Begun, the Clone War has

Clone Soldiers - from flickr user HJ Media Studios

I only had time for a brief sortie in Eve yesterday. I started with a corp fleet plexing in Ladistier, but we didn't have the numbers to take on the experienced enemy pilots we encountered. We did take a couple of plexes, though and before logging off I decided to take a cheap Tristan through a set of asteroid belts and kill the local pirates in order to improve my security status.

The first couple of times I tried this I was found by other players who were hunting for pilots like me, and quickly finished off. I've started hitting d-scan a LOT more often now, and also flying this cheaper Tristan fit.

[Tristan, DerpTris]

200mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates I

Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane I

Drone Damage Amplifier I

Limited 1MN Afterburner I

X5 Prototype Engine Enervator

J5b Phased Prototype Warp Scrambler I

Anode Light Ion Particle Cannon I, Tungsten Charge S

Anode Light Ion Particle Cannon I, Tungsten Charge S

Small Remote Armor Repair System I

[empty rig slot]

[empty rig slot]

[empty rig slot]

Hobgoblin II x5

The main damage is, of course, the Hobgoblin II drones. I keep away from the enemy and let the drones do the fighting, only closing in to add some blaster damage if necessary. I have a variation where I use railguns instead.  I have Scout Drone V and Drone Interfacing IV, so the drones deal decent damage. The remote repairer is for healing damaged drones, but I usually don't stay out long enough to make use of it. The scrambler is....well, pretty useless. In the unlikely case I get into a fight with another pilot that tries to escape, I could pin him down. But against rats this is a wasted module. The web is handy for slowing rats down and letting the drones increase their damage. I've used this fit to take out a Serpentis battleship.

The tradeoff with flying a cheap ship like this is that it is relatively slow in killing your targets, so you need to use d-scan frequently to make sure nobody is coming to get you. 

In the last belt I checked I found my first Clone Soldier! These are especially tough belt rats (mine was a "trainer", the easiest of the four types) that drop a valuable tag which you can use to raise your security status. I kept at least 30km from him during the 5 minute fight and luckily nobody else came to the belt while we were there. In retrospect I could have returned to the station and got a more powerful ship, if I wanted to risk getting caught. I think that anyone coming to find fights in a belt is likely to be in a group that is well-equipped enough to handle whatever I can dish out, so I might as well stick to my cheap ship and just focus on running away if someone arrives.