Rock you like a Hurricane

Recently I made a return to wormhole space along with Sorn Nordvind. You can read about our exploits on his blog post here. Needless to say, the crave for sleeper wrecks and glorious nanoribbons have returned,  but I wasn’t happy with my Hurricane fit.

I reread my old posts and reviewed old lossmails. I remembered Immortalus, my old workhorse, and how fond I was of its passive shield tank. I then read in one of my posts that its passive shield tank didn’t hold under heavy sleeper fire. I loaded the simulation of the old fit and started tweaking.

[Hurricane, Immortalus]

425mm AutoCannon II, Phased Plasma M

425mm AutoCannon II, Phased Plasma M

425mm AutoCannon II, Phased Plasma M

425mm AutoCannon II, Phased Plasma M

425mm AutoCannon II, Phased Plasma M

425mm AutoCannon II, Phased Plasma M

Prototype Cloaking Device I

Core Probe Launcher I, Core Scanner Probe I

Large Shield Extender II

Large Shield Extender II

Experimental 10MN Afterburner I

Adaptive Invulnerability Field II

Shield Power Relay II

Shield Power Relay II

Shield Power Relay II

Shield Power Relay II

Gyrostabilizer II

Power Diagnostic System II

Medium Core Defense Field Purger I

Medium Core Defense Field Purger I

Medium Core Defense Field Purger I

This is the old fit. I immediately noticed the huge EM hole and the less extreme Thermal hole. I need to take care of these holes first but also wanted to up my overall resistance without messing up the passive recharge time of my shields. After a lot of trial and errors, I came up with this:

[Hurricane, Aegis]

425mm AutoCannon II, Phased Plasma M

425mm AutoCannon II, Phased Plasma M

425mm AutoCannon II, Phased Plasma M

425mm AutoCannon II, Phased Plasma M

425mm AutoCannon II, Phased Plasma M

425mm AutoCannon II, Phased Plasma M

Core Probe Launcher I, Core Scanner Probe I

Salvager II

Large Shield Extender II

Large Shield Extender II

Adaptive Invulnerability Field II

Adaptive Invulnerability Field II

Shield Power Relay II

Shield Power Relay II

Shield Power Relay II

Shield Power Relay II

Gyrostabilizer II

Damage Control II

Medium Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer I

Medium Core Defense Field Purger I

Medium Core Defense Field Purger I

I swapped the Power Diagnostic system with Damage Control and added another Invulnerability Field in the place of the afterburner. This boosted my overall resistance. The lack of prop mods is concerning, but I can create a bookmark 150km off the centre of the sleeper site and warp to and from it to get into range of the sleepers. This also means I’m a little safer as I’ll always be aligned to a celestial or my bookmark. Should I receive visitors the instant warp should save my life. It just means I’ll have to do some extra scouting beforehand. (thanks to the Ministry of Inappropriate Footwear for that suggestion). I also plugged the EM hole by removing one Field Purger Rig and swapping it with an Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer. Yes, that messes up my recharge rate a bit, but I’m counting on the plugged hole to make up for it.

Now my only concern is the frigates. I think used to be able to shoot them (at least I said so in my posts) and my Gunnery skills have improved somewhat since back then. Should it be a problem I could always swap the Gyro for a Tracking Enhancer or switch to smaller autocannons.

Once I was happy with my new creation and I shipped the parts I needed into low sec, I took it out for a test flight. I wanted to pop its cherry on a battleship rat but I just warped to a belt when Sorn reported a Harbinger ratting. I turned the heavy battlecruiser around and warped back to the station to get into something fit for the job. Sorn declared point with his Rupture and I was just about to dock when I suddenly realized that my Malediction wasn’t going to dish out nearly enough damage. Sorn had point, the Hurricane’s got DPS...I’ve already wasted a lot of time, I flung the ship around again and warped towards Sorn.

“How you holding up?”

“Not good, might have to disengage soon.” I didn’t have any warp jamming device and had no prop mods, if Sorn left, so would he.

“Did he point you?”

“No,” said Sorn as I was about to land, “Warping out.”

I landed next to the Harbinger and Sorn was already gone. I locked him and unleashed the full fury of my 425mm Autocannons. To my surprise he locked me up and had me pointed. The shield tank held brilliantly, I never went lower than 70% shields and his armour buffer was running out. If we don’t point him soon we’ll surely lose him.

“Can you come back and point this guy? Think he might warp out soon.”

“Already warping in.”

Sorn landed, but so did another Hurricane. Now I was starting to feel uncomfortable. I decided that if I was going to go up in a ball of flames, so was the Harbinger! The Hurricane locked me, but didn’t aggress.

“Did the Hurricane point you Sorn?”

“Yeah.”

This was great news...for the Hurricane at least. With the Harbinger about to go down and me already aligned to a celestial, it meant I could get out of the fray. I declared my intension to flee and pretty soon the Harbinger was destroyed. I barely entered warp when Sorn reported a fleet of battlecruisers just dropped. I bounced from the celestial to the station and offered to pay half of his loss. Comms was quiet for a while, then came Sorn’s calm voice:

“I got out.”

We both burst out in laughter and docked up. We drank a few rounds at the bar to celebrate while we waited out our GCC.

***

We tried the same strategy yesterday against a Prophecy. I was tackling in my wolf and Sorn brought DPS in his wormhole Drake. It was soon apparent that my wolf wouldn’t make it as the drones bit hard while I was webbed down to a standstill. I couldn’t hit them either and it was all too late when I realized that I was flying in a straight line towards the prophecy, allowing him to get heavy hits on my Wolf’s armour.

The Drake arrived just in time to see the Wolf pop. I went into station to find another ship to help Sorn with. Sorn reported two Hurricanes landing on him and there was nothing I could do.

I donated some money towards a new wormhole Drake for Sorn as I feel like I could have done a better job tackling that Prophecy. I'm hoping to get into a wormhole soon. With Sorn in a Drake helping me, I'm sure we'll make large amounts of ISK.