Lowsec Lovin'

Last post I hinted at a greatly improved ISK income thanks to my newly acquired flagship, the Lieutenant Dan. The Lieutenant Dan is a battlecruiser-class Myrmidon, specializing in drone warfare and armor repair. Over the months I’ve been training up my drone skills as a Gallente pilot and I’m really starting to see the power of a well-stocked drone boat. With the right fitting I can tank nearly all level three missions and my drones do almost all of the work allowing me to do other things while my drones effectively complete the missions themselves. I still find missions to be extremely annoying and repetitive but at least I have the ability to focus elsewhere while maintaining a pretty substantial ISK income.

So now that I’m able to run level three combat missions with ease I have a rather large budget to throw at my pvp ships. Traditionally I usually use tech 1 modules on my favorite frigate, the Incursus; but I decided to live a little more luxuriously and purchased five fully fitted tech II Incursus. These bad boys (Jenny IV through IX) each sported three Light Ion Blaster IIs and a Hobgoblin II drone for a total of 119 damage per second using the tech II Void S ammo. With Micro Warp Drives powering their propulsion systems, the new and improved Jenny Incursus fleet is the fastest I’ve flown and also the most deadly at close range.

Strangely enough, I decided to undock in a completely different frigate on my latest lowsec roam. The As Stupid Does is a Minmitar Rifter and features three turret hardpoints as well as space for a missile launcher. It packs a mean punch and I decided to buy one long ago if I ever felt like flying something held together by duct tape (Minmitar are known for their ability to “manufacture” ships out of leftover scrap).

In the As Stupid Does I began to scout lowsec systems around my homebase in Reisen. After a few minutes I noticed a pilot with low skillpoints flying a Magnate frigate around the planets in my current system, Tasti. I knew she was flying the Magnate because she forgot to rename her ship after assembling it and using my extreme intelligence I determined she was a new player by sorting through her employment history. Finding a noob in a squishy frigate outside of highsec is a pretty rare occasion so you can imagine the excitement I felt when I pinned her down at the first planet in the system. Unfortunately I landed one hundred kilometers away from her and she slipped through my eager fingers. Cursing myself I warped to a safe spot and tried to scan her down but couldn’t locate her frigate anywhere. So close and I couldn’t nab her!

With an empty feeling in my gut I moved on to the next system and continued to search for some easy prey but only succeeded in finding a few ships locked behind a POS shield. I moved on to the next system and repeated my search in vain. After a few more empty systems I turned back towards home. Upon entering Tasti I did the usual sweep through local chat and yelled several celebratory expletives when I found my earlier prey still in-system. Her name was April Myst and she was begging for someone to send her back to the clone vats.

I immediately began a sweep on the directional scanner and narrowed her down to the same planet as before. From our previous encounter (or lack thereof) I knew she was probably sitting directly on the warp-in point and I tried my best to land on top of her. I mashed my warp-drive button and prayed to the internet spaceship gods that April be unaware of her impending doom, courtesy of moi. My heart was pounding as I exited the warp tunnel and I shouted a few more celebratory expletives when April Myst appeared directly in front of me at only twenty kilometers!

As I slammed on my afterburner activation key and locked on to April’s Magnate I let a devious grin spread across my face. Within a few short seconds I shut her ship down with my stasis webifier and warp scrambler and began to tear into her defenses with my autocannons and missiles. Her tank was minimal and in no time I managed to kill April Myst.

God I love lowsec.

-Floyd Foggytreks