a slight attack of conscience

After almost going blind during my last encounter, I decided I needed to work on staying calm under pressure and so jumped into a Rifter and headed back to the systems I was tootling about in the other day.

It was getting late so I only had 45 mins or so, figured I'd have a quick scout around and if there weren't any obvious targets I'd call it a night.

First low-sec system had around 20 pilots in them, most of them Old Hands but there were 3 relatively new pilots, so I set about tracking them down.

In hardly anytime at all I managed to land on grid with one of them and he was in a Hurricane, though he warped off.

Now normally I'd not be keen on going up against a 'cane in my Rifter, but as this pilot was relatively young I knew there was no way he could have a good fit installed on the ship, so I tried tracking him down again.

I then noticed that there were 2 other 'canes and a Drake on scan - waaay too much for my lil ol rRifter.  A quick chat on Corp chat had offers of help, but as I was not going to be around for long I demurred.  However, a corpy was next door and had just recently been exploded by a guy in a 'Cane - the same guy I'd tangled with in his Thrasher in my last blog.  I was able to get his shipname (so I could avoid him), and I thought I'd see if I could find a single noob piloted 'cane.

A couple of minutes later my corpy had entered system, we fleeted up and the 3 noobs promptly disappeared.

Ho-hum.

I decided to stick my nose into a nearby dead-end low sec system in case they'd gone there - no sign of them, but there were a couple other young characters in local and I spotted a Cormorant on scan, next second he landed on grid, turned tail and warped out again.  I was able to see his direction, and a quick scan that way located him in a belt - I warped to 0.

As soon as I landed I started burning towards the Destroyer, locked him up, applied web, scram and guns and set orbit to 500m.

He returned fire and I set my guns to overheat, pretty soon his ship exploded, whereas I still had most of my shields left.

At this point my wife demanded my attention and I made the schoolboy error of warping to a gate - not wise when I'd just been flagged for an illegal act!, before I could warp off again the gate guns exploded my ship. bugger.

I docked up in a hi-sec island and hit the sack.

next morning I checked the fit of the Cormorant and it was pretty bad;

Dual Afocal Light Maser I,Microwave S

Dual Light Beam Laser I,Microwave S

Cu Vapor Particle Bore Stream I

250mm Light Carbine Howitzer I,Nuclear S

150mm Carbide Railgun I,Plutonium Charge S

Core Probe Launcher I,Core Scanner Probe I

Upgraded 'Malkuth' Light Missile Launcher,Inferno Light Missile

Salvager I

Small Shield Booster I

1MN Afterburner I

Analyzer I

Codebreaker I

[empty low slot]

Small Ancillary Current Router I

Small Egress Port Maximizer I

Small Energy Collision Accelerator I

Then my conscience kicked in "He was obviously a young character, it doesn't look like he's had any decent fitting advice, what if I just killed his EVE for him?"

So I stuck together a cheapish, decent fit he could use ratting and evemailed him along with some general fitting advice and wished him well.

Turns out he'd been doing some exploring, must have found a WH through to low-sec and jumped through to see what was what - then he met me.

He didn't sound disheartened, and at least he knows what to expect now :)