Firstly, as a veteran of sorts to this game we love if not to the yo-ho life as such, I should really have known better in the following situation.
There sat I, drifing happily in a haze of single malt and idly scanning my immediate area in my beloved Rifter, 'Betty', when I decided to make a move to a neighbouring system. Upon arrival at my intended stargate, up pops a Merlin on scanner.
'Ah ha! Fisticuffs!', think I, and rightly so, but not in the manner I had hoped.
Making the assumption that my incoming sparring partner would be up for close-range fisticuffs and sporting a fine array of blasters, I decide to load barrage into my beloved autocannons and make the attempt to keep my potentially hard-hitting but ungainly opponent at bay via canny use of my web and afterburner.
He lands on the gate, I dance carefully about his virtual person at 7km, he locks on...
(I should mention at this point that as something of a cad and bounder, I'm viewed with less than fondness on the part of Concord and flash rather splendidly in red hue.)
...and in my overeagerness for fisticuffs I fire first!
I hang my head in shame, dear readers. Had I listened to Mrs. Corsair I would have been happily and ignorantly abed in cap and nightgown, lulled by the light breathing of my sleeping baby Corsairs. Instead, I suffer the ignonimy of dull wittedness and wither under the fire of gateguns and my opponent happily rummages through the ravaged hull of my beloved Betty.
Onwards and downwards, I say!
