Those damned Angel cartels...

Me and my trusty Tristan frigate have gone through a lot together. Until last night.

I was doing well, patrolling a few sectors, checking out the asteroid belts where Angel Cartel pirates like hanging out. Sometimes I found a couple of Angel frigates, which were easily despatched. And then I found an asteroid belt which had 3 Angel cruisers. It gave me pause for a bit, but I decided to give it a go.

I moved up and engaged them, and with some careful management of my armour repairer, was able to maintain my armour defences without too much of a problem. I finally destroyed all 3 of the cruisers. After waiting a bit for my shields to regenerate, I moved onto the next asteroid belt.

This one had 4 Angel frigates. Considering that I'd taken on 3 cruisers, how hard could 4 frigates be? The hierarchy of ship types is that the smallest ship is a frigate, which moves up to a destroyer, followed by a cruiser, and so on. Theoretically, taking on 4 frigates is easier than 3 cruisers.

But it does depend on the weapons they have, and whether or not you can get within their optimal range and thus be relatively unaffected by their attack. This is often easier with cruisers than it is with frigates. Unfortunately, I'd forgotten this fact last night as I engaged the frigates.

I had a hard time maintaining my armour defences (my shields were vapourised quickly, which is normal, as my main defence is my armour), but I managed to do so while destroying one of the frigates. I turned my attention to one of the remaining 3, but by this time they had my range, and my armour was seriously being hammered. In a matter of seconds I went from 80% armour to 60% hull... not a good thing!

I immediately tried to warp away from the battle, but it was too late. In the time it took for me to align for warp to my chosen destination, they were through my hull, and from out of the explosion came my pod. I sat there, looking at the shattered debris of my lovely Tristan as the Angel frigates moved away, back to their asteroid belt. I could hear them laughing to each other over the comm systems.

With a sigh, and a heavy heart, I warped to a station in the next system that had a ship of mine available. It's always safer flying a ship than a pod... While there, I decided to try the Thorax cruiser again. I've had the Thorax before, but wasn't that excited about its effectiveness. I've come a reasonable way since then, having learnt better skills and tactics, so I bought another Thorax. I spent a while equipping it before falling asleep with a wrench in my hand. I'll continue the fitting tonight.

The lesson I learned is that I need to start warping away as soon as my armour is at 50%, rather than hope my armour repairer will catch up on maintaining it... it won't. If the armour has been chewed away to 50% or less, then you're about to be screwed. Warp immediately!

Unless you're in a flight group, of course, and your presence is required to achieve the group's objective. Then your sacrifice may be required. If you're alone though, heed the wisdom of one who has learnt the hard way. I hope you can learn without the same pain.