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So...EVE exploded.  Thought I'd just get that out of the way up front.  It's been blogged about to death by people far more capable than yours truly though.  To be honest, I've had a lot to say on the topic, but I've said it in smaller and less public circles than the internet at large.  Ever seen this?  Yeah, that pretty much sums up how I've felt about it at times, but I've decided to keep my thoughts to myself as far as this blog is concerned.  So now, back to your regularly scheduled programming.

My recent blog posts have been trending in a direction approaching competency.  If you had read those and only those, one could almost believe that I knew what I was doing.  It was inevitable really that I was heading straight for a reality check.  Let me tell you, falling back to Earth hurts.

On my last post I had taken my Myrmidon out for its inaugural roam.  Being new to Battlecruisers, I had all these thoughts in my head of how it would allow me do these amazing things that I had thus far been depriving myself of in my time flying frigates.  That post finished with me destroying an evil miner and then riding off into the sunset...unfortunately the roam itself didn't end that way.

Shortly after my run in with the Retriever I found myself warping to a gate only to hear a report from a scout that there was an Ishkur on the other side of the gate.  Not recognizing the organization he was with, I assumed he was just passing by and jumped through.  I reasoned that it would be foolish for a lone Ishkur to engage me and that he'd simply jump out if I engaged him, so I made my way to warp to a safespot in system.  That's when things started to go downhill.

At 17km from the gate I seemed to have misjudged this lone Assault Frigate's intentions and he was quick to lock and point me before I could warp away.  A series of events unfolded in my head as I played out reasons he would want to engage a Myrmidon class Battlecruiser by himself.  I came to the conclusion that he must have been tackling for a large gang and decided to err on the side of caution and simply re-approach the gate and jump back out.

The Ishkur is a powerful ship in its own right, capable of dishing out over 200 DPS between the Blasters and a full flight of Light Drones.  While this is impressive, I knew a single Armor Rep from my Triple-Rep Myrm was more than capable of keeping up with it.  I still felt relatively safe and continued under the assumption that his backup would soon spike local and be inbound to the fight.

At 10km from the gate a Daredevil landed practically on top of me and quickly laid into me with Blasters and, arguably the more dangerous of the two, a 90% Stasis Webifier.  I now found my shields failing and began to turn on first one and then two of my Armor Reps.  Still convinced that this pair couldn't possibly be trying to take on a Myrmidon by themselves, I continued my course for the gate realizing that, while I quickly slowing down, my momentum would carry me very close to jump range.

At 5km from the gate we were joined yet again by a Hurricane.  He quickly added his Autocannons to the mix and I now found my tank being truly tested.  Somewhat relieved to see that it was a test I was passing, I was still needing to use all three reps and both Cap Boosters to keep up with them.  I knew I couldn't keep this up forever, but even at 90m/s I was getting extremely close to jump range and felt fully committed to the idea of escaping from this fight.

At 3km from the gate I watched as the Cane pilot blew past me and ran headlong into the gate.  I knew what was coming next.  I saw it and yet with my own maneuverability crippled by the Daredevil's web was helpless to prevent it.  Mere seconds away from the gate's 2500m jump radius, the Hurricane bumped me.

Now 5km from the gate, I knew I wasn't going to be able to jump.  I was running out of Cap Boosters and when an Triple-Repping Myrm's cap fails its tank crumbles.  Only then did I begin to fight back.  It was far, far too late at that point.  I knew it too, but my other options were limited.  As the boosters in my cargo ran out and the alarms began to sound due to structural damage, I picked a celestial, my thoughts now turned to saving my pod.

As I warped away good fights were exchanged in local by all.  I chatted with them for a moment and they were all extremely complimentary of my impressive tank.  I admitted that I assumed they had a much larger gang with them or I would have been happy to have fought back with a bit more enthusiasm.  They explained that the three of them were camping the gates in the system specifically looking for War Targets and I had just been a target of opportunity.  Setting my destination for home, the nineteen jumps left me with plenty of time to go over the fight in my head and go over the fight I have.

I've actually beaten myself up a lot over this loss.  It was truly my fight to lose from the outset and I don't so much feel like they defeated me as I defeated myself.  Knowing now what I didn't know then, I would have eagerly engaged all three of them had I known there were only three.  The Myrmidon's tank lasted a very, very long time in that fight.  The compliment of Drones I was carrying would have made quick work of even their Tech 2 and Faction Frigates, and the only real question would have been how it would have fared against the Cane.  It's a question that I'll never get to have answered.

This is partly why I've been lacking in posts this past week.  Feeling quite discouraged after this fight, I've had a bit of trouble convincing myself to get back on the saddle.  That bit of discouragement was shortly followed by the events of the Monocle Lewinsky Scandal (clever eh?).  Between the two, EVE didn't really sound like something I was wanting to play for the last couple of weeks.

As you can plainly see, I finally managed to write the post explaining the loss.  This was also quite hard, as reliving the fight still leaves me kicking myself over it.  This cathartic process, combined with the recent Devblogs/Press Conferences/Interviews attempting to clear the air over recent rumblings within the EVE community will hopefully reinvigorate me a bit.  I've already gone for a test drive in my own recently purchased Hurricane and managed my first kill while flying Minmatar.  The rust was a bit hard to get used to, but I think I managed alright.

Taurean has a new post up today btw, in which he talks about coming to Verge Vendor for the first time.  Go check that out if you haven't already.  The Tuskers and The Cartel base only 9 jumps from one another, and I might just have to go teach him a thing or two about flying a Vengeance before long...

Regarrrds,

FNG