Fighting Among Stars

Blind jumps into hyperspace are a terrifying right of passage for each EVE Online player count member.

The Republic Frigate is many things, but it’s very rarely an Assault Frigate hunter. When you’re flying solo, you need to be able to disengage from unfavorable encounters.

Keep an eye on your directional scanner to see where there might be useful landscape. In this case, decorated Matari Warrior Joseph Swolin and his fleet were already busy throwing down at an outpost.

Flying solo means no multiboxing, no backup, and no comms; you just gotta believe! I figured the Minmatar boys in the plex might appreciate me bringing a kiting war target assault frigate to the beacon at 0. I took the gate and when I slid out of warp I found that the fight was spread out, with an ally double teamed about 40km from any support. There were other, easier kills nearby that I could’ve likely taken advantage of, but I decided to save an ally was a better mission.

By the time I caught up with Donald Trump in the slasher, he’d slid barely out of tackle range and dove right back to the beacon. Unexpected.

Of course, I followed; by the time we arrived at the beacon from within the skirmish, the retribution that’d been chasing me across multiple constellations thudded out of warp.

Shit.

Donnie The Clown In EVE Online?

Donnie The Clown’s slasher was clearly fit for speed, evasion, cargo space; he was screaming around the beacon in an oblong 20km orbit at better than 3km/s. The brawl taking place within a few hundred meters of the beacon still raged on, but there were only two ships left; one ally, and one war target.

Abandoning pursuit of the slasher, I adjusted my own orbit to within range of the enemy Imperial Navy Slicer; it had already taken heavy damage by the time my first autocannon barrage landed. Unfortunately by this time, Lithalnas in the retribution had managed to lock on to the rifter and start dealing heavy damage from long range. The 200mm plate armor held until the fall of the slicer, and during the ensuing evasive maneuvres. With only shorter range weapons, the rifter was unable to return fire on the retribution from greater than 20km.

With one kill already, I used the distance of the retribution against it, launching into warp with no impedence save for the laser blasts forcing the mighty rifter off grid.

Evading long range fire from the retribution and pursuit from the slasher, I somehow managed an escape with minimal damage. The crew, who should always be considered before heading into battle, are overjoyed.

And much more experienced.