Pre-post Mini-rant: Autocannons suck. Relatively low DPS made even worse by almost certainly fighting in falloff. Selectable damage type is great until you realize other comparable ship fits do around 50% or better raw DPS and the raw DPS loss for that selectable damage type is not offset by the subsequent resist holes (less so if the resist hole is plugged as is often the case). So yeah, I'm lamenting autocannons, though these days of T1 vs T1 engagements has me wondering if they were ever really that strong in the first place.
Non-Minmatar ships suffered a great deal prior to the ship rebalance due to poor powergrid/CPU and mediocre ship bonuses. These have been "fixed" on the frigate/destroyer/cruiser level and will soon be addressed on the battlecruiser level on up.
So yeah, I'm not too enthused with autocannons at the moment. Artillery on the other hand...
/end rant
So, the fight.
First, the fits:
[Rifter, Bud Good's Rifter]
Gyrostabilizer II
Damage Control II
400mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates I
Limited 1MN Afterburner I
J5b Phased Prototype Warp Scrambler I
Balmer Series Tracking Disruptor I
125mm Gatling AutoCannon II,Republic Fleet EMP S
125mm Gatling AutoCannon II,Republic Fleet EMP S
125mm Gatling AutoCannon II,Republic Fleet EMP S
Small Anti-Explosive Pump I
Small Anti-Kinetic Pump I
Small Projectile Burst Aerator I
and
[Merlin, Merlin]
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II
Micro Auxiliary Power Core II
Limited 1MN Microwarpdrive I
J5b Phased Prototype Warp Scrambler I
X5 Prototype Engine Enervator
Medium F-S9 Regolith Shield Induction
Light Neutron Blaster II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge S
Light Neutron Blaster II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge S
Light Neutron Blaster II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge S
Small Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer I
Small Core Defense Field Extender I
Small Core Defense Field Extender I
First thing you should notice is the obvious disparity in propulsion mods. My Merlin is MWD fit, which almost certainly ensures that my prop mod will be off when it gets into a brawl. My reasoning is that as long as I can project damage out to scram range I can out brawl anything I encounter. Secondly, if the other ship is trying to escape I can overheat my scram and spam my MWD hoping that my opponent either hasn't overheated his scram or isn't aligned out, thus allowing me to get an MWD burst in to close the range.
So, how'd this play out? The Rifter was in a novice plex, I warped into the plex to find the Rifter 4km off the warp in and immediately scrammed and TD'd. Having anticipated the Rifter to kite, I had Null loaded and overheated. What I wasn't anticipating was the TD, this knocked my range to 5km with Null, all I could do at this point was hit approach and hope my TD'd DPS would be enough to destroy the Rifter before he destroyed me as I had no hope of disengaging (hence part of the point of MWDs, isn't it?).
To my surprise my base speed was enough to catch up to the AB fit Rifter and started getting some solid hits in at around 4km where he crumpled fairly quickly.
http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=16335332
I believed I shouldn't have won that fight unless I had an opportunity to get to 0 on him and apply enough DPS before he is able to pull range. Warping into the plex where he gets to dictate the initial tackle range is a crapshoot at best.
The first thing I noticed on his fit? The 400mm plate and triple armor rigs.
Next? He left his TD unscripted which meant that only half as much range reduction was inflicted on my Merlin.
Finally, his fit had the smallest autocannons available which meant his optimal+falloff is somewhere around 5km, pretty short. Granted, he did have a gyro and burst rig, but those do nothing to extend your range when trying to kite.
Now, given the meta of lowsec FW AB short range frigates, I can't imagine that fit succeeding against my usual AB Merlin. Closing range and applying overheated CNAM DPS to the tune of 240 or so would have ended the fight that much sooner.
