Two megathrons and it isn't enough.

Pirate corps were out in force last night. An anti-pirate force is being set up but am wary of them. I think most anti-pirate forces have too short a life span and that overall, most pirates are better at the pvp side of things.

However, am still interested in finding out more so have signed us up.

Arzal, Lionsan and I were out in our ships last night but Lionsan was ahead, six jumps with a Havoc Inc roaming gang between Arzal and I and Lionsan. Arzal and I idled in Helgatid but we did spot some more pirates from [MAD] hanging around, one was in local and in an Ishtar class heavy assault cruiser. Flashfresh was with us and our trio went hunting. Bad idea as the HAC was dancing around the planets and no intention of leaving. We managed to land in the same system but never had enough time to lock. Silly really, as we had no tacklers apart from Flash's wolf.

Finally, Flash managed to get the HAC around planet V and called us in. We warped in landing between 30-35km from the fast HAC. Even with our MWDs at full burn we could not get close enough to scrambled let alone web it. Arzal and I did send out our drones though.

Screaming across space, they chased after the nano-ishtar.

Ach, we should have figured out that the HAC pilot was skillfully buying time for his friends. So it came to pass, once we finally got close - local spiked and his friends jumped in. A deimos and other cruisers: no problem really. However, included in this gang were a celestis and a lachesis. Should have insta-locked these crafts and killed them. Instead, the lachesis got it's full set of dampeners on Arzal while I had the celestis.

My target range dropped to less than 2km and targeting time increasing to almost two and a half minutes. Cursing, I knew that I was dead. Just too stubborn to admit it. I was primaried and lost all my shield; I tried to tank but the deimos and others tore my armour to pieces. Hardeners notwithstanding.

I popped and was ransomed.

(sigh)

Lesson learned: in a small group, one needs to have force multipliers in the form of ewar. Small groups need to also instantly take out all opposition ships with even a hint of ewar. Forget everything else. Celestis, blackbirds, scorpions, lachesis, arazu etc - all need to die.

An expensive but very fun lesson. Time to get another ship!