The VFI, or Virgil, as I name my ships, is one of the most versatile lowsec FW frigates in the game and definitely my favourite. But it's not until recently that i discovered how good it is in Nullsec too. Here's how I fit mine:
Spoiler
Ballistic Control System II
Damage Control II
Small Ancillary Armor Repairer
1MN Afterburner II
5MN Quad LiF Restrained Microwarpdrive
Stasis Webifier II
Warp Scrambler II
200mm AutoCannon II
Rocket Launcher II
Rocket Launcher II
Small Transverse Bulkhead II
Small Transverse Bulkhead II
Small Transverse Bulkhead II
Hobgoblin II x3
I had a pretty good roam a few days ago when I took a frig hole into Impass and I will describe the most interesting engagements I had during said roam:
Engagement No 1:
I had been poking at Brave for a while and had already managed to isolate and kill a couple of their ceptors and some frigs while running away from a Jackdaw and a sniper Algos that did a lot of damage at range. Eventually they got smart and hung together, making it more difficult to separate them.
I left system for a while and warped around, until I picked a tail in form of a Malediction a couple of jumps over. I stopped on a gate to see what he would do. Initially he stayed at range, but after a while he came in to tackle me. I was sure he had friends on the other side of the gate, so I jumped to see what they had. A Keres and a Tornado sitting at 0 on the other side. I tried a gate separation with the aim of killing the Malediction on the other side, but although the Keres and Tornado aggressed on one side, the Malediction got smart and didn't go for me again on the other side. This is when I decided to take on all 3 of them. I noticed the Tornado was sniper fit with no tackle, so if I could avoid getting hit by him I could tank the DPS coming from the other two long enough to kill them. So I jumped back in and burnt transversal against the Tornado using my AB. The Malediction followed me and they all aggressed. I decided to go for the Malediction first since he was the only one with a scram/possible web and could make my escape difficult should more reinforcements come in. I manually piloted to keep high transversal and used MWD to get in scram range of the Malediction then switched to AB until he was dead. Rinse and repeat for the Keres. Once he was dead as well I turned to the Tornado who was sitting duck on the gate at 0. All I had to do was orbit 500 and wear him down with my missiles. GF!
https://zkillboard.com/related/30002597/201802121900/
Engagement No 2:
After this, Brave got demoralized and didn't undock anymore. Seeing I couldn't get another fight out of them, I moved a few jumps over to my old friends Requiem Eternal. I knew from previous engagements that they like to camp you in if you got into their pocket, so I was hoping I could isolate a few weaker targets if they'd try that again.
They did try it, but with less numbers than in the past. They had Hecate, Sabre, Confessor, Harpy, Bellicose and some other stuff, but given the speed and agility of the Virgil, I was able to move fast through systems and get out of bubbles a lot easier than with a bigger ship. I didn't allow them to group up all their ships on one gate and make it more difficult to break the camp, so eventually some of them got bored of chasing me around and gave up, bar a Confessor and a Harpy.
I saw the Confessor was beam sniper fit, so he became my main target. I tried to separate them by gate but they didn't fall for it. The Confessor sat at 0 on the gate while the Harpy burned after me with AB on. The Confessor started crying in local that I was running and that I should stay and fight, so I invited him to an honorable 1v1 at the Sun, which he refused on reasons that "he doesn't want any of my kiting bullshit". So I tricked the Harpy into chasing me 100km from the gate by throttling my speed to keep around 20k from him, giving him the illusion he might catch me. I then quickly pulled to over 150km from the gate, turned and warped back to the gate at 0 and engaged the Confessor. He shot back so I gave him a good orbit@500 brawl and none of that "kiting bullshit", which soon led to his demise under the eyes of his Harpy buddy who was hurrying to close the distance with his AB. I then turned to the Harpy and started kiting him at the edge of my scram. He was quite tanky with the MASB, so the trick here was to kite him AWAY from the gate while wearing him down, so that when his backup arrived they were about 100km from him. This worked pretty well and both the Hecate and the AB Bellicose were too slow to cover that distance in time. They also had a cancer Orthrus that I didn't know about who poitned me just as I downed the Harpy, but I managed to slingshot him and get out in low structure. GF!
https://zkillboard.com/related/30002620/201802122100/
Engagement No 3:
This was a pretty standard fight, but it goes to showcase the versatility of the Virgil. This Sabre was really confident and bloodthirsty so he chased me for a couple of jumps and isolated himself from his backup. I dragged him off the gate and scram-kited away from the gate while slowly wearing him down. He popped just as the Orthrus and a Harbinger jumped system, so I had time to loot and wave in local as the cancer was burning in.
https://zkillboard.com/kill/67997443/
Engagement No 4:
I killed a few more of their ships and eventually they seemed to give up, so I considered leaving. Problem was the wromhole had collapsed behind me and I was almost out of missiles, so I asked if I could buy some more to fight my way out of sovnull but they didn't want to sell. So i went and looted about 70M from the ESS in system half out of spite and half hoping to trigger some reaction and go down guns blazing. Nobody came to stop me, but the Orthrus pilot from before invited me to a 1v1. He said he'd lost his Orthrus (thank god, not even the mighty Virgil would be able to 1v1 that ), but he didn't want to say what he was flying. He told me to warp to a gate at 100 and I'd see. Since I'm not one to refuse a 1v1, I did that and an Arazu decloaked on me. First I was reluctant to engage him, so I pulled some range fearing that with the long scram he would be able to hold me down long enough for the backup to kill me. I let myself long pointed for a while to see if his buddies would come, but it seemed to truly be a 1v1, so I committed into scram range and got under his railguns. He deployed ECM drones which I immediately killed, and then a long grind ensued. I had run out of Nova missiles, so I had to shoot unbonused Mjolnir then even Inferno into a gallente T2 armor ship! Eventually I ran out of any missiles as he approached hull, so I had to rely on my 3 Hobgoblins to wear down all his remaining armor and hull. GF!
https://zkillboard.com/kill/68000338/
At this point it was getting late and I had no missiles left so I didn't feel like traveling the 25+ jumps back to hisec. Instead I decided to take advantage of the infamous citadel asset safety mechanic and deposit my ship and all the loot I had so far in a freeported Athanor 3j over owned by the same guys I'd been killing. I thanked the guys for the fights and self destructed my pod to hisec.
It was a fun roam and I really enjoyed flying the Virgil. I killed 16 ships worth close to 1.2B, made about 250M in loot altogether and didn't even lose my ship. Here's how my killboard looked after the roam:
I hope this helps some of you to muster up the courage and go out there into the scary sovnull and try your hand at some frigate pvp. If you have any questions or need advice, hit me up here or ingame and i'll be happy to help. I know I promised some videos of fights, but recently OBS slows my computer down to a degree where the game feels slightly laggy and slow, so I don't record that often anymore.