So, hi again!

Greetings fellow pilots!

As I'm sure you'll have noticed I last made a post at the end of October and we're now in the middle of December. Some gap, eh? Unfortunately real life decided to rear its ugly head and I pretty much only had time to log in to update my skill queue (and lose a Firetail to gate guns due to forgetting about having gone GCC on a Drake moments earlier). I probably should have posted here to say I was away from New Eden but I actually forgot. But I'm back now!

I made my return to New Eden a few days after Crucible was deployed and on the whole I like it a lot. By far my favourite addition to Eve are the beautiful backdrops that I now gaze longingly at in between relinquishing defenceless pilots of their assets. Also, I used to play Eve on my meh laptop that could only handle it on low-medium settings at a lulzy resolution. I've recently built myself an uber gaming tower to play Battlefield 3 on ultra settings and as such now get to stare at New Eden in 1020x1080 on a 24" 1080p monitor. It really is beautiful.

Crucible brought with it the new Tier 3 Battlecruisers and to be honest I've only really looked at the ship models to see how awesome they look and given their stats a cursory glance over. I don't have large guns trained at all, let alone to T2 so I'm not really fussed about flying them. I have however had a run-in with a Talos. I was returning to Hev from a fruitless roam when I saw the Gallente BC appear on D-scan. Local was quite sparse and the only non-Tusker in system was a 2-month old pilot. Instinct took over and I immediately warped to the top belt. Sure enough the Talos was there ratting. I let out a hearty chuckle. It then occurred to me that I wasn't completely sure what a Talos was. I'd heard the name but couldn't quite remember what ship type it was. Spamming point I began to orbit tightly, unleashing fury from my autocannons. The new pilot yellowboxed me for a while and it wasn't until he was deep in armour that he started shooting. I found out in the conversation afterwards that he mistargeted and was in fact blowing holy hell out of an asteroid before he started to direct his fire at me. Here is the killmail. It's not especially impressive considering the age of the pilot and the fit but it's still a cool above class kill.

I've had a few more encounters this weekend but will save those battle reports for another post. I've also hit a lot of my skill training goals. I'm now fielding Warrior IIs with a decent Drone skillset (considering how much I use them) and I'm holding off on getting all my gunnery skills to V as that will take a stupid amount of time. Plus there are more important skills to train right now. I have almost 4.5 million SP in Gunnery which is a huge chunk of my 10.5mil total and I'm happy with all of my Gunnery skills being IV or V for the time being.

I'm currently working on a new skill plan for my next desired ship to cruise around New Eden in:

The Vagabond.

What a Return - The October Review

Greets,

Since coming back from my work trip I've had an excellent time yarring. To start with, there has only been one bad event: I foolishly lost a Rifter by warping to a gate with GCC. No more 100% efficiency this month but that is my only loss!

I think the most exciting bit of news that's come from this month is my first solo ransom to the tune of 100mil! I'll set the scene:

I was undocking from Hev V in my trusty Jaguar when a couple of guys called out in comms that a Retriever had appeared on d-scan. As luck would have it the foolish mining vessel was undocking from the Tuskers home station at the very same time as I was. Not daft enough to engage it on station I patiently watched to where the pilot would direct his ship...

...To the closest asteroid belt.

I couldn't believe my luck! Spamming warp to the belt I arrived just after the mining hull and promptly locked and scrammed it. Seconds later the miner vented atmosphere and I pointed the pod.

Inviting my hapless victim to the Tuskers ransom channel I set about getting some Isk off him. At first the pilot was unsure about parting with his money in case I popped his capsule anyway. Tawa and I convinced him that we always honoured ransoms by directing him to our untarnished ransom board. As the guy was a 2006 player I started at 100mil, thinking he probably wouldn't take it. However when my wallet flashed and I saw all the zeros I was elated and promptly let my satisfied customer go.

I had a flurry of kills last night while roaming in Adirain. I quite like Adi as I've had some good kills there and there's usually a good mix of carebears missioning or mining as it's next to Arnon and pirates preying on the aforementioned.

Last night I was looking for a fight when I noticed Taurean on the sun in one of his Maledictions fighting a Merlin. Asking on comms if he needed a helping hand (I was in my Jag again - love this ship), he said he was still a couple of hundred km's from the Caldari frig and if I wanted to have a go I was more than welcome.

Warping to the sun I found myself 170km away from both Taurean and the Merlin. I warped to a planet that was in line with my potential next victim and bounced back, 100km off the sun. I was still too far away though!

As I was burning towards the pair (who were now engaging each other), a Rifter landed just out of overheated scram range and then warped to his friend - the Merlin. The fight was on as Taurean announced he couldn't take on both of the frigates in his lightly-tanked inty. I bid him to join fleet and the moment he turned purple I initiated warp, landing within point range of both aggressors.

Suffice to say a half-damaged Merlin and a Rifter were no match at all for my assault ship and they crumbled. I got point on the Rifters pod and offered the princely sum of 5mil for his life. He was only a 10day old pilot and I thought he'd have no more than that. It turns out that the pilot is up to his eyeballs in PLEX's and could have afforded a hell of a lot more. Hindsight is 20/20 as they say!

A few minutes later, as Taurean was salvaging the wrecks that were littered about the sun (a couple of T2 hulls had caught his eye), and Yarr Beard was back in another Merlin. Taurean announced his ship was in no state to fight and when he called point I warped back in and relinquished another Merlin hull from Yarr.

Splitting the ransom and buying out his share of the loot, Taurean and I went our seperate ways after a successful few minutes blitzing. There was gfgf all around!

In summary this month has been pretty damn good. I may have only scored a total of 23 kills but I lost only the one ship, and a Rifter hull at that. My ISK efficiency has shot up to 98.12% which I'm happy with.

I've definitely made a profit this month with 102,500,000 in ransoms and the modules from the majority of my kills. Hopefully I'll manage even better in November!

Fly reckless o7

Back in New Eden

Those of you who read my blog regularly will have noticed I've not posted anything for the past few weeks. I went away with work and didn't even have internet access let alone chance to play Eve. I had intended to post a "afk for a couple of weeks" message up but in the lead up to my departure I forgot. Regardless I'm back now!

Since returning I've popped on a few times to update my skill queue and now have some respectable drone skills and also got Sharpshooter to V while I was away, of which I'm please with. Once I've touched up my drone skills to all IV or V (currently have some at III) I'll aim to get Battlecruisers to V.

My killboard currently shows 100% efficiency this month but with a paltry 12 kills totaling 53mil ISK in damages. I'll be trying to boost this number before Monday whilst keeping that perfect efficiency up. Easier said than done though!

I'm also going to be working on my manual flying skills. I feel that I rely too much on orbit@ and keep at range so I'm either going to find some asteroids or something similar and do some practice maneuvers before applying them in combat.

Fly reckless o/

Flight of Icarus

Bait is an oft-used tactic in Eve PvP and comes in various forms. Early last month some random guy in Adirain began trash talking in local when I declined to 1v1 him. I briefly mentioned this in my 'Settling In' post just after joining the Tuskers. This is one way of baiting people to fight you, by getting them riled up. It didn't work on me  but I did find his Thrasher sitting pretty on a planet which leads me onto another form of baiting:

The most traditional way - in my eyes at least - is the heavily-tanked, lone ship sat on a belt or a celestial patiently waiting for someone to pounce on what he thinks is an easy kill. Whenever I see a Maller on d-scan I always smile to myself and think "Haha, bait!" and ignore it. There's a pirate corporation in Old Man Star who like to leave a Punisher sat on the top belt and then warp in silly amounts of battlecruisers, ECM boats etc on anything that attacks it. I learnt that the hard way but it only took one lesson.

Fast forward to last night and I was out roaming with Tawa and one of the Sinners, Abellona. Initially we forayed into nullsec but after losing his Wolf to a Sabre with complimentary SUDDENLY FALCON! and Abe losing his Rifter to a bubble camp we decided to stick to lowsec and go up to Sinq Laison in our search for some pew pew. 

Reshipping from a 0.0-fit Wolf to an active shield tanked Jaguar we made our way system to system towards Eggenhelde. Along the way we killed a Thorax and a Vexor, probed out by Tawa, but they were both young characters and stood no chance against our two Jags and Rifter. On both occasions pods were pointed and upon invite to the ransom channel both victims declined to pay up.I did get two amusing quotes to add to my bio:

GOLDENANGELL > GO to hell!


Jean Benneau > arseholes

Upon jumping into Egg we found it to be pretty quiet so I went through to Siseide and then on to Dal. A Catalyst caught my eye on d-scan and Abe and I set about scanning it down. Despite our best efforts it get bouncing from cluster to cluster and in the end I mentioned the idea over comms for Abe to sit on the sun as bait. I suggested Abe for two reasons: Firstly he was a Sinner and as such unaffiliated with the Tuskers so anyone who had the sense to check local wouldn't be wary of out ploy, and secondly lone Rifters are far more inviting than a Jaguar, at least to a T1 destroyer. 

Checking local we noticed that the Cata pilot (who had warped in on belts as Abe was leaving and thus shown his identity) had a friendly corpmate in local. Tawa and I were confident we could handle anything they could throw at us in our uber-fit Jaguar (a fit I won't post until I've had chance to fully test it out). 

Abe warped to the sun and minutes few passed before the Cata warped in. Despite being rail fit he landed quite close to the Sinners Rifter. Not long after announcing point, Abellona relayed that a Stabber piloted by the destroyers corpmate had landed on the sun as well and that he was starting to take a beating. I was already mid-warp when this unfolded and as soon as I was greeted by the fiery sight of Dals star I pointed the Catalyst and began unloading autocannon shells upon its hull. The destroyer disintegrated pretty quickly, especially with Tawa firing too. 

When Tawa landed he pointed the Stabber while firing on the Catalyst so when it popped it was simply a case of applying dps. I was spamming d-scan furiously in between adjusting my orbit and watching the cruisers health bars. Stabber went pop soon enough and I offered a 'gfgf' in local. Abe had managed to escape in his Rifter and warped back to the sun to get some of the loot. We managed to point the Stabbers pod but our ransom wasn't accepted and he was sent back to the clone vat.

As we were wrapping up a Drake piloted by a FW pilot landed 60km from our position. Seeing local begin to fill up we bugged out quickly leaving some of the loot behind in the process. Nothing of great value was lost and it was a very, very good fight.

Grab the loot Cable, Cable grab the loot!

Looking back at this months set of kills its become obvious that I have too many to write about in detail like I have done in previous posts. This month has seen me take part in the enforced distribution of other peoples assets 64 times. To describe all 64 kills would make for a cruelly long post that would probably bore many people to tears, if not myself as I typed it. I feel I'm past retelling the epic battles of tech one frigates shot-for-shot and so these unremarkable kills will fall to the wayside in Chasing the Blue Flash, to be replaced by adrenaline pumping tales that would envy the likes of David and Goliath and other famous combatants. And as advertised, big failures too. While I'm on the subject of fail lets start with what could possibly be one of the most expensive Jag losses ever!

Yeah that's right, a Centum A-type repper and an RF gyro and web were in my cargo hold. Why, you ask? It started when a fellow Tusker announced they were set to ambush a Loki in Old Man Star and so I pointed my Jag in the general direction of OMS and fired up my warp drive.

Unfortunately I landed a little too far from the battle and unfortunately didn't get on the killmail. As the Loki popped, his backup in the form of Hurricanes and an Arazu turned up. As our fleet began bugging out Sulieman asked if I could scoop the loot from the destroyed Loki before I gtfo. I did indeed grab the loot but the gods were not in my favour that day as I was the sudden and proud owner of four points. Trying valiantly to burn away from my captors I tanked a great deal of their damage before succumbing to an inevitable doom.

Morosely announcing the loss of my Jag as well as the epic loot, I took solace in the fact that the 300m repper hadn't dropped and then held a brief silence in memory of Septembers ISK efficiency knowing it would never recover. *tear*

All in all though it was a gf and despite not getting on the Loki kill it felt good to swoop in and grab some expensive modules before (attempting) to run away with it. I suppose you could say it was an "I was there..." moment.

A Pirates Life For Me - 6 Monthly Review

I started playing Eve in February of this year and after doing the initial career combat missions I embarked on the Sisters of EVE epic arc to acquaint myself to the game. When I finished the arc I didn't have much of an idea of what I wanted to do but I'd read the Evelopedia article on Piracy and thought that it sounded awesome and that as an avid PvPer in other games, appealed to me. 

And so in March of this year I trained a few levels of Propulsion Jamming and went forth! I didn't have a good grasp on the PvP mechanics and how to fly well in general and started out with some embarrassing losses, such as this Drake loss, in Mara. Coming to the conclusion that Eve was full of nasty people who preyed on newcomers I came onto the verge of rage quitting but the determination to carry on was too strong and after doing some research came across RvB. 

I'm sure most of my readerbase know of RvB but for those who don't here is a brief summary, taken from their recruitment post on the forums:

What is RvB?R-V-B is a long standing P-V-P institution that began back in 2007. The premise of RvB is two corporations, Red and Blue, which are constantly at war with eachother. You choose a side, join up and are welcome to get into action immediately. A significant portion of the fighting in RvB takes place in frigate and cruiser size hulls there are ample opportunities to kill and use every type of ship.

I learnt a great deal in my time in RvB and it put me in good stead for when I finally left to venture into lowsec. Basic skills such as proper fitting, how to act in a fleet, effective use of the approach, orbit and keep at range tools as well as a myriad of other things were shared by more experienced pilots and I really began to enjoy PvP. I wasn't an exceptionally good pilot as Eve-kill shows and the majority of my kills came from small-medium gang warfare where I played but a small part. I lost most of the 1v1s I took part in but would sometimes win against a less-skilled opponent. This is a summary of my performance in the months I was in RvB:

Month	Kills	ISK (B)	Losses	ISK (B)	Efficiency
April, 2011	32	0.36	32	0.13	73.60%
March, 2011	4	0.09	11	0.08	50.56%

I was inactive in May and June due to going away with work and having no internet access, let alone measures to play Eve. I wasn't even able to log on to train skills which was unfortunate as I missed out on two months of SP.

In July I decided to make the move to lowsec and my corp at the time was based in Ignebaener, a 0.5 system bordering the lowsec system of Lisbaetanne. I had my staging area and a safe system should I require one. It was from Igne that I made my roams out to Aeschee, Onne, Old Man Star and beyond, sometimes going up to the Black Rise and other times through Verge Vendor. It was at this time that I had my first brush with piracy and I loved it! Back in July I was still quite an incompetent PvP pilot with much to learn but I was learning and at a rapid rate of knots! Moving through to August and still averaging a negative k:d ratio I was nonetheless happy with how my solo PvP skills were coming along and I got in on some nice kills. Statistics for those two months are as follows:

Month	Kills	ISK (B)	Losses	ISK (B)	Efficiency
August, 2011	24	0.8	39	0.25	76.06%
July, 2011	15	0.14	21	0.24	36.75%

This takes us up to this month. I have to say that I'm mightily impressed with huge difference in August and Septembers statistics. I know that "killboard rep" means hardly anything to the discerning PvPer and is merely a tool for those with a huge e-peen to swing around or to laugh at failfits but I believe it's useful to track a persons progress month-to-month. One thing to mention with Septembers statistics is that I've been flying with the Tuskers for just over two weeks and having participated in some small-gang and ad hoc ganks of larger ships has somewhat "padded out" my kills. However I feel that this month my solo flying has for the most part been excellent in comparison to the past and I'm very happy with some of the kills I've made.

Month	Kills	ISK (B)	Losses	ISK (B)	Efficiency
September, 2011	46	1.76	23	0.43	80.39%

As you can see for the first time I've got a pretty decent k:d ratio and a fairly good ISK efficiency overall. One thing to mention is that I'm on the brink of going into an positive k:d ratio with 121 kills to 128 losses. If I fly well for the rest of the month and keep my exploding to a minimum I should hopefully get there by October.

I hope I've not bored you to tears with all this talk of stats and ratios but I think since starting to pew pew back in March I've come a long way, from a humble beginning as a highsec warring pilot to a now fairly-experienced  flashy red pirate, flying with arguably one of the best pirate corporations in all of New Eden.

Fly reckless o7

Moving on up in the world

On Friday I began skilling Medium Autocannon Specialization and it's now at III, and training to IV. What does this mean for our daring author?

Hurricanes.

I can now fit T2 gank and tank on my favourite Minmatar battleruiser. Flying 'Canes will open up a whole new array of targets to take on solo and I'll be more use to the Tuskers when they call for backup. I intend to get T2 artillery trained too as I've noticed a lot of people fly arty Canes and I've seen first-hand of how much damage they can dish out. The biggest change I'll probably find with flying Battlecruisers is that I can now fight on stargates without grievous repercussions. No longer will I see a juicy target and not be able to engage because I was flying a frigate.

I've already lost one though the odds were stacked against me but I went down valiantly, the Myrmidon down to half armour when I exploded.

I have a few more fitted in Hev and I've gone with both shield and armour variants. I'm very much looking forward to seeing how they work both solo and in fleet ops. The added gank and tank will be a great asset to my versatility as a pirate and I think I can cope with the extra align time and drop in agility.

Settling In

Having recently joined the Tuskers I've got all of my stuff over to Hevrice, our home system. When my app was accepted I didn't have a great deal in the way of ships left and only 20k m^3 worth of modules in Aeschee. I took my scanning/missioning/station trading alt up to Jita and went on a massive shopping spree. A very condensed list would look like:

• 3 Hurricanes with Armour, Shield and nano fits.
• 3 Jaguars with shield fits
• A single Wolf, just to try them out
• 30 or so Rifters, with a myriad of fits ranging from cookie cutter 150+nos, 200+RL, to arty fits and the madman cap boosted, dual rep fit. 

I spent about 480mil in total and have loads of stuff in Hev. If I fly decently I shouldn't have to make another shopping trip for a while, though it did recently occur to me that I bought a bunch of MSE IIs, completely forgetting about LSE IIs for my Canes. I'll have to pop up to Jita in a Bastion for those! 

Since joining the Tuskers I've lost a handful of ships but more importantly got in on some good kills! Despite flying solo 90% of the time it feels really good to have backup at the other end of a mic just in case I come across a target too big for my current ship or if I bite off more than I can chew.

Looking at my most recent losses I know for a fact that some of them could have been avoidable. I lost a Jag to an cane on a gate in Onne. When he aggressed me I should have jumped through but instead decided to hold my ground and pew pew him. It didn't take long for his neuts to cap me out and I became a sitting duck and was gunned down. 

I then went on to lose another Jag to a bunch of pilots who don't have the balls for solo pvp. The Thrasher was talking smack in local after I declined a 1v1 (as per the Tusker Code). Despite declining a 1v1 I was actively scanning for him and soon found him at a planet. After getting him into armour his friends arrived - a 'ranis, Rupture and Dramiel and they took my ship apart but not before I gave the Thrasher the good news. After popping his ship the trash-talking destroyer pilot soon shut up and hastily left the system in his pod. I suppose I should have known it was a trap but I still went in.

I lost a couple of MANLY RIFTA!'s to foes I maybe shouldn't have engaged. For those who don't know, the MANLY RIFTA! comprises of 150's+nos, with a cap booster and dual armour reps and associated rigs. I think it's a good fit but I should probably have tested it out on other T1 frigs and not a Harpy and a Thrasher. I'll definitely be giving it another go though!

I then went on to get dropped by a B A N E gang for sitting 100km off a planet. I wasn't paying attention to d-scan as I was going through assets and chatting on comms to Tawa. My own fault really!

I've been part of some good kills though. Too many to list here and nothing out of the ordinary. Popped a 'ranis who thought he could handle the Big Cat, tackled a Drake whilst the Tuskers brought him down (went on to snag his pod too - go me!).

All in all it's been an excellent few days since joining the Tuskers. Despite some avoidable losses I've had a blast!

Fly reckless o7

I am a pirate, daring and cunning...

The past few days have been privy to several events; popped a 'ranis in my Jag, won a fight against a Tusker, destroyed a Rifter in my Rifter and burnt out my guns in a rematch (lolfail, I know!).

However the highlight of the past few days - nay - of my short Eve career has not been one of the above. On sunday afternoon I put in my application to join the Tuskers. I'd decided to use the Scythe kill I made days previous as one of my above class kills and at the end of the day it was a fair above class. I was in a frigate, he in a cruiser. I can't help that he had fit it for mining! My application was accepted this afternoon by Man Barthelme and upon joining I was greeted warmly. Online there were many faces I recognized and I felt genuinely welcomed into the corp.

Those of you who know the Tusker Code will recognize the title of this post as being the first few words of the first direction of the code. Since joining the Tuskers only this afternoon I've had to decline two 1v1s as to accept them would go against the grain of the code. A part of me wishes I could have gone head to head but the majority of me knows that as a pirate I don't spin up the barrels of my autocannons at the whim of some pilot; I spin them up when I want, where I want an against whoever I want!

The next few days will see me moving my stuff around lowsec from my home stations littered around Essence to Hevrice. Whilst doing so I'll do my best to engage in every fight I can. Another segment of PvP has been made more aware to me since becoming a Tusker; Ransoms.

Before now I've never really made that much of an effort to ransom a ship or a pod. I've been more than happy to explode both hull and capsule and move on to my next victim. I've seen a couple of my new corpmates make successful ransoms tonight and it looks rather easy. Obviously ransoming a pod is easier than a ship as your opponent might not turn off their guns or withdraw their drones when you initiate the conversation but catching a capsule is easier said than done. I'll be trying both out and you'll be the first to hear about how well I do!

Until next time, fly reckless!

That Sweet Kill. Also teamwork!

Looking back on my past few posts I came off with the feeling that people reading this might be getting bored of me going on about an above class kill. Well, I can cheerily say that I've gone and done it though it wasn't as good as I'd hoped.

I was fitting a Rifter in Adirain and after undocking saw a Scythe on d-scan. Arriving at a safe I began the task of scanning him down to the belt, planet or other celestial he was (hopefully) sat at. It was at this time that an Incursus came onto scan as well. Seconds later I found the Scythe sitting on a belt but unfortunately the Incursus was there too and it wasn't too long before pod replaced cruiser.

Being used to arriving at a fight late I warped to another cluster-safe and spent the next few minutes trying to pin down an Imicus that had appeared, but to no avail. It was then that the pilot who had just had his Scythe asploded was back, and at the same belt! Without hesitating I keyed in the co-ordinates and warped in, making sure my scram was pre-overloaded. Landing right on top of the cruiser I engaged him gleefully.

It was only when it reached half armour that I realised the pilot wasn't firing back. The reason for this is that he was bloody mining. I sighed long and hard and popped the miners pod for good measure. I was/am still reluctant to use this as one of my Tusker-required above class kills because there was no competition at all. It still is an above class kill so I guess it counts. Its just I don't know when I'm going to find another cruiser to take on solo again so I may well end up using it. At least now you don't have to read about me whining about not having one!

The rest of the evening was spent roaming around and stuff(tm). I didn't find any action until Taurean Eltanin (whose blog you can find on the right -->) mentioned he needed help in baiting a Cyclone who had evaded his clutches. I was given a bookmark to a mission site and sat there waiting for the spooked Cyclone to return, while Taurean left the system to give the illusion he had given up on hunting him. It really wasn't long (read: five minutes, if that) before the mission runner popped up on my overview. I was on him straight away like a tramp on chips. Announcing merrily into comms that the battlecruiser was pointed I began the task of taking his drones out. Seconds later and Taurean was back in system and had landed on us started to smash through the Cyclones tank. Suffice to say it wasn't long before it exploded in a really pretty shade of blue. We tried to get his pod to try and get a random but it eluded us.

More stuff happened afterwards but my night was ultimately ended by my internet being really bloody annoyingly stupid and not working well at £$%^*()(&^%!


Fast forward to tonight and it was more of the same roaming and failing to find any action. I ran a few gatecamps, tried to engage flashy reds on gates who were too chicken to stay and play but didn't get any kills.  Tawa then mentioned that he had seen a Raven Navy Issue on d-scan who was presumably mission running. As he began scanning the carebear down I made my way back to Adirain. It wasn't long before Tawa warped on me and dropped a bookmark to the R.N.I.'s location. We had the help of one of the Sinners in a Hurricane and our merry trio warped in.

Landing on top of the Raven we made short work of melting his tank and upon reaching structure, Tawa called out for a cease fire and invited the pilot to the ransom channel that he made, but I share ^_^. The following is an excerpt from the channel:


[ 2011.09.03 20:36:54 ] Tawa Suyo > 500mil to keep the ship
[ 2011.09.03 20:37:04 ] Cable Udan > Hello Romulis :)
[ 2011.09.03 20:37:11 ] Romulis Blakk > Hello.
[ 2011.09.03 20:37:20 ] Romulis Blakk > I don't have it. Please...spare me.
[ 2011.09.03 20:37:29 ] Cable Udan > How much do you have?
[ 2011.09.03 20:38:17 ] Romulis Blakk > 19,785,341.27
[ 2011.09.03 20:38:24 ] Tawa Suyo > lol;
[ 2011.09.03 20:38:28 ] Romulis Blakk > in other words...I am broke.
[ 2011.09.03 20:38:28 ] Tawa Suyo > sorry
[ 2011.09.03 20:38:32 ] Cable Udan > Don't fly what you can't afford.
[ 2011.09.03 20:38:33 ] Tawa Suyo > 300mil minimum
[ 2011.09.03 20:38:35 ] Romulis Blakk > please don't do this..
[ 2011.09.03 20:38:44 ] Tawa Suyo > cya
[ 2011.09.03 20:39:10 ] Romulis Blakk > wowl..
[ 2011.09.03 20:39:15 ] Romulis Blakk > thanks..
[ 2011.09.03 20:39:27 ] Tawa Suyo > sure you only got 19mil?
[ 2011.09.03 20:39:32 ] Romulis Blakk > I just wanted to run missions
[ 2011.09.03 20:39:51 ] Romulis Blakk > That's all. Just missions.
[ 2011.09.03 20:40:00 ] Tawa Suyo > 19mil to keep the implants then
[ 2011.09.03 20:40:05 ] Tawa Suyo > since you have that
[ 2011.09.03 20:40:11 ] Romulis Blakk > have no implants.
[ 2011.09.03 20:40:24 ] Romulis Blakk > you take all the fun out of this game.
[ 2011.09.03 20:40:39 ] Romulis Blakk > You really suck.
[ 2011.09.03 20:40:49 ] Tawa Suyo > 2nd tutorial
[ 2011.09.03 20:40:50 ] Cable Udan > I'll say again, don't fly what you can't afford to lose.
[ 2011.09.03 20:40:52 ] Tawa Suyo > don't fly what you can't afford
[ 2011.09.03 20:40:57 ] Tawa Suyo > especially in lowsec
[ 2011.09.03 20:40:57 ] Tawa Suyo > also
[ 2011.09.03 20:41:00 ] Romulis Blakk > This game isn't fun at all with guys like you in it.
[ 2011.09.03 20:41:01 ] Tawa Suyo > YARRRRRR
[ 2011.09.03 20:41:04 ] Cable Udan > :D

It was then that his ship and shortly after his pod went BOOM! I was kinda hoping for more raging tears than what we got. I suppose he genuinely felt hard done by. If he wanted to lower his chance of getting popped he should have:

a) Not been missioning in lowsec

b) Have read one of the many mission-runners guides to surviving in lowsec

c) Not gone flying in a Raven Navy Issue if he couldn't afford the ransom. Who seriously flies around in a half a bill ship and claims to only have 19mil?

So all in all it's been a good few days. I'm flying around in my second Jag, having lost the first one to taking on a Hookbill whilst absolutely gazebo'd. I have a total of three ready to go and will experiment with some fits I think. 

That's all for now as I'm tired and need to go and photoshop this posts image and get some sleep. Fly reckless, people!

Edited for spelling and clarity.

Holidaying in Lolsec

Good evening readers!

As I write this a large grin is slapped across my face. Tonight has seen me partake in three kills and one technical loss. Logging in after work I was pleased to see that over the night Minmatar Frigate V had finished and Assault Ships II was also trained, with III and IV being queued for the rest of the working week. I thought aloud to Tawa whether I should wait until I had AS trained to IV before undocking  in one. Tawa jovially replied that I should buy one and try not to fly it.

So I bought a Jaguar and after a quick scout of FHC decided on using the following fit:


[Jaguar, Big Cat]
Overdrive Injector System II
Damage Control II
Gyrostabilizer II


Medium Shield Extender II
J5b Phased Prototype Warp Scrambler I
X5 Prototype I Engine Enervator
Cold-Gas I Arcjet Thrusters


150mm Light AutoCannon II, RF EMP S
150mm Light AutoCannon II, RF EMP S
150mm Light AutoCannon II, RF EMP S
5W Infectious Power System Malfunction


Small Anti-Kinetic Screen Reinforcer I
Small Core Defence Field Extender I

For me it's a solid fit. The tank and resists are good and it has loads more EHP than I'm used to, having flown Rifters almost exclusively for the past few months. Originally I wanted to buy a Wolf for the extra gank but I was eventually swayed by the pure versatility of the Jag and have realised it is probably a better solo ship (I will try out Wolfs as well though).

As you'll know I fly with Tawa quite a lot and he's recently moved up to Sinq Laison on what he's dubbed a "holiday". Yesterday he bid me join him as he'd had some hilarious kills such as this Retriever mining in lowsec. Today I made my way up in a bid to test out my shiny new ship and to see what all the fuss was with the pilots in this region. After chasing a few shadows on our way up to Egg I quickly stumbled upon the calibre of pilot that Tawa was talking about. A Thorax was mining openly in a belt into a Sigil. I couldn't help but laugh at this foolishness and decided to teach this guy a lesson.

Warping into the belt at zero I'd pre-overloaded my afterburner and point knowing full well that my potential victim would want to make a quick getaway. Unfortunately I landed 24km too far and my prey warped off to his pre-aligned escape route, a station. I returned to a safe spot and my wingman casually mentioned that being a carebear the pilots greed would soon get the better of him and he'd be out again before long. Sure enough not even ten minutes later the Thorax and Sigil were back out, albeit at a different belt. Aligning to the cluster I hit warp and crossed my fingers hoping to land within scram range this time.

Bish. Bash. Bosh.

Not a lot to say here; his fit was pretty fail. There was no tank or gank. I would have thought that if someone wanted to mine in lowsec he'd at least fit some guns to try and ward off potential aggressors. I considered opting to use this kill as my second and last required above class kill for my Tuskers application. Though Tawa is on the killmail you can see he did zero damage so it was indeed a solo endeavour, however it's not worthy to be used as evidence of my PvP skills so I'm still searching for that last cruiser kill. I was glad that my Jaguar had bloodied it's teeth though.

While I popped the Thorax, Tawa attempted to tackle the Sigil but the Pew Pew gods were not favourable and it managed to escape. I tried snagging the miners pod but he spammed the warp button vigilantly and got away.

Nothing much occured for the next couple of hours apart from roaming the local systems in search of more customers. There were a few baitships out there (like 2008 pilots who don't rename their Punishers whilst sitting pretty on a belt for example) which I ignored. My next fight wasn't far around the corner though and I found myself chatting to someone in local about PvP. My soon-to-be-adversary enquired as to what ships I flew so I replied that I'm mainly a Rifter fanboy due to them being cheap, efficient and hella fun to fly. I agreed to a 1v1 against his Wolf so we fleeted up and he found me at a disposable safe.

I was a little nervous about this fight as my opponent was an early 2006 character and so would have an obvious advantage when it came to skillpoints and quite possibly pilot skill too. As has been told by many players though, SP isn't the be all and end all and I soon found that my autocannons were easily chewing through both the shield and armour of my enemy's assault frigate, much to my surprise. It really didn't take long until my Jag scored it's second kill. We both bade each other a 'gf' and I was then offered another 1v1 - but this time I'd be fighting a Vengeance. I heartily agreed, secretly thinking that I'd bagged myself another easy win.

Little did I know how wrong I was!

The Vengeance soon appeared on my overview and I went in for the kill. It's shield fell quite easily while the damage it was doing to my own was  quite low. Sensing another win I adjusted my orbit while keeping good control of my overheated modules. As soon as the Amarr AF went into armour my damage completely stopped. I was using Barrage and was completely unawares that I was hitting the highest resists of my opponent. As my shields began to get low I realised this was a fight I wasn't going to win and I decided to disengage rather than lose my ship. Manually piloting I pointed my ship away from the orbiting frigate and overheated my afterburner and web, hoping to keep him slowed down long enough for me to get out of scram range. Within moments I was free and I warped to another safe. After the fight we both talked about our fits and how I was using the wrong damage type etc. before we went our separate ways.

What have I taken away from that fight? I must learn T2 frigate resists! Due to the fact that I never engaged them in my trusty old Rifters I didn't pay any attention to the numbers behind Assault Frigates and it came back to bite me in the arse. I'd previously read the Know Your Enemy articles by Azual but hadn't bothered with the T2 ones. I'll be studying them hard and fast now so another incident like this doesn't happen again. It could have been a lot worse and I could have lost my ship but thanks to some good piloting and my opponent not noticing my actions I got away.

Cue some more roaming with not a lot of action. I was still searching for targets but wasn't interested in the (everpresent) tarps and baits. Towards the end of the evening though when I was thinking about going to bed until Tawa chimed in that he'd found a Megathron doing a mission in a lowsec pocket. This piqued my interest and I frequently asked for scanning updates as I made my way closer to the system in question. It wasn't long before Tawa's awesome probing skills found the battleship and we both warped to the acceleration gate. Announcing he had a point I jumped in not far behind my wingman.

The following fight didn't take long at all and many lolz were being had between Tawa and myself over fleet comms. A battleship was being taken down a guy in a Rifter and another in a Jag! The pilot opened a convo with Tawa to try and organise some form of ransom. Unfortunately for the pilot (but fortunately for me as I wanted the killmail) he could only offer a paltry 17mil and it was decided that his mighty Megathron would be reduced to spacejunk. As you can guess the battleship soon went pop. Once again the pilot got away in his pod which was a shame - were were going to try and get the 17mil ransom from his pod instead. The dropped modules from his wreck weren't too bad and as we speak they're being shipped off to a trade hub to be sold and the profits split.

Who said piracy wasn't profitable?

Skill Training Complete

I've still had no luck with my last solo above class kill despite having a few close shaves and getting infuriated at the lag between my point activating and target going into warp.

I thought I'd make this post about skills, and in particular my skills and where I'm going with them. Right now I'm happily sat on a sliver under 6 million SP. I won't bore you with how many I have in each subheading but they're quite nicely spread out to form a good PvP baseline and I've started specialising in certain areas already.

Right now I'm training Minnie Frigates to V and there's just under 3 days remaining. As soon as Tuesday rolls around I'll be training Assault Ships to IV and then jumping into Wolfs and Jags. I'll also be able to fly Caldari AFs as I have their Frig V too but my missile skills suck in comparison to my turret ones so I'll stick with the Minmatar hulls for now.

Once I'm sat happy in AFs I'm going to concentrate on skilling up to fit my armour-tanked Hurricane, which is all T2, sans rigs. To do this I need to train up T2 medium autocannons which is about 12 days away as well as getting a couple of lvl. III skills to IV for neuts and T2 MWD. Once this is done - which should be around early-mid September - I'm going to spam drone skills out. As I exclusively fly frigate hulls at the moment drones have been put on the backburner as they have no immediate use to me. Now that I'm soon going to be PvPing in Battlecruisers I really need to get them trained.

After that my plan is to max out my Gunnery skills. Right now they're all at IV with several at V which I'm happy with for now. It's probably going to take a good month and a half to max out the Gunnery support skills with most of them being 8 days and others being 12 but it'll be worth it in the long run.

Looking over what I've just typed out it seems I have a plan that's 4 months long tops, dependent on how hardcore I want to go with drones. When I first started playing Eve that would feel like a very long-term skillplan but now I realise that 4 months is a grain of sand on a beach; I've read on various Eve forums of people that have "long-term plans" that last years. I don't think I'll be joining their ranks by creating an Evemon plan that takes me to 2015 however. I'm quite happy to wait until I get to the Gunnery skill stage before I start planning which field to go next.

Drones, what drones?

Yesterday I won a fight against an Arazu in my trusty Rifter. I don't have a killmail to show for it but the fact that he ended up burning away from me and dropping point is a win in my eyes.

I was in Vifrevaert, one of my many roam systems when a Caracal came up on scan. This kill was quite important to me as it would mark my second required above class kill to make me eligible to join the Tuskers. I was sat at the acceleration gate to a plex where the Caldari cruiser was but unfortunately he had moved on before I warped in. I should have really returned to a safe having found he'd left the plex but ran a few more scans where I was. Before long an Arazu popped up on overview about 20km away and instantly began yellow-boxing. As the flight of Warrior IIs approached me I thought I was doomed and at first tried to burn out of long point range. It soon became evident that this wasn't going to happen. Deciding to take the fight to the recon ship I burnt towards him while manually flying to keep my trans up, successfully avoiding the majority of damage from his railguns. At the same time I had his drones targetted and began taking them out one by one. I was quite surprised at how fragile they are with a web slowing them down.

Before long all the drones were spacedust but I was well into my armour too. This is where I got annoyed; having an afterburner meant that I couldn't get within range of the kiting Arazu who was obviously MWD fit. His railguns were doing next to no damage to me and my cap and armour were starting to replenish nicely. I tried all sorts of ways to get close to him but could never get under 17km which is a shame as I'd have loved an Arazu killmail in a frigate.

My opponent must have had the same thoughts going through his mind - he couldn't hit me and I couldn't get near him so he aimed his ship away from mine and began speeding off, dropping point as he did so. He offered a 'gf' which I returned. It was a good fight but one I wish I could have gotten a killmail for.

Empty, Cold Space

It's been a few days since I posted due to well, lack of anything interesting. I've killed a few frigates, helped Tawa kill a couple of destroyers, lost some ships to gatecamps and 1v1s but nothing that differs greatly from anything I've posted recently and I didn't want to bore you all with rehashed stories.

Possibly the most interesting news is that I'm no longer part of my corp. I left on less-than-pleasant grounds but won't go into great detail here. At the end of the day carebears are carebears and I wasn't getting any PvP action within the corp so I left. I didn't raid the hangars or anything but things aren't great with the (majority) of my old corpies.

I do have my sights set on another corp though, the mighty Tuskers. I've recently spoken to Suleiman about it and though I don't meet their SP limit he said that was only a 'soft' target and that they focussed more on attitude than skillpoints which was good to hear. I only have one more kill to attain to meet their solo kill requirement and that is one more above class win.

I posted the Moa kill in a previous update  and though it wasn't massively difficult I think it still counts. I've been searchig high and low for cruisers to kill in recent days - even ignoring lone frigates in my quest to find what is quickly turning into a very elusive prey. Just today I had four cruisers run away from me. I warped onto the belt or planet and was out of scram range each time, allowing them to scuttle away. Who runs away from a Rifter? I think it must have something to do with being flashy red...

Busy Times

Things have been pretty hectic these past couple of days and I've destroyed and lost a fair amount of ships. After I put up the last post I logged on again and scored three more kills. I tempted to post again I thought better of it and waited until now as I didn't just want to spam posts whenever I killed something.

I'm also not going to write up in depth battle reports for the following two ship and pod kills as they were nothing spectacular really. I outclassed my opponents easily and from the outset it was clear who the winner would be so I'll just glaze over them.

Tawa was flying solo and announced he was in system with a pilot he'd killed earlier and had a Merlin on scan too. As Tawa and I both roam around Essence and often have a chat window open it didn't take me long to get to Adirain where he was currently scouring for targets. I asked for some intel about this pilot he had killed earlier.. I knew his name as he'd failed to rename his ship so pulled his info up from local. He wasn't that old - a month or two younger than me. Tawa then mentioned he had used T1 guns so I immediately loaded up Barrage to take advantage of the lack of range my opponent would have. 

I found the lone Rifter pilot right on top of the sun. Within a few heartbeats I was the victor. I took barely any damage due to Barrage allowing me to stay out of range of  most of his punishment. When I saw his ship pop I planned on snagging his pod and sending him back to the clone bay but something else caught my eye.

A Merlin had jumped in and unbeknownst to me was a friend of the guy I just killed. Undeterred by this new arrival I hastily reprogrammed my targeting seqeunces and engaged this new threat. His tank wasn't as strong as my autocannons however and he popped pretty easily. 

He didn't seem to have a sense of urgency about his pod however and I got a point on it. Moving in close I checked the pilots info and found he was a 2008 player. I then offered up the princely sum of 100m (which in hindsight might have been a bit too much. I figured being an oldish player he'd have some juicy implants). He promptly told me in no uncertain terms what I could go and do with myself and so lost his pod. Tawa had joined in at this point as he wanted to get in on the kill. I scooped up the corpse and then prepared to move back to a safe to wait out my GCC when another ship appeared in overview!

The pilot whose Rifter I'd popped only minutes ago had reshipped into another hull and had rejoined the fray. I think he was hoping to find me and the Merlin still locked in combat and could aid his friend. Of course landing right on top of me secured his fate and he lost another ship to my autocannons.

I called it a night there as it was pretty early in the morning. I was quite content with my three back to back fights but more happy that I was now officially an outlaw and flashy red in the eyes of everyone else. Yaarr!

Fast forward to yesterday afternoon and I was cruising the belts looking for a target. A Moa appeared on scan and excited about the prospect of an above class kill I began pinning him down on d-scan. I soon had him down to a single belt and warped in, slightly nervous at going against a cruiser in a Rifter. I landed 20km away from his ship and to my surprise he was ratting. In lowsec. In a Moa. 

I burnt towards him furiously hoping that he wasn't spooked by my flashy red appearance. Seconds later and I had him scrammed, webbed  and having already preloaded my guns with RF EMP started destroying his shield tank. One thing that struck me as odd was how he didn't set his drones on me and for the entire fight they still stuck to the Serpentis rats. Nonetheless this chap wasn't going anywhere and he died pretty quickly. In the killmail it shows that 43% of the damage done was by the rats but when I engaged him he had around 80% shields and full armour. Not that it matters really - he was getting popped regardless of how much or how little prior damage he had on him.

There's not a lot I can say for an after-action review as all my targets were doomed from the start. My module management, especially when it comes to overheating is coming along nicely and I've got a strong grasp on using the correct ammo for the right tank as well as aiming for resist holes. 

Pretty damn happy I got an above class kill.

Even a God-king can bleed...

Thought I'd spruce things up with pictures! As the first image to grace the pages of Chasing the Blue Flash what else could I pose than my favourite hull in the game; The Rifter.

After last nights success I spent much of today out roaming solo and an hour or so roaming with members of my corp and Tawa, who after last nights events looks like is going to become a good PvP partner in crime. A great deal of the roam was chasing down pilots who didn't want to be caught and I spent a lot of time bouncing around asteroid belts until I either got bored of trying to intercept them or they docked up.

Before long a Tristan appeared on scan and I quickly pinned it down to one of the FW plexes. I warped to the acceleration gate and checked again to make sure my potential victim was there. I mused for a few seconds as to which ammo I should use and the debate came down to Barrage and RF Fusion. I knew the Fusion would be good because I know Tristans are generally armour tanked but I also know that blasters would obliterate me if I got too close. Loading Barrage I prepared to kite my enemy to death.

I landed almost right on top of the Tristan and in doing so forgot about checking the pilot info as I hastily locked onto the frigate and activated my scram, web, afterburner and guns. Noticing my shields immediately start begin taking a pounding from the blasters I overloaded my prop mod in an effort to get out of the death zone. After I'd got around 9km I immediately piloted around before starting a healthy orbit of around 8km. It soon became apparent that this was a dps race as both of us were smashing each others ships to bits. One thing I did notice is that I had to work to keep my range. I was constantly manually piloting away from the Tristan when it got too close for comfort and then restarting my orbit and had to make good use of overheating my afterburner to keep the range as the blasters were doing horrific damage when up close. I pulsed my repper with what I thought was good cap management and when my opponent entered structure I was down to around 30% armour. A few good bursts later and I was down to 3% armour and very little cap. The Tristan however was a smoking pile of steel and wires.


2011.08.11 16:56


Victim: Etuura Zellis
Corp: The Tuskers
Alliance: Unknown
Faction: NONE
Destroyed: Tristan
System: Old Man Star
Security: 0.3
Damage Taken: 3173


Involved parties:


Name: Cable Udan (laid the final blow)
Security: -3.4
Corp: Kagan-Kincaid Enterprises
Alliance: Subspace Exploration Agency
Faction: NONE
Ship: Rifter
Weapon: 200mm AutoCannon II
Damage Done: 3173




Destroyed items:


Caldari Navy Foxfire Rocket, Qty: 42
Small Armor Repairer II
Caldari Navy Thorn Rocket, Qty: 200 (Cargo)
Small Hybrid Ambit Extension I
Small Hybrid Burst Aerator I
Small Ancillary Current Router I


Dropped items:


Rocket Launcher II, Qty: 2
Light Ion Blaster II, Qty: 2
Null S, Qty: 238
'Langour' Drive Disruptor I
J5b Phased Prototype Warp Scrambler I
Cold-Gas I Arcjet Thrusters
200mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates I
Damage Control II
Caldari Navy Gremlin Rocket, Qty: 200 (Cargo)
Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge S, Qty: 361 (Cargo)
Caldari Navy Foxfire Rocket, Qty: 100 (Cargo)
Caldari Navy Phalanx Rocket, Qty: 200 (Cargo)
Null S, Qty: 180 (Cargo)

I offered a gf in local and the pilot returned one. It was then I noticed one, tiny little thing that made my hands shake a thousand times harder than the adrenaline rush from the fight.

[TSKR]

What? Have I just popped a Tusker?


I couldn't believe it. I hold the Tuskers in very high regard. Since before I got into PvP I'd heard about them being one of the best pirate corps in New Eden and whenever I'd seen any in local I made extra effort to fly out of their way because I knew to sit among their ranks you had to be a decent PvP pilot. And I unknowingly won against one! Etuura then opened a chat window and expressed praise at how I'd kept her at range for a large portion of the fight and we discussed the skirmish in detail before both agreeing that it was a close and excellent battle. Going our separate ways we bid each other to fly dangerous and that we looked forward to facing each other in the future.

Little did I know how soon the next encounter would be...

I spent some more time roaming around, still riding the high of killing a Tusker but there was little in the way of potential targets. A short while later Tawa were both roaming around the Adirain system and we came across two players of around the same age as I in a Catalyst and an Incursus. Tawa made it his mission to pin down the Catalyst and show him the fury of his autocannons and I thought I'd give it a try as well. As I pinned the destroyer down to a single belt Tawa announced in convo that he had him and as I landed in the belt I saw him furiously orbiting the Catalyst. For the briefest of moment the idea of engaging the pair of them flitted across my mind but was almost instantly dispelled. Tawa is a cool guy and it wouldn't be honourable. If it were two randoms whom I'm just stumbled in on then I'd have no qualms about sending them both to the clone vat. I warped out letting him take his kill in peace and set my sights on the Incursus.

To cut a long and probably quite boring story short, I didn't get him. Three times I got within scram range but was just milliseconds too late with the lock before he warped away. I must have followed him to every single asteroid belt in the Adirain system before Tawa excitedly reported a Caracal in another belt. By now we'd fleeted up to chase down this Incursus so I punched in his location and warped in on him. Unfortunately there's no cruiser killmail here tonight and Tawa was raging about it slipping from his grasp. He only just got out of scram range and hastily warped as I was warping in, much to my allies chagrin.

It was around this time that a corp lowsec roam was about to begin. The corp I'm in is very much a PvE entity who specialise in mining, industry and manufacture and all that boring shit. However I was taken on as security for when they do lowsec mining operations and to kill can flippers and stuff and it's been alright so far. I think at some point I'd like to move on and join a dedicated peeveepee pirate corporation. Ooops, gone off topic. Rather than chin off Tawa I invited him to fly along with us and he happily agreed.

Whilst waiting for our fleet to arrive in system I noticed that the pilot of the Catalyst that Tawa had obliterated earlier on was back on scan. We split up in search of it and before long Tawa informed me that he had a point and to warp in. I arrived on scene to find most of the work done but I spun my guns up anyway and the pilot was once again put in his pod.

Our fleet consisted of six including myself and the others were starting off in Lisbaetanne. Rather than Tawa and I jump through to them it was decided that we'd hang around in Adirain looking for targets and they'd meet us in system, as local showed various targets of opportunity. This is where I started losing ships because I was lazy with my skills and drills. Once our merry band of warriors had grouped up in a safe spot we began scanning targets down. And there were a lot of targets. Tawa called out that he had a Coercer scrammed and I immediately warped in finding my target had already lost his shields and was down to 2/3 armour. I engaged my own modules and quickly ended the destroyer. I didn't get the final blow however and as of yet don't have the killmail to show for it.

A moment of absolute hilarity occurred at this point. Seeing that the pilot of the Coercer was in no hurry to get his pod out of harms way I pointed it and offered a gentle sum of 20mil in local. Smirking to myself I expected my wallet to flash within moments of payment being delivered. Only it didn't happen. I kind of glazed over the fact that once I'd popped his ship my Rifter had ground to a halt, having nothing to orbit. I watched in complete embarrassment as the pod slowboated out of scram range and warped away. Kicking myself for being so inept I warped back to a safe spot, swearing all the way.

Beginning the search anew various Rifters and Comets lit up our scan screens as well as a few other targets. I pinned a Rifter down to a belt and warped in on Kirith Darkblade, another of the fabled Tuskers. I got a point on him and we both opened up on each other. It was apparent from the very first volley who the victor of this fight was going to be. I settled into orbit and began overheating my modules whilst unleashing as much damage as I could on him, before calling in for backup over comms as I knew I was fighting a losing battle.

Reinforcements came in too late however. Kirith's Rifter was approaching very low armour as my Rifter asploded. As my fleet arrived on scene the lack of point meant Kirith could warp away at his leisure, which he rightly did.

With my next two losses I have nothing much to say about them other than gf. The first was my own fault for warping into the wrong belt and despite arriving 30km off centre one of them managed to get a point on me and Etuura got her sweet revenge. The second loss occurred when a fleetmate called out a point on a Rifter over comms. I hit the warp button instinctively only for him to announce that it was a trap and to not warp in. It was too late however and I landed amongst a group of flashy reds and lost my ship quickly.

My final loss wasn't quite so bad and even though I felt bad about losing the guys in fleet reassured me that it wasn't a bad loss at all. I left the gang in Adirain whilst I scouted out Aeschee for any decent targets. An Incursus and Dramiel came up on scan and I began pinning the Gallente frigate down. I soon had him locked to a single belt and warped in. I landed about 30km off and began burning towards my prey. He seemed game for a fight and didn't warp away. I'd planned to operate during this skirmish how I did against the Tristan. Kite at distance to avoid the blasters and win. That was it!

It wasn't to be though. I overshot my target and at a range of only a few km his blasters ate easily through my shields. I managed to get to range and began unleashing 150mm shells in his general direction. At one point I thought the fight was turning in my favour as the incoming damage seemed to be mitigated greatly by my armour repper whilst I was still munching through his armour. Unfortunately the Hobgoblin II changed all of that. As is usually the case, as the Incursus was going into structure my Rifter went bang and I found myself sitting naked in my egg.

Gfs were exchanged and I limped back to my home station to recuperate.

What have I learnt from todays PvP? I can safely make the analogy that Tuskers are like King Xerxes and that they certainly can bleed! I won't hesitate to go toe to toe with one next time I come across one. My skills also get very sloppy when I'm in a fleet. I seemed to get into the mindset that I didn't need to be as focussed on my module management etc because if something went wrong then I'd have my fleetmates to back me up. Unfortunately that proved to be my downfall against Kirith Darkblade. If I'd gone into the fight knowing I was flying solo and had no reinforcements to call on then the outcome might have been different.

To conclude, I'm not really bothered a lost a handful of ships tonight. I've had a great afternoon/evening pew pewing and to say I've had a few victories in the past 24 hours I'm very happy indeed.