The odyssey of living and dying in low sec has been a pretty successful.  Although there are mixed results waiting for those who might choose to go down this route in Eve.  Remember my objectives have been to make enough ISK to be able to continue to freely roam around low sec and PvP as I go.  I am not interested in making loads of ISK, just enough to help me live and survive where I am.  As I do that I can maximise my skills for the Frigates that I am flying rather than get myself into bigger and bigger ships where I need to have more and more ISK to sustain my losses.

The first thing to note about this approach is that a decent corporation which is active in the same field that you want to fly in seems to me to be essential.  Whilst flying around solo meant that there was a lot of targets around. Joining Autocannons Anonymous in the Minmatar Militia has effectively halved those targets.  However, by doing so this has given me a bit of breathing space in low sec, there are now blues around who ‘in theory’ won’t shoot me!  This is really useful because it has given me access to a group of like minded individuals that I can fly with should I choose to.

The breathing space that having friendly’s around is very important because when you fly around in Factional Warfare there are not that many solo targets you can shoot.  People tend to be in small gangs roaming and plexing –  they may pop open a bunker and then either hold it or attack it in order to swing control of the system in the direction of their faction.  Defending these bunkers has already given me some really decent fights.  I got my first kill in factional warfare in one last night.  In the next patch “Inferno” CCP are bringing some amazing changes to Factional Warfare which is really going to make this aspect of the game fascinating and a lot of fun.  I am going to write about these proposed changes in my next post.

Anyway what has been happening?  The approach I have adopted is as follows:

1) Join corporation ops – we have had to engage in a bit of PvP with the corporation and this has involved popping a few POCO’s.  The ops have been good sport mostly because it has involved scouting Amamake.

2) Roam through low sec to different locations and scout for targets of opportunity.  By this I am looking for solo fights with ships I can have a good fight with.

3) If there is an open Factional Warfare fleet join it and participate.  This has been the source of a lot of amusement and mayhem.

4) Kill ‘Rats’ this involves looking for decent pirate targets on asteriod belts whilst looking for people to fight.  Finding these can easily make enough ISK to cover frigate losses and this combined with PvP loot has enabled me to break even this week.

The results so far:

These figures look like not a lot has been happening.  But the truth is there has been a lot of action, we have been involved in a three evenings working on clearing and defending POCOs in Bosboger.  In those ops I have been scouting and watching the threats we might have been facing.  This has left a further three evenings and an afternoon of roaming and factional warfare.

In the operation where the first loss happened we were in a factional warfare fleet defending Kourmonen when we chased an Amarr fleet into Kamela.  I was shooting at what must have been 3 to four targets, not one of whom got destroyed, then my ickle Rifter was blown to bits within seconds.  The Amarr held the gate, with Kamela being their home system they could easily reinforce from their station.  I felt a bit sick to have got in there, to follow the FC’s orders and not get anything for the loss.  But that is how the cookie crumbles.  From this point forward I focused on raising ISK by ratting and roaming solo.  This worked quite well and in one evening I had made back the ISk from my loss.

Then came this loss.  I have a good few scan points around Bosboger and so can locate targets quite quickly.  I found Octavian Bruti alone at one of the belts and started to burn towards him.  He wasn’t that old as a character so I figured this would be the closest thing I could get to test out how I had been developing.  I started to burn towards him when Kado Tuss appeared on the scene.  Well to be frank at this point I knew the chances of killing one of them was going to be small.  But hey “feck it” I thought lets give this a go.  So I continued to burn towards them.  Octavian agressed first and I started to chew into his shield.  When I had him down to armour Kado then started to shoot me.  I had Octavian into structure and going down really quickly when my Rifter exploded.  Damn!  I was so close.  I was overheating my guns and burning around him like crazy.

This was a useful learning experience.  First of all did I choose the right target?  The Tristan was chucking out the right amount of dps and it probably had a big shield tank but would the Rifter have been a quicker kill?  What if I had used combat boosters?  I suspect I will have killed one of these guys but the problem is that these boosters cost twice as much as the ship.  The fact I lost another Rifter did piss me off but the thing is I can see that I am improving as the skills develop coupled with the knowledge developed off the people I have fought with in low sec.  But what about my fit?  Maybe a different fit would have been better?

Here is the fit I had:

[Rifter, Efilant]

Gyrostabilizer II
Adaptive Nano Plating II
200mm Reinforced Steel Plates II

Fleeting Progressive Warp Scrambler I1MN Afterburner II
‘Langour’ Drive Disruptor I

Small ‘Gremlin’ Power Core Disruptor I
150mm Light AutoCannon II, BARRAGE S
150mm Light AutoCannon II, BARRAGE S
150mm Light AutoCannon II, BARRAGE S

Small Projectile Ambit Extension I
Small Projectile Collision Accelerator I
Small Projectile Metastasis Adjuster I

Would this have been any better?

[Rifter, Rifter rifta docs]

Damage Control II
200mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates I
Small Armor Repairer II

1MN Afterburner II
X5 Prototype Engine Enervator
J5b Phased Prototype Warp Scrambler I

150mm Light AutoCannon II, EMP S
150mm Light AutoCannon II, EMP S
150mm Light AutoCannon II, EMP S
E5 Prototype Energy Vampire

Small Projectile Ambit Extension I
Small Projectile Ambit Extension I
Small Projectile Burst Aerator I

In the second fit I would have sacrificed some DPS (about 15%) for better resists and a better tank.  I suspect against the two people I was fighting that I might have been able to kill them?

What do you think?