My kill-board stats suck at the moment. It's to be expected for a character that's around 2 months old, in a corp of other characters that are around the same age. It's hard to find (winnable!) pvp at the best of times and a moderately skilled solo (or very small gang) Rifter isn't exactly going to set the world on fire - even though it can provide excellent kindling.
Whilst looking for ideas for ways to find targets I came across the my loot your tears blog. I've already tried some suicide ganking which is entertaining; but since I haven't yet decided whether to move fully into low and null security space yet, maintaining a sec status greater than -2.0 involves more pve than I like, so spurred on by the Suddenly Ninja's shenanigans outlined in the blog I thought I'd try some griefing.
I've had to change the modus operandi a little from that described; for one I can't yet scan with this character. That means that griefing mission runners is out of the picture for now, leaving only miners that are jetcanning and players that are prepared to loot my wrecks and cans available as targets. Since I also don't have an Orca capable alt (I'm working on that) if I'm going to swap ships it needs to be at a station. Of course my choice of ships is quite limited at the moment anyway.
Initially I decided to use a thrasher to flip a couple of miners in the hopes of getting engagements but that ship must have been a little scary because none were forthcoming for a long while until somebody with a Myrmidon decided to bite; I flipped their can, they attacked my flashy thrasher and took out half my armour with drones before I could warp away. Whilst I headed off to the station for repairs, they reshipped into an industrial and was back at the site collecting "their" ore for my return. On a hunch they'd be back with the Myrmidon (knowing the Thrasher was no match for it), I reshipped into an Assault Frigate - and my hunch was correct. No words were exchanged after these kills, so no tears were collected.
I think I might grow to enjoy griefing.
As you say, at this early stage winning solo and small gang fights will be pretty hard (I mean like combat combat, not griefing combat). Winning against people with better skills and ships will likely require 1 of 2 things: 1) a specific setup to counter another setup, such as a Wolf vs basically any laser frigate or 2) numbers, ie wolfpack mentality.
ReplyDeleteGood to see that you aren't letting your sp/isk situation stop you from having fun though.
Thanks for the comment! I prefer combat combat to griefing combat at the moment, I think - although I do suck at it :)
ReplyDeleteI'll certainly be trying to put your suggestions into practice - I'm still at the stage where I'm so stoked to find a target I'll rush it without thinking things through enough. I definitely need to engage the brain before the fight more rather than after it; not that there's anything wrong with learning from mistakes of course.
I'm hoping that ammo + resist selection will become second nature with enough practice and I can stop thinking what to do and just do what needs to be done, but I feel a long way from that at the moment.
Practice makes perfect as they say, so here's hoping I can practice a lot very soon :)
For future reference/posterity/whatever, Wensley has made a post about finding targets to his Rifter Drifter blog: http://www.rifterdrifter.com/2012/02/finding-the-good-fights/
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