Even before I got my Crow, lately it’s just been a lot of cruising around in belts looking for Guristas and doing some small complexes that are not empty. I guess it’s fun for the first bit while, but then it gets really redundant.

Then I tried to spice things up by flipping cans, waiting for can flippers, and taking wrecks hoping someone would engage in a 1 vs 1 battle with me. So far that hasn’t been working out very well either.

Other than that, here is a small list of past events:

• Had scouting help from Zoe for a hauling route through some low sec systems to retrieve my order of tritanium with my Badger Mark II.
• Almost got a kill in Akiainavas (Moa) with my Crow but he got out of warp scramble range, which is 24km, for some reason. Almost had him, he was down to 20% hull. Then we were able to recruit a new corp mate who is an active miner.
• Me and Zoe joined in on a mining operation with our good friends over in the Kul corporation and at the end, Saft surprised me and interrupted me when he brought in his cloaked Manticore.
• Then our corp did some little PVP and had some fun flying our ships
• The corp did a few missions for fun times.
• Went and tried to gang flipped cans. We first tried to lure other people to us by dropping our own can with minerals in it. Not a lot of people tried to steal our containers so we stole from others. Very good operation for a first fleet flip.
• Received another new corp mate
• Back to level 4′s with Saft, Zoe, and Busta. Yay!

Ya, that’s what I do, besides throwing up some sell orders and contracts.

I also wanted to share with you guys on how things have been going and to present to you some of the beautiful scenery of EVE online!

Jita:

Missioning:

Can Flipping:

Ratting

Mining:

So remember when I bought the super fast and super awesome Crow? It was also an interceptor class ship so I thought maybe the Raptor may be of some use to me. And after all the articles that I have read about other people’s experiences with it, you would think I would have listened to them and not have bought the ship. Well I didn’t.

There are several huge flaws with the overall basic design of the Raptor. It is a very close range ship to deal ginormous amounts damage – but this means you can and will be webbed by others. The amount of powergrid that is available isn’t enough to fit the most juiciest guns – now you must sacrifice a low slot to fit a micro auxiliary power core instead of an overdrive. If you try to go long range your DPS drops extraordinarily, less than half of what you can do if you fly closer – which leaves you unable to kill the target. And either way, being close or far, you can’t go fast enough to avoid the damage of missiles – therefore fitting a MWD will increase your signature radius too much and still be slow enough to be hit by larger missiles.

I had prospects of this ship out doing the damage of the Crow by 3 times, but somehow that just never happened, because halfway through the battle the Raptor would have half of it’s shield eaten already. Then a minute later it’s down to armor and time to haul ass.  Not enough time to kill the intended target. This is one ship that would truly fit under the category of the “expensive tackler”.

One way to get some success is to hope the enemy doesn’t have a web equipped. And for maximum effectiveness, use an afterburner to keep your signature radius down and speed some what up. Orbit at 4000m and fire all of your neutron blasters. At times you can gank the opponent before your shields rot out; then at other times it’s seeing your ship falling short of it’s goal; and then at other times it is just at an arms race with your foe.

It would be a wise decision not to purchase this spacecraft. If there was a no joke dog fight between the two Caldari interceptors, the Crow will tear the Raptor a black hole and send it back into the Jurassic period where maybe then, it will finally reign on top.

[expand title=Technical Specs:]

• 5% bonus to small hybrid turret damage
• 10% bonus to small hybrid turret optimal range
• 5% reduction in signature radius
• 5% bonus to warp scrambler and warp disruptor range
• 80% reduction in propulsion jamming systems activation cost
• Tech 2 ship – Increased thermal damage resistance
• Default targeting range is 25 km with 4 locked targets
• Velocity is 415 m/sec with 0 m3 of drone capacity
• Shield hitpoints is 493 and recharges in 625 seconds
• Power grid is at 26MW, 150ft of CPU, and 400 calibration points
• There are 4 high slots, 3 medium slots, 3 low slots, and 2 rig slots
• 2 slots for launchers and 3 for turrets[/expand]

[expand title=Blasters Setup:]

• 3 Light Neutron Blaster
• 1 Rocket Launcher

• 1 1mn Afterburner
• 1 Warp Scrambler
• 1 Cap Recharger

• 1 Micro Auxiliary Power Core
• 2 Overdrive Injector[/expand]

[ratings]