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| Surrender your mysteries to me! |
A stubborn heart shall fare evil at the last; and he that loveth danger shall perish therein.On my long voyage to purdify New Eden there's situations when I know the odds are bad but I have to take action. Consider the Celestis for example. The Celestis - and I want to be completely honest with you - is one ass ugly bird. On a scale of ugliness - where most gallente ships inhabit the upper (uglier) quarter - ... or, let me put it this way: In a universe of ugly ships the Celestis would still rank high among that universe's ugliest. In summary:
Sirach 3:72
The Celestis poses a severe disturbance to the aesthetic balance in the force!1
Seriously, I'm just messin with you kids, I think the Celestis is a marvelous ship. I will tell you why in a second.
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| Part IX of Minmatar Girls Gone Wild |
A few days ago, I had just finished watching the surprisingly well directed Debbie does Heimatar (with a spectacular Bambi Woods' PvP jump clone) I spotted a Celestis in a belt and with the strong feeling that there's an aesthetic correction waiting to be performed I engaged at my comfy range. Drones? Sure, but not a problem as far as I remember. What I distinctly remember is that at some point I was getting too close. Web range close. Dual web range close! (Which is essentially the same as single web range, but I wanted to use this rhetoric figure thing to catch your attention, you little internet junkies! I know you're secretly longing to play HALO on your ATARI!)
And that was it for this Rifter.
Now I wouldn't have mentioned this if I hadn't found another Celestis yesterday, other pilot, other belt, same System: Siseide. Again I was very tempted, I warped in at 100km and watched. The pilot jumped to another belt, he didn't seem too eager to fight. Now that was a cunning move, because it pushed me over the edge: I followed the guy to the next belt and engaged at 20km to work on his coating. A set of T2 drones was unleashed and I managed to take out two or three before my opponent called them back. Meanwhile an unwelcome tracking disruptor had been working on my artilleries tracking, and I noticed I was doing too little damage. So I went in just a little closer. Just a liiiittle. 12800m. Ka-ba-ba-boom!
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| Solo Rifter pilots beware! |
Now in concludification of this post: I'm very unpleased to see more and more anti-frig cruisers out there. I guess most of them will be after shiny Dramiels kills with these fits - which I support wholeheartedly - but there will be a lot of Rifters in the by-catch, like the those Dolphins accidentally caught by tuna trawlers!
Anyways, GF everybody!
1Now go and put this into your red pilot's notebook!
Bait Celestises are about as ubiquitous as bait Mallers these days. Nice to see people using the combat log grapher. Its a very useful tool.
ReplyDeleteIf only it were a fair T1 cruiser 1v1 in your Rupture! And if only you could respawn in 10 seconds with a fully equipped, free cruiser identical to your old one ... am I getting carried away here?
ReplyDeleteObvious lesson to be learned here: kudos to Mr Kamikaze for having to guts to engage. What 99.8% of the massage-chair riding population lack in balls (and seem to have 8 additional fingers to type insults with in local), you swing around and try to smash shit up. o7
Being the second pilot of a celestis, I have to admit I do fly it mostly to kill dramiels and other expensive frigs, that it kills any other frig or destroyer is a very nice bonus.
ReplyDeletehttp://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=9394415
Happened earlier, the Eve Uni person on the mail must have died in system before I engaged. And then a few jumps later:
http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=9394508
The one downside to the Celestis fit is that now more people are flying them, all with similar fits. I may have to move on to other terrible cruisers for this sort of thing and I have a few ideas on what to try. Or I should probably just man up and fly more frigs.
@Wensley: It's very interesting to see the different characters of low sec areas that aren't that far from each other. In and around Amamake there's not much institutionalized baiting - you have to be very careful, because it's busy and anyone could just warp in, but I've had little problems with bait. On the other hand, when taking this journey arount Parts (http://brutorbullfighter.blogspot.com/2011/03/solo-combat-pilots-guide-to-good.html) I was confronted with bait Mallers, Trashers and the like immediately.
ReplyDelete@Panthe: What you chose to call balls I'd call plain stupid. But thanks!
@Chris: Thanks for popping in! Those are really nice kills. And if it takes losing a Rifter now and then to drop the Dramiel population then be it! Also I've seen people using Bellicoses and Caracals for that job. (I have a Sports Utility Rupture which I used to take out Frigs, AFs and Cruisers, but I guess the Rupture's reputation makes most Frig-Pilots leave the system.)
Good read m8, especially the Debbie does Heimatar part :)
ReplyDeleteNice post and the Celestis makes one of the best bait ships due to its otherwise poor reputation as a bad ewar ship. Those 5 mids make for the excellent combo of dual webs and a TD, which can ruin many a ship's day. I think a med shield booster Hawk might have a chance, though. What really blows with the Celestis is the typical lack of grid that plague almost all Gallente ships.
ReplyDelete