Close Call

The fleet was small as it was early in the evening and more would be on later. Me and two other pilots were in Enyo assault frigates primed for dealing destruction. Four Navitas logistics frigates formed the support wing; two more than I usually would have had for this size of fleet but we were expecting more Enyos in a bit and one of the logi pilots was new to the vessel. For tackle we had 3 pilots in Atrons and a veteran in a Malediction interceptor.

My scout, the Malediction pilot, sees several war targets in the next system, and picks up a Hurricane on scan. We move into position on the stargate ready to jump in if he calls point. "Hurricane warped off," my scouts calls from within system. "I think he warped to the gate...Yep! He's here!"

"Jump jump!" I call on comms and we go in. As the system resolves I see more war targets landing, a Caracal and a Blackbird. "Blackbird is primary," I call as we uncloak and move to engage.

We start into the Blackbird and two more hostiles arrive, a Loki strategic cruiser and a second Caracal. Looking back I should have disengaged, especially after seeing the timeline. In the time it took us to burn down that Blackbird, surprisingly well tanked as a bait ship I expect, we lost all three Atrons and two Enyos to the firepower of those Rapid Light Missile Launcher Caracals. I overestimated the repair ability of my small Navitas wing.

I called the Stabber Fleet Issue as the next primary, not realizing at that time that my fleet was pretty much gone. I started taking damage but the navis kept me alive... I suspect the Caracals entered a reloading cycle after killing one of the four Navitas pilots... and that's when I realized it was just me and my Malediction pilot left doing damage. I was scrammed by the SFI so I overheated all the things and burned him down to try and bring some balance back to the killboard. Just as the Caracals got reloaded we went kaboom and I fled the scene of the crime. Unfortunately my interceptor pilot was not as lucky.

F - Atron 00:57
F- Atron 00:57
F- Atron 00:58
F- Enyo 00:58
F- Enyo 00:58
H - Blackbird: 00:58
F - Navitas 01:00
H - Stabber Fleet Issue 01:00
F - Malediction: 01:01

In hindsight I should have been more cautious about continuing to engage with two anti-frigate Caracals on the field, especially in light of our less than overwhelming DPS. Also, I will need to watch out for bait Blackbirds in the future as I suspect had I ignored that ship and went after the Caracal we might have had a bit better outcome.

Oh well, not every battle can be a victory.