The annoying fight or flight response we all possess as a vestige of our mortal past is a great hindrance to our actual prosperity as capsuleers. In New Eden, death is not a mortal threat. At most, it is a monetary setback and a stung bit of pride.
Yet, most of us still fear "dying", silly as that might be. Some of us fear it so much they never venture far from the protection of CONCORD, forgetting that CONCORD provides no protection, only revenge, and a very non-satisfying, non-personal, brand of revenge at that.
But such is human nature. Even those of us who do not fear death, still dislike losing and that's not what we're here to discuss.
The point I wish to make is that the person most dangerous to the survival of our ship is often ourselves. Sure, it is possible for our reach to exceed our grasp, and it is painfully easy to fall into a trap, but in all those cases, our first response often defines the outcome. Because of this, it is important to develop the correct response for the cases where things happen when we least expect them.
Our basic, programmed, response in those cases is trying to run. It is also often the exact reaction that causes us to lose our ship.
Why, you ask?
Because the flight response is irrational. The flight response for a capsuleer is most often a blind attempt to enter warp, without regard for the actual feasibility of the attempt or whether the alignment vector will take us dead onto the path of the rushing attacker. The most common scenarios where we are surprised by something occur when someone warps in on us without us noticing and when we enter a new system.
The second case is actually somewhat simpler: The gate cloak enables us to survey our surroundings and assess whether we are likely to be able to enter warp, whether burning back to gate is viable, or whether the only option is to go balls to the walls and try to take someone down with us. The edge of an unpleasant surprise is well dulled by delaying our decision for a few seconds.
In the first case, we often have very little time to make a decision and using this time right is critical. In a quick-aligning frigate, immediate escape is possible if we notice the intruder as he starts to decelerate from his warp, but anything slightly less agile, such as an assault frigate (especially if your prop mod is running), takes several agonizingly long seconds to align and may well be caught if the attacker lands within his point range.
So let us assume the following: We were not paying attention our directional scanner (fail #1), we were not paying attention to our overview (fail #2). This leaves us with someone appearing on grid with us, pretty close to us, at some random location in, say, lowsec and this is the point where we can make our decision for the first time.
Needless to say, if we got this deep into trouble, we've screwed up, but now we need to dig our ship out of the grave, because giving up is always silly.
Every ship has an optimal range. Your first concern in a combat situation is to maneuver into your own optimal range and deny your enemy the ability to fight in his. In the situation above, getting into your optimal range is your first concern. It serves to do two things: First, it gets you into position to fight. Fighting is always better than dying without firing a shot. Second, it does something your opponent may not expect: It throws you into the engagement. Turning an expected gank into a hard fought fight is a good way to turn the tables on your assailant. It might even make him panic in turn and after all, the best defense is a good offense.
The most basic (and probably the quickest) way to do this is to try and pull into your usual, pre-programmed, orbital distance (you have one, right? And it is a setting that makes sense for your fit, right?). If you opponent is short-ranged and you are long ranged, you might just slip out of scram range, often winning you the day, or enabling your escape. If your opponent is long-ranged and you manage to run him down before he can pull away, then again, you may have well snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. If your ranges match, then the fight becomes either a short range DPS battle (which still gives you a chance to win, assuming you are not outmatched outright) or a long range duel, which is relatively easy to escape if you need to (two long point fast ships often have a hell of a time keeping each other tackled due to their relative speed being too high for human reaction times and control lag. Of course, if your attacker is much, much faster and agile than you, then it won't help).
Needless to say, this won't win you all your fights, and better knowledge of ship fits (and practice, practice, practice) will lend you better tools to respond to surprises (after all, you probably don't want to rush a Myrmidon in a speedy frigate just because your orbital preset is 500m), but training to supress your flight response will serve you well.
In short, in the absence of any reliable information, you must still act in the way that improves your chances of winning the engagement. In the most basic sense, this requires pursuing your optimal range as early as possible. Always remember, as the saying goes: When pressed to make a decision under duress, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the second best is the wrong thing, and the absolutely worst thing you can do is nothing.
Fly well and don't freeze,
Ang.
