Well, another loss to report.
But first let's put it in perspective. My explorer character (who I have been having a great time with - it satisfies my gambling craving) has been doing very well flying an Ishtar and searching out radar sites and 3/10 and 4/10 DED sites in Gallente high sec space. This has pretty much taken over as my primary isk generating source (though I still have a station trader in Jita).
A couple days ago I lost an Ishtar (and a Helios sent in to bookmark the Ishtar wreck) in a Serpentis Watch site due to inattentiveness. Then earlier today I lost another Ishtar to a gate camp in a low sec system that's usually very quiet (the microwarp/cloak trick worked to escape the camp - but while I was sitting at an asteroid belt complimenting myself on my success the rascally pirates followed me in a couple hurricanes and destroyed my pve Ishtar in short order).
Since those two Ishtars had earned enough to pay for themselves, along with three replacements sitting in stations ready to go, and a few PLEX to keep my accounts active - it was not more than I could afford to lose. But generally, things have not been going well over the last few days.
So tonight I decided to fly a Rifter for a change. I strapped Jack in an armor rifter in Ishomilken and set a low sec route to my old stomping grounds in Auner. There was some of this Faction Warfare in Ishomilken and I thought I'd look for a new neighborhood (especially since Heild (my other recent location) is overrun with Eve University students flying in large fleets).
The trip to Auner is about 40 jumps and I doubted that I would make it the entire way. I was right.
About 8 or 9 jumps into the trip I found miso Padecain in an Incursus alone in a system. We ended up on a gate together and each targeted the other - which pretty much gave away our mutual intentions. He warped off to the sun and I followed.
I had barrage loaded so set a 4k orbit. He threw out a hobgoblin II and I targeted it with my guns while my missile launcher shot at the Incursus. To no avail - the guns couldn't hit the close orbiting drone. So, after a while of not hitting the drone I turned off my guns to return to shooting the Incursus. He was going though my shields and armor about as expected - but I was not doing much damage to him at all. I was more than halfway through armor while he was still less than halfway through shields.
Then I noticed that I had not actually ordered my guns to fire again after untargeting the drone. DOH! I hit the big "SHOOT THE INCURSUS!" button and started doing some real damage - he dropped through shield and into armor very quickly. But it was too late. I blowed up.
The lossmail says the loss was 6.5 million ISK which is a lot less than my other recent losses, so I was happy with that - but unhappy that another blunder cost me a kill.
Current "Death to Flying Things Campaign" score: 9-22-1
Tough break, Jack. You'd think the interface would have some kind of buffer, so that even if a module is in it's winding-down state of deactivation it can be re-assigned to a new target and automatically activated on the next cycle. I suppose the future isn't as smart as the present.
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