Suppose I was finish running a mission in low sec and then found out my buddies in PVP ships were being attacked at gate in the same system. One of them is using a very blingy ship. Unfortunately, I’m in a PVE ship, meaning I have several inefficiencies. I have a battery, but if I removed it I could have fired my blasters, reload them, fired again, reload, fired it again, reload a 3rd time, and fire 10 more volleys all while running my armor repair before I run out of cap. The battery changed it from “can go on for a few minutes” to stable, but the odds of a fight lasting that long are not too big. The next problem is the ship has a huge kinetic hole, 5 volleys of 720mm titanium sabot and I’m a goner. Other inefficient module slots are a tractor beam in the high and nanofibers in the low. Oh and one of the rig slots was empty. I was asked to tackle and damp one of them and my ship could do neither so I decided to grab a ship that could do so.
I did have a PVP ship with the same hull… 3 jumps away in the next constellation.
The decision I made was that the PVE ship wasn’t going to be optimal. I went to grab my PVP ship which had 8/7 the weapons DPS, a lot stronger volley, more EHP, and a tackle module. I came back to find one of my buddies destroyed and most of them pretty badly beaten up. The end story was not exactly a happy ending, although I did manage to not add my ship to the wrecks.
Was trying to suit up to a better ship a good thing or a bad thing? Was trying to help right away in a PVE ship with three wasted modules (tractor beam, battery, nanofiber structures) or making 3 jumps to get a correct ship at an NPC station and try to save the day right? I didn’t exactly miss the fight entirely, but assuming I would be the second target after the first ship went down, I’d end up doing more damage if I tried to fight immediately than trying to get a new ship since at least my drones would do some damage.
If I thought my friends could win the fight without me at all, would just warping in and using my PVE ship a valid idea?
Kneejerk reaction is how many people lose their ships.
It is one of the reason why I hold blingy ships longer incase they are calling for help and another blingy ship comes in to try and safe them. It has resulted in some hilariously fun kills.
So no, you did nothing wrong by not warping in a ship that might have been added to the list of wrecks.
Well, it’s good that you’re trying not to feed, but there may be times when you feel it is better to respond quickly with a PvE ship, than to respond slowly with a more appropriate ship. For example, I’ve responded with a VNI to a corpmate’s rattlesnake being tackled because my VNI was significantly cheaper, and my drones had a decent chance of driving the guy off before his buddies landed on grid (fyi, the rattle was saved, but like 4 other corpies responded as well, so I can’t take all the credit).
So, yeah, as a general rule of thumb, you don’t want to use PvE fit ships for PvP. However, there might be times when you feel it’s better to respond quickly with the wrong ship, rather than respond too late with the right ship.
Yeah, I don’t know how I managed to end up arriving in time to see the fight still going on. They didn’t just alpha one of our ship in one volley. This makes me think the attack was one of opportunity than them sitting hours in advance.
Honestly I would have dove in with the PVE ship. Maybe I lose it, maybe the extra dps is enough to drive off the attackers. I don’t actually care either way. What’s important to me in that scenario is that my friends see my willingness to lose ships to help them out. I can replace the ship, what I can’t replace is my corp mates watching me warp off while they are getting their teeth kicked in. If we die, we die together. If a corp mate dives into my fight in his ratting vexor and loses it, I’m not blaming him for not getting a better ship. I’m respecting his aggression and know I can trust him in the future.
