Tornado for Hurricane

Got online tonight, and Superpooper mentioned that some of the Forsaken Federation members were active in the Amoen loop. These guys are fun to play with, though in the last fairly long while they'll only undock if they've got better numbers, or ship-types then what I/my friends come in, which pushes me towards nano-fagging around to try pick some off and disengage.

Heading in there today with my trusty Nano-Hurricane. The grid-nerf hurt my fit a little bit but not h orribly, so I'm alright with that.

Getting into Amoen I had a Drake and Retriever on scan, soon had them scanned down to the belt and warped in. Lock. Disrupt... nothing happens. Hit the disruptor and guns, still nothing happens. Remember about the damn green safety, turn it off, and got the Ret. The entire time this has been going on Superpooper was grabbing a drake of his own to come, once the Retriever was down, I pointed the Drake while loading EMP. Loaded, firing, taking chunks out of his shields with every volley. Mentioning Super better hurry, I turned off the heat on the top rack so he could get on. Not paying too much attention to anything as the Drake wasn't hurting to bad, Super mentions that he's too far off and won't be able to get in range, I look at distances, and sure enough the Drake is burning away while I had turned off my MWD to preserve cap. Overheating the mids, I gave chase, dropping point for a split second when he gets out to 30km away, but doesn't manage to warp in time. Able to re-establish point, I went and finished the drake.

Before we had left system, there was a Vexor on scan, after chasing him around I caught up to him on the Ruerotta gate, with Super landing I engaged, and soon saw the Vexor engage back. Dropped him pretty quick, though I think solo I'd probably have had issues breaking his tank before the drones/sentries did their part.

After repairing and dropping off loot, we ended up down in Avaux, with Super now in a sniper Oracle, and myself still in the nano-cane, since we saw 5 reds in system. After a few minutes, A Talos undocked, and warped off, coming back at a safe 200km off the station, sniping my 'cane. Getting the idea for Super's alt to probe out and warp us in on the Talos, we give it a shot, but sadly have the Talos warp off before we're able to do that. After trying to accomplish similar things afterwards with no luck, they started undocking more and more. With Super's Oracle forcing an Abbadon to dock a couple times, eventually they undocked a Hawk, Myrm and Tornado to go with the Talos and Abbadon. With Super's probes already in place, the Talos and Hawk warped in, with the Tornado warping to the hawk (which wasn't with the Talos, but still 200km off). Probed, warping... Talos warped off. Made the call to go after the Tornado and Hawk instead, though I figured already it was suicide.

Landing next to the Tornado, and about 30km off the Hawk, I right away set orbit to 500 and overheated the top rack, trying to get through what I hoped was a real thin tank as fast as possible. With the Talos warping back at 100 and taking shots, the Hawk burning to us, and an Abbadon & Myrm aligning to us, that was about all my hope. Sadly, the Tornado had a stiffer tank than I had expected, and the Hawk was there scramming me pretty quickly, so I swapped my neuts over to him. Finally dropping the Tornado, with my own ship nearly out of shields, I tried to drop the Hawk, and in a couple volleys nearly had him out of shield, at which point he warped off, breaking tackle on me. Had I been aligned at this point, I could have gotten out, but I was too slow, as the Abbadon grabbed me. I had been speed tanking the Abbadon before, but combined with the DPS from the sniper-talos, and Myrmidon there, it was not to be as my Hurricane dropped. 5v2, and coming out equal on the # of kills, and ahead on the efficiency, all good in my books.

I've tried flying the Bellicose and Stabber a few times now, and I think once I've got my missile-distance skills trained up a bit higher (they're both at 3 right now, both 4 should be sufficient I hope) I think that the Bellicose may be my go-to Cruiser. Good speed, decent damage + projection. The Stabber though. I'm quite sad about the state of the Stabber. It may have it's place for a new player in a nano-fleet or something like that, but by itself, it's basically garbage. I skirmished with it against a larger gang of cruisers, and a Thrasher, and going after the Thrasher, landing good hits, he wasn't all that close to dying when I had to warp out due to the rest of the gang getting close, and nearly being out of cap. I later lost it due to :badatkiting: against a Moa (Vexor just whored on the KM, I was as good as dead well before he arrived).

Still need to give the Rupture a real try, it seems like not all that much has changed, so it should still be decent, I'm just afraid it'll have Rifter syndrome, and be out-classed by all it's competition (and we don't have the Stabber to be the Slasher, and be a viable alternative).

It's been a fun few days.

Fly dangerous
'Chord