Gate fighting in a rupture. Is FUN.

I don't normally gate camp but sometimes, needs must. Me and some other pirates decided to roam a bit, RealZonk leading the way. We wanted to tackle anything we could find find and we knew that the gang had to be quick and decisive. It comprised of a hurricane, vagabond and rifter in addition to my rupture. Not exactly the most robust low-sec gate camping fleet but needs must.

RealZonk chased the first hurricane through into Taff where he then warp scrambled the hurricane's engines - preventing it from warping off. The hurricane pilot, either panicking and not being sensible fired back at RealZonk. This now prevented him from returning to the gate and jumping off as the hurricane's weapons needed time to bleed off excess energy and 'cool down' before the stargate drives could engage. However, RealZonk fired the first shot and under the CONCORD rules, he was an aggressor and the automatic gate guns spun up and spat out deadly rounds at him.

I arrived with the other three and immediately locked and fired at the hapless hurricane. I wanted to draw some of the fire off RealZonk.

"Flashfresh has engaged. Hurricane has been pointed. Am drawing sentry fire."

"Jherek has engaged. Drawing sentry fire also."

"Koet has locked. Not engaging yet." Koet was in a rifter and he would be instantly shredded by the gate guns. However, he was smart and would hold off to either snag the pod or get a quick shot in before the hurricane was destroyed.

The space was thick with fire as we poured fire onto the hurricane.

"Zonk is out. Fecking sentry guns!"

"Okay Zonk - that was a good tackle. Get to safety, we'll finish it off from here."

RealZonk's vagabond whipped around and sped away into safety, with tracer rounds from the sentry gun screaming after him. Now there was only three of us and the enemy hurricane was going down. My drones (deployed as decoys) were already shredded and the gates guns had already blasted off my shields and were pinging off my armour. My ship being rocked violently to the side with each blow.

However, we were quick enough to kill the hurricane but not quick enough to kill the pod. I had to warp out and leave the loot to Jherek and his 'cane.

A few minutes later, we caught a cyclone doing the same thing. Hanging around a gate and dispatching Angel cruisers. The fool, I went in for the initial tackle - once again, drawing down the considerable fire of the gate guns. I just had to hold on long enough, the second to arrive was Koet in his rifter and he bravely put his small ship into the fray - long enough to get shredded into scrap. Jherek was replaced by Knubbelino in his thorax while RealZonk was there in his vagabond. This group of four was even weaker and less suited to gate fighting than the previous one but we didn't let that stop us. The cyclone was butchered within sight of the gate and safety.

In both cases, I was delighted with the performance of the rupture-class cruiser under sentry fire. It was packing some meaty armour, had the micro warp drive for speed and packed a rack of four dual 180-mm T2 auto canons. Not to forget the hard working small armour repairer. The 1600mm plate is there to soak up damage with the armour repairer there to patch up the armour after a fight. It's repair rate is too slow to make this rupture an active armour tanking ship.