Tuskers kill another Carrier

Yes, earlier this week the Tuskers killed another Carrier, this time a Thanatos was brought low by The Tuskers.

I was minding my own business in Hulmate after having tried and failed to take out an Arbitrator in my Rifter, kudos to the Arbi pilot for having a nasty setup to take on my Rifter with along with a flock of horrible Warrior II's. Following a recent small gang roam I was the only one left in a Vent sub channel when Proxxxy came into the channel, stated that they had a Carrier tackled in Muetralle and told me to haul ass and come in the biggest ship I had.

Not needing to be told twice I shot from the system, running the fearsome game guns with my GCC, I had one dicey moment in Jovainnon where I took two volleys from the sentries but otherwise made it to rendezvous with the fleet. Given that I was at the time in my biggest ship (Rifter) I didn't need to stop off in Hevrice to reship. First order of the day for Tacklers was hold point on the Thanatos and take out drones whilst doing so. His drones & fighters fell swiftly each time they were launched. I had to warp out once when I had a viscious swarm of 13 Hornet II's after me.

The fight was fairly plain sailing and was nowhere near the difficulty of killing the Archon a week or two earlier and so it wasn't long before the mighty Capital ship was destroyed. The pilot, after messing about with ransom attempts refused to pay and was summarily despatched. Looking at the fit I do wonder why he had three sensor boosters fitted, any ideas?

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.

EVESpace

True to form and following the example of fellow bloggers I hereby post my EVE space. It's certainly nothing impressive, My desktop PC desperately needs a new graphics card to upgrade from its 128mb card which really struggles with EVE. Being completely useless in this area I'm "looking into" the possibility of upgrading it myself.

Crazykinux Updating the EVE Blog Pack

In case you have been under a rock for a week or so, you have probably noticed that Crazykinux is going through the process of updating the Blog Pack. I would like to recommend that anyone interested in having input into the blogs which may eventually form part of the pack head over to his thread here and give their feedback.

My Little Pony . . .No, wait . . . Rifter!

I thought that I would post up my current preferred Rifter fit. Flying the classic "cookie cutter" just doesn't do it for me, it never really has.

Regular readers will know that I prefer my Rifters fit with Cap-Boosters instead of webs, I love the superb damage it does and how long it can keep going in a fight often surprising my adversaries and where I do lose one it has usually taken a good 3500 damage. One single Cap-Boosted Rifter of mine took around 6500 damage from a Firetail before it finally died.

This fit is a refinement of the "normal" Cap-Booster fitting, foregoing the damage control for a Gyro. Max skilled she will do 166 dps without overloading, my skills put me at 155 dps in her. Overheated and max-skilled she is just shy of 200dps!

Up until very recently I didn't use Faction Ammo as I felt I couldn't afford to lose it. Now with additional income from my small-time trader I feel I can splash out on some. Do all my fellow pirates out there use "the good stuff" or do you stick to the off the shelf ammo? I would be interested to hear what you use and why.


Here she is:

[Rifter, Kirith - Current]

200mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates I
Small Armor Repairer II
Gyrostabilizer II

Cold-Gas I Arcjet Thrusters
Fleeting Progressive Warp Scrambler I
Small Cap Booster II, Cap Booster 200

150mm Light AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet Phased Plasma S
150mm Light AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet Phased Plasma S
150mm Light AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet Phased Plasma S
Rocket Launcher II, Foxfire Rage Rocket

Small Projectile Burst Aerator I
Small Projectile Collision Accelerator I
[empty rig slot]

A small example of how resilient this fit is, last night I walked into a Caracal TARP in a belt. The Caracal was anti frigate fit and resulted in a second Caracal joining the fray who was also anti frigate fit. Whilst had a stayed I would have certainly died I held out long enough to get out still in low armour. By the time I had gotten out I had one Caracal to half shields. The Rifter lived to fight another day =)

My First Video

It is becoming a running joke amongst some members in the Tuskers about my Rifter killing Battlecruisers, so last week to immortalise these occurences I reinstalled FRAPS which I haven't used in years. Yesterday once engaged with a Hurricane I remembered about FRAPS and started recording, this morning I attempted my first movie editing session and pulled together this video:

Rifter kills Hurricane

The quality isn't great so apologies for that and I haven't quite worked out how to add a soundtrack to the video as all my music is in Itunes and I can't seem to use any of those tracks. The Hurricane pilot was salvaging as I landed and set upon him.

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.