Hello again. CMDR Maya Ulniian here. My adventures continued in another quite short session the next day. I actually spent a fair bit of my available time searching GalNet or gossiping with the pilots of Mobius on voice comms instead of flying ships. When I did get out into space there was plenty of action to be had!
All my available money was spent upgrading my Eagle. While not every component was A rated, all the core systems were. My first trip for the session had a fit something like this:
http://coriolis.io/outfit/eagle/22A3A3D1D2A2D2C0p120p0mB42725-.Iw1-EA==.IwBhrSrI
A gimballed beam on the top mounted hardpoint and two burst lasers on the underside, powered by A rated power plant and distributor sure dish out the damage. Heat started to become a problem in longer combats but was still manageable.
The Eagle, even with a top tier fit out is still a tiny fragile ship. Taking it out to a High intensity RES site rather than the Low RES I had previously visited was possibly misguided. Initially things were going great – my first kill was an Anaconda with just under 200k bounty, quickly followed by a Python at about 130k. After that things got a little hairy as I hunted a Fer De Lance and his wingman.
The FDL was reasonably easy to take down with the assistance of a couple of police fighters, but I was so focussed on staying out of his firing arc that I didn’t notice his wingman had finished off his police target and was firing on my flank. I thought I had just caught a couple of stray shots from the FDL but was actually taking withering fire from the wingman. The shields vanished quickly and hull plating was boiling away before I managed to pop the Fer De Lance and bring guns to bear on the wingman – who was flying a Vulture! No wonder he hit hard!
Vulture class ships are a heavy space superiority fighter. Not quite as agile as Eagles or Vipers they still manage to duck and weave pretty well and are very heavily armed for their size, with two Class 3 weapons. They also generally are heavily shielded and can have heavy armour as well – certainly a lot tougher than a half-dead Eagle! This one however was substantially damaged by the battles with police craft and I managed to out-fly him long enough to secure the victory.
Back in Haxel port after repair and refuel I revisited the outfitters to swap out the burst lasers for the pair of gimballed pulse I had used previously. They do slightly less damage but are a lot easier to manage the heat buildup. I also remembered to change my paint job for the Tactical Crimson instead of the Cobalt.
After a bit of R&R in the station I headed back out to the High RES. This time the pickings were fairly slim. I don’t even remember what ships I killed, but it was under 150k worth for several ships. The police group I was following engaged a pair of Imperial Clippers in a wing while I was chasing down a pirate Cobra Mk III. Once I had the Cobra down I assisted a pair of police on what looked to be the weaker Clipper. He was down to about 25% hull when I started taking shots from his turreted weapon but my shield regeneration was coping ok. By the time we had him down to the low teens however, his friend had finished off the three police ships that had kept the wingman busy and suddenly I was the focus of two Imperial Clippers.
Turreted weapons do a bit less damage than gimballed or fixed weapons of the same size and type but it was still more than enough to shred my remaining shields and start boiling hull plates. Four pips assigned to engines and two to system plus spamming the boost button just barely got me out of there in time. I made a very cautious landing at Haxel Port with 1% hull remaining!
After repairs and refuel, on the advice of CMDR Wife_Aggro from Mobius, I sold off my modules and exchanged my eagle for a Viper Mk IV with a mid-range fit-out of mostly C class equipment. My current net worth is just under 2 Million credits which I hope to expand more once I get this message posted. (No pictures this time. I've managed to delete the entire camera roll while tidying up previous shots!)
- CMDR Maya Ulniian 21st April 3302
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