Cormorant Maiden Flight and Choices

Starwalker was distracted whilst waiting at the sun and since nothing had been happening he quickly disappeared from the flight controls rather than go to a safe first and then disappear. It was the wrong decision, he should have gone to a safe.

He returned just in time to find that a Thrasher at 22km had begun to fire at the Cormorant, which was slow boating to conserve its capacitor. At least that was better than finding a wreck. Starwalker immediately hit approach and turned on his micro-warpdrive to get under the artillery guns. That was perhaps the second wrong decision - it was too late and too slow.

The distance was slowly closing but he was still 13km away and the Cormorant shields were nearly gone.  On a shield fit ship that was not good but it was too late to change course now and Starwalker hit the overheat again as it appeared the last command had got lost.

The distance closed to 10km but Starwalker was in armour now and progress noticeably slowed, he was simply not going to make it. The Cormorant had soaked up all the damage that it could and the fatal blow came - destroying the ship and bursting it into a million pieces. 

The Cormorant was blaster fit and never even came close to being in close combat range. Starwalker would never know if he had started his approach earlier at full (overheated) speed whether that would have made any difference. 

Starwalker had also noticed that he was strongly influenced by what had killed him last:

• If killed at range by a fast kiting ship then he felt that he should also be in a fast kiting ship
• If killed at close combat range by a brawler then he should also be in a brawler
• If killed by an active tanked ship then he should active tank
• If killed by a buffer tanked ship then he should buffer tank

It was the logical equivalent of trying to win the LAST war. Starwalker considered whether he should simply select an arbitrary ship and fly (and lose) many of them before moving on to any other ship. He currently had a tendency to shift between ships albeit the range of ships was actually quite small - Minmatar and Caldari - frigates and destroyers.

Whilst he flitted between ships he knew what he liked:

• Flexibility to engage a wide range of targets (frigate to battlecruiser) with a reasonable chance of solo success
• High DPS for the class of ship, ideally good damage projection for kiters
• Fast and agile to quickly close to scrambler range or to slingshot kiters
• Strong tank to soak up damage brawling and prevent low DPS kiter kills
• Capacitor stable or will last really well when in full use

Maybe part of the reason for moving between ships was that he hadn't really found a ship and fit with the best combination of the above characteristics. He also knew that pilot error was a big reason for losing ships and not the ship itself. The choice of ship was more about learning to fly and fight in that ship inside out. Using that previous analysis, perhaps he should focus on flying and fighting in the Hawk, although the afterburner fit might be too slow. Would something faster like a Taranis be better?

Starwalker considered his options - should he really focus on a single ship for solo combat? If so, what ship? What about his training queue such as Gallente Frigate V or Interceptor V or his foray with covert operation ships or the stealth bomber? Choices, choices, choices.