Last night, I was forced into a 1 vs 1 engagement that I didn’t want, but it taught me that EVE is so much more than just a numbers game.
Popping into a system near my home station, an opponent we had earlier defeated in a small gang challenged me to a Rifter 1 vs 1. I’m pretty new to flying Rifters and using guns, and my skills in both regards are still in the early stages, so I politely declined.
As I landed on a gate, another Rifter showed up right behind me, he was determined to engage. I quickly turned tail back to the other stargate, completely forgetting there was a drag bubble that had already caught me twice that day.
Landing over 40km off the gate, I had little choice but to engage. From a pure numbers perspective, my opponent should have bagged an easy win. I already knew he had maximum skills for flying the Rifter frigate, and suspected he could also use the more powerful tech 2 guns, as well as numerous other gun-related skills I had neglected as I focused on core abilities.
With us both using warp scramblers and webs, we engaged in a slow dance, orbiting each other at 500m, guns blazing. While I was initially resigned to defeat, I noticed the enemy Rifter was actually taking damage as a similar rate to me, and I started to believe I might actually win.
However, my armour was rapidly disappearing, and as I approached the point of taking direct hull damage, I decided to take some bold actions. Using an armour repairer, my ability to tank his damage was highly dependent my capacitor, which was rapidly running dry. I decided to disengage my web to get enough spare capacitor to run a single cycle of my repair module. However, by not having my web to hold him in place, there was a real risk he might start to out-track my guns, taking less damage than me. To counter, I decided to stop orbiting him and manually pilot in a diagonal line towards him. It worked, his auto-orbit meant his ship attempted to move away from me a straight line, meaning my guns could still track him, and moments later his ship exploded with me near death myself.
My heart was pounding. Even though it was only a cheap frigate at stake the excitement and tension of the whole engagement, which probably lasted no more than two minutes, was intense. I’m shocked I managed to make the decisions I did in such rapid time, and a post-match review of the kill reveals my opponent used EM damage, my strongest resist, which no doubt also played a major part in my victory. Nonetheless, I learned that even with the numbers stacked against you, good choices of how to pilot, fit and arm your ship can make all the difference.
My opponent, Bobly Joness, congratulated me on a good fight, and I congratulated him in return. It was a good fight, one of the best I’ve had so far, and I learned a lot about EVE doing it. You can view the full kill details here.
