In the Thick of It

Friday night I powered up my new Crow interceptor and prepared to head into the Thick of the fighting to run some missions and captured some complexes. My Crow:
3 x Arbalest Standard Missile Launchers
1mn MWD II
Warp Disruptor II
Cap Recharger II
2 x Overdrive Injector II
Nanofibre Internal Structure II

Can get over 6km/sec and throw missiles over 50 km which is not too shabby (even if the targeting range is less than that).

I warped to the Dal system in low sec and talked to the agent who assigned me a mission in deep Amarr lowsec as expected. As I was leaving Dal I saw a mission beacon in the overview with the same name as my mission, so a quick check confirmed only Frigates and Destroyers. I set course for my secret Amarr base where my Cormorant awaited.

Nearing the system, I saw a friendly militia pilot in local and a level 2 Amarr complex beacon. I decided to check it out and see if I could help. As I arrived I saw nothing but wrecks and his ship looting them. The beacon was untouched. I convo'd him and asked if I could capture the spot and he gave me the all clear. I set the orbit and waited as the 15 minute timer counted down.

He left and more rats spwned shortly thereafter. I engaged with the Crow and while the speed tank was more than enough to avoid most damage, my partly DPS was not killing the cruiser sized rats fast enough. I was two jumps from my base so I flew there and picked up the Vexor, and once back in the complex I had no trouble dealing with the rats and securing the objective. Just as the timer was in the final seconds a neutral Arbitator cruiser arrived but as I moved to engage he departed, apparently deciding it was too late or something.

I went back to my base and jumped into the Cormorant restocking the Pepperette jar in my pod before undocking. As I jumped from system to system in the Amarr low sec area I didn't run into any trouble until the last stargate. There waiting for me was a war target in a Rupture.

In the best situations Destroyers are easily outclassed by Cruisers. And a Rupture is the top tier Minmatar combat ship in a Cruiser sized hull. If he engaged and scrammed me, I was dead. I jumped through the gate and as quickly as possible warped to something to try and make a safe spot to hide in. He followed and tried to lock me but I was off but misclicked when I tried to bookmark random space. As I came out of warp, my scanner showed him following but my safe spot was too close to warp too (WHAT!?) so I picked a planet and warped to it, again just barely escaping the lock by the Rupture. This time I made a better safe spot and soon was safe in deep space.

Since I had a level 1 mission I knew he could not follow into it with a cruiser. I warped to the mission and began killing rats and soon he left, never to return. I completed the mission with ease and snuck back to Dal through the heated front lines with little effort, turned in the mission, and looked at my real rewards in the standings increase. I got 3% bump for capturing a complex, and only 0.8% bump for completing the mission. Seeing the descrepency, I opted to head back to base and just scout out Amarr complexes to capture.

I got in my Rifter (fast for scouting yet not expensive should I get in trouble) and jumped into the first warzone system and went to the first planet. On board scanner activated and 30 seconds later I had four(!) hits. Three were level 1 complexes and I went to get the Cormorant to shut them down. It took about 25 minutes but the Destoryer had no problems with the frigate sized rats spawns and soon two complexes were captured.

The standings increase from the complex captures boosted my standing with the militia above 1.0 and I received a field promotion to Spike Lieutenant! With the promotion came a 4.4% increase to my Minmatar faction standing putting it at 4.25 from 3.99. Three or four more promotions and I'll finally have that desirable 5.0 standing so I can think about anchoring a new high sec POS.

In other news, Advanced Space Ship Command V finished on the weekend but since I was not near my headquarters I could not start on Captial Ships skill. Instead I started training Energy Management V (~12 days) so I can eventually get Thermodynaics trained to allow me to overheat modules. Overheating is a valuable PvP tool and one I need to add to my asrenal so I might as well do it now.

In other skill news, Derranna completed Cloaking IV so she can use the Covert Ops Cloaking Device on her Cheetah Covert Ops Frig. Now just another 19 days for Covert Cyno Generators. Sigh.