Lessons: I Thought 425mms Could Track…

While the CFC pounds Delve with relatively no resistance, I thought I’d go roaming through the nearby low-sec of Aridia in one of my Hurricanes.

This Hurricane was meant for small gang roaming, so it was shield DPS fit with 425mm guns.  As I was going through low-sec, I didn’t really worry too much about small ships – anything that would tackle me on a gate wouldn’t survive the gate guns for very long, and I could escape.

And that’s exactly what happened.  I passed a few bombers, and really didn’t find any targets.  I did see a Corax I tried to attack, but he made it back through the gate and escaped.  So after about an hour, I headed back.

And ran right into a Ghostly Fleet gate camp, of course.  Unfortunately for them, all of their tackle engaged me when I overloaded and activated my MWD to burn back to the gate.  Their DPS was a bit behind, so even with the scrams, I got through the gate at 75% shields.  I immediately warped to a perch point and reached it before the first enemy ships decloaked.  With my luck not really panning out and it getting late, I decided to dock up there and call it a night.

As tends to happen with these things, I ran into more trouble the next day as I was heading home, this time two Pandemic Legion Hawks.  I foolishly warped directly to a gate and got dragged into a bubble, where they were waiting.

I’m used to flying Rapiers when roaming, but I left my Rapier in S-E.  So it shouldn’t surprise anyone that I thought to myself, “No problem, I’ve got this.  I put my neut on the closest Hawk, launched my drones, and started firing.

Once my neut capped him out, my guns got two solid hits, taking him into armor immediately.  I thought things were working very well.  The all-powerful neut had saved me yet again.  But then, the third shot – and every one after – missed.  He was tightly orbiting at an effective radius of 758 m.

I thought my 425s could track a capped-out Hawk.

Unsurprisingly, he was fit with ASBs, and his shields started coming back fairly qucikly.  His buddy was also in a tight orbit.  At this point, I knew I was dead.  These two Hawks along had killed me.  I was embarassed.  For about a minute and a half, they chipped away at me and there was nothing I could do.

A Vagabond decided to join in on the killmail, but he made the mistake of getting close.  I had him down to 50% shields when I popped.  I honestly don’t know why he came in so close; he likely had the same guns fitted, but he had a bonus to falloff that meant he would out-DPS me significantly at range.  And the Hawks saw to it I wasn’t going anywhere.  Had he come in immediately, I’d have likely had the time to kill him.

But he didn’t.  And I died – for all intents and purposes – to two Hawks.  All because I thought my guns could track.  My effective DPS was around 100, and that was until they decided that my drones had stopped tickling and needed to be killed.