Taking a break from Amak I set course for Egg via Sisi (which seems to be dead apart from fellow pirates).

I managed to scan down a Vexor ratting at a belt and it was a fairly new character. Jackpot. I’ve heard the tales of Vexors being death to frigate pilots due to their ability to field fleets of drones. Bugger it I’m in a T1 fitted Rifter I can afford to lose and I may get a fairly juciy kill out of it.

Warping in I immediately scramble him and web his medium drones. He managed to get a few hits into my shields before I could close range (damnit I really need to figure out why I can’t fit an MWD to my Rifter yet) but nothing severe. Surprisngly I managed to take out his 4 drones despite my worries that medium drones would eat me for breakfast. Either his drone skills were very sub par or he just forgot to set them on me, either way I’m not complaining.

Yay *does the dance* I quickly web and open fire on him and eagerly await my moment of glory. WTF he’s warping?!?!?!  *dance cancelled* I try to figure out what I did wrong while chasing him to the nearest belt that he would have gone to given his exit path.

Got him again! Warp+scram and fire. WTF warped again! OK this is getting annoying. Finally I chase him to a 3rd belt then a 4th where there’s a Hugin (sp?) and Vengeance sitting. I die. Quickly.

Being that I’m a bit drunk at this point I automatically assume that the Vexor was bait and put out some light smack in local about how leet these guys must be that they take all that firepower to bait and kill a lone Rifter. Shortly after I’m aplogising. Turns out the other two pilots had just started trying to take down that Vexor and just took me down as a percieved threat or vulture that might have attacked them while they were distracted.

So I apologised to the guys and wished them luck and they told me that the Vexor was fitted with stabs which was why we all had so much trouble keeping it pinned down. Lesson learned.

It turns out that those guys did eventually get the annoying little shit because I saw the kill mail on Battleclinic whilst trying to upload my own kills/deaths for posterity.

Anyway the semi hatemail I got from the Vexor pilot after my 3rd attempt to pin him down was roughly “Hahaha you can’t catch me loser.” I’ve cleaned it up a bit since it was written in ALL CAPS except the letters that should have been capitalised and had way more smilies than is strictly neccesary. I’m unsure whether my potential victim was

1. The EVE equivalent of a troll
2. 13
3. A twat
4. All of the above

I’m leaning towards 1 and 2.

First and foremost I’ve started building up my Rifter skills and brushing up on alternate fittings and started to get more good fights if still very few kills and lots of deaths.

My memory is pretty bad but so far my kills amount to two Rifters and a Bestower while my losses are…. well lets just say they outweigh my wins by a significant margin. Although it has to be said the majority of my losses are Incursuses (sp?) which sadly I’ve had to retire because they just aren’t getting the job done.  Maybe once I’ve got more experience under my belt I’ll return to these. In the meantime I’m going to concentrate on getting T2 guns for the Rifter then continue with my Drone skills to fly Gallente crusiers effectively. Live and learn folks. I never thought I’d end up liking the Rifter because I do enjoy being the underdog but being the underdog is too expensive when you’re still a young pilot.

The last few nights Amamake has really been the chaos I was expecting when I first moved there. Apparently a few well known pirate corps have started to use the area more frequently so I’ve been much more careful about who I attack.

Anyway on Friday I logged in and roamed the belts for a while because of the high local poulation and eventually got into a fight with another Rifter pilot. I died pretty quickly due to the fact that he was using T2 guns ( I assume) and seemed quite amused/surprised afterwards in local when he looted my wreck and found only T1 fittings. I guess this goes to show that people expect pirates to only PvP in the best tech they can afford.

Afterwards this duel I got invited to a fleet by the infamous Wensley from The Tuskers for a 1v1. I had to wait a while due to my criminal flag and my shields getting eaten a bit while exiting the station. Turns out all that nonsense about sentries eating you alive in 3 seconds doesn’t matter if you can warp away quickly. I think I’m going to get to set up some insta undocks from my frequently used stations so I can avoid the majority of shield damage in future.

Anyway. Wensley was flying a T1 fitted Rifter much with pretty much the same fittings as myself and the fight was pretty close until he got through my armour and my structure depleted pretty damn quick. Still it was a good fight and afterwards he gave me some advice on fittings which proved helpful the next night when I decided to go on a roam to Sisi and Egg to look for more inexperienced targets. Read all about that fun including my first piece of hatemail (kind of) in the next post.

I’ve finally got all the pre requisites for Thermodynamics out of the way and thanks to that can properly outfit a Rifter as well. Well with T1 stuff but still. The ship won me a few fights and had a few that were extremely close.

Notable fights – a destroyer I found in a low sec DED. That one came right down to the bone. If it wasn’t for my cap running out I would have won. We were both running similiar tanks and it was just a matter of who broke first.
Second – a T2 Amarr frig. Ok this wasn’t as close as I thought but the guy was only a similiar age to me and I figured I had a chance if he hadn’t properly trained all his support skills. It was pretty close until we got into armour and my cap once again failed.
Guy was a member of the well known pirate corp The Python Cartel. I’m actually considering an app to them.

Overall I like the ship but I’m going to keep training towards Gallante Assault Frigs one Thermodynamics is done. Plus despite the definite appeal and overall survivability of the Rifter I still love my Gallente ships. Maybe I’ll keep the latter for any gangs and just use the Rifter for solo work.

For reference I’m using a T1 version of this fit http://eve.battleclinic.com/loadout/3546-Solo-PvP-Rifter.html

I wonder if my electronics and engineering skills just aren’t high enough to fit all this. With the MWD turned off I can keep it cap stable but still can’t fit a NOS or a decent launcher. Any suggestions?

This is by no means meant to say these people are misrepresenting themselves deliberately but I sometimes think older pirates maybe forget how hard it is starting out as a newb and not having access to all these cool toys or being able to get into a good corp because they have less than 2M SP.

So anyway here are my current skills. Sorry for the formatting but I can’t figure out how to put these in a spoiler or more box. Any recommendations for what to do next are welcome. Currently as you may be able to see I’m training Minmitar frigate up to fly a Rifter to give myself some more options, obviously the associated weapon skills are next.

I think it’s a fair grounding in PvP skills for my current ship (Incursus as you may have noticed) and I’m trying to do most support skills to 4 before I even think about moving onto T2 gear and ships. Still planning on getting Gallente frigates to 5 to fly the T2 variations.

Attributes
Intelligence: 17.28
Perception: 20.52
Charisma: 5.40
Willpower: 12.96
Memory: 16.20

Drones
Combat Drone Operation 3
Drones 4
Scout Drone Operation 3

Electronics
Electronics 4
Propulsion Jamming 2
Survey 3

Engineering
Energy Emission Systems 2
Energy Grid Upgrades 2
Energy Management 4
Engineering 4
Shield Management 3
Shield Operation 3

Gunnery
Gunnery 4
Medium Hybrid Turret 3
Motion Prediction 4
Rapid Firing 4
Sharpshooter 4
Small Hybrid Turret 4
Weapon Upgrades 3

Industry
Industry 1
Mining 2
Refining 1

Learning
Analytical Mind 4
Clarity 3
Eidetic Memory 3
Focus 3
Instant Recall 4
Iron Will 4
Learning 4
Logic 3
Spatial Awareness 4

Mechanic
Hull Upgrades 4
Mechanic 3
Repair Systems 3
Salvaging 3

Missile Launcher Operation
Missile Launcher Operation 2
Rockets 2

Navigation
Afterburner 4
High Speed Maneuvering 3
Navigation 4
Warp Drive Operation 2

Science
Astrometric Acquisition 3
Astrometrics 3
Cybernetics 2
Infomorph Psychology 2
Science 4

Social

Social 3

Spaceship Command

Destroyers 1
Gallente Cruiser 4
Gallente Frigate 4
Gallente Industrial 1
Minmatar Frigate 2
Spaceship Command 4
Total Skillpoints in Group: 383,531

Total Skillpoints: 1,872,971

True to my work I put out word on Idependence that I was looking for any more experienced pilots or anyone that would take my little Incursus out for some pew pew action.

Lesson 1 – Pirates are untrusting. Most of my shout was met with lols which may have been because my typing skills are sub par when I’ve had a few drinks or because people suspected a trap. Still it was interesting. Two of the Hellcats and the infamous Kane Rizzell were present on the channell and I had a private conversation with Kane. Despite not agreeing to take me along he was actually very pleasant (but don’t tell anyone).

At some point during this I got a convo invite from another pirate in the system and the offer of a fleet with him and his buddy.

Lesson 2 – Never trust a pirate. I took my brand new Vexor out to meet up with NCC 1701E and Strifal. Waited for their GCC to finish and was promptly dropped from the fleet and fired upon. Still had a conversation with NCC after where he apologised saying that they didn’t look at how old my character was but it had been a slow night and they wanted some action. No hard feelings on my part because well let’s face it we’re pirates and you half expect these things to happen. Next time I’ll be more wary but if I’m going to be spending time in this system then it’s good to know the locals and hopefully next time we meet it will be on the same side.

So final lesson – never pirate while drunk.

Anyway a bit about myself and my not so illustrious career so far in EVE. Warning you may want to skip ahead a bit because this will be extremely boring for a lot of people til I get to the pew pew bits. Also this post is intended partly for other newer Incursus pilots to get and idea of the various PvP fits you can try and my opinions as a low SP character on their fun and reliabiity for aspiring pirates. Although it’s only fair to point out that I’ve lost more fights than I’ve won so please don’t take this as a “Fly this and you will win.”  guide. It’s simply my perspective and I’m only just starting to actually come close to winning a lot of fights.

A few years ago I started playing but never really “got it” and tried my hand at mining, missioning and industrial work and very quickly became bored with the game.

Fast forward about two years to the present day and I decided to give the world of New Eden another chance having enjoyed some of it before and knowing that there was a great game lurking somewhere under the user unfriendly interface and moutains of spread sheets and number crunching about what ship fittings were “the best”(tm). I mean let’s face it in other MMOs it’s easy to tell what best suits your needs because it’s usually shiny or obvious in some other way.

At the outset I set my mind on what I love about all MMOs, the PvP. Not caring an inch about what people say said about the Rifter being the best PvP firgate I went with my old favourite race the Gallente and they’re signature PvP frig the Incursus. Let’s face it any ship that looks like it has a freakin’ sword sticking out the front and no sense of symmetry what so ever is either going to look either

1. Stupid
2. Menacing as hell

Plus it’s generally overlooked by a lot of pilots that don’t realise just how much damage it can kick out.

So I started with the awesome new tutorial and about 5 mil in my bank and decided to skip the new epic arc (which I’ll probably regret at some point) and took a quick saunter over to the EVE Pirate forums to look for a newbie friendly pirate corp where I came across The Esquires of Questionable Intention. I won’t say much about them but they’re a high sec pirate corp who engage in can flipping and war decs for their pew pew.

All in all I had a great time with these guys but recently I found myself growing bored with can flipping and wars because with the latter it mostly ended up fairly one sided and the former because very few people apart from noobs ever made the mistake of agressing me. So I ended up spending my nights doing long low sec roams around the infamous (although I didn’t know this at the time) Amamake (sp?) area and while I lost more than I won I quickly discovered that each fight brought a wealth of experience and helped me test out the various Incursus fits which people regard as the best in PvP to find one which suits me. Descriptions for noobs i.e. people like me.

1. Nano fit. Speed and lots of it. Forget tanking and rely on the superior speed of frigates to keep you from taking damage. While I like the idea in principle I’ve found that unless you have other bonuses and skills to back this up you still end up dying very quickly. Maybe I just suck with this fit though. Generally fit a nano fiber internal structure + overdrive injector or just to nanos.
2. “The holy Trinity” MWD, Scram and Jam. Also needs a MAPC (micro auxiliary power core) to allow you to fit all the modules. I’ve had some success with this setup solo.  For a great guide to this particular setup I recommend checking out this post and also the authors blog http://tuskers.eve-gamers.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=111&sid=54790acba0d56e62cb3d24a35271ce1
3. Armour tank. Fit an armour rep and damage control unit in your lows. Other than that fit web and scram in your mids and switch out the MWD for a afterburner. I like the idea of this fit for greater survivability but I’ve yet to test it out. Might not be great against other frigs because frig fights are short and brutal and you may not even be able to get time to cycle your rep.

Other than that always try and use faction anti matter and ion blasters (once again refer to Ka Jolo’s guide).

Anyway on to the pew pew. Today I started out my official career as a low sec pirate and used an alt to haul enough of frigs and various modules out to my new low sec home for me after sending a polite farewell to The Esquires and thanking them for the good times.

It started off quite boring as I noticed most people were passing through systems quickly so I decided to rat for a bit to get some cash and maybe entice another capsuleer to come out and fight. Sure enough as finish off the last rat in one belt I notice another player in a Rifter drop out of warp not far from me. Honestly I can’t remember for sure but we both locked each other and I think it was me that initiated hostilities by jamming him and using one quick cycle of my MWD to close range.

My shields were already part way down from the rats but I felt like I was doing quite well and he was taking a while to break through my shields and plate. I must have just been getting lucky for that first exchange of blows because he quickly started to chew through my plate and into structure. I desperately tried to warp hoping that somehow his scram would fail but no such luck and a brief second later *pop* goes my poor little Incursus.

Oh well I console myself with the fact that the Rifter is generally regarded as the best PvP frig and that maybe I was doomed from the start but I’m not the type to run away from a fight even if I know the odds are stacked against me. So my opponent Medio Morde gives the customary “GF” in local and I warp my pod back home to lick my wounds.

Wow that’s a long ass post. So yes welcome to the new blog of possibly the worst pirate in EVE. Don’t expect me to regale you every night with tales of epic battleship kills. This is newbie town baby and I’m wearing a diaper. Wait, what.

Anyway tomorrow I’m planning on putting a shout out on the Independence channel for a partner or gang to do some roaming with for some experience and hopefully at few kills. Idea inspired by 00sage00 and his rather excelent blog over at http://00sage00.wordpress.com/ I also reccomend checking out this article on his blog http://00sage00.wordpress.com/2009/06/02/piloting-saaviness/ because it is just that damn good.