I play DCS, and participate in public PVP servers. I fly Mirage, Su-33, and on occasion, just for s and giggles, Huey and Gazelle. The Gazelle is my favourite. It's a troll chopper. If you fly it right, you're almost impossible to shoot down, even by the most skill F/A/18 or -14 pilots. Because you can hug the ground, hid behind obstacles, you're loaded with flares and an IR deflector and, if you're good enough, you can catch an attacker off-guard who, after expending all their missiles on you, slows right down and comes in nice and close for a gun run, in which case, you can put your own guns/rockets/even TOW missiles on him. I've had four kills with the Gazelle. It's hilarious.
There's nothing symmetrical about a Gazelle killing an F/A-18. It's akin to a Sidewinder killing a Vulture. But that's not really where the fun is. The fun is in evading their attacks whilst completing your mission, be it transporting soldiers in the Huey (or CAS with a bunch of miniguns, this is especially tough because it turns the Huey into a brick) or anti-armour support/low-altitude SEAD/recon in the Gazelle. As an explorer in Elite, I get something of the same thrill when I'm departing Jameson Memorial to head for Lori Jameson to initiate the first of many engineering jobs on a new exploration ship. This is when I'm most vulnerable. I have a few blueprints pinned, including Dirty Drive Tuning, so before I leave, I've done a bunch of upgrades already that'll help my survivability. But this first trip is always when I'm most vulnerable to an attack, and it's always in SD. One such attempt was made on me a few weeks ago.
I departed the station in a Krait Phantom, targeted the engineering base, and entered supercruise. I think I got about a quarter to a third of the way there before my bandwidth spiked and I knew there was another player in the system, whereby I started searching my sensors for that hollow icon. As soon as I saw it, I turned towards it, targeted it, and got a scan. FDL, with an FSD interdictor. Knowing that many gankers/PVP'ers will fly whatever the most cookie-cutter meta they can get their hands on, I had a fair idea of what he intended, and as he was heading right for me, my suspicions were aroused. I kept my throttle at full and waited to see what he would do as he moved behind me. When he did, I watched his ship hollow start a turn behind me to get on my tail and I knew at that moment that he was coming after me. I E-dropped, selected a system at random from my left console, and started boosting in that direction waiting for my FSD to cool down.
The FDL hadn't landed when the CD finished. I thought, "hmm, maybe I was a bit paranoid, let's wait and see if he follows my wake", and so I did, still boosting. Lo, my suspicion was justified when i heard the 'thump' of a ship landing behind me, and saw the hollow icon go from square to triangle in an instant. "Scan detected," announced Archer, as I hit the boost, FA-off, and threw my Krait into a Crazy Ivan (full stick left, full opposing rudder, and a bit of pitch for good measure) while the FSD charged for a hyperspace jump. He hit me once, from about 2km, and my shields barely noticed. The police did though, and they arrived in seconds. Seconds after that, I was in hyperspace.
Well, I arrived safely in the system I'd decided to jump to but was unsatisfied with the fact that I'd been unable to reach Lori Jameson. I decided to take a calculated risk: knowing the gankers were in SD, I decided that they're probably more interested in grabbing stuff around the station, where it's slowing down for approach to the station (anything coming into the system) knowing that the odds of catching something off the sun that might just be passing through are actually quite low. Well, I decided I was going straight back for my engineering. So I did. I jumped back into SD, and despite a spike in bandwidth, saw nothing on my sensors. I began my approach to Lori's planet and watched my sensors in case that changed. Eventually, and before I arrived, the spike dropped off.
While I was arriving at the engineering planet, I decided to have a bit of smack. I wrote in chat, "oi, noice try m8" or something to that effect, and got no response, so I left it. Eventually, though, someone replied, and I found myself talking rather casually with the gankers about game mechanics. Turns out, Harry Potter himself was in the system, and we ended up discussing the mechanics of torpedoes while I did my engineering. He wasn't even a bag, just knew his stuff, and I wondered, briefly: who did I just evade? I didn't even get their name. Was it Harry? I'll never know. Sadly, I didn't record it. And I didn't ask in the system who, specifically, it was that just tried to kill me. To be honest, it didn't matter. I had survived. And I hadn't just survived, but I'd blue-balled them hard.
It was some of the most fun I've had playing this game by far. And not entirely unlike evading F/A-18 launched AMRAAM missiles by racing between the buildings of Las Vegas at 20ft above the ground doing almost 200kts in a chopper that's smaller and lighter than a fire engine.
![[Diplomacy] Carnegie](https://forums-cdn.zaonce.net/data/avatars/m/123/123809.jpg?1553527149){kind=avatar}
. you should try ganking next! It's the logical step
