Well, you know what they say about plans...

Anyway, yesterday I had the day off work so decided that I'd get into a fight no matter what, after picking up some new T2 200mm ACs from Dodixie.

I had 15 jumps to make, I was dropping safes in each system, checking belts for miners for can flipping (which got me some free ammo) and keeping an eye out for war targets but got no bites at all, A corpmate was also on trying to track down a WT but DT beat us to it.

I jumped back in after DT and decided that as it was quiet I'd see about scouting for a high-sec PI alt to get him into a 2 system low-sec pocket near his base to colonise a new planet, just as I was leaving the station in Balle I spotted a WT in local, so I decided to see if I could find him and undocked... I almost bumped into a red flashy Talos who was docking!

He set his drones loose immediately, I waited until my session timer expired and then docked.

I asked in corp about my chances with a Talos (versus my Rifter) and was told I should be ok, so long as I took out his drones first, stayed nice and tight to him.

I brought my alt into the station and saw the Talos was sitting 35km off with his drones out. I had an insta warp off sorted (or so I thought) so I planned to leave station, warp off and back again to see if I could land close to him. Vague plan sorted I undocked only to find him 9k away and closing, looked like he had decided to dock.

Then I stuffed up -

I webbed him and hit orbit at 1k (I had planned to change my default orbit as I was warping off), targeted him and 3 of his drones (max I could target) and assigned 1 gun to each drone.

Then I noticed my shields were gone, turned on damage control II, noticed my guns weren't hitting his drones, paniced, managed to turn one of the guns off & on again, noticed my armour was down to 50% so turned on my armour rep, attempted to switch my guns to the Talos instead of the drones (in the process leaving at least one gun switched off), noticed I was down to hull, decided I'd see if I could run away, but rather than switch overview to my previously setup pod-saver tab, I instead opened up my bookmarks and tried to warp to one of those which was not within warp distance (too close to station).

I then woke up in a fresh clone in HQ.

Things I did right
update my clone and location so lost no skillpoints. I didn't have any implants.

Things I did wrong
not webbing his drones so that I had a chance to hit them
trying to spread my damage over multiple targets - I should have grouped my guns and killed each drone in turn (the webbed one)
forgetting about damage control
forgetting to use my pod saver overview setup when it all started going wrong

I did ship back up from HQ - though there weren't any Rifters on corp contract. I should look to have a few ships setup in a couple of stations to save time. Though by the time I'd got back to Balle for another go the Talos had gone. I fleeted up with a couple of others but we missed out on one WT in Hek who was killed a few minutes later by someone else Then I had to bail for the day.

At least I got my first fight out of the way, and hopefully I'll take on board my mistakes for next time.

a planned day of action

Crucible deployed more or less successfully, and I travelled to the R1FTA HQ in low sec, not without some trepidation.

I then toured the system making some bookmarks and safespots, but it was pretty quiet, so I called it a night.

Next day I realised I was almost ready to train for T2 guns, so headed back out of low-sec to buy the skillbooks and started training. Then was out of town for the weekend...

Tomorrow, I have a day off work and so I plan a day of action.

The plan is to buy and fit 4 or 5 Rifters and then spend the day looking for fights - I fully expect to lose all but one of these ships...when I'm down to my last one I'll need to switch back to my alt to make some more money to fund some more Rifters.

So hopefully I should have some killmails to post tomorrow - I just hope that they aren't all of my Rifters ;)