guns and I realised too late all those things I hadn't realised - precisely at the moment when my capacitor was empty. I initiated a desperate attempt to flee the scene and actually escaped his warp scrambler, only to select the most foolish warp destination possible and be caught again, this time for good.

Not even one week out of the box and Skyhook III went pop. I have the ISK for Skyhook IV, but there is no point as long as I won't learn how to fly ships cost-efficiently again. I've been calling myself a self-sustaining professional after all, boasting about earning ISK only by fighting for it, not blowing it out the docking bay.

So how to get the flow going again while keeping my hands off the shiny toys for a bit? I think I have found two things that should work just fine in this regard: cruisers and cross-training.

Recently I have completed the advanced training required for flying a Thorax of my liking. What I wanted were heavy high tech blasters and more agility than the standard armour-plated variants. What I got was a very capable gank fit that is sturdier than the typical glass cannon.

I was actually surprised how well it would do and how comfortable I would be flying it. The first test of its destructive potential was easily passed when it dispatched a Cyclone as part of an ad-hoc Tusker fleet (it's also how I found out that overheating those blasters is freaking expensive!).
In the second kill it again provided the necessary fire power to crush a heavily buffer-tanked Caracal. As a bonus, thanks to my warp jamming drones the Caldari cruiser barely scratched me or other members of the fleet.

In the more even-numbered engagements I didn't fight against overwhelmed rookies or gate camping capsules, but capable opponents, Buzzer Beater performed very well, too.

An Arbitrator proved to be a very tough cookie for fellow Tusker Kishin Hattori and me. Kishin had to get his Jaguar out a bit earlier and I as well took an exit when both cruiser entered structure; he had finally managed to escape the range of my vicious blasters, while his drones kept hurting me. In retrospective, he surely would have faced more serious trouble, had I decided to load Null M ammunition prior to the fight instead of Antimatter.

Another time I landed right on a Stabber and initially tore some considerably large chunks out of his tank. Knowing of these ships' kiting strategies, my guns were spewing Null M this time. Moreso, throughout the fight they delivered more damage to my target than the other way around. It was a joy to watch, really. The Stabber eventually managed to flee, thanks to its pilot's rather unconventional choice to fit a warp scrambler. Beats me why he would've wanted to fight within scrambler range in the first place, but oh well - him transmitting a simple "ouch" on local coms was almost as satisfying as a killmail would have been.

Long story short, I really like the Thorax and how well it can perform against its biggest competitors in the cruiser segment.

As for the cross-training I mentioned earlier: brace yourself for some entirely non-blaster-related brawls. By the time I have more to write about it, we'll know how that turned out. Looking forward to what should be a refreshing change.