Up like a Rifter, down like a Drake

So, finally it happened. I found a Drake I thought I would be able to take down with my Rifter. However, it sat on a gate and I needed to provoke it to attack my flashing red Rifter. Just as I was warming up in the local communications channel, a pirate competitor showed up in another Drake clearly on a mission to take on the gate-hugging Drake. I sighed and thought it was lost.

However, EVE pulled one of it’s quick turnarounds of luck and I noticed on the directional scanner that my targeted Drake had escaped and warped to a belt. The Pirate Drake was still out of range on 360 degrees d-scan with max range. I warped in. There he was, shooting the local NPC-pirates 100 km off the belt. Overheating the afterburner and dodging the rocks, I was making quick progress towards it. And it seemed he was either not aligned, not paying attention or just very confident that a lowly Rifter would only make a dent in the shields! Overheating the scram, I got him locked and pointed and I started pounding his shields with Republic Fleet EMP.

Damn! There’s that Pirate Drake on d-scan again. I’m overheating the guns to see how far I can get. My competitor lands on grid. 100 km away! Yay! Many thanks to the Caldari engineers that made the Drake so very very slow. The pirate crawls his way towards me, and I needed to cool down my guns again. The Drake really is slow, so I get to keep on pounding my target and after a while my pirate competitor gives up the slow approach and warps out. Or is he trying to get a better warp in point? Time to overheat again! The tank breaks and suffering starts. I invite my target to Saftsuzes ISK Transfer Service, but no luck on ransom - and there’s that pirate on grid again! 30 km off this time. Time to finish of and get away. And so I did! And there was much rejoicing.

I bragged about it all day, and then, a little later, I undocked in my bling-fitted Helios to scan down a mission runner, got pointed and melted in seconds, just outside a station, by some pesky +5 security status law abiding citizen. So... That's the life of an Overheated Hothead.