The Infamous 'Rifter Plan'

One of the most frequent questions that I have been asked by readers of this blog concerns my continued reference to the Rifter Plan.

For those of you unfamiliar with this phenomenon, The Rifter Plan is the skill training plan that I created when I first created Kirith. I wanted him to be able to fly a max-skilled Rifter and be something approaching the most deadly Rifter out there flying the low-sec space lanes. I could summarise simply by saying that the plan takes every skill which affects the Rifter to level V. Now once some readers have seen the plan they will say "but that doesn't max-skill my Rifter", well all I can say is that it does for mine. Some of you will say that I shouldn't waste time taking those skills that only give a small bonus to V and that I should concentrate on more ships etc. This is my plan, I'm happy with it and will not be swayed.

The initial idea was to stick with this plan until completion and then move onto another plan, however I have swayed a little from this mantra to get into some different ships. At least every other skill that Kirith trains is one of my Rifter plan skills.

So without any further adieu, I present the skills that I will have trained by the end of the Rifter plan:

Electronics
- Electronics V
- Propulsion Jamming V
- Signature Analysis V

Engineering
- Energy Management V
- Energy Systems Operation V
- Engineering V
- Shield Management V
- Shield Operation V
- Tactical Shield Manipulation V

Gunnery
- Advanced Weapon Upgrades V
- Gunnery V
- Motion Prediction V
- Rapid Firing V
- Shrapshooter V
- Small Autocannon Specialisation V
- Small Projectile Turret V
- Surgical Strike V
- Trajectory Analysis V
- Weapon Upgrades V

Mechanic
- Hull Upgrades V
- Jury Rigging III
- Mechanic V
- Projectile Weapon Rigging V
- Repair Systems V

Missile Launcher Operation
- Missile Bombardment V
- Missile Launcher Operation V
- Missile Projection V
- Rapid Launch V
- Rocket Specialisation V
- Target Navigation Prediction V
- Warhead Upgrades V

Navigation
- Acceleration Control V
- Afterburner V
- Evasive Manouvering V
- Fuel Conservation V
- Navigation V
- Warp Drive Operation V

Science
- Thermodynamics V

Spaceship Command
- Minmatar Frigate V
- Spaceship Command V

Many of these skills are either prerequisite for bigger ships & weapon systems or will scale beautifully when I upship.

That's all for me today.

August 2010 Character Review

Well hello there! It's been a while hasn't it. Kirith is still very much alive, but not so much kicking right now.

Following on from July, which as I noted in my last post was my least active month spent in game at that time August has been even less active with me recording under 1 hour of time spent in game in the whole month. When I did log in I jumped in my surprisingly long living MWD Jaguar and tagged along with a few Tuskers harassing the neighbouring systems. Unfortunately no kills were had but still it was good to be on vent with the guys, meeting up with some of the new blood that had joined since my play time dropped dramatically. It's been a very busy time in real life for me which has led me to look at and rebalance how I'm spending my time, needless to say I'm really enjoyin the way life is right now though I do miss the banter with my Corp mates.

It's a bit late in the day to be writing my overdue August character review, so I'm going to bring you up to date with where Kirith is up to today in some respects, although I did export the graph below at the end of August so apologies that things are going to be a bit disjointed.

Kirith has now completed Minmatar Cruiser V and has all the support skills in place to make these things deadly when flown in anger. Being so rigid on working towards the ultimate Rifter of course means that all those support skills scale really well when shipping up. My bigger hulls really will kick out the hurt. Kirith is also now over the 20m SP bar and boy that seems to have happened fast. Small Autocannon Specialisation V is cooking as I type before I get onto interleaving the skills to fly one incredibly badass Hurricane. The shortest skills I have left on the Rifter plan come in at just under 12 days each with the longest at 23 days!

Here's how Kirith's skills broke down at the end of August:

No play time to speak of means that all other things not mentioned, including my trading income have halted. I have kept up skill training on the alt account, I aim to get one of my alts into a plex busting Tengu in time.

I would like to pick up my blogging again and get back into the saddle, even if it's just once a week but we will have to see how that goes. Now I need to get some fittings for my cruisers shipped down to Hev!

Remember my motto my fellow pirates; take a chance for you never know what you and a Rifter can achieve!