Sunday, November 25, 2012

A tough little customer

Shortly after I arrive, a scout in our chain reports activity in a C2. There are several pilots actively moving around and we appeared to interrupt a mining operation. Evidently, the pilots were more aware than some and saw us come through their connection.

A short discussion and we decide to attempt a baiting. It rarely works, but we might as well try it. A fleet forms up and we send a probing drake into the wormhole. A couple of minutes later, an Ishkur lands on grid with the drake but he is nearly 100km away and he warps out again. A few seconds later, he lands again; this time much closer to our drake and initiates combat.

We keep the fight to just the drake to see if anyone else will engage for a minute, but the Ishkur isn't going down and the drake is starting to get hurt due to the Wolf Rayet effect in the wormhole. At this point, we warp a proteus into the fight.

We were still hoping by limiting the engagement to get more people engaged. We knew they had a Falcon somewhere nearby, but after a couple of minutes, no one else has engaged. Additionally, it is now apparent, that the proteus is barely scratching the Ishkur.

The rest of the fleet warps in and once we have 3 webs on the Ishkur, we are finally able to slow him down enough to kill him. The Ishkur proved to be a suprisingly tough little customer. I chatted with the pilot for a couple of minutes after the engagement. He knew what we were flying from his own scout and chose to engage us and test a tank he had been theorizing anyway. Very cool! A drake and a proteus were unable to break his tank, so I would have to conclude that his tank was pretty good!

Fly safe smokeAjoint and thanks for the fight!

Saturday, November 17, 2012

Slippery Buzzards

It has been a while since I had the opportunity to shoot at something. Our corporation moved from our previous system to a different system which took up a lot of time and energy. We evicted two industrial corps and now have a secure home system.

A couple of corpmates have scanned down the static connection and are a couple of jumps down that chain reporting contact with a Buzzard. They are speculating that he came through our chain so I grab a fast locking Stilletto and park myself on the static connection along with another corp mate in an Ares. Sure enough, in less than a minute, the wormhole flares and we active the sebos to attempt grabbing the slippery covert ops ship.

He decloaks and I gain a positive lock and point just before he scrambles back through the wormhole. My corpmate and I both jump immediately and move as soon as we are loaded into the new system to burn the session cloak. The buzzard pilot decloaks, burns off the wormhole and immediately cloaks back up. However, I had his position and I accelerate my Stilletto towards him and immediately decloak him.

Both myself and my corpmate gain positive lock and points on the Buzzard. At which point, I notice a critical error in my flying. I forgot to turn back toward the covert ops ship after decloaking him and my speed is carrying me out of point range.

I attempt to correct and overheat my point but it is too late, my momentum carries me outside point range and I lose point. No problem, the other pilot still has a point. I head back towards the covert ops ship just in time to see him warp toward a distant planet. Hmmm! A stabbed Buzzard. This is the first time I have seen one of those.

We both immediately follow the covert ops pilot to the distant planet, but unsuprisingly he has vanished into the mysts. My piloting error probably cost us a kill. It has been a while and I am a bit rusty in the heat of battle. At least the exercise proved mildly entertaining. The moment of what just happened when he warped off with a point on him was pretty good.

Friday, November 16, 2012

Killing hole rollers

I log in and receive an immediate request for help. One of our scouts has jumped into our static C4 and landed in a bubble camp. He burned off and cloaked but they have a warp bubble out and several ships and drones out trying to prevent him from returning while they slowly close the wormhole with a couple of battleships.

We are up against a Megathron, Tempest, Thorax, and Myrmidon. As I get ready, two more pilots log in and immediately ship into combat ships giving us 4v4. We warp to zero as the Megathron pilot jumps into our wormhole and all 5 of us jump into the static together.

As we decloak, it is obvious that the other corporation called off the camp and are scrambling. The Thorax and Myrmidon manage to clear the field before we can get points, but the Megathron and Tempest are not so agile. We spread points and take them down.

The response to our gf in local was, 'YOU SUNK MY BATTLE SHIP'. Too funny!

Saturday, November 10, 2012

Boring Bait

The night begins like any other. We run a site in our home system and lose a ship to sleepers. Nothing all that unusual for us. We absolutely suck at PvE. After finishing the site minus one Tengu, we decide to find something easier to kill.

The crit wormhole goes down first. A jump with the bubble collapsing heavy interdictor and it fades into the night. We begin scouting our new chain. We find a C4 - C4 - C2 -> multiple wormholes which are all end of life.

If the wormhole collapses it will just add to the adventure. We jump 2 of the EOL wormholes without finding anything but the 3rd wormhole as a lone retriever on d-scan and no towers. Looks like we have found a miner.

Our scout warps out to the far planet and deploys probes. He pins the retriever and warps into the belt to find an unpiloted retriever sitting a couple kilometers off an astroid. Maybe we found a trap instead of a miner. But bait is only interesting if you take it.

He moves into position and we jump the fleet and hold cloak. Once he is in position, we warp in at our optimal values and lock the Retriever. It explodes in a ball of fire and no one attacks us in return. Bummer! Turns out this bait wasn't interesting even after we took it. Oh well! Maybe the next target will prove more interesting. We return through the EOL wormhole and disperse for the evening.

Friday, November 9, 2012

Quebec Runs

Scanning. The absolute trademark skill of living in w-space. We run a few sites for ISK in our static and then collapse it and head out hunting. The C4 static opens to a C3 which has connections to a C5, another C4, null sec and a lonely EOL C2. While we are scanning down the C3, we notice an Anathema with unusual tags on d-scan and another set of probes are deployed.

While I attempt to locate where this Anathema came from, the fleet begins to organize. I warp to the C4a and find a Devoter and Enyo guarding the wormhole. Interesting! I do not see many assault frigates in w-space. I navigate around the Enyo and jump into the C4 to see what is going on.

There is nothing immediately on d-scan but my notes show a tower at one of the outer planets. I warp out to the tower and find a Falcon, Raven and Badger at the tower. The Badger is of little interest but the Falcon and Raven could make things more interesting.

The Falcon warps out of the tower and cloaks so I head back to the wormhole to watch. The Enyo has moved back to the C4 side and I am told the Devoter is maintaining a vigil on the other side. Time to engage. We warp a Cyclone to the wormhole to start the engagement. Oops! That must have been too scary. The Devoter jumps back through the wormhole and warps off.

The Enyo jumps the other way into our landing fleet. He immediately jumps back and is tackled by our Cyclone while the rest of the fleet jumps in. The Enyo goes up in flames very quickly and the pilot warps his pod off before we can lock it.

The Falcon chooses not to show himself at all. For a group who acted aggressively to engage, they ran just as aggressively when our single battlecruiser landed on the field. We had a fleet to back it up, but they began running long before our fleet showed itself. We were hoping for a good fight. Instead, we ganked an assault ship.

Saturday, November 3, 2012

Finishing the takeover

A mere 12 hours after putting the tower into reinforced mode, we reassemble our forces to destroy the tower. We maintain our control over the static connections and the fleet begins working on the tower. With no hardeners, it doesn't take long and we soon have a killmail for a large tower and assorted modules.

A BPC and some capital construction parts for a Rorqual drop along with various ore and a few ships. In total, we probably spent more on ammo than the total value of what dropped. Either way, we set a suspected macro miner back a little. He will now need to start over.

Now that the hostile tower is out of the way, we take a break and get organized for our event. We plan to rage roll the C2 static looking for people to kill. In total, we had nearly 40 people show up and the participate for our afternoon event.

The following kills were recorded in our first skirmish: Buzzard 1, Buzzard 1's PodHurricane 1, Hurricane 1's Pod, Hurricane 2, Hurricane 3, Harbinger, Harbinger's Pod, Sacrilege,

The following kills were recorded in our second encounter: Buzzard 2, Buzzard 2's Pod, Legion, Legion's Pod. LOL at the Legion pod and fit. A pilot who cannot figure out what he wants to do.

The last encounter netted us the following: Raven, Raven's Pod.

Overall, the event was a fun activity and we learned several things we can do next time to make it run a little more smoothly. Unfortunately, the only large fleet we found was also the only blue we maintain.

Two memorable quotes from the day. From the first encounter, "Would you guys mind collapsing that connection while I go clean out my pants?". A loki who escaped in the second encounter stated, "WOW! That is a lot of cloaky T3's!"

Friday, November 2, 2012

Hostile Takeover

Our corp is hosting a wormhole roam so we decide to go looking for a C2 wormhole to stage out of for the weekend. The first C2 we find is a static low sec with a static C2. As an additional bonus, there is a Covetor in a belt mining.

A couple of us move into the target system and we wait until he warps to the tower and scan out the grav site. He warps back to the site and our scout moves in for the tackle while the rest of us warp to the belt. Our scout points him, the rest of the fleet lands and as we are targeting him the ship disappears.

Evidently, he disconnected as soon as our ships showed up on overview. We bookmark the rock for later and scout out the tower. It is poorly defended so we decide to add a POS bash to our weekend agenda.

We start moving the staging POS in and get everything setup. As we are in the process of incapacitating the pitiful defenses, the guy logs back in. The entire fleet warps to the bookmarked crokite rock and lands about the same time as the Covetor. The pilot immediately ejects and warps off so we hold DPS and get most of our entire fleet on the killmail.

Rahmanan jumps in a Cheetah and starts probing. We collapse the lowsec connection, and the next one is closed by accident. We manage to crit the 3rd low sec connection leaving a HIC cloaked outside the wormhole. In a few minutes, Rahmanan manages to scan down the third connection and jumps into lowsec. We cross jump him collapsing the wormhole and leaving him trapped outside his wormhole.

We then return to finish off the defenses and take a break before the main event to reinforce the tower occurs. The rest of the evening is fairly boring as we sit around and shoot at the tower. We are pleasantly surprised when the tower hits reinforced and only has 12 hours of stront. Perfect timing for our roam. We can finish this tower off tomorrow and then begin our roam in peace.