My first PVP kill on Nizran....

 This was a glorious kill, I scanned my prey down and lit him up in a blaze of glory, after the smoke settled, I was rich and had barely taken any damage....


If only my first kill was that awesome.

The Kill

I decided to do a little bit of ratting in a 0.2 system because I only had an hour or so to play and didn't feel like spending that time roaming.  I had just gotten into my Caracal earlier in the week and I thought to myself "lets go see how those nasty pirates in that scary lowsec hold up against my shiny new cruiser."  So I am running around keeping all the belts and gates empty of pirates thinking that I'm not doing too shabby, when I see a 5 year old player hop into the system.  Quickly I look at his sec status and it's positive, now a lot of people go through this system because it's a transit for missioners and they are only there for a couple minutes before jumping; not so with this guy.  I watch him on d-scan for a bit and, sure enough, I see npc wrecks start popping up on my scanner.

I think to myself "Man, I've been holding this down for awhile now by myself, and then this guy pops in.  No hellos or anything" so I ask in local "you aren't hunting me are you?" I have found that saying that actually deters a lot of people from trying to scan me down as it means I am aware and their chances of getting me pointed and locked are far lower.  He responds back "No, just killing some pirates testing out my new ship, I'm not a pirate."  Now here I am thinking "He's obviously not a PVPer, Mallers are crap and only used for bait, everyone knows that." So I undock and start scanning him down.  It's pretty easy and I warp to 0 to see whether I can get him pointed as a lot of ratters and missioners fail to put stabs in their lows.

When I find him and warp in, he's 47km away and just finishing up with a rat.  As soon as he sees me, he warps out.  "Crap" I say to myself, "well he knows I'm here and that I am hunting him" so I decide to just dock up and go afk for a few minutes to deal with the screams of my children doing something. The older one probably beating on the younger one. ><

When I get back on, I see that he's still in system.  "No way, does he really not realize that I'm out to get him?" I think.  Sure enough, after popping D-scan up and looking, he's back at it.  So I warp to the next belt from the one that he was in before and, sure enough, there he was about 38 km out and killing pirates.

Now I'm not sure what was going through his mind, but I tend to have setups depending on the kind of person I think I am about to fight that I learned on my old main.  (It's a female character and I really want to represent myself as I am and is the reason for making this character.) Knowing that this guy probably wasn't a PVPer and, furthermore, probably doesn't have a PVP fit, I tend to fit a Scram and a Disruptor so I have both a long range point and then a short range as a lot of PVPers tend to think that if they get pointed from far away, they can warp out with a stab if things get hairy.  This has been the downfall of a few people because once I get in scram range, I swap it and alluvasudden, they have nowhere to go. This guy, on the other hand, is not a PVPer so I opt for a second Large Shield Extender II and just use a Warp Disruptor.

Anyway, I digress.  I get within 30 km and target and I watch him start aligning. "Crap, crap, crap, crap" I think to myself as I am waiting for my target lock to resolve and then, BINGO! target resolves and I start slamming that disruptor tab. "POINT! YES!" I think to myself as he is just sitting there aligned and not doing anything.  I burn into HAM range on this guy and unleash hell on him.

Groups of four Torrent Missiles slam into him as I watch his shields melt.  Knowing that this is a Maller and he is armor tanked and has resistance bonuses, I get ready for the long fight.  Switching to Terror Missiles, I lay into him with my kinetic bonus from my ship.  Salvo after salvo wreaks havoc on his armor as his pulse lasers chip away at my shields.

"Oh no" I think to myself as my shields hit the 50 percent mark. "He's taking my tank down quicker than I'm taking his down."  Thankfully, in the heat of the moment, I forgot that the best shield recharge rate has yet to occur and as he gets me to around 35 to 40 percent, my shields start holding.  As the pirates are pounding on him and I am lighting into his backside, he decides to try and run.....

RIGHT INTO A GROUP OF ASTEROIDS!

"LOL" I think to myself and, yes, I do actually say lol in my head.  Sue me. "This guy is going down!" moments later....http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/killmail.php?id=13235301


Ecstatic that I got my first kill on this character with relative ease, I begin to explain what I noticed that was done wrong so that he could improve his chances in this harsh environment.  (I know, I'm such a philanthropist)

Before I press enter he tells me "So YOU are a pirate....Asshole." Well, this just doesn't go over well with me as I never said I wasn't and he didn't respond very nicely to me in the beginning nor did he bother to ask if I was farming these rats.  (There are like a half dozen or more low-sec systems very close by.) So I tell him "I never said I wasn't a pirate, however, to increase your chances of living here in PVP land, let me tell you what I noticed that you did wrong." I then listed off items that I noticed, no stabs, no web, using light and medium weapons together, etc.. At this point, he gets pretty rude and tells me that "if I'm not really a priate, I will give him back his stuff"...Lol, well, the EVE universe is a cold one and I need to keep myself well equipped just as badly as the next guy so, obviously, I tell him no.  He doesn't like this and after a few choice expletives, he goes into ignore mode.  "Oh well" I think, "still a good clean kill and I made some money of of it." Maybe next time, he will be a little more cautious in low-sec.

The best part about this fight?  His character is five years old while mine is barely one month!!

Lessons Learned:

Every fight has lessons that need to be learned by the winner and loser alike whether it's a shuttle kill or a frigate vs. battleship kill, this one is no different.

I realized that I need to learn how to anticipate where my victim is going to be quicker and how to burn within point range faster as I really got very lucky with this guy and if he were a cautious low-sec dweller, I would never have gotten the point. 

I also determined that I need to consider using a shield booster as I am virtually capless using missiles and he did burn through my shields fairly quick. 

I need to consider what my true range is for my HAMs (It appears that 18km seems to be the tail-end of that range) and consider kiting as his pulse lasers really burned into me on my weaknesses. 

Something else I need to start considering is ransoming his ship once I get it into structure.  I probably could have gotten 20 mill in cold, hard ISK if I had just tried to ransom him instead of blowing him up.

All-in-all though, a very good fight.