Sunset on my Dramiel

Last night I had 20 minutes so I decided to bomb around in ole faithful, my Dramiel. In Kedama I detected a hostile on a plex gate and warped in. A Thrasher, could be tough so I click on him and ....

WHAT THE HELL!?!?!

So lately every once in a while my computer while playing Eve freezes solid except sound for 4-6 seconds. It's happened three times now, including last night when I started to engage the Thrasher. And when I say freezes I mean no mouse, no keyboard, no movement. It happened when I fought Connall Tara in a duel and a night last week when I was flying around in Korneilia before going to the wormhole and I engaged a Condor.

I don't know what causes it, but it seems to happen periodically at the beginning of some PvP engagements.

When it happened last night, I became very rattled. Now I was lucky that the freezing wore off before the Thrasher had engaged me but I was rattled and made some missteps. I managed to pull range as my shields and armour took damage, but I knew from the damage that I was facing an Artillery Thrasher and I noted with panic that my afterburner speed was less than his MWD speed. I switched to MWD and tried to pull range again as he closed but sadly failed to manually pilot out while keeping transversal up. As I flew in a straight line from him he lined up my bloomed signature perfectly and my damaged ship could not take the hit.

BOOM!

I was not pleased with myself as I limped back to Heydieles in my pod. Lots of "I shoulda"s. Like, I should have not engaged a Thrasher, I know the margin of error against them in my Dramiel is small. Or I should have tried to dive in close to 500 meters and get under his guns with my afterburner. Or I should have flown manually and kept the transversal up. Sigh.

Regardless, I will not be getting another Dramiel for a while. Against trickier and better opponents the ship requires a better pilot than me. I have two Daredevils to run with for a while and a slew of ideas for the improved T1 frigs, destroyers and cruisers I want to try.

* * * * *

Anyways, I got back to Heydieles and decided to jump in my new Incursus to check out the local plexes. I warped into one and saw a militia member in a Fed Navy Comet engaging two neutrals in Maulus ships. I leaped to help out, but my mind was racing.

"Maulus... what's a Maulus?"

The Comet exploded and the two ships turned on me.

"Gallente, right? What do they do now? Hell, what did they used to do?"

Suddenly I was sensor damped all to hell and my locks broke.

"RIGHT! Its the T1 electronic warfare frigate! .... Oh crap..."

Sure enough, the tactic these two were using was obvious and I was trapped in it. Combined their remote damps brought my lock range down to the 4 km range. They were faster than I was and were kiting me from 10-15 km away. I was pointed... and stuck.

I did the only thing I could do. I fought on. Zigged and zagged to try and pull one of the hostiles into locking range. I targeted and shot drones to reduce their DPS. My tank was holding up nicely, so I settled in for a long fight.

Then, fortune shined on the prepared. One of the Maulus must have his approach instead of orbit and flew straight at me. I nearly tripped over my fingers in my hurry to lock him and get a scram on him. Once pointed, the fragile ship was gone in three shots.

With that done his partner warped off and we exchanged pleasantries and fits in a convo. Good fight.

* * * * *

So one fight in which I spazzed out and one in which I fought well and got the kill. I'll take that any night of the week.