New Progress

Solo flight didn’t last long. As chance would have it, Nocipe, a co-worker and friend that recently got his pilot license just happened to be stationed in Oursulaert for the past few weeks—the very system I’ve been basing my hi-sec hangar and market operations. Out of convenience, and just to have another soul in my chat window, he decided to join me in Project Copernicus. This is a good thing.

Though I have a good six months of skill training more than he has, mentally, we’re at a similar milestone in our experience. We both have the desire to learn lessons the hard way. We want to study our ships, fly them well and often, know all of their strengths and weaknesses, make mistakes and learn from them. We’ve read enough guides. We’ve heard too often how it’s ‘supposed’ to be done. We want to take hold of our own paths in New Eden, rather than flying with the current, so to speak, as we have been.

It began as a request from me to test a new Incurus fitting I put together on a few of his hulls. We fleeted up, picked a planet in Renyn and I proceeded to make him my punching bag. I first, and with hesitation, brought my frigate up against his Destroyer. Having a reputation for being frigate killers, I was a little worried he may burn me down before I had much of a chance to take the offensive. This wasn’t the case, thankfully, and my three T2 Electron blasters put him in hull before he had me around 85% armor.

Both of us intrigued at the outcome, we tried it out on his Vexor, which gave me a little more trouble, but mostly because of his youth in skill training, the Incursus still prevailed.

Since he was still training for a “Wensley Special” Rifter fit I directed him to a few weeks ago, the next night we put combat on hold and devoted all our flight time to playing directional scanner cat-and-mouse. I would set out to a random belt or planet in Du Annes, and we chatted on vent, both figuring out the best tactics for narrowing down a specified target in the shortest time possible. At first we were taking up to a minute or two before we had each other at a 5% angle. By the end of the hour, we were clocking more easily under a minute before warping to one another. Nothing special, but progress.

And last night, Nocipe could finally fly his Rifter—fully fitted aside from a T2 Afterburner. I grabbed my T2 fit Incursus and we rendezvoused at Oursulaert VII at 50 km apart. From there, we had around four or five duels, each time his Rifter getting the drop on my Incursus at surprising speed (curse you Wensley!). Then we slowed down and took turns studying the effects of orbit distance on our optimal range, AB on or off, varying speeds, etc. It was a course in trial and error, and we both learned much better tactics for piloting our Frigates.

So well in fact, than when we finally found my orbital sweet-spot while testing my blasters, they hit his Rifter so hard and instantly that I popped his ship before I could even turn off my hard points. Yeah, I ate the ISK on that one. There was much laughter.

Through this routine over the past week, we’re both more eager to get flying in real combat situations than we’ve ever been. Yes, we’re aware we’ll get our asses handed to us, probably sooner rather than later, but we’re ready for it. Each loss mail is another lesson. We need that.

After probably another night of trail duels, our objective for the weekend is to fit out a handful of our best fitted Frigates and hit low-sec.

Look forward to the outcome. I sure am.