Flying and Voting Correctly

First, like other rebels and maybe lowsec people, I voted for Karrde and Hans with my two votes. Hope both win, I like each ones policy viewpoints and couldnt decide on one or the other, so went with both. On with the show!

This fight is from someone who had just finished a fight with another r1fta pilot and I guess he likes feeding us. Or something like that. Anyhow, he brought in a Hawk after a few minutes. A quick inspection of this ship showed me I should be using EM missiles for the shields and maybe explosives for when he drops to armor. Being a Caldari ship, I figured he would plug the usual EM hole. I tossed in Nova rockets and locked target.

As I was closing range, I assumed he would hold range at about 13-14km to take advantage of the longer range rockets. Apparently not and he decided to close range to about 4km. Thats fine with me, really, and I adjusted my orbit and keep at range defaults midflight. I havent fought in as many battles as other people, but experience has shown me that in a straight up brawl with low dps output ships, my Vengeances tank is impossible to break. Knowing this, I turn off my OH'd repper and launchers. I chose correctly in going with explosive rockets, my opponents shields were dropping pretty quickly. With a non-heated repper going, my armor was holding strong. I even skipped popping an Exile booster seeing this. Soon enough, my Hawk opponent hit armor with structure quickly following and exploding. I tried to snag his pod just to see if I could, but he was pre-aligned and got away easily.

This was a good confidence booster fight for me. I was able to pay attention to the surroundings, there was about 13 or 14 people in Heild at the time, even though half that was R1fta I believe. I adjusted my range controls and kept range as I felt I could pretty easily. I didnt OH my launchers needlessly, same for repper, saving me some small amount of ISK in repairs. I chose the right counter to my opponents ship and resists, lucky guess, really. I dont feel my opponent flew his ship correctly by closing range instead of keeping outside my weapons range; taking advantage of the ships bonused rocket range (up to 15km unrigged). Yes, it was a duel, however, I dont feel you should change tactics just for a duel. Bring your A-game as if its life or death; or gtfo tbh.

I had practice probing down a Tengua as well, but got a 100% lock just as the person finished the mission but scared them off before they looted anything, leaving plenty of salvage and loot for myself and the other rebels I shared; although I dont remember who all got anything.

I think Im getting the hang of New Eden finally!