First impressions

After a month of training, I was finally able to fly my Rifter out for the first time yesterday. I've spent a few hours making bookmarks in the neighboring systems and looking for potential prey.

A stable of Rifters

While the Heimatar/Ingunn low-sec seemed full of targets at first glance, I was disappointed to discover that almost all of them were macro haulers. If you're a fan of gate camping, the Ingunn system is the place for you - a steady stream of traffic goes through both gates all the time.

After learning to ignore all the industrials, freighters, newbie ships and shuttles on my scanner, I found a Hulk mining in Hrondedir. I quickly jumped to the belt he was in, scrambled him and started with my attack. Within seconds, the pilot unleashed a horde of Hammerhead II drones on me. Fortunately, medium drones have a harder time hitting small targets like frigates, so I did not die in a matter of seconds. I tried shifting my fire to the drones, webbing them one at a time, but my skills are just too low at the moment to kill them fast, so the Hulk pilot was able to take them in, causing me to lose my lock. With my Rifter in low structure, I bailed and docked for the duration of the aggro timer.

A mining Hulk (image by Ancient Gaming Noob)

I went for a quick spin to the Molden Heath low sec, again finding little targets. A cyno frigate seemed like an easy kill, but I didn't notice the nearby gate sentry guns and my first Rifter went down.

Trying to get to the wreckage with a new ship was an education in aggresion timer dynamics, too - fire from stations and sentry guns taught me to just stay put for the duration of the timer next time.

I found a Catalyst ratting in Istodard, but the pilot was alert and warped out before I could get into scrambler range. If this happens again in the future, I'll try fitting an AB+disruptor instead of the MWD+scrambler combo and see if that works better.