When I first started on my course of piracy 4, maybe 5 months ago it was mostly can flipping and agroing people in high sec.  Well we all have to start somewhere….

I mainly used a frigate or a destroyer.  However I did have a Drake available to me and wanted to use it - for no other reason than to see if I could, and to give me a bit of extra damage over my opponent.

I wrote about such an incident and sent it to Eve-pirate.com.  It didn’t appear so I assumed it was too poor to appear in print.  Suddenly to my shock, my mailbox fills up with comments about an article.  I noticed it had been published, in January - months and months after the event.  You can see it here http://www.eve-pirate.com/index.php?/archives/928-Stubbornness-gets-you-killed,-cash-gets-you-free!.html

Anyway, I’d stated in the article that I *could not* outfit a drake properly at the time.  Don’t get me wrong, I knew *how* to fit one, but was simply unable to at the time so went with what I could use.  Thank you to those who offered congrats on the kill.  Likewise, thank you to those who told me I was a buffoon and didn’t know what I was doing - I already knew that though and did make a point of highlighting it.

Nonetheless, said Drake is still in existance and happy rumbling along.  It provided me with my first BC kill, even though poorly fitted.  To date has been very useful in many other exploits - mainly shooting haulers and sentry gun tanking.

Some had commented that I was lucky to get out alive against the Brutix in my noob fitted Drake.  I beg to differ.  Although poorly fitted, poorly skilled I had made adequate compensations for this.  Checked out my opponents age, his ship, how many mining lasers he had, drone bay capacity, high/mid/low slots and so on.  I was also aligned ready to warp out.  Using the information about his character, ship and visible fittings it gave me a *very* good idea of what I was up against.

A gamble?  Yes.  It paid off though.  I was 90% certain I could beat him with that setup after doing a little research.  So the moral of the story is even if you’re not the best, you can still catch your opponent off guard and use what information you can gather to ascertain if it’s likely to be in your favor or not.

It always pays to be prepared as a pirate - and do your home work.  Against popular belief we’re not just a drunken opportunist rabble…  Anyway, I’m off to drink that rum I stole from an unconscious guy earlier.  Happy yarring!