Rifters are Superior

Ever since I wrote my first article i've been going out almost every day in a Rifter, getting a decent number of kills, never really having enough cargohold to haul back as much as I want. I would go far out into 0.0 space, I've gotten a lot of practice with the scanner, I can find a mining op in a system within 1-2 minutes average. I haven't gotten to one fast enough to catch the logged out covetors, but I have gotten to them fast enough to pop all their ore cans before they bring their backup combat ships. More then once I have engaged a hauler or attacked a can right infront of a hostile battleship, kill it and warp out safely simply because their lock times are so high. I am learning more about what ships I can engage and what I should avoid. The alliances in the south love me- I know because they speak to me so much in Local.

But back to business, after a lot of activity similar to that described in my first article(ganking haulers in a rifter), I decided to look for NPCers, abandoned ships, anything that I could destroy or steal. I found several battleships atacking NPC pirates, but unfortunately I was not able to survive the damage inflicted by most of them. I tried fighting a Raven, but the torpedos did too much damage for me to survive till the end of the fight, and the nosferatu took away my ability to warp scramble or outrun torpedoes with a Microwarp Drive. Rarely did I ever find an NPCing ship other then a Raven but whenever I did, I always gave it a try.

I came across a Cyclone in a belt, fighting three Angel Battleships. I noted the lack of tackling support on the part of the Angel fleet, so I decided to lend a hand. I warped into the belt and the first thing I saw was one of the Angels exploding. I plan to avenge its death. I turn on my Microwarp Drive, scrambler, and(relatively ineffective) guns and set a course straight to the cyclone and ram its side hard. The Cyclone was shield tanking and for the longest time it looked like my Angel comrades were ineffective against the Battlecruiser, but I knew that the capacitor cannot hold forever with a shield tank.

I was in a race against the clock. I knew that this Cyclone was a member of a large alliance and I knew, from past experience with alliances, that reinforcements will arrive soon(usually in quantities of ten or so). Luckily, local was still empty aside from the two of us.

Two minutes passed. I was running low on ammo, and the Cyclone's shields still registered as full on my ship's targeting sensors. I focused on ramming and scrambling this battlecruiser while my dual Battleship support worked on his shields. The cyclone's guns are surprisingly inneffective against my Rifter, after the Cyclone found the tracking ability on the guns were too low, they were soon switched back to the Angel battleships.

Local increases by one. open the scanner and fervently search for signals of an approaching ship. Could I kill it while I held down the cyclone? Should I run now? All these questions raced through my mind as I kept an eye on the cyclone's shields, and my Angel support, just incase some friendly fire breaks out.

Local decreases by one. The scanner told me nothing about what the pilot was in, but now it didn't matter, they are gone now. The cyclone's shields begin to buckle. I watch the top red bar with excitement as it slowly dropped to 50%, jumps momentarily to 75%, and plummets to 0% as the active hardners and shield boosters switch off. the shields fail and the armor and structure soon follow.

Local decreases by one more as the frozen corpse is scooped to my cargohold. The Angels stole my killmail! Their treachery is furthered when I see red brackets appear around their icons- they started firing on me while I was scooping loot! I consider warping out first, but before I do I notice they are doing no damage. Clearly their transversial is too high for their battleship sized guns, every shot misses me. I return to scooping loot. Most of the items from the cyclone were tech1 named, and despite not having a list of items destroyed I don't believe the cyclone was tech2 fitted.

Local increases by one. I finish sorting through my loot, The rifter's cargohold is yet again too small so I jettison a can and fill it with trash. I target it and start to blow it up when a typhoon warps into the belt. Even after it lands I wait long enough to destroy the can before running, I know a battleship can't lock me fast enough.

Local decreases by one as I jump through the gate leading out of the system. On the other side there are 5 battleships and cruisers about to jump through. I laugh as their inferior tech2 ships and fittings utterly fail to destroy my tech1 frigate. I escape free that night, hull intact and wallet slightly richer.

Cleared for publication by: Ander