Pop!

It's not been the busiest few days, getting on for just a few hours of an evening this week. It's had its low points, like where I landed on gate just as a gang of 10 or so faction frigates did in my Drake resulting in me losing not only my Drake but also my Pod and along with it my bounty which was up to over 110m too.

Last night though, saw my most enjoyable moment since returning. Typically, and doesn't it always happen when you need to log off to go or do something? Just before I needed to head out to collect my girlfriend from work I land off of a belt in Adirain. It was busy in system and I'd been chasing around after various craft in my Rifter. Eventually a Black Rebel Rifter Club pilot arrives. We start closing with other, until at about 70km a second Rifter arrives causing the Rebel pilot to bug out after I assume fearing a TARP! I sadface in local and he suggests meeting for a 1v1. I mention that I have to log to collect the girlfriend, so we will settle that score another day. As we are talking the second Rifter is closing on me until at about 20km I decide to engage him. I have friends in the system but this is serious business of Rifter v Rifter combat! So they are aware of my engagement and wait looking for other targets. So our two Rifters are engaged, and aside from me forgetting to activate my web for the first minute I'm having the better of things. I see ships on 360, a bunch of frigates so I overload everything and pop him just after his friends arrive. I thought I was a goner until I hear warp drive active and escape at 88% structure and a sliver of repped armour. Repping up in a safe I have to go to dock so that I can log out without the risk of agression in space, braving the sentry fire I dock and log wishing my fellow Tuskers good hunting. Based on the killboard it seems that they did.

I do beleive that I have reignited my love of the Rifter....

February 2010 Character Review

I write this post as I am on my holidays, doing my annual "UK Tour" to see friends and relatives. I'm just outside Manchester right now and seem to be convincing, without trying I might add my friend to play EVE.

I bought some +2 implants a little while ago after I was podded (for the second time) and they shaved a huge chunk off my training plans (note plan"s"). As we stand, there are 332 days remaining in my Rifter plan. The last few days though I have diverted to the Thrasher plan. Advanced Weapon Upgrades is ready to be injected, though maybe once the remaining 11 days of the Thrasher plan are done. My Thrasher plan only has five skills on it, so nothing too bad. Though I will be taking all of the following to IV:

- High Speed Manouvering
- Shield Rigging
- Shield Upgrades
- Destroyers
- Energy Emission Systems

Once comfortably flying the Thrasher I will train towards the goal of a Hurricane, which will give me the flexibility that will help the corp more than I can in my Rifter. After that I will consider expanding my piloting portfolio or returning work on Rifter combat prowess. Though it has to be said that I am tempted by many ships. I could consider buying a T2 Frigate to see how it goes but I'm not sure.

Increasing Kirith's SP's this month by 1.4 million the most significant gains have been to Spaceship Command, taking both Spaceship Command & Minmatar Frigate to V followed by increasing some gunnery skills like Weapon Upgrades to V. A few days ago I passed the landmark of 10m SP's.


After buying 5 Thrashers in anticipation my wallet ballance has taken a dive to only 35m ISK which is a bit sick, Morathi is doing well on trading however and has now exceeded 100m ISK in profits. Fortunately I am well stocked with Rifters for now so hopefully my balance will improve.

Updated Battleclinic stats:
- The Tuskers are ranked 40th, up two places on last month.
- Kirith has 270 kills for 51 losses, its been a busy month of kills.
- With a couple of Capital Ship kills Kirith has now been party to the distruction of 5.3bn of assets.

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.

November Character Review etc

First, apologies for no posts for a few days.

I'm now a Tusker, granted I haven't been online for more than an hour or so since becoming one but OOG commitments have prevented this and it's something that I hope to remedy in the coming days, weeks & months. I have a lot of reading up and setting up to do. Setting up of channels, Ventrillo etc and reading up on the forums of anything and everything (within reason) that I can. I'll be heading back to forums after making this entry to keep on reading as I beleive that I should at least be upto speed before doing anything else.

Next, the eagle eyed amongst you will notice that my bounty has gone (/me sad panda). It happened the evening that I dropped my Tuskers application in, exiting the station I found it camped by a Devoter, Harbinger & Moros. The first time I managed to redock and in hindsight I should probably have logged off and tried later, but I tried a second time and was bumped out of the docking area and nuked to oblivion, my Pod was locked super fast too and again think I was bumped away from docking, in the blink of an eye I was back in Aralgrund station with no implants. Fortunately I only lost a cheap mix of +1 & +2's, but I can't afford to replace right now so it is irritating. Part of the reason I beleive I lost the Ship and Pod is that I was trying for the first time to use my desktop PC to play EVE after I had recently upgraded the memory. It just can't handle EVE aswell as my laptop and lags too much, thus I doubt i'll be trying that again for anything but safe runs on my hauler.

So, as I mentioned in a previous entry I intend every month to post a short character review on Kirith. Kirith to date after taking learning skills to optimal for the "Rifter plan" has been building a solid base of skills to support his Rifters, this is a plan that will continue to be followed so long as my willpower stands. It's massively long at nearly 440 days total but I don't beleive that Minmatar Frigate skills can be improved much/at all beyond that and the skills picked up will of course benefit hugely when stepping into different hulls in the distant future. Here's a pie chart of Kirith's skill spilt as at a few minutes ago:


Currently Kirith is training: Acceleration Control IV