Rifter Drifter

Back in The Tuskers I had a lot of fun running around low sec space in Thrashers. I was flying an autocannon fit and having a lot of fun shredding other destroyers, assault frigates, and Taranises at close range. Yesterday I decided it was time to try something different so, inspired by Isilza of Club Bear and after a chat with Garmon ages ago, I set out in an artillery Thrasher to see what havoc I could wreak. I haven’t flown a ship like this before so I spent a bit of ISK and bought plenty of fittings. The plan was pretty simple. I was just going to fit them up, roam into Providence and Curse, and see what I could kill.

The first couple of times I didn’t manage anything particularly impressive. I killed a Crow before dying to a Harbinger on my first trip out. The next time I was able to pick off a Rifter before dying to a bubble and bomber camp on the 9UYH-4 station. I could probably have survived the bomber camp but I got excited at the idea of taking down the Nemesis and his bomb got me with my MWD on.

During in my roam I bumped into a Genos Occidere gang while trying to get a Taranis to engage me. Needless to say I legged it pretty quickly seeing as they had a whole bunch of Angel Cartel ships and other vicious stuff. Thankfully I was about 90km from that gate at the time and made it to safety. Genos, who are notorious for tearing their way through Providence, have decided to join with Sev3rance and help defend Providence against -A- and Ushra’Khan. So far it looks like they’ve been having a lot of fun and my alliance mates have been caught with their pants down several times. While we’re pretty good at all the big fleet stuff the herd mentality that comes with an alliance means that we could really do with working on our small gang skills. Genos, Br1ck Squad, and Darkside are all regular thorns in our side that operate almost with impunity. We definitely need to get better at dealing with them. Thankfully my own corp seem pretty good at avoiding them. Hi Hercules Strongarm, by the way.

I was able to pull a Crow away from his gang in D-GTMI but on the other side of the gate, in F9E-KX, I tried the same with a Hawk, failed, and got toasted by another Harbinger. The next couple of sorties both ended without anything in the way of a fight. In D87E-A I thought I could cold warp away from a Cynabal only for a Sabre to uncloak and bubble me, the result was predictable. In CBL-XP I decided to try my luck against a Dramiel. I won’t do that again. He got to half shields before he got under my guns and killed me. To add insult to injury the rest of his gang – another Dramiel and two Daredevils – all came and held my pod to make sure they got on the mail. Thanks, guys.

With five losses under my belt now I was starting to get a feel for what I could and couldn’t do. From a standing start I was going to find it hard to get away from anything frigate-sized so the best thing to do is to warp to the next gate at range and then hope they give chase. Then I can burn away and toast them out of the range of their main gang. The Providence residents love to fly anti-frigate Harbingers and I can now say they are very effective.

Armed with this experience I set off in Thrasher number six. This time I had a series of engagements on my own terms and I was able to pull off some nice kills. First of all a lone Taranis died to me. He was able to escape my initial web and scram but when his support arrived on the gate he got too confident and I was able to kill him, loot his wreck, and get away before his backup could do anything. I then proceeded to toy with the two Sentinels and Taranis that came to help him. At one point I had the Taranis in armour but I was feeling twitchy so I decided to leave and move on. In 8P9-BM I had a nice running engagement with a gang that I was able to break off and then pick off a Crow and Hound. On my way back home from 9UYH-4 I found another roaming Paxton gang and once again I was able to pull the Crow away and kill it. The Crow’s pod came with a 26 million ISK bounty so I wasn’t too sad about not being able to loot the wreck.

In conclusion the artillery Thrasher is a lot of fun. If you fly it like a Vagabond and use it to pick off lone tackle ships it can be very, very effective. Despite the fact that I lost five ships I think I managed to collect enough loot to pay for the adventure and I am definitely doing well on the ISK efficiency, even if I no longer have 99.5%. On top of that I have now established a healthy lead in DKOD’s solo kill competition for February and I’ve started to collect footage for another film. Now I just have to actually remember to start the recorder.