Crime & Punishment

Urp, he said he used his Catalyst as his gank boat. With the right skills and implants it can dish out nearly 700 dps. It's a perfectly fine beginner gank boat, and very hard to hit.

i applaud your efforts, i run three accounts, i have 3 character slots all dedicated to ore thieving with indy haulers. it is so much fun to find a miner or ice miner with 3+ cargo containers sitting next to him and warp all 3 indys to scoop it all up at once. even more fun is when they get their gun ship and it becomes a game of hide and seek. i once warped to a fleet of 5-7 hulks with an orca they all warped out immediately and left the system. they left 5 full cans of ore lol. it's not that profitable but is so much fun

Indeed! We bastards do tend to have the most fun, don't we?

I've tried this many times, but sadly have never gotten someone to actually take a shot at me, no matter how much I've trolled them :(

A really entertaining thing to do is start ninja salvaging/looting the wrecks of mission runners and hope they attack you. Once they fire one shot, warp off and grab a PvP ship, come back and maul their PVE fail fit ship then laugh. I haven't done it for some time, but you can get some very lucrative kills doing this to people.

My CEO took a pot shot at a corp mate of mine as a joke when a gate camp we were on started getting boring. Turned out the guy was in a frigate, and for some reason he was sitting still (not smart for a frigate as you know) so he got one shotted. He is a funny guy and started doing a “wowis me!” routine about how much his frigate was worth and how it was all faction fitted and not insured (the kill mail said otherwise). Our CEO felt bad and gave him 5 million isk, as did two other guys. His frigate was probably worth about 2 m, so he made about 13 million isk off it.

Grats on your first PVP kill.

As to your Vexor, armour plate and armour rigs slow you down. Perhaps someone here who is more familiar with that ship can tell you what strategies to use to overcome this. Training up the navigation skills is good, but I don’t often see people using T2 afterburners. I am not sure why, but just know that it is not as important to go for as some other T2 modules.

Talking about the darker side.

I just got myself my trusty Imicus, and then my Vexor destroyed *sighs*.

I relocated to a system next to Rens where there seem to be lots of mission runners. Wanted to try a different environment, you know?

Anyway, after I've lost an Imicus today already because I decided to take a shortcut through lowsec when exploring a bit and stumbling into two people at a gate which killed me so fast I didn't even notice it was my pod warping out, not my ship (killed by a command ship, as I saw in the combat log, then) .. I wanted to earn some money.

So I scanned down this mission a Vargur pilot was doing and went in and stole stuff.
Got shot at. So far so good.

.. Sadly, I didn't pay attention while warping out and lost transversal and got one-shotted.
No biggy, cheap ship, I'd come back and make him pay.

So I got into my Vexor and warped to him and, right, there he still was. .. 30km away.
But closing in on me, so I set an angle to approach and .. dang, he still pounded me good. I was already partly in structure as I finally dispatched his drones and was in an 1km orbit (which turned out to be more of a 2-3 km orbit in real).
My cap almost empty since I had to run my repper that much, but I felt reasonably save in that close of an orbit.

WRONG! While I was recovering my cap a little to start my repper again without losing my warp disruptor or afterburner, whipping out my medium drones to attack him.. I got hit again.

BOOM!
Destroyed :(

Bad luck, or bad piloting..

Atm buying new ships, going to get revenge on the next random person I have the opportunity to, even if it's not the same, hehe.


Edit:
I've sent the person a "gf"-evemail .. it's polite to do these things after a fight from what I've gathered, but didn't think of it before I had left the system.
Offered him my congratulations for getting me.
Just received the answer:

"Take care of your business and leave me in peace."

So cold..

Edit2:
After researching a bit: "Large Repeating Artillery" apparently is not artillery at all, but an autocannon. Part of my false feeling of safety came from the thought, that according to everything I've read, artillery shouldn't be able to track me that close to his ship even if he was steering away and my transversal less than perfect because of that.

Edit3:
:o He just gave me 18m isk to cover my losses.
Wow.. just wow. I don't know why he did it, but I have to retract my former judgement of him being a cold person. He's actually nice!

Thank you for your advice!
I'll have some new information to consider now.

I created my fit based on the fit of another Vexor some nice person donated to me completely fitted already, but with many t2 modules I cannot use yet. Mainly the weapons now, though, for the rest I am on a good way.
It uses small autocannons, presumably to shoot at drones and otherwise help out with dps a little, and has a big-ass 1600mm armor plate fitted for this buffer you were talking about, but a medium armor repairer, too.

I think the reasoning behind this has to be to have a buffer to get in close and get rid of the drones, then have a repper to slowly rep yourself up again in case something went wrong.

I modified the fit (which had a salvager in the 5th high slot) by replacing it with a small neut. I couldn't get a medium one in. I read about this active tank thing and was hoping maybe although it is only a small neut it might tip the fight in my favor.
I cannot run it while running the repper though, cap-wise. With better skills I should be able to permanently run either the one or the other, though, depending on situation.

It also has a stasis webifier. I was originally not sure whether I'd need this against battleships and if it'd be better to fit a cap booster instead, even if only a small one (due to fitting requirements) .. but with my recent experiences of my Vexor being so slow I'm not sure whether it's better to slow a BS down with it for being able to use a better orbit.

Edit:
Using an afterburner. Should I use a microwarpdrive? hm..

This kind of hybrid buffer/active tank may work alright. It largely depends on what sort of rigs the ship has on it. I think it will work if the armor repper is just for slow regeneration and you are using trimark armor pump rigs...however by having the medium repper you are depriving yourself of necessary power grid to use neuts and cap to kill your target. You'd also not likely have enough PG on your ship to fit a medium cap booster. Here's a fit that might work for you:

[Vexor, Vexor Mission Runner killer]

2x 50W Infectious Power System Malfunction
3x Anode Light Electron Particle Cannon I (Federation Navy Antimatter Charge S)

Medium Electrochemical Capacitor Booster I (Cap Booster 800)
Warp Disruptor II
Experimental 10MN Microwarpdrive I

800mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates I
2x Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
Damage Control II

3x Medium Trimark Armor Pump I

5x Hammerhead II
5x Warrior II
5x Hornet EC-300

This fit is especially designed for killing active tanks. For this fit you *may* need a 3% powergrid implant if you don't have Advanced Weapons Upgrades trained up. With a 10mn AB it should be well within powergrid requirements. For a cruiser, it still should get a respectable 21K EHP (omni damage), be more agile/faster than the 1600mm plate fit you have, have the necessary energy neutralizing you'll need to kill your target. The blasters + warrior drones should be able to easily dispatch any pesky drones or force your target to pull his drones back/cycle them out. Once his drones are dead, pop out the Hammerheads, turn your blasters on him, and go to town while neuting his balls off. The Hornet EC-300's are very nice to have just in case your new "friend" decides to bring in someone to tackle & kill you. You can hope to jam him and gtfo if the heat becomes too much or just remove him from the equation by making him unable to do crap to you whatsoever (should the chance to jam hits).

This fit can work well if your target is very far away if you make sure to spiral in on him and keep a high angular velocity. If he's more than 40km out, call it off unless you think you can tank him for awhile since at that range he'll likely have perfect tracking on you, especially if he's using autocannons on shield boats that are likely to have 2 tracking enhancers to give them a long amount of falloff.

If the mission he's running doesn't involve gates that are far from each other to move between rooms you can probably get by fine with an afterburner. Just overload the damned thing if he's farther than 28km out of heated point range. I've just had times where having a MWD and being able to close range quickly made the difference in him escaping or not. Remember, you can overload your warp disruptor if you have Thermodynamics trained and be able to point him at 28km...but be careful not to burn it out. It may be handy to have two Vexors available in your hangar. 1 AB fit and 1 MWD fit. Just hop in the one that is appropriate for the situation.

Another option is to drop the armor plate all together, use your rigs to give you the buffer you need, and put on an medium armor repper. With "Repair Systems" to 5 it'll rep you for 79dps which will mitigate most of his drone damage on your while you clear them out, and will some mindful piloting and correct dodging techniques the 12.6K EHP you have left of armor should last you enough to get into a very close orbit and under his gun's ability to track you well. With Thermodynamics you should also be mindful to overload your armor repper as needed to help you if you get into a tight spot. If you want to practice these fits on the test server I am more than happy to help. Just send me a msg in game.



Right...but with a cruiser such as a Vexor you will likely have to sacrifice some survivability in order to kill your target. You're likely going to have to give up a certain amount of on-paper tank and compensate with more piloting finesse. You'll get there, though. It just takes practice.


I'd probably get rid of it.

I found a guy doing a mission; several battleships still left, but he was kiting them and was maybe 100km from the gate to the next room. So instead of immediately stealing something I waited until he went for the two groups that were left and approached the gate (or bridge or whatever it's called). Once he was there I quickly headed back (having travelled some 200km away because I had nothing else to do) and stole something from a large wreck. Not sure what exactly to be honest, because he immediately shot at me (having locked me while I was approaching). Shields went down to 80% or so (on my trusty not-at-all-bait Heron) and I warped away.

I've had several mission runners take a potshot at me and then sit in station for the entire duration of the aggro timer, but this guy didn't. He was in a Dominix Navy Issue, and he was fighting Serpentis, so I loaded up with Ex damage missiles (I use a HAM drake, named Hambeast right now -- when it pops I'll try something else) and warped back. He was still there, and he was in scram range. Nice. Popped him in about 20 seconds or so and was left with some delicious faction loot: one Imperial Navy Large Armor Repairer and three Federation Navy 350mm Railguns. Thank you muchly, kind bear.

I've not heard from him though, but he was a pretty old player (possibly bought, because any 4-year old player should know better) so either he accepted the loss or logged off furious and/or crying.

So thanks to Serena for the initial post that got me curious enough to want to try it.