Yesterday night was an interesting night. Genesis lowsec has been an interesting place anyway lately lots of new faces in the area they brought torches & pitchforks and seem intent on putting the place alight. I’ve seen more cyno-fitted battlecruisers and battleships in the last week then in the 6 months prior. You think (super)caps and (titan bridge) hotdrops are bad in null? Come live in low for a while where you don’t have the option of putting up a cyno-jammer or rape-caging a staging POS. The ever increasing numbers and therefore decreased value of caps and supercaps means they are going to become a problem in lowsec too, people are becoming more and more willing to field them as losing them is less of big deal then it used to be.

Alas, I digress I was going to write about my frigate adventures not about how badly CCP needs to drastically increase the cost, risk and especially time involved in producing caps & supercaps.

Not possessing any great of love for gate-camping already -it’s boring and no sport at all- what little attraction ‘cheap kills’ might still hold to me is quickly extinguished when the camp gets hot dropped every 30 minutes. So I undocked Carmen my trusty Dramiel and headed out towards Aridia where over the previous weekend I had sniped a Hulk kill. There have generally been a number of people from Purge alliance out and about mining and care-bearing in the area recently, so it seemed like a sensible place to go and hunt!

After entering Kenahebab I pick up an Arbitrator on dscan and quickly located it in a belt, I enter warp wishing very hard it would turn out not to be neut fitted as that might get ugly. I land 25km off with an absolutely massive asteroid separating the space between us, the arby manages to align out and dock up before I can get in range 🙁

I turn my ship around and decide to head back to Genesis, I spend some time dodging a Space Monkies fleet that was heading in the same direction but short of their tail scout I saw no more of them.

I enter Keri and on my dscan I pick up an Abaddon and a Thrasher, now Keri is a tiny system so I quickly narrow the battleship down to planet 3 belt 2 as I land in the belt the baddon warps off, aligned to the next belt… A belt ratting battleship in lowsec now there’s something that made the endangered species list years ago. I have no mind to let them get off said list, so I give chase and notify my allies on teamspeak that I am about to tackle a battleship in a belt and could use some extra guns. Surely enough I point the Baddon and as it deploys warrior II’s, I lock those up and start taking them out while frantically punching dscan (now set to close range) as I am worried about the Thrasher. A dual prop fitted Dramiel (or any fast frigate) isn’t really under any threat from a battleship as long as you maintain close orbit, but a Thrasher landing on top of me could quickly ruin my day…

As I finish killing the last warrior II backup arrives in the form of an Ishkur and another Dramiel, the Baddon slowly starts dying and the Thrasher would have been here by now if it meant to intervene. It takes a while but it enters structure readily enough and then suddenly the other Dramiel pilot starts getting hit, wtf? He’s a little far out at +/- 9km but large guns surely shouldn’t be able to track him, nonetheless he dies, the killmail reveals why; medium guns… [killmail]. So we kill the battleship but lose a Dramiel in the process, still we’re quite pleased with the end result.

Having resumed my journey after sitting out my timer I find 3 Rifters in Lela with similar names and local informs me there are also 3 capsuleers of the same corporation. So I pose myself the question; Am I that brave? Three Rifters v.s. one Dramiel? So I started thinking through the scenario, if they were all web fitted they’d surely be able to hold me in place, even if my EC-300’s could successfully jam one out of the fight periodically it would still be a though fight. I decided that while I’d probably loose the Dramiel I might be able to take two of them with me, besides it would be a glorious death so what the hell, lets roll!

That turned out at little harder then I had hoped though, the Rifters seemed to be evading me, so I made myself a target and sat still on the 1/10 ded plex entry and waited to see if they would go for me. My waiting was in vain. So I asked in local what gives? Surely 3 vs 1 they’d be willing to engage? The reply was negative (though friendly) they weren’t so sure of their chances vs. a Dramiel or flashy red pirate actively looking for a fight.

But I really wanted to fight now, my mind was set on engaging these three, so I offered to come back in something with less of a reputation then my current vessel. Off I went to grab another ship, on the way to a nearby ‘garage’ system I pondered upon what exactly to grab, I settled on a Vengeance. Since if I wasn’t likely to be moving much anyway I might as well bring something with a good tank and as far as frigate hulls go the Vengeance is the king of tankiness.

Finding them still in Lela I offer to fight them in the Vengeance, they express concern about me having friends nearby, while this is not the case I understand the concern, so I offer to fight them in the 1/10 plex where only other frigates and destroyers would be able to follow. They tell me to meet them at planet VIII however, challenge accepted, so I warp the planet at 10km and wait.

The Rifters show up on grid and land really close, we’re all within 5km of each other, I checked the pilot ages in local before and quickly scramble and web the youngest, my overheated autocannons start spitting bullets at it and it goes down before I enter armour. That’s a lot better then I had dared hope for. I move on to the second oldest pilot overheat my burner an manage to get right on top, this one is considerably thougher, but finding that nobody is neuting me I realise I might well win this if i can get it down before I hit half armour. It pops as my armour hits 25%. I overheat my repper and point my guns at the last remaining adversary this one is also properly tanked, I have to stop overheating my guns to prevent melting them down at this point, the final Rifter pops and good fights are exchanged in local [killmail]. Three Rifters down, I find my self in a state of mild disbelief, I won, I actually won!

While warping to a safe in a state of mild euphoria and still somewhat disbelieving of my own success, I spend some time chatting to my erstwhile adversaries who turnout to be quite a friendly merry bunch. I decide to leave their wrecks unlooted and ignore their corpies iteron 2 on the way out, tonight was a good night I decide to end it on the high and head home to dock up.

God I love EVE so much sometimes, fights like these are what makes this game into meticulously designed digital crack.