So I get the bright idea to go npc pirate hunting in low security space (space being 0.0 - completely lawless, to 1.0, almost completely safe). 

Off to an 0.4sec area I went. 

Pirates have bounties, paid when you kill them, and the value of the bounty can be used to guess about how difficult it's going to be to kill that particular (until you get used to the different names the pirates use for their ranks). I'd been killing pirates with bounties in the 3000 to 6000 isk range up in 0.7 space. The first asteroid belt I warped to in 0.4, there was a 96,000isk rat, and a couple 30,000isk rats. 

I got the hell out of that belt. 

The second belt had a 10,000isk rat by himself. I engaged. Targetted, his the afterburner, set to an orbit of 10 kilometers, and waiting for him to come into missile range. 

No contest. He got my shields about half down, but I was wiping the floor with him. 

Just as the last of his structure was about to go out, a player warped into the belt. In the "stuff in this area" display, his line looked a little odd. There was a kind of skull and cross bones on it. 

That's odd, I thought. I wonder if it's some kind of corporate logo or something maybe? 

So I pulled up his info and was looking him over just at the npc rat died. 

All players have security ratings. You start out at 0.0, neutral, and go from there either positive, if you do good, or negative, if you're a bastard. It moves very, very slowly. Like, tens of thousands per thing you do. This guy's rating was -9.9. 

Oh shit. 

A second player warped into the system, also with a jolly roger on his icon. 

Shit shit. 

I had a waypoint set already (always a good idea when jumping into an unknown situation), and just as I hit the autopilot to warp out, both ships started targetting me. 

But I'm gonna be ok, because I'm warping out. It will take a couple seconds for them to get a lock- 

But no. They locked almost instantly. How'd they do that? 

I'm not worried, though. How much damage could they possibly do before I'm able to get out? Surely they're weapons aren't that powerful. 

The first blast from the first player's artillery took out half my shields. 

Oh, really? That much damage, then? Ok, no problem, I'm leaving. Just about have the engine online (this is about a full second after hitting autopilot). 

My ship goes dark. 

What? 

The computer comes on and says "Capacitor drained." 

What what? How? 

No warping for me. No shields. Electronic warfare using player pirate BASTARDS! (I'm now a little more educated on EW and ECM...) 

Wham, wham, wham! My beautiful shiny 250,000isk missile boat is so much debris, and I'm in my escape pod. 

Great. Oh, well, back to the station. 

Now they target my pod. 

WTF? This is the most evil thing you can do in the game. If you get killed in the pod, it's death. There's no real penalty for it, unless you're wearing implants to boost your skills. Implants are real expensive. But I'm clearly a noob. There's no reason to kill my pod, short of revenge. There's no possible profit in it. It's just sheer bloodymindedness. 

Fortunately their nosferatu or warp scrambler or whatever the hell they used to drain my capacitor hadn't come back online yet and I was able to get to the gate and jump back into higher sec space. 

I spent the next two hours kitting out a better ship (insurance policy paid off on the old ship, but I still had to buy a bunch of new gear and pick it all up from where it was being sold, etc), and grumbling about how the hell was I supposed to make any real kind of money if I couldn't even safely fly into lowsec space to rat hunt. 

Answer found, as I'm now levelling my social and connections skills in order to access that level two agent sooner, so that I can get more cash in the bank and eventually go after the two names I now have kill rights against... 

I love this game.