I got myself setup in my new home system in the HQ station of R1fta, fitted out 7 replacements for 'Black Sunshine' and headed on out to meet the locals.
During the next few days I spent all of my in-game time shooting around low-sec space looking for a fight, and other than 4 or 5 man gate camps (which I avoided) I didn't get a single engagement.
I caught glimpses of people warping out as I landed at a gate or the sun, but I was unable to track them down.
I decided to try my luck flipping cans in nearby hi-sec, again with no luck - closest I got was a Hulk targeting me, but he didn't have a can to flip and didn't flip mine when I jettisoned some ammo.
I even did the Molden Heath loop which included a couple of null-sec security systems...and nothing. Most systems only had a few people in them, most of those seemed to be sat at POS (POS with forcefields and lots of guns).
I even resorted to renaming my ship 'Target Practice' and sitting at the sun in a couple of low-sec system and still didn't get a nibble.
I have no idea if people see the R1FTA tag and assume I'm proficient at flying a rifter or if they think I'm acting as bait with corpmates waiting to jump in, but for whatever reason I spent a week looking for a fight without success.
So I came up with a plan - I had the day off work to work on some college assignments so I setup a Thrasher as a baitship, equipped it with a couple of mining lasers (as well as 5 ACIIs, armour plate, damage control II, webber, scrambler and AB) and sat in a belt hoping for someone to come along and flip my can thinking I was a noob miner.
In the meantime, I proceeded with my assignments on my other machine.
I should have known there would be a problem when I had to offline everything but the guns to bring the mining lasers online
Anyway, finally a stabber turns up and heads towards my can, I offline one of the mining lasers and wait for Cap to regen to 95%, then bring on the damage control at which point stabber is flashy and moved off 20Km.
I hold tight - offline the other mining laser, wait for cap to regen to 95% then bring on my web, then wait until cap regens again and bring on my AB, then stabber warps off
I hold tight, wait for my cap to regen and finally bring on my scram as the Stabber warps back in at 6km!
I fire up my AB and activate my scram, Web and guns, can't understand how he's moving away and not taking any damage when I realise I'm targeting a 'roid at which point I know I'm fekked as he's sitting at 15km firing missiles at me.
I target him but can't get my web nor scram to work, and he can keep me at range.
He asks for 2 mil ransom, which I guess I could have afforded for a lesson learned, but I told him I was skint and overheated my guns and AB, managed to get his shields down to about 75% before my thrasher was no more
Engagement did get my blood pumping though so wasn't all bad. Exchanged gfs and chatted to him afterwards he said he was thinking of putting in an application soon to join us.
Ho-hum, I should have just ignored the Stabber and waited for a more suitable target to come along. I should have checked I was targeting the stabber and not the asteroid, and I probably should have overheated everything to start with.
Anyway, I headed back to a nearby system to jump back in my trusty Rifter and decided that I may as well do some shopping (needed rigs for my replacement rifters, and some ABs and ammo).
Shopping done, I headed back to base with a full hold (about 10 million isk worth) and land at a gate at the same time as a flashy hawk (Assault Frigate) - now is definitely not the time to lose my ship so I jump and warp to station and safety.
So I spend a week looking for a fight and can't find one, then for the 10 mins when I really don't want one I get the perfect chance to go down in flames! /sheesh
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