Musings of a Pirate - Part 8 - Pushing the envelope.

Being a pirate means you need to be very isk efficient. Am in this business to get rich at the expense of others, thus I need to fly something that is relatively cheap and easy to replace. Forget faction mods or a ship dripping in tech two goodies. However, expensive mods and rigs can give a pilot the crucial split-second advantage to win a contest, so it's always a balance. After bagging that freighter and machaerial, my luck changed appallingly.

While I view uneven odds as a given and challenge, I recently pushed my ship and my skills too far and in the last few days have lost a rifter, a wolf and a rupture.

My Rifter versus Rupture and Stiletto: Loss of Rifter but gain of a rupture.
This was an interesting hunt as my intelligence sources told me that they were both working together. The rupture and stiletto were playing the station hugging game and I decided to bring them out into a belt. With a gang of three, I jumped into Hrondredir. Surely a lone rifter was too obviously shouting 'bait' to them? The stiletto arrived and engaged me, I did not have the speed to kill him but he didn't have the damage output to make much of a difference. I informed the situation to some local pirates and waited for a response while I danced the complicated dance with Sahonen, the stiletto pilot. I was ready to take advantage of any mistake.

Then his friend in the rupture arrived.

The game was up. I switched my attention to the more dangerous threat of the rupture and the rifter gave a good account of itself but when it was down to armour, I knew that I was in trouble. I could repair the damage from the stiletto but not that and the rupture. DJ and Daplat (I think) now entered into local. The interceptor scampered off while the rupture smelling blood, managed to clip my port side engine nacelle and my rifter blew up. He stayed too long however, a flashing thorax entered into the belt and tackled the rupture. It was DJ in his thorax. Something very funny happened soon thereafter. The rupture pilot, fearing a podkill, ejected from his rupture and got away. I re-entered the belt and boarded the still smouldering rupture and piloted it away! I tasked one of my camera drones to take a picture of the still-on-fire rupture.

Details of the rifter kill.

My Wolf versus Deimos
Still chuckling from getting a 'new' rupture I docked in Gusandall. One of my contacts informed me that there was a ship inside the Angel plex. Now, normally, it is Kane Rizzel who patrols these plexes; ensuring them that it is clean of all interlopers. He wasn't around so I took the job. The wolf would be perfect, with it's formidable armament it will shred any other frigate or assault frigate into scrap. Feeling confident, I undocked and engaged the warp engines. It was a pity that I bounced off the warp gate into the plex and even worse luck that i fell into the embrace of a waiting deimos. Too big to go in, the heavy assault cruiser was sitting there with the sole purpose of snagging anyone trying to get into the complex. Fair play to him, I would do the same. My bad luck he snared me. My wolf did not last long as the hybrid blasters punched into it's frame and his five drones screaming all over it, buzz-sawing it to death. I was too close, in fact, I was inside the deimos' optimal kill-zone. Mercifully, it was over quick and here's the details for everyone's amusement.

My Rupture versus Cyclone, Crusader and Incursus
Still smarting from the loss of the wolf, I wanted revenge and Gusandall was proving to be most active. Even though the systems from Gusandall to Evati had pirate HQs and roaming gangs and solo operators; we still get many, many pilots and corporations going through it. Providing a constant source of combat but more importantly, isk. So, it was with interest that I spotted some new faces in local and undocked in my rupture (no, it wasn't the one I liberated) and proceeded to do what all pirates do: scan and get a closer, more accurate location of the prey. I picked up a cyclone, a rifter, a crusader, an incursus and another rupture. I had no idea if all the ships were in a pos or in a safe or running a mission. Not many pirates were active today, probably sleeping off the night before.

I managed to scan and pin down the crusader it to the top belt but the rupture, without sensor boosters, was woefully in-adequate for tackling the speedy interceptor.

Sitting in my scanning perch, high above the system plane, I managed to pin down the crusader a second time but no, I was too slow. I whipped into the top-most belt. Like most systems, the top belt (usually designated as 1-1) was the main area that people visited first. It's also the most obvious location for baits and traps and counter-traps.

I thought I was being smart and laying down the trap. Little did I know I was the bait and kill.

A cyclone came into the belt, plasma streaming off it's bludgeon-like hull. Excellent, I thought - time to chew into a battle cruiser then. I readied myself and locked him, reloading EMP into my auto canons. Then the crusader came back in, eagerness evident in it's hostile attack pattern and to add to my woes, a fanged incursus joined them. My ECM drones screeched out and attempted to do their work on the cyclone.

OK, not too bad but I better get some hits in I thought and I volleyed the cyclone. The cyclone replied with it's own volley, this time from it's much larger 425mm auto canons. My shields were ripped off in one salvo.

I wasn't expecting that. The cyclone pilot quite clearly knew what he was doing and I was past the point of being worried.

The Crusader was buzzing around me and the incursus was blasting at me as well. At least I wasn't jammed but the plated Ruppie couldn't cope with the DPS and the cyclone was FAST. I hit my own micro warp drive to get some distance and managed to get away from the incursus but the cyclone was on me and maintained it's range. It had a micro warp drive too.

I died very quickly.

Fair play to the other pilots but losing three ships was a blow and humbling. Hope my luck changes soon!