Anyway, shiny blue forcefields are only interesting for so long, and the system was pretty dead at that point besides me and a few other corp guys. So I headed off to Ami in my newly fitted out Rifter, after I decided that every PvPer ever can't be wrong. And I'm starting to like this ship. While it's nowhere near as tanky as my Punisher (see a few blogs back) it's much faster, with the smaller plate also allowing me to fit weapon rigs instead of fitting ones, and the three midslots provides room for a web, giving me an even bigger speed advantage over other players.
So I'm bouncing around Ami, hitting my D-Scan, trying to find an Incursus that keeps popping up now and again among the Drakes and Jaguars. Eventually I get bored, and giving up on finding the Incursus, I warp straight to belt one. Bad idea.
 |
| A Jaguar, Enyo, Fleet Stabber and another random ship appear in my overview |
About eight minutes later I realise that I'm useless with the scanner, and instead switch to jumping between belts hoping to find him. On my third jump I strike gold, figuratively speaking. It was the Incursus, seemingly ratting. Unfortunately I had landed about 10km from him, so I had to react fast before he warped out. Stupidly I had also not prepared in the slightest for this fight, as I still had RF EMP S loaded in my guns, despite the fact that shield-tanking Incursuses (Incursi?) are incredibly rare. Also I was mildly suspicious it was a trap. Who rats in a system with over 15 pilots in?
But I was desperate for a kill, so I hit my afterburner to overheat, and rocketed towards him while locking on. I hit my guns and scram at the same time. He didn't even appear to have realised I was here yet. And then I got that stupid Concord warning. "This is a criminal action la la la". Guns still hadn't fired, and by now the Incursus had noticed I was there and was locking me up. Almost face-palming, I ignored the warning and told my guns to fire again. His shields melted instantly, though I wasn't too surprised, EMP ammo vs untanked shields is a no-brainer. But then his armour started melting only slightly slower than his shields. My jaw dropped, was he using a kite fit? I wasn't expecting him to go down fast, but I am used to the "grinding down" style of my Punisher. Maybe the Rifter is more ganky. By the time I was halfway through his armour he had only just dropped my shields, and when he exploded I was still at 75% armour. Either the Rifter is better than I thought, or he had a seriously poor tank.
I scooped my new loot and warped off to a nearby planet, ecstatic at my first solo PvP kill in LowSec. It was while I was bouncing around planets, waiting for my GCC to run out, that I saw the cyno appear on my overview, and a Moros popped up on D-Scan. Besides Chribba's Veldnaught, I had never seen a capital ship in Eve, so I warped to the cyno at 100km to check it out.
Stupid mistake.
The smarter ones among you will have already realised how dumb this was. For those of you like me, who know very little about capitals, let me explain what I learnt in about 10 seconds in LowSec.
1) Capital ships are slow
2) Capital ships on their own are juicy gank targets
3) Any capital ship on it's own outside a fleet is going to get attacked by a gang if it isn't somewhere they can't hit it within about 20 seconds of it cynoing in
So it was obviously a station the cyno had been dropped at. No capital pilot is going to get their alt to drop a cyno anywhere else unless its in the middle of a fleet fight. I still had four minutes left on my GCC. Unfortunately while I was checking out this huge ship slowboat towards the station, I did not notice the sentry guns take aim at me. Oops.
Victim: Seraph Minayin
Corp: Adamas Anima
Alliance: Unknown
Faction: Unknown
Destroyed: Rifter
System: Ami
Security: 0.4
Damage Taken: 3466
Involved parties:
Name: Amarr Sentry Gun / Zoar and Sons (laid the final blow)
Damage Done: 1900
Name: Astra Winter
Security: -0.10
Corp: Tempus Stabilis
Alliance: None
Faction: None
Ship: Unknown
Weapon: Modal Light Electron Particle Accelerator I
Damage Done: 1474
Name: Blood Converter / Blood Raiders
Damage Done: 92
As you can see, I got pretty nailed by those guns. The earlier damage was from the Incursus and a random belt rat. (Weirdly Battleclinic doesn't show my loss as being due to station guns, probably because it's a manual post. I need to get round to putting my API key on there) I also lost most of my sweet lootz from my fight, and this annoyed me more than the loss of my ship. After I waited out my GCC in a station, I bought a Kestrel, flew over to my wreck, and grabbed whatever had survived.
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| Getting my property back |
I've learnt some valuable lessons today. The main one being to ALWAYS wait out my GCC away from gates and stations, a classic mistake for those unaware of LowSec mechanics. However I've also realised I need to practice my D-Scanning skills, and that warping to zero on asteroid belts is an incredibly stupid idea. Maybe next time I'll be less dumb ;)
Tl;dr While in LowSec, pay attention all the time. Don't assume you'll be fine like I did :)
Congrats on that first lowsec kill \o/
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