The Little Gila That Could

It's been another frustrating day for the Buckster.  I haven't been able to get on much lately due to RL things.  I finally got on a little bit last night with my corpmate Strikilla.  We decided to do a quick roam.  He was in his Dramiel and I was in my Stabber Fleet Issue.

It was a really quiet night and it was approaching downtime.  We stuck our nose into Todifrauan and I saw a Gila and a stealth bomber on scan.  It looked like they were running a mission.  I am fairly afraid of Gilas since I have been spanked by them several times.  I thought about leaving them along but Strikilla is braver/more reckless than I am and he wanted to go for it.  We decided to give it a shot and charge in.

Once we got there the stealth bomber GTFO of there and left the Gila.  I started orbiting at optimal and unloaded RF EMP on him.  Strikilla said he was getting hit fairly hard by Hammerhead heads but I wasn't taking any damage.  He warped out to give his shields a break while I stayed in the fight.  I had ECM drones out so they could screw with his targeting and let me have the chance to bail if I needed to.

I noticed that I had gotten his shields down to about 50% but they weren't moving at all past that point.  Then BLAM!  My shields took a heavy hit.  I thought those Hammerheads really weren't screwing around.  I kept taking more and more damage and soon I was in half armor.  However his shield was still at about 50%.  WTF.  My guns were hitting solid hits and I was in optimal range.  This guy was tanked in a silly way.  Finally I decided to give it up as a bad deal and I warped off just as I hit structure.

*sigh*

I don't really understand how I couldn't get close to breaking his tank.  I think I am going to finally train all my gunnery skills to V.  I reviewed my combat logs afterwards and realized that after Strikilla had pulled out, the Gila had recalled the Hammerheads and put out Ogre IIs.  Well that explains the damage.  I was a little pissed at myself once I saw that.  Those things are so slow I should have had the Dram come back in and take them out.  That would have killed the Gila's DPS and I could have stayed around a bit longer.

Another mistake I made was I assumed the Gila was a missile boat so I wasn't using my MWD at all.  Turns out it was just slinging rockets at me.  I think I could have stayed ahead of those drones if I had pulsed it.
The ECM drones were also a mistake.  Since the most damage was coming from drones, the ECM jams had zero effect on the damage I was taking.

It was a very frustrating encounter.  Even though I didn't lose a ship, I consider it a loss.  However I did learn some valuable lessons so at least I can improve next time.