I'm enjoying myself in Jakanerva. There seems to be a good supply of jetcan miners. As usual I'm scanning the belts and find a target - some guy mining in a Cormorant and dumping ore into a can. He's a new character in a new corp.
Acting as any self-respecting griefer would, I swoop in and flip his can - hoping for at least one weapon on the Cormorant I hang around for a little while, but no dice. Maybe he'll be braver once I'm not in his face so I warp to my safe just off the belt and wait. After a few minutes a new ship arrives at the belt - a Drake of all things.
This is interesting. The Drake pilot isn't much older than the miner, and certainly looks too young to be flying a Drake well. I've been involved in fights with Drakes before and they fail to damage Rifters significantly other than with their drones (of course this one could be fit specifically to kill this frigate but I don't think the pilot will have thought to do that). Whilst I'm a bit wary of drones after previous escapades, I don't think the pilot has enough training time to have decent drone skills and a Drake. It's worth a shot...
Back to the belt I warp. We watch each other for a minute - long enough for me to check my aggression timer to make sure I do still have corp aggression (I do). Then he locks me up and starts shooting at me. His damage is negligible so I return fire and put a point on him, still a little worried that the Cormorant might have something up his sleeve, then the Cormorant warps off.
Even badly fit Drakes have quite a lot of tank to chew through in a Rifter so we're both still at the belt pewing when the Cormorant pilot returns in a Badger. I don't know what they're thinking but the badger tries to steal my ore, and I was going to use that to pay for some ammo! I worked damn hard for it. Point is on the Drake, he's not damaging me, so the now-flashy red Badger dies (I assume all the ore wouldn't fit in in one go, hence the empty cargo hold).
More minutes pass, and with the Drake's tank broken and its armour getting low, the Drake pilot ejects. I can't fly a Drake, and I want this kill anyway, so I keep pewing away as the pilot starts talking to me in local. I don't know if he thought he wouldn't be on the lossmail if he ejected, or was trying some kind of diversionary tactic. I'd guess he was hoping his buddy could return in the Cormorant and I'd transfer my attention to him so he could get back in the Drake whilst my attention was elsewhere. His buddy did return in the Cormorant, but I ignored it and continued to shoot the pilot-less drake (the Drake pilot was now directing the Cormorant pilot via local, but the destroyer was doing nothing) until the Drake was no more.
Since the Cormorant was still doing nothing, it died too.
The Drake pilot convos me and asks what kind of bounty I'd like. He ended up being cool about the whole thing and added 3m isk to my bounty. I give him some advice to avoid this kind of thing in the future, whether it'll be taken or not I guess we'll see.
After chatting a while, we part and I return to Reisen to have a bit of a break - it's not until this point that I actually look at the Drake killmail... *facepalm*
km sure explains alot, but it takes guts to shoot up a class or two like you did. I can't remember the last time I heard of anyone soloing a Drake in a Rifter.
ReplyDeleteI was lucky with this kill I think... very lucky :) I'm pretty much having a go at anything and everything at the moment. Sometimes it works, sometimes not but it's a good learning experience. I think this drake kill is one of my favourites so far, I'll have to also write about my losses so I can jog my memory in future about how not to do things, in addition to stroking my ego with the kills like I have been doing!
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