Cruiser Crunch in W-Space

Well, I had my first foray into the deep, unknown reaches of space tonight. Let me tell you up front that a Sleeper frigate in W-Space is almost the equivalent of a cruiser. Another thing I learned about Sleepers tonight: Guerrilla tactics don't work so well.

With most things in New Eden, if you are taking a lot of punishment and you need a quick repairing break, you can warp away, let your buddies take some aggression, repair a bit, warp back and rejoin the fight and slip amongst the battle unnoticed. Those Sleepers are some smart cookies, though. Even if I was minding my own business--floating around and enjoying the visual spectacles of wormholes--while Chainer Cygnus was shredding through Sleeper armor like an Amarr in a room full of Minmatar children, the Sleepers wanted me dead and they made plenty of fuss about it.

Well, no problem, I can take a few hits from a battleship and 4 frigates. I actually made a half-decent tank for all of about 30 seconds before I'd have to warp back to my wormhole bookmark and spend several minutes repairing my armor and letting my shields power back up a bit. At this point, in most battles, Chainer would have established his superiority and I would have just hopped back into the fray barely noticed by the deadly Sleepers. Wrong! The moment I left warp all eyes turned to me; savages hungry for the kill.

I basically played this game of tag throughout every battle in our little space amongst space, effectively rendering me entirely ineffective. However, I did manage to make myself useful a bit later as the only salvage-capable ship remaining towards the end of the raid, as our pilots started needing rest.

Needless to say, as soon as we evacuated the wormhole, I obtained the skill book for battle cruisers and I'm currently training that to the second tier. I also picked up my first Helios, and fitted it out with a probe launcher and attempted scanning for the first time. It was definitely a different side of piloting, and one that I think I'm going to enjoy immensely. Which is probably for the best because, apparently, Chainer despises the scanning process.

The more time I spend as a capsuleer, the more interesting it gets.