Tuesday, April 17, 2012

I Love my Stabber Fleet Issue


Galdornae first got me hooked to SFIs a few months back. I admit I whined and complained at first. Why don't I just bring a nano cane....or a rupture....or something safe.

But of course, I eventually gave in.

We were bored silly last night so I suggested a roam into Metropolis. Most people were not interested in anything requiring effort, so the suggestion was met with groaning and complaining.

So, I went by myself. Well, I thought I had gone by myself until I noticed our newest corpmate of three days trailing behind me in his  Sleip. He has a strangely pronounced name that I always forget, so sadly I've been referring to him as 'new guy.' Hopefully he's not offended.

We ran up part of the pipe without hardly seeing a soul. There were several Test and Goons in Ardar when we hit local. Unfortunately, anything we had on scan when we came in seemed to immediately dock up. Typical.

So, we turned around and headed toward the home system of our Euro brethren instead -- Arzad. I noticed a drake on scan when I arrived, and low and behold as I warped to the Tararan gate, there he was, slowly approaching the gate.

He was neutral, so I just locked him and waited for him to make up his mind whether to fight me or jump. He had a lot of friends in local and I wasn't going to GCC this time.

Finally, he aggressed. I let New Guy know, as well as the AUTOZ guy who was buzzing around in a rupture nearby. (Galdornae informed New Guy that he better save me or he'd get kicked from corp...lol)

Just as the drake hit armor, his friends arrived in an assortment of things. I saw battleships, including a Scorpion, as well as small stuff including a Caracal. Just, weird.

As the drake exploded, our rupture and Sleip quickly got out. However, I was hitting half armor and I suddenly had 5 points on me. They was mad.

So I burned toward a safe spot, and threw on my afterburner. As I hit about 45% armor, their dps started to drop away, along with their points, one by one. At the last, the caracal was the only thing pointing me and I was quickly outrunning him somehow. I tried on several occasions to lock him so I could just pop him, but the Scorpion was maintaining ECM on me, so the only option was really to just keep burning away.

Finally, I outran even him and teetered off to my safe spot in 43% armor -- a safe amount for an SFI.
Of course, everyone on coms perked up at the idea of a fight, but sadly the neutrals ran away to high sec before we could find and engage them again with a larger gang that could bring deeps for the bses.

At any rate, I love the SFI that much more now, and think I might fit up a couple more of them to have on hand.

And New Guy, of course, didn't get kicked from corp. (Nor would he have if I had died.) But I'm pretty sure he thinks we're completely nuts.


6 comments:

  1. I've had some really poor luck with the stabber fleet issue (I keep defaulting to trying to fly it like a Vagabond, which is wrong). What suggestions for fit and flying do you have?

    ReplyDelete
  2. The fit Susan is likely using has a Scram, Web, Afterburner, and MWD, along with a 1600mm plate, three trimarks, and ENAM II's / gyros in the rest of the lows, along with a suitcase. It uses 5 dual 180mm's in the highs, and can absolutely shred frigates that try to tackle it. She was able to burn away because of the dualprop.

    The SFI can be fit like a cheap vagabond, but it lacks the range and speed of the Vaga, so dies even easier than a Vagabond. Where the SFI really shines is in armor fits like the one I just described.

    The alternative is to drop the web for a cap booster and go with a dual-rep, dual-prop setup, but the plate version is much sturdier and simpler to fly in general and the scram / web dualprop combo gives you a lot of utility and survivability.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yeah, I didn't mean I flew it fit like a Vagabond, more that I tried to engage things at the ranges I would in a Vagabond, Dual 180mm's and this fit don't really have the range to engage at 20-30km, and I was hesitant to close range and engage with it. Guess I should suck it up and dive in a bit closer with it.

      Other than frigates as viable targets, what are the other things one would normally engage in a SFI?

      Delete
    2. I've seen a corpy take down battlecruisers with them solo, as well as an entire small gangs of frigs + cruisers.

      Delete
  3. Lol that was good fun. We almost caught that gang as they ran away to Eggelhende, but them's the breaks I guess. And yes, you are all nuts, but so am I.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Dual prop armor tanked SFI FTW, every time. Only time I lost one in a fight like this was when a cursed drained my cap dry...

    ReplyDelete