On choosing targets

For my first 5 Rifters I pretty much decided not to choose and pick targets but attack anything that stands on my way if I have at least slim chance of having a fight, Fighting large gate camps and CONCORD falls outside of this rule.

This approach has both advantages and inevitable drawabacks. Main drawback is that you going to loose ships, first few days into my venture to lowsec costed me 3 well fitted and rigged Rifters. There is sometimes also an element of frustration when you realise than you have bitten more than you can chew or when you learn that your chosen target is a bait and has few buddies who just waiting for you to take a bite. Those minor problems are however quickly overshadowed by satisfaction you get from good fight and some nice killmails.

Genesis region looked inviting again, after checking map for recent kills that may indicate low sec gate camp I jumped to Dom-Aphis. On exit was one Rapier who quickly targeted me, local chat indicated he has corp mate in the system. I blame that on my eagerness for fight and inexperience when I decided to take him on if he aggros, sporting 400 plate on my Rifter I though my web and scram should keep him long enough for gate guns to finish him off. He slowly approached me I targeted him back and he opened fire. AB on and after a moment of hesitation my guns returned fire and Rifter set tight orbit around my agressor.

Almost instantly Pilgrim appeared about 10km from gate, turns out his buddy was there all the time, sitting cloaked waiting for someone to take a bait. Rapier lost his shields almost instantly and his armour quickly started crumbling, mine wasn't looking too rosy either but I still had him on 1.5km webbed and scrammed and I though there is still a chance to trade my Rifter for a killmail of that Rapier. Weapons systems glowed from overheating and almost at the same time I realised how badly I misjudged situation. Pilgrim took a couple of seconds to acquire target and then neuted me to the oblivion and back, I lost web and scram on Rapier, lost my AB and my ship was also webbed and scrammed now. I could only watch them finishing the job with Rapier getting away close to the structure. We have exchanged "gf" and had a brief conversation afterwards, they even invited me to their corp but since leaving one not long ago and wanting to do some stuff solo I declined.

Lessons learned, when there is 2 guys from same corp with low sec status in the system and one of them is attacking you on the gate, it's a trap and you should gtfo. Anyway it was a good experience, limitations of my frigate became more apparent to me, in particular importance of capacitor even for projectile weapon boat can not be underestimated. Damage was also rather underwhelming, my expectations were higher when fighting cruiser sized boat, perhaps I need to experiment with ammo, I wasn't really sure really what to load when, EMP or Barrage?

Despite that setback my plans remain unchanged, anything that stands on my way will be attacked and more than likely only one of us is gonna make it out in one piece.