Show Me Your Cans

A jettisoned canister (jet-can)

When Good Samaritan asked if I was a hauler, I believe he was onto something. One of the most entry-level forms of pirating is to take the contents of another citizen's can (usually ore) in an attempt to force a combat situation. The idea is simple: Disrupt or irritate a miner to such a degree that in the heat of the moment, blinded by emotion, they commit to an act of aggression in a ship that is combat-inferior to your ship of choice. My ship of choice is the Rifter, a Tier-1 (T1) Minmatar frigate. Citizens often discount frigate class ships as weak or inferior due to their small size and the minimal training that frigates require. A combat pilot can take a frigate and turn it into a lethal and capable weapon.

Pictured Above: A visual comparison of a Rifter and a Boeing 747.

It is common for mining operations (large and small alike) to fill cargo containers with ore during a mining session. This has multiple benefits:

• Capacity: A cargo container has a maximum capacity of 27,000 m3 in comparison to a Hoarder (the industrial class ship I once used) which has an unmodified capacity of 5100 m3 or a Mammoth (the largest Industrial class ship of the Minmatar) with an unmodified capacity of 5625 m3. An experienced miner has the potential to fill a jet-can in as little as 10 minutes.
• Time: Less trips to a station means more yield per hour for a miner. Ideally, a miner will have at least one other assistant hauling ore from the jettisoned canister (jet-can) to a station for processing.
  

Jet-cans provide an excellent source of income! Let some other poor sap toil over asteroids! Wait for your mark to fill a jet-can, drop your own jet-can adjacent to theirs and then claim the contents of your target's jet-can as your own. Wait, thats not all! When a citizen pilfers another citizen's jet-can, Concord (a universal agency responsible for enforcing and upholding law in hi-sec) grants that victim a 15 minute window of action. In that 15 minutes said victim (and members of the victim's corp) may take hostile action against his aggressor's ship. A can-flipper's ultimate goal is to get a miner to perpetrate an act of aggression while piloting a combat -inferior ship. A mining or hauling vessel provides little threat and if destroyed has the potential to hold a treasure-trove of valuable components and ship parts. Miners may have millions- sometimes billions of ISK invested in a ship, components and rigging. It is not unsual for a mark to pay large sums of ISK in the form of a ransom in an attempt to save precious ship and fittings.

Over the past month I had busied myself in preparation for my newly chosen career path. I poured over maps and hologrids of the systems I would be "patrolling". I familiarized myself with the logistics of the various asteroid belts found within these systems. This included the laborious task of creating "book marked" jump points inside asteroid belts. At a variable range of 200km to 399km, these jump points would prove invaluable as a means to collect intel on a potential target. These jump points would also provide me a safe place to maintain visual communication with a hostile target, from a distance, comfortably outside of hi-sec conventional weapon range. I honed my ability to utilize and operate the directional scanner- a common but tricky tool found in most if not all modern ships. Once mastered, the directional scanner is indespensable in seeking out potential targets in the depths of space and triangulating their coordinates.

I began to network with young pilots attending Republic University (RUN) and found a handful of like-minded individuals willing to haul and process ore for me in exchange for a cut of the profit. The sheer number of nut-jobs enrolled in the University was staggering. A clear indication of just the character drawn to mining asteroids for ore! That suited my purpose just fine; it would take a nut-job to agree to such a dangerous sport as can flipping.

My Rifter, Panty Dropper, was fitted with three small auto cannons, a Nosferatu energy vampire (a device that drains energy from a target ship and transfer's it to my ship) which, in turn, would fuel my webber (used to slow a target down, in turn making that target easier for my auto cannons to track and hit), my warp inhibitor (a device that denies a target the ability to travel at warp speeds, and ultimately escape), and my active armor repair device. I carried a few variants of small projectile ammo to compensate for the variety of shield and armor resists utilized by pod pilots to protect their ships. My primary ammunition of choice is the variant, Emp S. Emp S provides Electro-Magnetic (EM) damage- the most common weakness in ship shielding.

Can-flippers usually favor frigate class ships. Frigates are small, deceptive, and best of all frigates are cheap!

It was just a matter of time before my hard work and determination would pay off! I slapped a sticker on the inside of Panty Dropper. An old souvenir from one of my excursions to the Amarrian strip club and brothel, "The Clap Trap". In big yellow letters the sticker begged "Show me your cans!"