Stuck between Null and Empire

CTA's for me go fine. I tend not to die, tend to in fact do good damage. It's the non CTA stuff that gets me.


I land in gatecamps, or get stuck on a gate with a Dramiel and incoming Sabre, only to jump to the other side to be pulverized by a 22 man gatecamp. Or something silly like that. A podding usually results, of course. It's null sec, I expect that sort of thing, though perhaps less often than it seems to be happening.


So, naturally, I fly without implants. But I find myself wondering how I could have handled the above situation better. I was in a shield buffer fit Rifter and I landed on a gate. 1 second later, a Dramiel landed. After a few seconds, he pointed me and hit the gate at zero while shooting.


I figured there was a gate camp as a sabre was incoming, but, I didn't feel I had much choice, so I jumped.


After jumping, there was no immediate dictor bubble, so I hit the warp for my destination. As I decloak, bubble goes up, Rapier gets me, I go boom, followed by a trip backwards one system where my medical clone was stored.


I at this point decided I needed to train interceptors, and clone jumped back to Empire for a few days.


Looking at the situation though, I feel screwed either way, just like I did then. Maybe I should have realized I was already dead and at least attempted to kill the Dramiel...that would have looked good on the killboard at least had it worked.


Before you suggest it, there was no intel on the intel channels about said gate camp.

What would you more experienced pilots do in this situation? Would you have attacked the Dramiel? Would you have jumped? Would you have tried to warp off (most likely ending in fighting with the Dramiel)?


I don't think my fitting is the issue (though feel free to me correct me if I'm wrong)...I think it's the decisions I make, or the situations I find myself in.