Jelly Legs

Ok, so this morning before I head to work I was back in the saddle of a Rifter. It's feeling a bit alien which I do not consider a great sign. In retrospect, the Rifter which I undock in is not what I'd consider my normal configuration for two reasons:

1, It's shield buffer tank fit.
2, It has an MWD.

I surf around my home area of low-sec for a while until after about an hour I find a Cormorant in a faction warfare complex. As I enter, he warps out. He's still on scan though so I warp out to avoid rat agro and warp back to wait on the acceleration gate in the hope that he will return. After around 5 minutes, although it seems far longer he warps back and I lock him up. What I don't expect is that I get tackled in return! His scrambler swiftly kills my MWD meaning that I can't get under his railguns in time, with the result unfortunately being that my Rifter goes boom. Gf's exchanged in local I warp home to lick my wounds and wait out GCC. Safely in my home station I realise that I'm still on the adrenaline rush. I stood up and walked away from my laptop while the timer ticked down needing to rid my body of my self induced high.

Seems it's going to be a while before I get back into the swing o' things.

Kills are like buses

I go a couple of days without a kill then two come along within 5 minutes of each other.

Yesterday I did find myself a Rupture ratting, all was going fairly well in the fight though his drones took a large chunk of armour away, but the damage was manageable as I had all bar one drone down and was working on the last until his two friends arrived. Deciding to scarper rather than engage in a futile fight I warped away as he didn't have me pointed. The pilot was confident that he would have blown me to pieces. Though surely that begs the question of why he called his mates in?

Today I had roamed unsuccessfully until I decided to do one last circuit before calling it a night. Locating a Vexor pilot ratting and after a little belt hopping I pinpointed him and engaged. He was fighting a couple of Angels as I landed within 3km of him and pointed him. He sent his four drones after me so I decided taking them out to be priority, in hindsight I didn't really need to as the hardly did any damage to me. He was equipped with ECM and a tracking disruptor, he did get a succesful ECM jam off on me but didn't warp out or attempt to. As soon as my sensors were online I repointed him and started ignoring his drones as a known and very effective pirate entered the system and I had a feeling I knew where he was headed. I had my warp out point selected then just as the Pirate appeared in a Jaguar I engaged warp and the Vexor exploded. Beautiful timing for the explosion. Parking in a safe spot the pilot of the Vexor mentioned that I was lame for jumping him ratting and that the rats did most of the damage. I say, he should be more careful in future, regardless of who did the damage.

The pirate left the system again shortly afterwards, his departure heralded the arrival of a new player in a Cormorant. Guessing he was headed for belt 1 my scan reported a positive hit and I dived in, landing 10km away I approached, pointed and destroyed the Destroyer very quickly, nailing the Pod too. I had a brief conversation with the pilot afterwards at his request. He didn't realise the dangers of low security space and wanted to know if his ship was really gone. I gave him a few bits of advice so that maybe he is a little more aware next time.

Avast ya swabs, I be having me some Tech 2 Auto's

Well as of yesterday morning I am very pleased to say that I am now able to fit and use T2 Autocannons. I had hoped that yesterday evening I would get opportunity to slap a trio of them on my current rusty steed Nero and give them a taste of first blood but unfortunately I found no suitable targets on my short roam.

This morning I came across a Cormorant shortly after logging in, choosing the range to fight it at was a nightmare as it had both blasters and railguns fitted. It was a reasonably close run thing as by the end of the fight I had only 25% armour remaining but once the shields were gone on the Destroyer it went down quickly along with its pilot's Pod.

These latest kills renders my officially an Outlaw at -5.66 Security Status which is something else I can check off the to-do list.

Unfortunately tonight my long serving (for me) rusty steed Nero bit the dust. I had the bit between my teeth chasing down a hauler warping between belts when the hauler and I warped into a belt which had a Vexor and Wolf in it, needless to say Nero did not make it out alive.

Tomorrow I can look forward to strapping some weapons rigging to the Rifter for even more punch. The downside to all this T2 and upgrading the bog standard Rifter is of course the cost. Including rigging a fresh out of the box Rifter will be coming in at 3.5-4m isk rather than the 800k that it did a couple of weeks ago.