Back to the Basics

So living out in null sec has been kind of boring to me. Most of the CTAs are called when Im at work, and the ones that do get called when I am home are so late in the evening, Id have to bail 30 minutes in to head to bed for work in the morning. I know, Iknow! These are just excuses to not participate in alliance ops to some people. Except that I want to pvp. So I decided to go back to the basics of what I know can provide that fun pvp for myself.


Firstly,  I needed a small set of rules for myself. I needed to not go all blinged out so that I wasnt so large a blob magnet as I had become in my Vengeance. I also wanted to be able to easily do something repeatable so I could re-learn pvp. I decided to go the route of buying 20 ships and fits and exploding them all. I tried this before with the Punisher and the Vengeance, but the punisher plan only lasted 3 or 4 ships and the vengeance was always getting upgraded after each loss usually. With these thoughts in mind, I decided to go with an old classic: the Rifter.

Buying, fitting and shipping all 20 ships and fitting was a small fortune, just so you know. Any newb who joins New Eden purely for pvp should invest in a single plex to sell just to get the funds needed to do this 20 ship plan. I didnt, but I also already have capital to use. Just saying, though...Do the 20 ship plan!

Back on topic, I began my journey by flying around Heild and the surrounding systems some. People seemed to be afk or unwilling to fight me in Hrokkur and Hrober. In Bosena, there was a gate camp of cruisers, frigs, and I think battlecruisers, but I escaped quickly enough to not be on their radar on the way in. On the way out however, I had warped to the Bos gate in Heild, tabbed out, began reading and forgotten about EvE being up. That is, until the shield alarms went blaring in my ears. And soon the armor and hull alarms followed with the explosion of Rifter #1. Thank you for the warm welcome back to the region with your Ferox, Fried!!

And then I popped a cyno ship in Hrober...Almost had his Ark too! Only thing with this was that my safety was on green for some reason. No idea why, thought I had it turned off all the time. So in my confusion and confounded mess of thoughts, I had forgotten to align for when the ship is exploded. And so, Rifter #2 explodes.

Now, you're most likely thinking that this is all pointless drivel, but its not. Because these werent actually real challenging fights. In both situations, the victor came out ahead because of overwhelming odds in their favor. Battlecruisers and Sentry guns vs a rifter usually have that effect. However, I was able to get a 1v1 for a former r1fta pilot who I had actually helped learn one or two things about the game, I think.

Naughty Cargo was in a Jag, but quickly accepted a 1v1 challenge in t1 frig combat. After downsizing her ship, we met up in a safe spot and commenced our very well fought war. She began blasting into my shields, evaporating them. I did similar to hers, as we're both armor tanked! As the damage seeps into my armor, the repper gets overheated to provide quicker reps. Her armor was dropping, but so was mine, I needed to get closer! So instead of trying to manually fly closer from 3km, I hit approach, and turned off my ab! I believe she kept her ab going, but was either orbiting or keeping range closely as well. This had the effect of increasing my damage as well as hers, but I was slightly ahead in this race to hull breaches! Very quickly, her armor was reduced to 0% while my repper helped maintain armor strength. As her hull was breached, I saw the great explosion of her ship graced me with its beautiful warm glow. A good fight, indeed!

And the final story of the evening, the Great Zodiac Black asked if I was still up for some fun. So after making repairs in the SartMart of Bosena, I jumped out to Heild. Meeting up at the sun, we began our deadly dance. In this fight, I had to appoach him from 40km away. I didnt think of it before it was too late, but I should have tried to spiral in, but I dont think it would have made much difference. Once in range, I went straight for the 650m mark. Having fusion loaded, I was hoping Zodiac would be armor tanked. Unfortunely, I was wrong in hope, and he was thickly shield tanked. As my shields left, I bit into his shields a tiny bit. As my armor was torn asunder, I tickled his shields at 50%. By the time my hull had breached and the pod inside was exposed to space due to the death of Rifter #3, his shields had reached 30%...maybe.

Overall, a great evening of PvP and relearning the basics!

On a side note, I need a banner for my corp killboard. The current one is funny, but we would prefer a corporate one. Payment in ISK, EvEMail if you can make a quality banner for killboards =) Thank you!