EVE-Mag.com

A Newb’s First Kill

Published on 27. Sep, 2008 ... written by Sam Guss, Tags: Articles, Columns

by Sam Guss … I always thought my first solo kill would be camping a station for a wardec or pilot I had kill rights to come flying out. Indeed, I had been a part of a couple of actions that as part of a fleet we hunted and killed, but the solo kill I thought would be a ways off for me still. Yet, there I was flying my Minmatar Rupture out of system, on my way to upgrade to medium projectile turrets, when as I arrived at the gate there was a pilot marked yellow and had a skull.

Since, skulls in our system always means trouble, I took a second or two and put it out in Corp. chat that a hostile had entered our system. Meanwhile, I noticed the pilot had started to flash and I quickly started to target him, and let the corp. know. I was under fire as the first hits flared over my shields.

I engaged the MWD, completed lock-on to the hostile and noticed just as I was coming to speed two things: I was slowing down fast and was within range of my webifier. As I hit both the webifier and the warp disruptor on my target, I couldn’t help but to chuckle as we were both tackling each other. As my weapons started to unleash on him, I knew it would be moments before help arrived. It was just a matter of whose help would arrive first and turned off my MWD.

By now, the gate guns were hitting him in his Thorax, we were both in tight orbit around each other, guns a blazin’, each locked down from warping away from this fight. I noticed his shield was out and felt the surge of victory, just knowing I could get him before he got me.

Then the sound and flash of light as the gate activated, followed by the bright flash of his ship blowing up and then I did the wrong thing… I was out of lockdown, I could of just punched my MWD and went off in the direction I was facing and all would be good, despite the two new hostiles firing at me. But no, I was elated from the kill and quickly targeted one of the new arrivals who had just started firing on me, and returned fire. Then the gate flashed again and suddenly there were two more hostiles. I was running out of time.

I switched on my webifier and my warp disruptor again, in the hopes that my incoming friends would get a couple shots off at him sitting nearly still and reported the new arrivals in corp.

Within a couple of seconds I was dead, then podded. Just as this was happening, the friendlies arrived and engaged. In the end though I was elated – I had won my first ship to ship combat, cruiser vs. cruiser and had won!

As I went about my business of collecting my insurance, upgrading my clone, buying and outfitting a new ship, one of my friends looted my ship and my enemy’s ship. Turned out that he lost more than I did, and what was salvaged from both wrecks would pay and outfit my new ship nicely.

In the end, I had my first taste of blood, not coming from a blob or superior numbers and I admit – I like it. Lessons learned though would include the following:

• Once you are out of lockdown and you are on the losing side – WARP! Or at least hit the MWD and get out of the area.
• Gate guns in low sec can be your ally, ensure they fire at your target first unless you know for sure you can tank both your target and the sentry guns.
• Remain calm and communicate as much as possible so that anyone arriving onto scene knows what is going on beforehand.
• Trust your instincts. When I saw myself being tackled, as a tackler I knew more would be jumping through the gate but I disregarded it initially. This could have been communicated and gave us an extra minute of response time.