First times can be an embarrassment to every party involved with it. Not just the person doing it for the first time, but also the other person or people involved. But that’s what makes it fun, great even. Especially when you’re doing it with people you love to play with.
Yesterday I had my first time. First time in a Tengu as a hunter on a BLOPSing fleet. We had decided a few days ago that we’d invite a bunch of people to a BLOPS-fleet and use our wormhole as a staging system. Because we can roll our null-sec static for new content.
I don’t fly T3’s much. If at all. I use a Tengu to scan and I’ve used a Proteus a few times as tackle or as an extra DPS ship. But I had never hunted for targets equipped with a cyno, until yesterday.
Most of the guys were rusty at doing it, our first target didn’t take us too long to find. One of the other hunters landed on three Rorquals. Which turned out to be fitted a bit better than our previous Rorqual encounters. So we lost a bunch of bombers and one of the hunting tengus. No big deal though, easy to replace.
After a few rolls I came upon a system in which I was earlier on grid with a Thanatos but when I was there it wasn’t within range. It was now. Unfortunately he had gone to a different site and I landed on a VNI. No biggy I’d just tackle that one. And here’s where I made a few of my mistakes.
As it turns out, if you want to cyno in your friends, you’re not allowed to go above a certain speed. So putting on my MWD to go to the target was my first mistake. But I grabbed tackle, all good right. Well here’s my second one. I forgot I had an extra-large Ancillary Shield Booster equipped. So I was dying to a VNI.
“But E’dyn how the hell do you forget about a shield-booster?” You might ask yourself. Well, it’s easy. First you need to remember that I normally don’t fly shield ships. Especially not a Tengu. The second thing that I didn’t think about was the fact that the shield booster had the cap booster icon, because it was loaded with navy cap booster 800’s. Normally when I’m flying a ship, this icon is to boost up my capacitor, and only that. So here I am, going down to a VNI in a 480m ship, wondering what the hell is going on whilst my friends are dropping bombers.
I lost the Tengu, to the amazement of both the VNI pilot and my corp mates. I spent the next 5 minutes after this death laughing about my stupidity whilst buying a new one in Amarr.
It even took me a few minutes to figure out that I did in fact have reps on this thing because at first I was proclaiming on comms that I did in fact not have a booster at all. Woops.
At least it’s not a mistake I’ll make again. And eventually I did catch a skiff and a venture afterwards. It’s not even close to what I lost. But I learned something and that’s what matters.
You always learn something when you’re doing it for the first time. And that’s a good thing.
Stay tuned o7