Stabber pwned me, then I killed a cyclone.

Anyway, enough of the musings - what have I done? Well, I got a few ships and lost a few. I went after a stabber in my rifter - the previous stabbers I had tackled solo went down eventually and I thought, this one would be no different. There's a pilot that rats in a local system I frequent and each time I jump in he safe spots. Until that one time when I scanned him down, jumped in and scrambled him all under ten seconds. I was in my rifter, with T2 guns no less and started to pummel him after a quick lock and scramble.

He replied back with rockets. He had no web but I noticed that his shield was barely shifting.
I was just about tanking him but as the fight progressed - it was clear he had a meaty shield tank and it was an active one too. A wee bit concerned, I switched to EMP rounds but it didn't make that much of a difference. I was into 25% armour when his shield dropped noticeably. Not too sure if it was lag or something but finally, when I entered hull - I was was finally making some progress on the stabber. I managed to pop my armour repairer twice and got the armour back up to 35% but I was already on fire. The stabber, spewing rockets and occasionally hitting me with his auto cannons, was into armour as well. Even relying on base armour - it would take time for me to chew through.

His last rocket blew my rifter into pieces and I insta-warped out of there. I congratulated the pilot on a job well done. I also noticed that the pilot was barely a week old out of pod school. So damn good job.

2007.06.21 08:12
Victim: flashfresh
Alliance: NONE
Corp: Independent Pilots
Destroyed: Rifter
System: Auren
Security: 0.4

Involved parties:
Name: DeaDie (laid the final blow)
Security: 0.5
Alliance: NONE
Corp: Republic University
Ship: Stabber
Weapon: Phalanx Rocket

So, a little bit miffed; I waited for the flag to time out and came back out with a new ship. Deadie has already left the system though still logged.

A few days later, I managed to snag him in another belt, same system. I was in the punisher this time and when I entered system; was too far from him to insta-lock so I hit the afterburner and closed the distance. To my delight - he targeted back and hit his microwarpdrive and sped towards me. He wanted the fight and since he beat me once, why not again?

Was relying on the meaty armour and high resistance with the small signature of the punisher to take me through the fight. How wrong I was. The fight was much like the previous fight: I got in close and started to hit him with the emp rounds but his rockets, once more, scored decent hits on me. Once again, my shields disappeared quick but my armour held.

Good, I thought, now we'll see how much he can chew through!

However, something went wrong with my tanking and his damage started to bleed past my armour repairer. I had a tech 2 version too so am surprised if not a little bit disturbed.

Like the previous fight, by the time I had chipped his shields away and into his armour, I was in structure once again. The punisher was on fire but the armour repairer was doing a better job on this frigate than it did on the rifter.

The fight was slowly swinging my way but by 15% structure I had to turn and run. Damn.

Once again, I congratulated the pilot on his ship fitting. I was dying to know what it was.

Replaying the combat log files showed me making decent DPS but I couldn't hold on and tank him and bleed his cap. I think the stabber actually had some frigate sized weapons on it and therefore could track small ships very well - backed up with cruiser sized shields and armour no less.

Oh well, no ransom on this one.

A couple of days later, was out hunting in my rifter when I came across two destroyers hunting. One was the thrasher class and the other, a comorant class. Without a second's hesitation I scanned them down and discovered both were in separate belts. I went in and ambushed the thrasher - my rifter blasting off it's shields in two volley and biting deep into his armour. The destroyer was in the belt moving slowly under it's sub-warp engines. I gave no quarter and needed to knock out the thrasher pilot as soon as possible; without the possibility of him warning the comorant pilot. Once the ship was into hull, I prepared to speak to the pilot, in a private channel but Angels appeared and attacked the now flaming destroyer and robbing me of my kill mail.

Just as I was preparing to snag the pod, the comorant came roaring in.

SHIT.

I quickly switched to the new danger - letting the pod and a potential ransom to go. The comorant locked me without hesitation and opened up with it's hybrid blasters. They hit my shields full on and my rifter rocked back violently. I hit the afterburner and ordered the crew to move to battlestations. The onslaught was impressive by the comorant but I reacted quick enough and started the intricate dance amongst the shattered remnants of the previous kill. The Angels had also started to lock me so I was in for a bit of a pounding.

The comorant, interestingly was setup with blasters so it was designed for up close work. No webber however so this gave me a chance. I webbed the comorant and slowed it's velocity to single digits - this should give me an advantage. Like most caldari ships - the shield sub-systems are very impressive but nothing underneath. I had to crack the tough outer shell of the shield and the destroyer was as good as dead. A massive hail of emps shells spat out of my autocannons and I was hoping he had not increased the resistance of his shields to the EMP pulse rounds I was firing at him.

He had anti-matter hybrid rounds but being webbed, he now was having trouble hitting me - I had now swung out to about 4km; still an effective range for my lovely 150mm auto cannons but too far now for his blaster rounds to do anything but bounce off my ship. I knew I had him. I opened up a private conversation with him and demanded a one million isk release fee. To that he replied:

>fuck off pirate

It was the last thing he uttered as I smoothly blew his ship to pieces and podded him.
About 500k of loot of him and a few named mods from the thrasher, a total of 900K. OK, I guess. A few of these and I will have enough to get a couple of rifters and add to the Flashfresh retirement fund.

After my criminal flag had expired, I took the scenic route back home. I spotted a cyclone on scan. It wasn't a rookie either. Never had much success against this class of battlecruiser - its shields always proved to be very tough. I paused and took some time to scan it down. Narrowing it down to a cluster of three belts, I warped to the first one and yes, there were wrecks. So he was ratting.

I docked at one of the base stations and discovered all I had was my hurricane. Quite possibly overkill but recent information on GalNet had a report on how a cyclone utterly destroyed a deimos class heavy assault cruiser. I quickly switched crews and checked the battlecruiser - like all pirates, I had all ship systems on warm standby so I was back into space within a minute.

Warping the two jumps back towards the target system I found the cyclone once more. A quick mental calculation and I estimated that he was would have moved off the three-belt cluster by now and would have moved down to the next belt. I was right: nothing like predictability to kill you.

Hurling the considerable bulk into the belt, I exploded out of warp - the plasma streams slipping off my battlecruiser like rain. The crew raced to re-calibrate equipment as I started to lock the cyclone. Not at all afraid, the cyclone pilot locked me back and battle was joined.

Tactical analysis revealed that he was using a combination of artillery and missiles. I ordered the webber to be switched on and sent my drones out, the deadly machines screaming towards the cyclone-class battlecruiser.

It had a tough shield tank and was trading broadsides with my hurricane with what appeared to be gusto. He wasn't running but with dual-medium nosferatus on him a well; the cyclone was trapped. My only hope was that it was not calling in friends.

The considerable shield systems on the cyclone were finally overcome and I was hitting his armour. I was eager to check out his active shield systems if I survived this. As the minutes ticked by and he was into hull, I knew I had him. My shields had stabilised at around 35% and his damage output had dropped considerably. He was also starting to move and align but he would soon discover that his warp engines were scrambled.

I opened up a private channel but i heard nothing. I did not want to do a general local broadcast either so decided that he was going to go down fighting. Escape pods started to stream out of the now dying cyclone class battlecruiser and I prepared my crew to grab what we can. The ship exploded with the captain zipping out instantly.

Checking the wreckage I found a nice named large shield booster - worth over 600K isk. With an assortment of other goodies, the haul was over a million isk. Not bad.

The pilot and I finally chatted and I congratulated him on his fight. It turned out he didn't have any insurance on his ship. That was horrible but as they say, never fly anything you can not afford to lose!