The high & lows of heat

Last post I stated how I now could use heat, prior to actually being able to overheat modules I almost percieved it as a simple concept, overheat -> kill opponent however after using heat a few times its not quite so easy and requires some careful micromanagement. My initial observations:

1, Overheating individual modules by pressing the green bar over the module itself asks for trouble. It's too easy to overheat the module but turn it off in doing so. This cost me a Thrasher kill and lost me a Rifter in the process.

2, Trying to click on those small overload rack buttons is not what I want to do in combat. Keyboard shortcuts help a lot here, I have mapped CTRL 1-3 to overload my racks.

3, At Thermodynamics III the heat damage taken by my modules was pretty high, now I have it at IV it seem much better. Being careful not to burn out your modules is a fine balance. I find it awful as I'm colour blind to red & green which isn't a great combo when we consider the colours in play on the modules during overloading...

I can however sum up and say that heat does change to outcome of fights, my engagement with a Coercer this morning convinces me thus, more details below.

I haven't been in so many fights this week as I wasn't online Sunday - Thursday due to some OOG commitments, my usual synopsis below:

Coercer
This fellow landed on Noir at a Faction Warfare complex, Noir unfortunately got caught on the gate and called for aid, myself and Ka Jolo were in system and hurried to him, sadly we didn't arrive in time to save him but I managed to scram the Coercer and engage, I popped as he was at 15% armour, leaving Jolo to finish him off. My first engagement against a well setup Coercer and I can say that they are nasty!

Raptor Rasta the Caracal master?
This fellow the Tuskers had quite a few fights against last weekend, I think in total he lost at least 5 Caracals & was podded three times. I chalked up two Caracal kills, here & here. and his Pod once too. There is talk that whoever kills him the most times in our curent campaign is in line for a 10m isk prize, I'm currently joint top at the moment so if this becomes a reality I should be in with a shot!

Catalyst
I happened upon this fellow by accident. I had jumped into the system and found a Rifter on the gate with me. I wanted to Rifter to chase me so warped to something obvious, a nice faction warfare mission. I used the gate as I landed but alas he hadn't followed but entering the room there was this Catalyst. He warped out on seeing me so I tried to pursue but he evaded me. I went back to the FW mission to find a Stabber Fleet Issue on the gate with a regular Stabber just landing. I used the gate and re-entered the mission as the gate only allowed T1 frigs, destroyers and Indys. Less than five seconds after I landed the Catalyst came through too. He died quickly and my Rifter was never in danger.

Coercer
This morning I had an epic fight with this Coercer, he jumped me at a Faction warfare mission gate as I was going for a Rifter & Slicer inside. I took tremendous initial damage and only overheating my armour repairer kept me going while I closed to point blank range. Once the damage was holding I overloaded guns, and gradually removed his armour and hull. I finished the fight on 50% structure. I would have finished the fight ahead of this but had somehow managed to switch off my armour repairer, god knows how as it hadn't burned out. My victory was bittersweet though as after I repaired and dropped off my loot (which was plentiful) I got caught by the very Slicer I was after and kite-killed.

I hope tomorrow to be posting my latest character review.

Your money or your . . . erm ship?

So today is Christmas, and I have been online so I guess that makes me pretty sad.

Anyways, enough of that. Yesterday evening a casual gang was going, skipping over the details I'll focus as per usual on the fun things that happened.

First we have a Coercer, the pilot didn't seem to understand that by jumping into low-sec space concord would not protect him. Local chat was entertaining with his comments while we held his pod. He was sent on the Pod express to the clone bay eventually though. The Pod mail seems to be missing for some reason, perhaps it will turn up one day!

The next event was scanning down a mission runner in a Hurricane. He certainly was taking his time about the mission too. So it was that five of us piled into his mission and took his ship rapidly into structure. Halt dps was called and the last shot fell bringing it to around 70% hull. The pilot was offered three options:
1. Pay 50m isk to save his Ship & Pod.
2. Eject from his ship and leave the area.
3. Sing us a song on EVE voice.
The pilot chose ejection, he didn't have the 50m to pay so it was that one of our pilots docked up and returned to claim the prize. As it would have been rude not to, I picked up all the meagre misison loot while waiting out my GCC.

Today I have been off and on sporadically. Decided today was the day to make a run to Jita to sell some loot. Early this morning Kirith was lucky enough to get on a Firetail kill, even if I was in a cheap ratting ship it still contributed to the kill.

It's been pretty quiet online, but I'll be about tonight again I think so we'll see what shows up.