Ballroom Blitz - Dueling Garmon

Don't know if we'll ever make it back
Now we're off track
Being chased by patrols
Pull it together, hands back on the controls
Tailspins and barrel rolls out of narrow spaces
To the center of a meteor, they can no longer trace us
Dub Pistols - Speed of Light

I wasn't sure what to think when I discovered Garmon had challenged me to a battleship duel. I suppose he'd done his homework and realized I'd never flown a battleship before. One of his many incarnations, by the name of El'Tar would be my opponent.

Given his ranking as the number one pilot on battleclinic, my never firing the guns on a battleship in the entirety of my eve career, and the fact that I could decline the duel, given the rules of the tournament I was participating in, I did what any sane pilot would do.

I accepted.

Revan Neferis sat 10 kilometers away from me. My stomach churned as El'Tar's Typhoon came out of warp less than 10 kilometers away from me. I followed the rules of the tournament and allowed the observers to lock me first, and then we locked each other. I set my ship on a collision course and I waited for my Raven to cover the distance between us.

It became clear from that point on that my microwarp drive would be useless. I had already assumed he carried neuts, so upon seeing how much faster he was (using an Afterburner, I imagined), I knew that my microwarp drive wouldn't carry me far enough fast enough to avoid being drained dry. He had nearly triple my speed without any of my modules active.

We stopped barely a meter off each other's bow, and waited for the go order. Once given, I overloaded everything and activated my tech 2 launchers, neuts, hardeners and damage control. I launched a flight of hammerhead 2(setting them to engage my target)'s and set a close orbit. I had imagined he carried torps, but if so it wouldn't have mattered if I was far or near, while if he happened to use autocannons, being close might save me a bit of initial DPS. That part became unimportant though, once he put a web on me.

After the initial volley, I turned off the overload for all of my modules.

His Mjolnir torps tore into me from the start, but my Infernos blasted his shields away in a puff. Then I smashed into his armor, and it was like a brick wall. Torpedos the size of frigates pounded away and were deflected effortlessly. My shields were holding up to his EM damage, so he took the time to switch to Infernos himself.

Then things started to go south. My capacitor began to fade, and I overloaded my hardeners to get the most use out of them before they deactivated. His armor still wasn't moving, and my shields were starting to accumulate damage. My cap was gone now, and everything deactivated. I spammed my DCU to keep it going, and got it working again. I tried to activate one of my invulnerability fields as well, but sadly couldn't get it to work. Then my shields were gone.

It took him a minute to work his way through my armor and structure, but as I knew it would, my ship eventually exploded. I overloaded my torpedo launchers in the last moments and burned them out, still not breaking 75% armor damage.

I had only a rough idea of how to fit the ship before hand, but before you go correcting me, I have some observations to make:

If you're using rage torpedos, use a target painter, even if the target is a battleship. I would've benefited more from a web than my microwarp drive. I also should've dropped the rage torps entirely and went with Caldari Navy Torps(instead of wasting a slot/drones on target painting). Not to mention carrying multiple torp types on the off chance that I needed it.

A few modifications and I might've done a lot more damage, I probably still would've lost to a well piloted Typhoon though, and I still put up a good fight. So here's till next time, Garmon.