The more I play Eve, the more comparison's to chess are drawn. The difference between chess and Eve is that you aren't forced to finish a fight. You can run. You can opt, not to fight, draw, or lose. That's not to say you can always escape, but in a situation where you lose something is a situation where you made a blunder in the chess match that is eve space combat.
Last night was an interesting chess match where FTLOL was buzzing around, trying to get the advantage over a Gunship Diplomacy gang.
It started out simply enough, I left in my Claw to meet up with Dz and Kel in Lamaa, where there was a Wolf, Omen and Thorax trying to get a fight. We were more than willing to oblige. Dz was in a Thorax and Kel remained docked. After a few attempts of me trying to get a fight out of the wolf, Meridius Dex in the Omen arrived and I was given the order to engage. This is where we made a blunder.
I was Afterburner fit, which works more often than not because ships want to get close to interceptors to nullify their speed via webs and scrambles. Fitting a scrambler myself meant that I gave myself the advantage in close range knife fights. However, if you miss the opportunity to tackle your opponent, and their intention is to maintain range on you, they will be able to do this fairly easily with a Micro Warp drive.
When the order came to engage the Omen, I had missed my window of opportunity to slap my scrambler on, and Dex burned away from us. Dz went in pursuit, but I was left behind with insufficient speed. Here is where things went sour. We made the blunder when we chased Dex, this spread us out, and left me in no mans land while Dz was isolated. I made the decision to turn back, the thought was I could engage the wolf and keep him tackled while Our ace in the hole, Kel, would undock and turn the tide of the fight.
However, unknown to me and Kel, Dz was going down, and decided to disengage, however, he didn't let me know until was too late to disengage myself. Being stretched out by the initial error of chasing Dex meant I was not close to docking range, and unable to burn away from the other two attackers, which had me webbed at this point. Dz managed to make it out, but I was left in no mans land to die.
It was a few error's that likely could have been prevented, but these things happen, you have a split second to make a decision, and hesitation will often times lead to failure. We miss-appraised the situation, and fell into Dex's advantage.
Mostly I was bitter because Dex was never in my range of engagement, so I never activated a gun the entire fight. I don't mind losing ships if I get to go down swinging. It's the reason I hate falcons so much.
Engage.
Falcon decloaks.
Wait to die.
I wasn't about to give up on revenge. So I made my way back to my ship stock piles, and Hopped in my Hurricane, this is where the middle game began. They had left their post in Lamaa to go on a roam, it was on the Amamake/Auga gate where I found Dex in an Omen and his Cohort in a Thorax. I sat there waiting for them to engage, knowing that I could easily wipe the floor with both of them. I didn't want to engage first, because they would simply jump through, and I would be unable to stop them.
I targeted them both, the Thorax targeted back, and eventually engaged, It took only moments to work my way through the thorax's hull, but what was interesting, and disappointing is that Dex never came to his buddy's aid. Dex warped off, and that was that.
I returned to Lamaa and on the way, Marrl Shadowfall, one of Dex's associates opened up a Channel with me, saying they were waiting for us.
This is where the real chess match begun. Dex had upgraded his ship from an Omen to a Harbinger, The thorax pilot, Yakuza Angelis, shipped up to an Ishtar, Marrl remained in his Wolf, and Galdornae joined them in a Blackbird.
Dz had shipped up to a Pilgrim, and Kel remained in his blackbird. This was a fight that would take careful positioning on our part in order to win.
Being Outnumbered, Out gunned, and equalized on the ECM front, we had to make sure we had positional advantage to succeed. I had moved to the Kamela Gate in Lamaa, and Dz jumped into Kamela. He looked for ships on scan to give us a heads up if reinforcements were on their way.
Dex arrived at distance to the gate. I didn't want to engage here because Kel and Dz were not in position, and the Ishtar would be free to maintain range on me while dropping 500 DPS of Ogres.
I returned to the Station at 0. Dex followed, Dz had not jumped back in, so our recon support would have been messy. There was a small opportunity here for us to engage though. Dex was in web range, and I would have been able to drop him pretty quick, maybe quick enough to equalize the fight when the Ishtar arrived and the rest of us arrived on the scene. Unfortunately, the deliberation took too long and Dex had burned out of Web range.
It did clue me in on his strategy, which was to use a lighter set up, and maintain range on us, allowing him to mitigate our superior tanking and DPS. Him burning away made the decision not to engage easy, as I would have been neutralized in the fight by superior range and agility that the Ishtar and Harbinger have.
What's interesting to note here, is that Dex knowingly brought out a Lighter set up to fight me, but yet has only seen me in a Shield Gank cane, which is faster, and more agile than his harbinger. Relying on Range to mitigate damage against a ship that's faster, better tanked and more agile seems pretty risky. It's somewhat fortunate for him that I was in my Armor Tanked hurricane at the time, and unable to out pace him.
The ishtar had docked at the station where this was going down, so I made my way to the undock point, Dex had warped off.
The thought here was that we could get the jump on the ishtar. Taking him out of the fight equalized their ship-advantage. If we could get him downed, than we could slug it out in even numbers, with us having the better DPS.
The posturing and wiggling to get the advantage took too much time in the end though. Another Minmatar fleet began to show up, and scared off meridius's gang, who used and insta-undock warp point to get the ishtar out safely.
This is were Meridius made his blunder. He and his gang didn't return to the relative safety of Kamela, instead they opted to link up with a couple of Amarr in Arzad, thinking they could get the drop on us.
They made it look like they were running so the three of us, as well as the militia gang who came through chased them to arzad. Dex and co had made an error in their guesstimate to our numbers and ship make up, and were heavily outnumbered once they stopped to fight. Dz screamed DEX MUST DIE in militia chat to implicate a primary.
I burned up to him and unloaded my guns on in his face. Down goes the Harbinger. I had turned my sights to a Brutix, but it managed to escape before I activated my Warp Disruptor.
Revenge is a meal best served cold.
Was a good night for us, though it ended the incredible run my Claw had. I fit out another one, but I feel like the magic might be gone.
See on the overview! o/
