Day 30 : The Return to Low Sec

How to get back in the mindset of not hiding in 0.9 space? I need to get back to my preferred home system and staging post for low sec. In 0.6 I have to deal with rats but I can handle them using drone ships. Why am I mining here in boring 0.9 space. I'm a little bruised and battered but I came up with a plan.

First of all I move stuff around, reactivating my old Caldari space mining expedition that I used to use to get minerals unavailable to me in Gallente space. This will take time to perfect but it's part of the plan. I'll get this up and running properly over the next few days. I don't need much so I won't be there for extended periods of time.

I then spend about 20% of my current cash on a blueprint for the type of Destroyer I was flying into low sec. It's possibly the wrong choice of ship for PVP but as a killer of large rats it has the fire power to do the job in the time available. It'll cost me more to build myself in minerals than it would to actually buy a pre-made one by some better industrialist. Not by much, but it is on my mind. So why? Well, I can take a cut from my mining and refining which will only get better and deposit that in a station with free assembly lines, then whenever I go there and the stock is up enough I can build a new destroyer. That way whenever I get ganked in low sec I already have a replacement ship waiting and the insurance on the last ship just goes to equip it. I can work ahead of this pattern and have pre-made ships ready to go. This will cut out the delay between me getting back into low sec, and will cut down on the sense of loss. I'm starting a production line in  supporting myself getting ganked continuously. Why this idiotic decision? I'm learning from every time I go there, both in the art of low sec behaviour, more experience of PVP, more experience adapting to the loss of ships, and finding more out about the game by rummaging through the assorted random loot that low sec rats leave behind when I finish them off. I've already upped by cargo haulers capacity to heights I'd not thought possible by fitting cargo bay extenders I looted of dead rats.

Once all this is done, I move my main mining ship back to it's old location and do a little mining to cover the costs of setting up all the stuff above. With my refining skills starting to give decent results I can ship minerals around instead of bulk ore. With the hauler now able to move a serious amount I don't have to spend much time running around. I watch some TV while I mine, keeping half an eye on the overview and cargo bays. occasionally laughing at rats trying to deal with my swarm of drones. It's good to be back.

It doesn't take long at all to cover the investment I put in, so I have to use it. I head back to low sec in a new Destroyer. It's oddly quiet and I make quite a lot of cash. I'm finding I can reprocess half the junk the rats drop and get minerals, some of which I couldn't mine myself yet. It's another form of mining! Only with guns. It all goes back into the production line of gankery that I've set up. It's starting to fulfil itself. Some months in future I might even be able to make a business out of it.

Another Destroyer appears when I'm halfway through a fight. I stay calm, ignore the rat and activate the warp to a pre-prepared safe point. I'm out, and free! My shields are all gone, my armour is mostly gone. Two or three more seconds and that would have been it. I ran away instead. I'm not sure that this is a victory but it feels like one. As I leave the system my would be killer asks me to come back for a Destroyer vs Destroyer fight. It's tempting but I have a full cargo hold that I don't want to lose and I don't think he's realised I'm only a month old and can't match his ship, let alone his weapons which are far superior to mine.

At least I'm back. I've mastered running away. The next ship might be called the Brave Sir Robin. Now I have to master shooting back.