What's with all these entertaining fights lately?

It seems that this last week has been one of the best in my EVE experience as a pirate. I've had some very fun and interesting fights. A small showcase below:

Rifter & Thorax
I had warped to the gate after spotting a lone neutral Rifter sat 10km away, I was trying to get him to aggress me but he was having none of it, as I was merrily orbiting him a second flashy Rifter piloted by Eviwyn, of Hellcats notoriety landed and locked me up and engaged, just after she engaged a non-flashy Thorax landed and also locked me up and engaged. Yikes! Unlocking the neutral Rifter to avoid getting accidentally gate-gunned I set about the Rifter and made good progress in destroying it. By the time the Rifter was down I was into around half-armour, I switched focus to the Thorax and his drones. Without the added pressure on my tank of the Rifter I was able to effectively speed tank the Thorax and his drones taking him out efficiently.

Busting a small low-sec ratting gang
Entering system, this gang were at the only belt immediately on scan, by the time I had warped there they had left, so using the gold old pirate initiative I selected the next belt I thought that they would go to and warped to zero. Landing amongst a Kestrel, Tristan & Caracal I decided to take out the fastest first. So the kestrel went down, followed soon after by the Tristan. The Caracal had not warped out to my joy and was trying to avenge his corp-mates by spamming Heavy Thunderbolt missiles at me. He didn't last long with my fire switching to him. I bet they must have been scratching their heads wondering wtf just happened afterwards. PS. Ignore the Osprey on related kills, I found that later.

OPM Holdings
I'm sat safed in Adirain and see a Kestrel ratting in a belt. I warp in pop it, and pod the pilot. Return to safe spot to wait out GCC and the pilot returns in a Stabber, goes to the same belt again so I warp in pop the ship and pod him again. Return to safe to wait out GCC. Pilot re-enters local in a Stabber with a friend in a Rupture, I warp in pop the Stabber and his pod but am gallantly gunned down by the Rupture. Fortunately I jettisoned my loot at my safe before engaging. I return to base to reship. I return to Adirain again to find him back again! Ratting, again! This time he's in a Rifter so of course I go in, pop his ship and pod him again. Way too funny.

The Typhoon 50 jumps away
Bourreau, a corp-mate says on vent that he got a Typhoon tackled piloted by a three month old. Problem is that he's 50 jumps away! In for the long haul Bourreau sets to work. I decide to jump clone to Aralgrund, jump in a Rifter and speed for his location some 11 jumps away. Bourreau notes that another pirate has entered local. I eventually arrive after probably ten minutes and rendezvous with my friend in his Jaguar. We soon have the Typhoon in low armour as a Rapier decloaks 175km away and starts to MWD towards us. Bourreau bugs out to save his Jaguar but I want this guys ship killed so I hang in as the Rapier closes. As the Rapier gets within 17km from me the Phoon explodes and I align out only to be webbed, pointed and have Warrior II's sicked on me. I shoot down a number of the Drones and the Rapier bugs out \o/.

Another Corps low-sec op ruined by Kirith
So last night I'm minding my own, cruising around look for something to pewpew. I sight a gang of four ships ratting together. A game of cat and mouse ensues and I eventually land amongst them and catch their Thrasher while the rest of them bug out, I pod him too as there's another Thrasher looming. Once my GCC is up I set off in search of the other three, two systems out I find them but see a Brutix on scan too. Hmm, I drop off my loot at a station then undock to go for no guts no glory kamikaze style madness. I warp in on the Rupture, Rifter & Caracal. Boom, Rifter goes down first then the Rupture and his Pod, finally the Caracal. Battle report here. As I finish off the Caracal the Brutix appears and a Dramiel is on scan. I align out and burn away from the Brutix escaping before returning to loot the field.

The Rifter truly is a ship to fear in the hands of a madman who does not care so much about losing it! Who said solo piracy is dead!

Podded...

Yes that's right. For the second time in my immortal Capsuleer life I got podded. This time I only had a bounty of 80,000 ISK on my head.

The podding itself wasn't a big issue to be fair, the inconvenience of being shot 38 jumps back to my clone vat was perhaps more frustrating. What it did give me though in a positive note was the opportunity to splash out and fit some +2's (Cutting 17 days off my Rifter plan). I also realised I needed more ships in this neck of the woods so it also made me restock and try a new Rifter loadout. All around a pretty good outcome from a something which can really upset some people.

So, armed with four fresh Rusty Rifters in the hangar, a new clone paid for and some +2's I set out on the 38 jump journey home. It was a reasonably eventful trip bagging two kills on the way and also one once I arrived back in Hevrice.

Only two fights worthy of specific mention this week. The first I fought a Thrasher who was at a Moon, so much for no Frigate can fight this setup and win. If he had used a Neut instead of the Nos then he may have won. The result was that I killed him by going in close and overheating everything and came out the other side with 75% structure remaining. The killing of this Thrasher seemed to result in me being stalked by an ever increasing Omega Vector Gang, that culminated in them coming into Hevrice then realising they were outgunned and running away to highsec, which was probably a wise choice!

The second worthy fight was against two Rifters, well, it became two Rifters. The first I was engaged with a Hellcat Eviwyn who I had read about in Mynxee's blog, we were having a good exchange when a second Rifter engaged me. I managed to take out Evi whilst taking very heavy damage myself. Bleeding into structure a lot. I eventually went down to the second Rifter and was podded but had him at 60% structure by the end. An awesome fight.

Topping the Campaign boards

I'll start by saying, what a week! Achieving 30 kills in a single week and all solo has got to be good going.

- 10 Pods
- 9 Frigates
- 3 Cruisers
- 2 Battlecruisers
- 2 Destroyers
- 2 Noobships
- 1 Industrial
- 1 Interceptor

All these kills have now put my on top of our current campaign scores & kills, sure I may not stay top scorer for long but getting there for me is probably a one-off that I'm really pleased to have done. Ordinarily amongst such successful pvpers I don't stand a chance of getting to the top of weekly scorers or killers. I would like to get 100 kills in the campaign, just as a personal objective. Thats going to be tough to achieve though.

I've had my share of losses this week too though, lost a ship to a POS (don't ask!) and lost a couple in fights with a Republic Fleet Firetail, the first fight saw us both bumping into a station and getting screwed over. The second fight at a planet was totally epic, my Rifter tanking over 6000 damage during the fight. It came down to a fight over Structure which I lost. I believe following talking to the Firetail pilot after the fight that his ship had faction/deadspace fittings so that makes me feel somewhat better, it was such a close fight though.

My alt I mentioned last week has been doing well for me with her trading in Rens, up to 37.5m ISK profit for me now which is very pleasing. I have also taken out a 21 day trial account to see if I can make a decent amount of ISK in those 21 days through mission running for around an hour per day. Currently the trial character has a net worth of around 18m so things are looking good, at the end of the 21 days all ISK will go back to the Darkblade crime family.

I'm going to stop posting about each fight, at least for this week as it would take too long and you probably aren't that interested in the more mundane ones. Thus I am going to select my personal highlights from the week. Although I have bagged two more Battlecruisers they were really easy kills so don't deserve any further mention.

First Interceptor Kill
This was the pilot of the Caracal last week who had wanted revenge on me but got ganked in the process. We danced around the system a while and whilst i could get to his location he was reluctant to engage me. He said that me chasing him worried him because he thought I knew I could kill him. After several meetings he jumped system with me hot in pursuit and again we danced around the system. Eventually though he engaged me and was doing a nice job of orbitting and keeping range slowing eating my shields. I decided to attempt to break orbit with some manual pilots and overheating of my mids, well it worked and i caught him just enough to shut down his MWD, it was quickly game over from there.

Smacky Pilots
I've had the misfortune this week to run into some pilots who felt the need to smacktalk in local following loss of their ship or indeed during the fight. I am a Tusker and I will not rise to it, though it has to be said that if you smacktalk me don't expect to have the offer of a Pod ransom. Here follows the rollcall of shame:

1 - Kreagan Longstrider
2 - Tysirus Hayden

Dual Rifters
The last time I fought two Rifters I died without killing either, yesterday however I fought a couple and killed both and podded one (who couldn't afford the ransom). The fight was also pretty comfortable for me, meaning no disrespect for my opponents. No overheating or micromanagement was required. I take this to mean that my specialisation in Matari Frigate combat is starting to pay off.

Rifter Solo's Drake!

Well, the title of the post indicates what the highlight of my week has been. Detail of the fight is further down the post, needless to say I was extremely pleased with the result and my corpmates would attest that I wouldn't shut up about it for a while!

I had spent a fair amount of time in the Bleak Lands on our current campaign recently and was getting a bit disheartened by the difficulty in soloing effectively in a Faction Warfare zone in a Rifter, so many blobs around. The one time this week I found a Minmatar Militia Rifter doing a complex I got jumped by a five man Amarr Militia gang before I could kill the Rifter who sadly got away.

Noticing that I have lost a number of ships of late and not sold on my hard fought loot drops means that my isk balance has hardly moved. This made me start to think about other ways I could earn isk fairly easily. I moved my hauler alt to Rens to have a go at some small scale trading, as she's on the same account as Kirith I invested a few minutes only on training Trade I to increase my orders from 5 to 9 so as not to take away much precious training time from Kirith. Starting with a cash balance of only 300k isk 4 days ago i now have increased her value in buy & sell orders to over 10m isk, not bad for a few days work. I do some order management before and after I log off Kiriths sessions and usually in a morning too for ten minutes before work. I'm still finding my feet with what to buy & sell but things look good! I've also been looking at the feasibility of using a 21 day free trial to make a mission runner and see how much isk I can bring in during those 21 days, the down side of course being using the mission runner means I can't pewpew with Kirith. Jury is still out on that one.

The weeks combat review, Battlecruiser-tastic! As I mentioned getting a bit disillusioned with Bleak Lands I jump-cloned "home" to my old stomping grounds, I've had some good fortune since doing so...

Parting shots in Bleak Lands
Noir and I were hanging around in Huola and noticed a Harbinger zipping around, we both set out to find him and eventually Noir caught up with him at a planet. Calling in any corp mates in system to assist, Jolo undocking a Dominix heading on over as I too headed in, I was in an Arty Rifter which really was designed as something of a fast fleet tackler not suited to a DPS role. Noir's Thrasher went down and I soon started taking more damage than I could handle from drones as another Harbinger along with a Myrmidon & Kestrel had joined the fray. I had to bail, so warped out then back again after I had repped up. Jolo was doing an awesome job, having taken down a Harbinger and being well at work on a Myrmidon as I re-entered, again drones were sent after me but I went down as the Myrm did. The second Harbinger warped out just before the Myrm popped. I'd managed to get a point long enough on the Kestrel before I went down for Jolo to get one too so he didn't escape either.

Rifter Once, Rifter Twice
This chap was unfortunate enough to be caught by me twice on consecutive days. The fights were straight forward enough and he ran away as I warped in both times, only to return to ratting afterwards. On the second time of me jumping back in however he would turn and engage me, not that I'm complaining at all but....why?! He did it both times aswell so perhaps some folk don't learn.

Rifter kills Drake, Solo!
This kill has to be my most satisfying yet. Entering the system there is only me in my Rifter and this fellow in his Drake, he's ratting. Now normally any sane person would think, it's a Drake so why bother trying to crack it's tank. But I thought, might aswell have a go, I'll be able to gtfo if I need to. He's enagaged with the last rat as I land and makes no attempt to leave as I close, could it be a trap I wonder? Still deciding that I can bug out if I need to I engage. During the ten minute fight a number of pilots came and went through the system but none came to investigate our engagement, thankfully. My first priority was taking out his 5 Drones as they were doing a bit too much damage and had I left them alone I would have succumbed. Now to the formidable tank, I slotted in a magazine of EMP S and let loose, slowly but surely his shield was depleting until around 1/3 shield left, peak recharge. His damage to me was inconsequential and easily tankable with speed, I barely had to even pulse the SAR II. I overloaded my highs and pushed through his peak recharge into his armour. At this point I asked him for 70m isk for me to stop and save his ship and Pod, say that he didn't have it I proceeded to remove what remained of his ship. His damage had stopped on me by the time I killed him, looking at the KM it appears that he ran out of ammo, how embarrassing! Such a tremendous feeling when it went pop and put me on a high for the whole evening. I renamed my Rifter "Drake Bane" in honour! The fit on the Drake was not a bad one either, sure not T2 fit but still I am very pleased to have taken down this mighty tough ship piloted by a character older than I with a lowly Rifter.

Caracal
There's a Caracal sat on a gate to highsec, hmm looking for a fight I imagine. I warped to 200 from the gate and he jumps to high-sec. I decide to go sit in a safe to see if anyone else enters the system when the Caracal comes back. I went to sit at a planet to make myself easy to scan down, sure enough in he comes. I could be asking for trouble if he's assault launcher fit but I'm game anyway. Turns out he's Heavy Missile fit and can't really pose a threat to me so it's a simple matter of reducing him to a wreck. Later in the evening the pilot came back looking for me for revenge (his words), sadly he didn't get chance as he jumped into a belt and was ganked by a small four man gang. Pity

Rupture
Considering the very young age of the pilot, this thing took some killing. He was ratting and I engaged him, he took the rats out then started on me, I was taking a fair bit of damage as he kept spitting Warrior I's at me, each time I killed them he sent more. Well eventually he ran out of Drones so I could actually fire on him and he went down along with his Pod. Looking at the fit he had small weapons fitted which explains why I was taking more damage than expected.

One unhappy Cyclone pilot
While waiting out GCC after killing the Rupture, this Cyclone entered system and started, yep you guessed it...ratting. Still high on my earlier Drake kill I went in and was rewarded with the kill in quite short order, though perhaps it seemed short order as I was glued to my D-scan due to the high local population. After the fight the pilot convo'd me telling me to give him the 23m to replace the ship, when I explained to him that wasn't how piracy worked he was less than impressed and now vows to hunt me down for all of eternity, super I look forward to our next clash!

Stabber at a Gate
This fellow was keeping a low profile in system, hugging gates between warping to safe spots. Eventually his willpower failed when I had been sat at a gate for the best part of 5 minutes. I was 200km from the gate when he landed so was able to warp back and land close to him. I had 17km to cover to be able to catch him, approaching at overloaded max speed with overloads mid's I caught him with my scram and killed his MWD taking a ton of damage on the way in but once within 1200m of his and orbiting it was game over for him and I barely took a scratch from that point. Once he was down I then made a mistake and shot his Pod out under the gaze of the Sentries, figuring I could escape. Alas it was not be and my Rifter got toasted. I came back later in another Rifter and recovered all the loot so not too bad on the whole.

Harbinger
I really don't know what this was about. I had spotted this ship at a safe early in the evening. Returning some hours later it was still there, I asked my nearby friend in his Helios if he would mind finding it for me, which he did in a minute or so. The Harbinger appeared to be dead in space not moving. I warped in and took it out without even being shot at, so I assumed the pilot to be afk. Waiting with glee to see the contents I was very disappointed to find it an empty ship. Venting my frustrations on the pilot's Pod. The only thing I can think of is that it must be an insurance job wanting someone to nuke the ship, but they could have self distructed it to do that. Who knows...

A change of scenery

Since last weeks post I have now trained Thermodynamics to III, it will be at IV in less than a day. This can only be a good thing and I plan to use it masses when flying some of the cheap throwaway ships that i have. Ive been clone jumping around quite a bit this week too, I now have a stable of ships in The Bleak Lands which is smack bang in the middle of Minmatar / Amarr faction warfare. I've also been around my Heimatar "home" as that's where my Thermodynamics skill book was. I've been in on 8 ship kills this weeks, which while not masses I am happy with considering i have only had a single loss.

I have been pleased to see now that my sec. status as others see it is now at -10.0, whilst I know that it isn't a true -10 it's still nice to have obtained this level of criminal standing.

Lets review the weeks activity:

Vexor
This fellow was hopping around the belts and seemed to be leaving some wrecks in his wake, I assumed that he was ratting. When I eventually saw him i noticed that he was mining too. Now he was a toon of a reasonable age, and many folk always warn about engaging Vexors in frigs but my experience has only perhaps once ever fought a Frig killing Vexor fit, so I engaged and he died. He paid a ransom to save his Pod and was allowed to go free. We chatted a little in local afterwards where I managed to blind him with science regarding the directional scanner and how i had found him.

A day or so later, I can't quite recall, the pilot was in local again and this time in a Thorax. I engaged him again to find I had sprung a tarp! Ohnoes! His friend, who was only young jumped in with a Vexor. I soon had 10 Hammerheads chasing after me plus the ships guns. In retrospect I utterly failed this fight and should have opened up a wide orbit to kite and kill the drones and then move into the ships, but i sat in close orbit and got nuked to hell. But credit to them both for having the stones to come back to low-sec and bait the pirate. I really hope to meet these guys again. They were also so pleased that they killed me and got some T2 mods.

Rifter
I had seen this pilot in a couple of systems and managed to get the drop on him in a belt, he was young and appeared to be looking for a fight so I obliged, It was a good fight which whilst I think it was only going to go my way unless I did something stupid wasn't completely demoralising for him overkill and-blow-him-to-bits-in-5-seconds. Since the fight I have exchanged a few eve-mails with the pilot where we talked about the reasons he couldn't do full damage on me whilst i could on him and several other points. I wish him luck should he decide to go the fully fledged pirate route.

Hurricane
In a gang merrily roaming across the faction warfare zone, this Hurricane and a Brutix were spotted in a complex, as we warped in the Brutix was popped as it appears they were fighting and not working together. I made towards the ship, but had it's full firepower turned on me so moved out of range as my shields were stripped along with half my armour, once someone else was under fire I moved back in by which time he was in serious trouble as the rest of our gang had engaged. The pilot was not amused by the loss of his ship.

Arazu & Jaguar
Entering Amamake, now there was an experience. Talk about a hornets nest. Our bait went into a belt and found a whole host of evil stuff. An Arazu decloaked just near him and he pointed it, the rest of the gang jumped in heedless of the rest of the evil stuff there too, this was going to be a hit and run. The Arazu melted fast and so too did a Jaguar that strayed too close to us. As they popped a bunch of battleships landed, 3 Armageddons were sat together on my overview, scooping what loot we could we bugged out for no losses to our side.

Stabber
Back again in Heimatar I had a Stabber on scan, whilst he appeared to be at a belt on scan, he was not to be found. He must either be in a mission or perhaps a cosmic anomaly, doing a quick 30s scan, a single anomaly appeared. Smiling to msyelf I headed there post-haste but no! He's 60km away salvaging, I make maximum burn for him using my new overheat ability! I probably didn't need to as he didn't react to my presence until I started shooting him. I took 5% shield damage in the whole fight, after his ship was destroyed the language barrier proved too much for him to understand a ransom request so I podded him, not a moment to soon as there was a Jaguar landing as I exited stage left.

Catalyst
Back in faction warfare space within five minutes this guy was in a complex, he was a 2007 character so i though twice about engaging. I warped into the plex and he warped off. I chased him around a little then went to a deep safe, a couple of minutes later i went back to the complex to find he had returned. I took some heavy hits from his railguns on my way in but once under their tracking made short work of him. The pilot refused a ransom and was another corpse added to the collection.

Harpy
A small gang of Tuskers was now formed and a report of tackle on a Harpy was received. Two additional Rifters plus an Arazu went in, The Harpy took out the first two Rifters then started on me, making good ingress into my armour before he popped. He dropped a rather nice Faction Shield Booster plus we recovered all the modules from our fallen comrades wrecks. A nice net gain!

This time next week i'll be preparing the next character review, they do come around fast.

Millionaire Club!

Not exactly, at least not in the sense that you are probably thinking.

I am pleased to announce that Kirith now had a bounty of over one million isk on his head, or should I say his pod. It had been sat at 5,000 isk for a long while and I'm dead chuffed it his hit the million.

Tonight's roam started well with me popping a Catalyst who went down extremely fast as he was engaged with rats too and already at low shields. What followed was then a 2 hour period with no sniff of another kill. I thought I was going to get popped myself a couple of times tonight as the first occasion I warped to a gate as a gang jumped through and I was rather concerned you might say that there would be the tail end of the gang on the other side of the gate (fortunately not). The second time was a Mean/Hellequin coalition of a few ships sat on the other side of a gate, they didn't seem bothered by me fortunately again.

Deciding to call it a night and head back to my home system I find a couple of capsuleers in a Rifter & Rupture, I guess that they are working in cahoots. I warp to what I think is the right belt and the Rifter was there, I land 4km from him so point him and engage straight away. The Rupture arrives as I do so so I lock him too but he warps away. The Rifter is going down comfortably and I can handle his damage on me along with the two rats that are also firing on me. The Rupture comes back, which I really didn't expect, perhaps his fleet mate was giving him grief for running! I target him again then the Rifter explodes and I target and pop the pilots Pod too. Switching my scram to the Rupture I set about it and I'm now only really taking damage from the rats as the Rupture doesn't scratch me. He doesn't last long being a big fat juicy Cruiser though I wasn't quick enough to catch his Pod. I enjoyed the fight no end, fighting two pilots and the firepower of some rats and coming out well on top a superb feeling to end the day on.

Picking on twins in Rifters is a bad idea

Just before logging off I spy two Rifters flying together. The pilots are far older than I, but I decide to chance my luck. I warp to 70km from the belts and they are there waiting. I select my target and engage, taking heavy damage quickly from the combined assault of both my opponents I hope that I can take out at least one before I crash and burn. Although close to doing so it was not to be and Mad Manuel is consigned to the scrap heap in the sky. Gf's exchanged in local it seems that my adversaries enjoyed the fight too.

You win some and you lose some, but I had fun in testing the limits. Another day I shall have my revenge.

1st proper Cruiser kills

Today had been very quiet, that is up until around 5pm. Truth be told I was getting a bit fed up as I had been roaming around all day without so much as a bite of action. This evening though I have been chasing frigates back and forth and killing cruisers, yes that's right more than one cruiser!

The first cruiser I killed (Scythe) was ratting in a belt with a buddy of his, who I recognized as a regular hauler pilot in the system. My initial guess was that he was mining with his buddy along in a Stabber to kill the rats. I was wrong though, the Scythe had been combat fit as was the Stabber. I primaried the Stabber but it was able to outpace me in my current Rifter which lacks a web so I swapped targets to the Scythe as I had only taken 30% of the Stabber shields off. As the Scythe went to low shields the buddy bugged out and docked up so I kept the pressure on. The pilot was saying "stop" to me in local but made no offer of a ransom payment. His ship went boom and I locked the pod. Asking him how much it was worth not to pod him I didn't get a reply in sufficient time to I blew his sorry ass back to the clone vat.

Later on in the evening I happen upon a normally quiet system which is really quite busy. Spotting a couple of newer pilots in local I see about tracking them down, one jumps out of the system so that decides who I focus on finding. My quarry came up on scan in a Rupture though I thought I had spooked him as he vanished form scan. Jumping between safe spots I found him again at a belt. Warping in he is engaged with a battlecruiser rat 35km away. I head for him as fast as my AB will carry me hoping he doesn't notice me (yeah right), 25km out he targets me! Then disrupts my warp drive!! Awesome news, the fight is on. I settle into a happy orbit as he very slowly picks away at my shields. The rat had already taken care of his shields for me so I set to it on the armour. At half structure he remembers that he has a web and uses it to pull some range but its too little too late and thereafter follows a pretty explosion with the cherry on top being his pod going pop too. I scoop the corpse and start looting his wreck when a Falcon decloaks 35km away, damned if I could stop the adrenaline shakes I just manage to click the warpout button before the Falcon gets close.

My third cruiser kill of the evening was another Rupture, doing a little research ahead of the engagement via battleclinic it seemed that he used drones and neuts. Now I don't like drones and I especially don't like neuts. All that said though I engaged anyway! After a little game of "chase through the belts" I caught him thanks to the fact that I can align quicker than he. It was my longest fight yet and boy did he like his neut. Without my cap booster I would have been dead as a Dodo. Several times my scram couldn't activate for lack of cap but he didn't capitalise. I took down his drones first as they were the biggest threat to me after the neut, thankfully they were T1. We then set about the dance of taking the rest of his ship away to get another pretty explosion \o/. I attempted to ransom his Pod for 100mil as this was no noob character, but he didn't pay so he went back to the vat.

To top it all off on my way to dock up I came across a Bellicose, seemingly mining in a belt as it had a mining drone out. Warping in I arrived some 40km away so again had to hope that I wouldn't get spotted on the way in. Somehow I managed to get to lock range without being noticed and really that was the end of it. The pilot must have been afk at the start of the fight as once in low shields they tried in vain to make a run for it. Unfortunately I didn't snag the pod on this occaision. Reviewing the killmail I have to say that the weapon loadout qualifies for a "lolfit".

If only I had gotten that Stabber earlier in the day I would have killed the full set of Minmatar cruisers in one day!

2 vs 1

Having a fairly long and dissappointly peaceful roam it was that I found a Stabber at a belt, He was looting some wrecks he had created until I warped into the scene. I set about the (very) slow task of depleting his shields, he had an active shield tank so I tried making best use of my nos to reduce his cap. Eventually I broke through the shields as a fleet of 4 NPC rats warped in along with a pilot in a Vigil from my targets corp. The Vigil lit me up with a target painter, not that their damage was a problem, though the rats were moreso.

I warped out when I saw the Vigil only to turn around and warp straight back. I wanted to take down the Vigil first. Arriving back in the belt I could not for the life of me catch the Vigil the so switched back to the Stabber. He was soon in low structure but somehow got away. Still scratching my head about that. I continued to try and get the Vigil in vain so after a further warp out/in to try and snag it gave up as the Stabber warped back in. I just didn't have enough ammo to do it all over again!

Tomorrow heralds a new era for Kirith as he gains access to T2 guns & ammo, something which will increase mighty Rifters prowess.