"You are crap. You therefore deserved to die," said Gorgoleon to me in his very, matter-of-fact tone. Sadly, I had to agree though I did not want to take anything away from the victorious Lau Wensink and his deathmatch offer. Yes, I lost to Lau in an arrange 1 v 1.
However, just a couple of hours before the duel - Jaxx and I found ourselves out in space in our recons (Jaxx in a Lachesis, me in my rapier) and we started to poke around our local area of space. We had new corporations move into our immediate area and we were interested in finding out who they were and whether they are 'fun' and potentially lucrative. A gang was formed and we went hunting. It would be an hour before I was ready and in typical fashion, I had not even fitted a ship.
Lau had challenged me to a duel and I agreed though I wanted it in a Bastard fashion: so I stipulated that it would be cruiser hulls with one (or more) battleship sized weapons. For me, I choose the rupture and bolted on a dual 425mm repeating auto-canon. My engineers had to add extra reinforced bulk heads to the hull so that I could dock without the weapon shearing off its mount. To power this monster gun required an entire rackful of reactor control units to provide the necessary power for the weapon. Extra large ammunition was added and crammed into the hull and I even managed to fit a medium smart bomb with three racks of 125mm auto canons. Truly an abomination. I then threw in some warrior II drones and with a scram, mwd and ECCM; I considered myself ready.
I had a bookmark set up and Lau, wisely came in his pod to bookmark the location and then warp off back to the station. He wanted to hide is ship until the very last moment. I was already undocked and was in a rupture, the overly large dual-425mm canon a very obvious addition.
My tactics were predicated on a number of things:
1. Any BS sized weapon would have problems hitting a cruiser, especially one moving with a MWD. Therefore, I fitted a MWD.
2. Therefore an alternative and supporting method of attack would be required and they would range from target painters, webbers, scramblers, nos, ecm and drones. I would be relying on drones and my smaller, frigate sized auto canons to do most of the damage. Hence warrior IIs and x3 125 mm auto canons.
3. I know Lau has been using ECM before (against VenomOrchid for example) and it was possible, that he would come in a vexor with a load of drones (some ECM) and nos. Therefore I fitted, with some difficulty, a medium smart bomb to take care of the drones.
4. I had no tank however and was probably cap unstable, toyed with the idea for a cap booster but decided to fit a ECCM module just in case he was cheeky and fitted a racial ECM.
It was with some surprise (and worry) that Lau arrived, after being counted down by Jaxx to initiate hostilities, at the bookmark in his rupture. Not what I expected.
As soon as he arrived, I locked him as he did me. I punched my MWD and moved into a wide elliptical orbit. Lau spat out his drones and I kept mine inside. As soon as I started taking shield damage - I hit the smart bomb with a grin. Meanwhile, I fired up all my weapons and my ship shuddered as the dual 425mm canon opened up, spitting out large calibre EMP shells the short distance to Lau's rupture. He started to take damage but I noticed with alarm how quickly my shields melted. His drones were not quite dead, even after three pulses of the smart bomb and with little armour behind the shield, I was concerned. Once his drones were gone (or hastily recalled); I sent out my own lovelies out. My armour continued to wink down and my scram shut off. My MWD had long since turned itself off as well. I had no cap left.
Odd; I thought. However, my auto canons required no capacitor to fire, being almost entirely mechanical and they bucked as they spat out shells. Lau was down to armour but I was now down to almost hull. With no damage control available, I would be dead.
His surviving drones buzzed into me and my ship blew up.Everyone had a good laugh, myself included.
Great fight by Lau, looking forward to the write-up
After the duel, Lau joined our pirate fleet and we moved around sniffing for targets but we ended up with him losing his drake to a gate-camping abaddon around the notorious Akkio to E0A-ZC entry-point. Gorgoleon, always a hoot to have in our fleet, with a dodgy microphone this time round, managed to get in on two kills including a hiliarious drake kill of an ex-corp mate's drake (not an agreed 1 v 1 or anything like that, target was in a belt) who calmly stated to Gorg, that he "had lost a friend."
To which Gorgoleon, shrugged and replied, "I will make more more friends on dating sites." Gorgoleon is a true Bastard.
The drake setup wasn't too bad either.
OK - back to some admin stuff as well as tweaking our requirement page. Yes, The Bastards are getting ready to open up recruitment. I will announce the day here and in the EVE-O forums too.
Final news: http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1171104 - looks like we might be back on the reserve list but with such a short time to prepare; I wonder if it's a good idea to submit a request?
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