Rifter Madness!

I was roaming around my base in Auner looking for trouble.  The other 6 pilots in Auner were sitting in the station, so I started jumping through the systems leading away from high sec.  In one I came across a merlin on scan.  A perfect target for my rifter.  Or, more likely, vice versa…

I narrowed him down to a Faction Warfare plex and headed there with everything overheated and all knobs turned up to 11!  But, when I arrived, he was gone.  A runner.  Or a cloaker.  Many of the FW guys are reticent to do battle with anyone.  And, it’s probably a good idea for many of them seeing as they are often either new players or new alts of players and don’t have many skills.

So I continued on.

The next couple systems were filled with FW pilots – 25 in each.  That’s a big number for our neighborhood and I moved through them as quickly as I could. 

Then I found a quiet system.  And I found that same merlin.

I narrowed his location down to a plex and again headed there with guns overheated.  This time he was there and waiting for me.

I set the orbit to a tight 500 meters and started peppering him with my blazing autocannons.  In return he was taking big chunks out of my shields with his neutron blasters (those things are vicious!).  I turned on my armor repper when he reached my armor and continued to take his shields down step by step.

It wasn’t looking good.

But then I finally made it through his shields and things changed.  His armor and hull quickly disappeared and then there was the big explosion!  I won!  \o/

We chatted in local and he asked about my fit – whether it had a plate.  I shared it with him (it did – just the standard 200mm).  He said, “that explains it”.  I didn’t mention that I was also wearing the slave implants (Thanks The CEO!) that no doubt boosted the armor by large amount…  J

I scooped the loot and headed to a station to repair.  Then I headed to a nearby system where I had some exile boosters from a previous purchase.  I grabbed one of those and headed back to Auner – it was getting late.

I managed to slip through the busy FW systems and when I arrived in Auner there was a Procurer mining ship on scan.  Hmmm…

I found him in an asteroid belt and turned up everything to 11 on my way there.  I had no real hope that my rifter could kill him (especially since I was low on ammo after the previous fight) – but I was game for trying.

I arrived to find 5 hobgoblin II drones flying around the procurer and a bunch of wrecks from the belt rats.  I tackled him, targeted the hobgoblins and started killing them.  Well, killing one of them.  Then I targeted a second and started in on it.  My shields were rapidly being destroyed by the drones so I gobbled down the exile booster pill and turned on the armor repairer.  I also noticed that I was not tackled – the procurer didn’t have a scrambler so I was free to leave if necessary.

I was having trouble hitting this second hobgoblin but doggedly continued.  My armor was losing to the combined efforts of the 5 drones and soon it was almost gone.  It was time to leave!  I picked a planet and hit the warp-to button – at about the same time that I heard those scary words in a very comforting voice, “The capacitor is empty”. 

Oh oh.

I kept jabbing the warp button and a couple seconds later I was flying through space.  I had escaped the procurer with my rifter burning and smoking – but intact generally!

I said “gf” in local and got ignored.  I then looked at the effects of the exile booster and noticed that I was suffering from a side effect – “reduced tracking”.  That explained why I was having trouble hitting the drones even with them webbed.

A fun evening.