Friday, August 18, 2006

Meeting Krist Valentine

I had just returned to Illamur on a hauling mission, and dropped off the delivery in the station. I was chatting with Krist Valentine in the gamersinfo chat room at the same time. Vance Avalon also hangs out in there on occasions, and I've recently contacted him to see if I can learn how to be as good a pirate hunter as he is, and he invited me to that chat room. Other gamersinfo bloggers, including the pirate ones, hang out in there too. So we were chatting away when it turned out that he was in the same system as me, and trying to hunt me down, little realising the pilot he was hunting was the same one he was talking to - me!

So I jumped into my trusty Tristan frigate and went patrolling the planets, seeing if I could find him. I came upon Sebu, who had 0.3 status, and was about to warn him to leave the area as pirates were around. But then Krist warped in and Sebu began a target lock on me. I realised they were probably working together, so while I activated my afterburner and closed in on Sebu, I checked out Krist's ship. It was an Amarrian Elite Frigate, and made me wary.

However, just as I engaged Sebu, Krist warped away. I wondered what that was about, then saw that he'd disappeared from the chat room and local, so he'd obviously got an accidental disconnection. I focused my attention on Sebu, but that was mainly unnecessary.

My two blasters and two rocket launchers had managed to destroy his shields, peel away his armour, and tear great holes in his hull, with my shields only being reduced to about 30%. With a mighty explosion, the Kestrel was destroyed. As the gas cloud disappeared, I could see Sebu's pod sitting there. I'm sure I could see his face through the porthole, looking quite stunned. Krist returned as the pod warped away. I let it go.

Krist and I closed in on each other, and we chatted about our soon-to-be-engaged battle. I suggested a duel, which he was agreeable to. I wanted to see how I would fare against an Elite Frigate, but without actually losing my ship. I hate losing my ship. I suggested 'first to hull', but Krist said 50% of armour would be better. I agreed.

Deciding to be the aggressor for the first time in my career, I engaged him. I wanted to have the slight advantage that attacking first would give me. As it turned out, I was surprised how quickly I was chewing through his shields. He exclaimed in the chat room that he hated rockets! I love my rockets...

It was almost touch and go for a few brief seconds. My armour repairer was doing its best to repair the damage his weapons were causing, but unfortunately, by the time I had reduced him to about 60% armour, he had gotten me to 50% armour. I disengaged, declaring him the winner, and he did the same. The battle of frigate vs elite frigate was over. I was the loser.

Ah well, at least I had found another honourable pirate, who keeps his word. We saluted each other with respect, and went our separate ways. I'm sure we will meet again in the future.

His own blog entry about the battle is here.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

hi Krist, thanks for commenting here. Tell Sebu that it was an honour fighting him. I'm sure the next time we meet he'll be handing my arse to me... or maybe not. *grin*

Look forward to meeting you in space again too.

Cheers

8/18/2006 11:23:00 PM  

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