Rifter days

Brutus has been pretty busy the last week or so but before we get onto that lets get the last loss out the way. It was a classic death by blob. Occupational hazard in Amamake I guess, take on one ship and end up fighting eight. But was it really necessary to drop TWO falcons on one rifter? Oh well, you've got to laugh. To be honest though it wasn't just bad luck as I know the corp well and should have known better...

Still, one of the reasons I love flying rifters so much is that they're cheap and fun. I've never believed in the 'bigger is better' ideas that drive the rush to battleships. In my experience the amount of fun you have is inversely related to the size of ship you fly and it wasn't long before a new rust coloured ship was heading out into the black.

Since that loss there have been 17 ship kills and 9 pods squished and boy have there been some good fights. It started off low key with Darveris in his Cormorant. I was doing the usual 'cycle through safespots' routine in Amamake when I spotted a group of 3 ships at a belt: a Cormorant, Incursus and a Magnate. I warped in on them and primaried the Cormorant and almost instantly his mates warped out leaving him to his fate. It didn't take long, even firing Barrage, and I also finished off his pod. The other kills that day weren't very interesting - I even killed a Reaper off out of sheer boredom - but the next day was to be different.

The first kill was Thanndor in his rifter. I'd been hunting down an Incursus in Gulmorogod when I scanned both the Incursus and a rifter at a belt. Warp is engaged and as the bubble collapses I find Thanndor under attack by denakita in the Incursus. I primary Thanndor hoping to get on two kills but denakita warps out before the rifter explodes. Bad choice in retrospect as denakita would have been the better kill but you can't get them all right.

Later that day saw me roaming through Egghelende... Now I'd like to be able to claim that the fight with Ghostmana121 came about as a result of great scanning work and decisive action by me - but I'd be lying. I'll spare you the details but what happenned was that I warped to zero on a planet by mistake and there only a few km away was Ghostmana121 in a Caracal. Oh well, lock. Again, no EMP, which could have been a costly error as it seemed to take an age to eat through his shield - even with the guns overloaded - while my own shield tank was starting to melt away. Then he launched his drones. Thankfully though they were of the T1 variety and quickly dispatched although it gave his shields precious breathing space. But with the guns back on the Caracal, slowly but surely, I began to win the war of attrition and once I was through his shield he went down fast. 'gf' was exchanged and we had a good discussion afterwards. He was surprised by the amount of damage my rifter could take but then he'd been using Navy Terror Assult missiles - luckily for me!

The next day saw an even closer fight...