Update on pirate life

So I have been camping with cloaky proteus quite a lot for the past few days. Mostly what I I get are empty pods. Nothing much to show for. Problem with cloaky proteus is that it can only fit 3 smartbombs, which are only capable of destroying shuttles and pods. Even if there's an assault frigate or interceptor, you can't kill it. Of course you can fit 5 smartbombs with almost full rack of reactor control units that give you extra powegrid, but that I consider a bad business.

I am prepared to lose my ship at any time. I take precautions, but I know I will be killed eventually. With 3 smartbombs I can fit some warpstabs and inertial stabilizers. The fast align time and "immunity" to point reduces risk of exploding greatly. I still have fitted Rokh, but after warp changes it is so slow, that I am not sure I will use it much. It was very handy during my earlier time in lowsec. Biggest advantage was, that I could smartbomb cloaked covertops frigates based on their timing. I need to try and do that too, but with so many gates where I live, it is very hard to collect data (actually using stopwatch to time pilots coming in and out of the system).

Smartbombing Rokh

It has more extra power that is needed to kill anything above shuttles and pods. It also has more room for error in case you have bad timing compared to Proteus. Sometimes I get aggro, but pod or shuttle still manages to pass, which means some smartbombs were out of sync. Here's my top kill so far:

Lovely. I really do enjoy role playing a wall that some travelers hit on their way. The downside is that area has quite little traffic. And most traffic is either covert ops or interceptors. You would think what's wrong with interceptors? They are too damn fast. Perhaps I haven't learned timing yet on when to smartbomb when they land, because watching them get into tactical overlay always ends up being too late. I found that once I see them on overview, pressing my keys few mili seconds later is close as I can get. Nevertheless, I only managed to kill one ceptor out of 10 and even that one felt as a lucky shot more than anything else.

Gate camping

If there would be customs officer role, I probably would fit it well. Smartbombing small fast ships and gate camping bigger ones is like a customs office you have to pass. I am still very rusty and doing very beginner mistakes such as putting a web too soon on a ship with full rack of warp core stabilizers. I use couple of remote sensor boosting Dominixes, so my Proteus can instalock pretty much most of the ships. It's always fun to kill by passers. I don't care what others say. Gate camping and smartbombing are being looked down on and a lot of people in local hardly resist not to flame on this "skill-less" type of pvp. Even though I am always up for occasional roam and pvp opportunities. There are a lot of wormholes connecting to different areas, unfortunately we haven't done many of those fleet ops yet. Perhaps that will change in the near future.

My first fuck up

To finish, I would like to share my latest fuck up. It's really embarrassing. Everyone piloting multiple accounts will probably understand. So here I was, scouting gate for incoming pods. I have been scouting for half an hour in covert ops Proteus. All is usual, except suddenly I see falcon decloak and scram me. That was a big surprise. I assume I got decloaked or never actually turned my cloak on and just been sitting there like a retard. Few seconds later I see a bunch of black opses on my ass.

I'm quite happy with myself. Happy, because I did not panic. I did not aggro falcon to try to escape. As soon as I saw cyno, I just calmly ejected and Proteus anticlimactically exploded. I saved my 3 day training time and a pod. It really sucks losing, or should I say - sacrificing, ship this way, but that's how it is. Next time, I hope it will be a bait.