Saturday 20 November 2010

Service with a smile

Mustrum Ridcully did a lot for rare species. For one thing, he kept them rare.
-- (Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies)

Attacking a ship and engaging in Piracy is not as easy as lock and pop, as I've mentioned before there are a lot of little things to consider, but it's not often you think to yourself "Kane, you might not have enough ammo for this"

The Cunning Man, a Rifter class frigate, has been rebuilt and like many of his class before him, he is lean, mean and ready for action. In familiar territory he stalks the black sky, Eifer his hunting ground and a good hunting ground it has been.

A Hurricane appears on scanner, quick and efficient use of the directional scanner concludes it is not in an asteroid belt, but is close to planet V, it appears to be running an anomaly. The onboard system scanner starts a rather long cycle but eventually it reveals a solid hit on a low class Angel anomaly. Again, using the directional scanner, the Hurricane is pinpointed in the direction of said anomaly.

A Hurricane is not the best prey for the Rifter, even a semi competent fit would be enough to chase the Rifter off, but, there is always some idiot who hath not a clue, there is always someone who braves low security space unprepared for what lies beneath. This particular pilot is young, far too young to be flying a battle cruiser into lowsec.

I warp into the anomaly and land about 29 clicks off, need to close the distance sharpish and get under his guns but maybe if I'm sneaky he won't notice me amongst the rats.

Kane can be very sneaky, sneaky as a sneak with a Masters Degree in sneaking from sneaky university if I must and I saunter over to the Hurricane. I lock him up and introduce myself.

"Hi, I'm Kane and I will be your Pirate this fine evening"

I open up and he engages right back, the fight is on but I'm easily orbiting under his tracking and I dispatch the three medium drones he launches with ease.

Suspicions of low skills confirmed, but even then, I still have to kill this thing... And kill I must as he refuses to answer the phone to be ransomed.

Now, there's a twist!

There always is...

I treat my Rifters like disposable razors and as such carry a single load each of Barrage and three flavours of Faction ammo for my autocannons, I also carry two loads of rockets. In most situations this would be enough for any fight I'm involved in...

By the time I'd run out of RF EMP I was starting to get nervous as he was at half shields.

I'd broken his shields and got him to about 75% armour by the time the RF Fusion ran out.

RF Phased Plasma took him to half structure, I'd run out of rockets but don't stop me now.

With Barrage loaded and my guns about to melt he explodes brilliantly.

I had a few offers of help, but I declined, I was riding solo. I had a few offers for ammo to be dropped off, but again I declined because solo is solo.

Yes his fit was a joke but a kill is a kill and you'll never know what's inside the piƱata until you give it a whack.

6 comments:

Benoit CozmikR5 Gauthier said...

Thank you for relieving New Eden of this eye-sore!

Panthe Tek said...

Your ammo reservoir is just brilliant!

Anya Sulii said...

I don't condone piracy but that fit places that kill squarely into 'Darwin Award' territory.

Theo d'or said...

You know, eve if you had died, it's always worth the shot, I reckon.

Thorvik said...

I echo the prevailing sentiment. Good riddance of the abomination. I hope ppl refuse to sell him another cane until he ca actually fit one properly.

Art said...

I like to call this fishing... The other day I was keeping an eye on a gate when lo and behold a guy was on auto pilot in his fully fited caracal. Three 425mm autocannon volleys later and it was all over.