[SOLO] Nullsec brawl Comet

[Glasi Vookto]

After reading Kelon's solo AARs I realised that this type of AARs are a good addition to more generic solo PvP classes as they help newer solo pilots to better understand how certain ships/ship archetypes are flown. So I decided to start doing some of my own solo AARs to illustrate how I fly some ships. I don't have Kelon's solo PPT skills, so my plan is to attach videos of my fights where possible to better illustrate the tactics. Unfortunately for this one I don't have any footage, as the thought of writing an AAR only occurred to me after the fact, so you'll have to deal with walls of text this time.

The ship I used for this roam was a hull tanked blaster Comet, pretty common in lowsec, only that it I fitted both MWD and AB instead of prop mod + web:

Spoiler

[Federation Navy Comet, Glasi Vookto's Federation Navy Comet]

Damage Control II
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II
Small Ancillary Armor Repairer, Nanite Repair Paste

1MN Y-S8 Compact Afterburner
Warp Scrambler II
5MN Quad LiF Restrained Microwarpdrive

Light Neutron Blaster II, Null S
Light Neutron Blaster II, Null S
[Empty High slot]

Small Transverse Bulkhead I
Small Transverse Bulkhead I
Small Transverse Bulkhead I

Hobgoblin II x3
Warrior II x3

This is the archetype of the nullsec brawling frigate, which relies on high close range DPS to quickly dispatch with enemy support and disengage when the backup arrives. For this you need relatively high dps to kill your targets quickly, decent speed to create on grid separation and some way to control range (web or AB). Popular choices for this type of enagement are Taranis, Dramiel, Daredevil, Comet and Firetail. I prefer the AB over web as it offers you an option to quickly disengage when shit hits the fan, it's faster to close range when scrammed and it can save your bacon when crashing gates in gatecamps.
One disadvantage of this fit, as with all hull tanked ones, is that you can't regenerate your tank up after an engagement. The Taranis is usually preferred for this type of roaming because of it's immunity to bubbes. It is flown the same way and it is more known for being an inty killer, so people will be more cautious chasing it. The Comet is more exotic in null, often understimated, although it has double the tank and more DPS while being just slightly slower. It's also pretty cheap compared to the other candidates, my fit being under 30M including ammo and paste.

So here are three of the many engagements I had during one roam which I find most representative.


Engagement No 1:
So I had roamed this region earlier in an ONI and these guys chased me very aggressively for close to 10 jumps with a bigger gang, including a bunch of inties and small stuff. I didn't want to risk getting my ONI hard tackled by several inties at the same time, so I reshipped into a Comet and went back to try and pick some of them off.

Got into a pocket and started stirring things up by chasing their carebears. They formed a Garmur, Svipul, VNI and Caracal to fight me. I warped for two systems to put some distance between me and the bigger ships, and landed on gate with Svipul and Garmur. I let the Svipul aggress then jumped through. The Garmur followed. I started burning away, he chased and pointed me. I missed my first slingshot attempt, he was on the ball, so I heated away to break point. I let myself dip into low armor and a bit of structure without repping, which made him rush back in to get point and finish me off. I turned and scrammed him, and quickly dispatched of him as his buddies started decloaking 60km off. Standard gate separation, with a bit of baiting and manual slingshotting into scram.
https://zkillboard.com/kill/64410469/

Engagement No. 2
As I didn't have a depot+hull rep, I had to go all the way to NPC Delve (10j) to rep up my hull. I decided to go back, hoping I could kill that arty Svipul too. When I came back, the Garmur pilot had reshipped into a Jackdaw and they had added a couple of interceptors to their gang. The arty Svipul pilot reshipped into a cancer AC Svipul now, making it un-engageable. So I turned my attention to the ceptors. The ideal situation would be to separate one of them from the other and kill him before his friends arrive. This proved very difficult, as after losing their friend, they were a lot less eager to chase me alone. They'd always hug the gates and wait for the T3Ds to be on grid before they would engage. Engaging them with T3Ds on grid would be very risky, even with 100km between us. I could kill a single interceptor and warp off before the T3Ds could reach me, but two is a lot harder and if the Jackdaw got in missile range while I was still tackled by the second ceptor it would be game over. So I decided to wait for a better opportunity and my patience paid off. I kept warping around systems for a while, at different ranges, allowing myself to occasionally get shot on gates to keep them interested. Eventually I landed on a gate, the Svipul and ceptors at 0 but the Jackdaw at 100 (hoping to catch me there, the last gate I had warped to 100). The Svipul aggressed and the ceptors jumped ahead. Bingo! This was the situation I had been waiting for. The heavier VNI and Caracal were still in warp to gate (long warp), Jackdaw would take some time to burn 100km and the Svipul aggressed. The ceptors were all alone next door. I jumped in, burnt away, slingshot first ceptor, boom, then second one, boom. I took my time to loot the wreck as the Caracal and VNI were burning to me. GG!
https://zkillboard.com/kill/64410938/
https://zkillboard.com/kill/64410752/

Engagement No. 3
I went a few jumps further but couldn't find anything, so I came back to see if these guys were still eager to fight. And they were. This time they had batphoned Goons too and were waiting for me with 3 Garmurs. Pure cancer, nomnomnom! I wanted me some more Garmur killmails, but it was tricky. So the same old game ensued, me warping through systems and celestials and them chasing. At first they wouldn't separate, but eventually one of them warped off the in-gate while the others jumped through after me. 1 Comet vs 2 Garmurs is a pretty hard fight, however, I was confident I could kill at least one of them, so I decided to risk it. I started burning away with overheated MWD and they started chasing. I didn't want to spend too much time not dealing damage, so I quickly turned back and scrammed one of them. I messed my slingshot a bit and although I scrammed him it took me a while to get into null optimal, which meant I spent more time taking double the dps than expected. When he died, I was in half hull, low on nanite paste in repper and more importantly, low on cap. The other Garmur was 30km away so I decided against going for him as I didn't have the tank or cap to last long enough to slingshot him into scram range. So i heated MWD, broke point and warped off. BUT, while in warp, I bookmarked the wreck of the dead Garmur. The moment I landed on the new grid, I counted to 10 and warped back to the wreck. In this time, I had cycled the last two charges of my AAR giving me 1/3rd of armor back and regened enough cap to cycle it a couple of times more and pulse my MWD. When I landed, the Garmur was 20km burning for the wreck. Spot on. One pulse of the MWD towards him and he was scrammed and a 10 seconds later he was dead. The third Garmur popped in system and I decided to go for him too as my repper had reloaded now, but seeing his friends dead he turned tail and crashed gate. Smart guy!
https://zkillboard.com/kill/64411379/
https://zkillboard.com/kill/64411435/

As I said, these were only 3 of the many engagements I had in this Comet. I also killed a Worm, a Daredevil and two VNIs among others before I landed in an asteroid belt with 2 Rorquals and a Nidhoggur, got stuck on a rock and got insta-popped by fighters before I could enter warp. An undeserving death for such a brave ship, seeing as it died with 14 killmarks on its hull and close to 1B in kills under its belt, but such is life in the wild Nullsec.

Addendum:
Here are some random tips for flying the Comet in null:
- Keep Null loaded by default. When fighting inties and smaller stuff, it can take a while for you to get into Void/AM optimal, so it's better to do a bit less dps but start applying it sooner. Ofc, if you're expecting to fight bigger targets that you'll be shooting a while, you can load Void from the start. Remember that reload only takes 5s, so don't hesitate to reload mid fight if needed.
- Pre-heat your repper and AB before going into a fight, and pre-heat your MWD when scrammed. In case you need to gtfo quickly, a heated first cycle on the prop mod can make the difference.
- Remember, half your tank is in hull. Don't panic when you hit low armor/hull.
- Be mindful of Sabres and bubbles and getting camped in. Don't spend too much time in a dead end pocket and always dscan a gate before warping to it if you know a Sabre is hunting you. If you land in a bubble with a Sabre don't panic, you can easily get out if it's just him. Scram him and use your AB to burn away from him. If you're still in a bubble once you break scram, pre-heat your MWD and turn it on once the AB decycles. You are faster than the Sabre, so you can outrun him.
- If roaming deep null with no stations to dock in nearby, carry a hull repairer and a mobile depot. You can drop it at a safe and rep up before continuing.
- Remember you are vulnerable to neuts, so pay exta attention around ships that are known to carry neuts. Also, keep an eye on cap mid fight, you don't want to completely cap yourself out with the repper. Your guns need cap also and it's usually better to dip into hull but keep your guns running than vice-versa
- Be mindful of rats when engaging on gates or belts. Especially the Blood Raiders (a single cruiser will insta-neut you) and Guristas (jams).
- Bring enough paste, you will use a lot of it. I would say 50 is a minimum, but for long deep null roams I would bring 100.

[Budda Sereda]

+100500

Please do post more!

[Turlough Dominian]

this was a good read thanks for putting the time into it o7

[Kora K]

Nice post and thorough explanations Glasi, that was interesting to read. I might try it out as soon as my skills are a bit better.

You said pretty much everything here, but regarding the VNI you killed : Do you focus only on the VNI, or try to kill his drones first ?

[Glasi Vookto]

Nice post and thorough explanations Glasi, that was interesting to read. I might try it out as soon as my skills are a bit better.

You said pretty much everything here, but regarding the VNI you killed : Do you focus only on the VNI, or try to kill his drones first ?

Max heated Void dps straight on to the VNI. You want to melt him before his drones melt you. When its drones are on you you should immediately start orbiting at your optimal. You will lose some tracking, but you will take less damage from drones too. Normally his drones should chew you up pretty quickly, but most ratting Vnis are slow to assign drones and they keep moving in a straight line with 100mn Ab on, which allows you to keep moving with close to max AB speed mitigating a lot of damage from heavy drones without ruining your own tracking. Always have an object preselected and quickly warp if taking too much damage. It's a very tight dps range and its drones can two-shot you if they cath you with low transversal.

I killed several VNIs in the Comet, but almost for each one I killed I had to let one go and warp off, so it's a bit of a gamble.

[Glen Burney]

Thanks so much for sharing this with E-UNI!

[Luca Goh]

+100500

Please do post more!

Ditto.

As a newer player who is only just starting to find my footing in low sec PvP what's great about the fitting and tactics discussed here are how relatively transferable my low sec experiences seem to such PvPing in null. Until reading this AAR null PvP has seemed too far afield to even consider trying to solo or small gang roam in for me given my present inexperience. Reading this I really have a basic sense of how I could approach it and apply my experiences in FW space. The skirmishing tactics and patience necessary to isolate targets has been a large part of some of my favorite PvP experiences to date; it sounds like these form the basis of this kind of null roaming, which really piques my interest in a kind of space I wasn't yet considering diving into.

I've been flying the low sec version of that Comet over the last week or two so it's nice to see it can be easily altered to fly in a different context. And it is definitely more budget-friendly for a newbie like myself. I intend to take this brawling Comet out for a spin in the coming weeks and see what I can achieve. Maybe I will rustle up a roaming buddy or two for the sake of some company and expanding my engagement options a bit (though from the sound of it, you can have a relatively wide engagement range if you know what you're doing!).

Deep thanks for posting this, it is hugely useful for a newer pilot like myself and will definitely tempt me out into null to if nothing else provide fresh content for others.

[Decklin Quark Reiger]

The tactics and mind games you if there are brilliant!

Thank you for sharing Glasi, and please keep it up.

[bringdapain]

Great educational read, and really looking forward to some vids. Thanks for sharing!

[Glasi Vookto]

+100500

Please do post more!

Ditto.

As a newer player who is only just starting to find my footing in low sec PvP what's great about the fitting and tactics discussed here are how relatively transferable my low sec experiences seem to such PvPing in null. Until reading this AAR null PvP has seemed too far afield to even consider trying to solo or small gang roam in for me given my present inexperience. Reading this I really have a basic sense of how I could approach it and apply my experiences in FW space. The skirmishing tactics and patience necessary to isolate targets has been a large part of some of my favorite PvP experiences to date; it sounds like these form the basis of this kind of null roaming, which really piques my interest in a kind of space I wasn't yet considering diving into.

I've been flying the low sec version of that Comet over the last week or two so it's nice to see it can be easily altered to fly in a different context. And it is definitely more budget-friendly for a newbie like myself. I intend to take this brawling Comet out for a spin in the coming weeks and see what I can achieve. Maybe I will rustle up a roaming buddy or two for the sake of some company and expanding my engagement options a bit (though from the sound of it, you can have a relatively wide engagement range if you know what you're doing!).

Deep thanks for posting this, it is hugely useful for a newer pilot like myself and will definitely tempt me out into null to if nothing else provide fresh content for others.

Great to hear that! The best way to learn PvP is by trying it. But bear in mind that although the Comet fit I used is similar between low and null, the type of fights and the tactics employed are quite different. In low it's quite easy to get a (1v1) fight by waiting in a plex or sliding into someone. In null, most fights you will get are of the 1 v Many type, so a lot of effort and focus is put on setting the engagement in such way that it becomes a 1v1 for a short period of time. The fight in itself is quite trivial and usually lasts for only a few seconds; the isolating your target and setting up the engagement so you can quickly kill it and get away with it is what takes a lot of patience and skill. Often you'll need to do some meta-gaming and play mind games to force an engagement the way you want it, so knowing how to move and how the typical nullsec entities behave usually helps.

[Glasi Vookto]

Last night I took the Comet out for a quick spin again. I managed to kill an expensive Slicer, a Thorax and almost killed a Worm too but I messed up and allowed an Ashimmu to get too close and he sucked my cap dry before I could finish him off.
https://zkillboard.com/kill/64528534/
https://zkillboard.com/kill/64528624/
https://zkillboard.com/kill/64528856/

Tomorrow I'm going on vacation for a week, but when I come back I intend to do some videos of the Comet and maybe other ships. If you have questions or you'd like me to cover a specific ship/ship type, just let me know and I'll see what I can come up with.