Boredom Strikes

It is a rainy Saturday afternoon and there are quite a few corp members online looking for trouble. We have been chasing chains for a while without seeing anyone moving when we finally roll into a new static with a pilot sitting in a force field. AFK pilots are not much better than logged off pilots.

Since the pilot in the tower is not doing anything, I drop probes and resolve the system. I find the outgoing B274 and the outgoing Z647 and a couple of gas sites. I need to refit one of my Sabres anyway and this looks like Amarr territory so I jump through in my Sabre and head to market.

I make it to Amarr (all of 5 jumps) refit my ship and head back to the wormhole. Before I jump back into the wormhole, I check d-scan with my alt and notice that the pilot in system has changed ships to a Loki and there is now a Noctis also in system. 

A quick check with d-scan shows the Noctis at the tower where he is expected. However, the Loki is not at a tower. I click the controls to show anomalies and sure enough, the Loki is running a site. I warp into the site and land about 40km off the Loki. 

There is only 1 other pilot online at the moment. Everyone else seems to have walked away from the computer. The other pilot grabs a Proteus and heads to the static wormhole, I land on the high sec and we prepare to coordinate our jumps. I maneuver my alt into position and we jump the wormholes and warp to the site.

Due to the differentials in warp distance, the Proteus lands before the Sabre and the Loki warps off a fraction of a second before I manage to deploy the bubble from the Sabre. Drat! We were close but there are no awards for being close.

Another corp mate has logged in by now and he warps to the tower in time to the Loki pilot log off. We offer the other pilot who is actually from a different corp a 2v2 at the sun but he claims to have insufficient assets for such an endeavor. Unacceptable!

Right about now is when the boredom factor kicks in. You know what, the Loki pilot's tower is completely undefended. Why don't we seige it? Ok! What type of tower is it? Large Minmatar. Sounds good, lets get some Gila's and have a POS bash. Maybe that will encourage them to locate some assets for a fight.

We start bashing the tower with all 4 of us who are online. This could take ALL night! Unfortunately, we have nothing better to do at the moment. It doesn't take long and our numbers have grown to 8 and then on up to 12. A couple of the additional people have brought battleships and the tower shields are starting to melt away. Although at a fairly slow rate. 

The shields are at about 60% when the Loki pilot logs back in and starts taking ships out of this tower and moving them over to his friends tower. We offered a reward to the pilot in the other tower if he will offline the tower, but he declines to backstab his friend in such an underhanded manner. Of course, he doesn't appear to care that we are taking the tower down either.

We start putting drag bubbles up to catch the guy moving ships but it is pretty obvious that he has cloaky eyes on the tower as he keeps coming in from directions which aren't bubbled. He eventually takes a couple of ships to high sec and we park a Devoter on the high sec connection to prevent him from coming back.

Meanwhile, he keeps moving ships to the other tower and floating them in space. We finally get to the magical 25% shield point and the tower enters reinforced mode. Not sure why he moved all those ships, but it gave us something to watch while our drones were shooting the tower. 

Not enough assets to engage! He must have moved over 20 ships to the other tower including battleships, battlecruisers, recons,  a Loki and a command ship. Since the other pilot decided to give him a safe haven, we investigate his tower and discover that it is also a large tower with light defenses consisting of 8 Medium lasers and 2 Large lasers defending it. 

The evening is still young. We grab a Scimitar and I fleet warp the group on top of the first group of guns with instructions for people to warp when they get low shield. I am targeted first and the reps start coming in. However, the guns are hitting me pretty hard and I end up warping off with 23% armor remaining. I let me shields regen about 1/2 way and then rejoin the fight. A couple of more people end up warping off before our second Scimitar gets on field and things stabilize. 

In the meantime, I hear a warning buzzer. Then another and then yet another. About that time, it occurs to me that I have completely forgotten my hauling alt sitting in a badger. I ended up warping it in with the fleet when I did the fleet warp. Oops! So long Badger! LOL!

While we are taking out the guns, the local pilot decides to reload the ammo in one of the guns we are orbiting. He grabs an interceptor and burns straight into our group to place more ammo in one of the guns. He dies in the attempt but I think he manages to get crystals in the gun. It didn't accomplish a whole lot but I admire anyone who will fly a ship straight into a hostile group of 20 ships. 

We finished incapacitating the guns and start burning the tower. Since we know it is stronted, we are not really in the mood to finish reinforcing it. The local pilot has been pretty cool throughout the afternoon so we offer him a deal. If he will get in one of the floating ships and pilot it into our group and eject, we will leave. One of my pilots insists that we ask for the Sarum Magnate which is floating. Never mind the Loki or the command ship, he wants the Sarum Magnate. Never one to pass up a good laugh, I offer the deal to the pilot in local. He increduously asks if we are serious, thinks about it for about .002 seconds and accepts the offer.

We stop shooting and the local pilot jumps in the Sarum Magnate and flies it straight into the middle of our group. He ejects and warps off. We recall our drones while Mindful Visteen, who wanted the ship, returns and picks up the abandoned trophy. He takes it to our corporate tower where it is floating on tower of the tower. 

We rolled the wormhole away and spent the next half hour laughing about the whole deal. Oh well! The afternoon ended up being entertaining in an unexpected way. As a final gesture of goodwill, I offered some advice to the two guys on how to setup their tower defenses to discourage bored groups such as mine from attacking their towers. 

Interrupting a tower bash

Hey guys, let's get rid of this dead stick in our new wormhole system! Ok. Should we put some scouts on the wormholes. Nah! We need all the DPS we can get on this tower. No one is awake in wormholes at this time of night. Ok! Heading to the dead stick with my shiny new Stratios! I want to see how it performs. Does this line of logic strike you as dumb? It should!

One of our scouts is down chain scouting and reports back that he was 2 Talos, 2 Naga, a Myrmidon and an Oracle. He gets little reaction since we often find ships floating. However, his next comment makes me sit up. These ships are a a planet with a tower but there is no force field. Scout, please confirm ship list and no force field. Confirmed, no force field. I have 2 Talos, 2 Naga, a Myrmidon and an Oracle plus a new Helios who is in a different location.

The rest of the group reships while he locates the tower and reports back that several of the ships are sitting in a group shooting a dead stick. I instruct him to move within 5 km of the group and we head down chain with a Devoter, 2 Proteus and an Oneiros. We move quickly to the entrance of the target system and figure out how to spread points as we are in route.

We land on the wormhole and since the ships were warped independently we wait the few seconds for everyone to arrive. As soon as we are all on grid, we jump the wormhole and initiate warp to our scout. The warp is 39.6 AU so they are not going to have much notice if they didn't have eyes on this incoming wormhole.

We land on grid with them and it is readily apparent that they did not have eyes on the incoming wormhole. They have not moved and as we land, a new pilot arrives in a Stratios. I quickly change my point from one of the Talos to the new Stratios. The first Talos and a Naga are dead before they even react to our presence. The Stratios is trying to burn away but I am faster and he cannot escape my 36 km point. I chase him down while the other Proteus is taking care of the pilots caught by the bubble.

The scout who found the tower bash in progress decloaks and tags the Stratios in his Buzzard before I kill it and then manages to catch the pod before it can warp off. Great job!

In total, we destroy 5 ships and 4 pods shown in the battle report. I thank the remaining members for contributing to my corpse collection since good fight does not make any sense. Poor security, poor reactions, poor target calling and poor DPS leads to a 1.1B loss. Of the seven ships on field, only 2 escaped. One was the Oracle who was sitting 40km from the rest of the group and the other was the Talos that I dropped point from in order to get the Stratios.

End of Line

We have just opened a new chain and are spreading out looking for activity. It is approaching the Thanksgiving holiday in the US and the activity levels are low due to people traveling. I am scanning with my alt and find the static high sec and the static c4 for the new wormhole. A teammate jumps the C4 and reports back that an Iteron V lands and jumps going the other direction. He links the pilot name and doesn't think he was spotted as he held cloak while the other pilot landed and jumped.

So we have an Iteron V moving stuff from a C4 into a C2. I move over to the high sec and confirm that he exits to k-space at that location. On the theory that what goes out will usually return, we set a trap with a cloaked Flycatcher on the C4 and prepare to wait. Less than 30 seconds go by when the Flycatcher pilot reports back that he has an activation. I am sitting in a Sabre and a corp mate is sitting in an interceptor in our home system.

The Flycatcher pilot reports a Bustard has appeared and immediately decides to engage. We jump and warp to the C4 and land just as the Bustard jumps back and a Proteus decloaks. I jump on contact but there is no sight of the Bustard. He either cloaked or warped off. A Falcon has decloaked and is sitting about 30 km off the wormhole yellow boxing me. I fly around assuming the Bustard has probably cloaked since that ship is not the most agile ship in Eve. However, I am unable to decloak him and the Falcon has be permajammed at any rate so it wouldn't really matter.

The Falcon of Rall Mekin does not miss a single cycle so I finally decide to burn out and put a bubble on him. The Flycatcher pilot has headed home to reship while I decide to test the tanked Sabre and see how long I can survive. Surprisingly I manage to avoid making any mistakes that get me tackled by the Proteus for several minutes but my luck finally runs out and they shut down my MWD. Once they shut down my MWD, it is all over and since I had bubbled up the Falcon, I not only pay for the mistake with my ship, but was given the pod express to high sec as well. Oh well! That pod was getting a bit ripe anyway.

The Flycatcher pilot returns to the fight with an Absolution and an Oneiros, but the Falcon and Proteus are joined by another Proteus, Hurricane, Loki, Wolf, and Rupture. With more pilots appearing on the high sec wormhole, I call it off and tell everyone to get out. The Absolution is going down but while it burns, the other pilots manage to escape back home.

I tell everyone to return to our home system and prepare for an invasion force. Against this group, I expect for them to come looking for our home system. We flew with a couple of them in the past and have encountered them more than once. My alt is sitting on our home connection watching activity as we prepare for home defense. There are only 4 of us online at the moment so our options are somewhat limited. We know we will be fighting outnumbered but I am going to field a fight if they come looking for us. We put a couple of pilots in battleships on the wormhole to encourage the opposing force to engage when they find us and cloak a Falcon nearby.

It takes several minutes but finally probes appear in the C2S. A few passes with the probes and they are all within 1 AU of the wormhole. Now we wait for their scout. Sure enough, within a couple of minutes, Hapachu decloaks in a Proteus and jumps the wormhole. He immediately jumps back out and nothing else is seen for several minutes. In the meantime, we are joined by another corpmate bringing our total number of pilots to 5. We are beginning to think they left when I see a fleet coming on d-scan. Holy Crap! We may be getting more than we can handle.

I have logged in another character who is sitting out of d-scan range of the wormhole in a Bhaalghorn. One of our pilots has a Navy Armageddon at the wormhole and an Archon off d-scan. We have a pilot single boxing a Navy Megathron and another in a Tempest Fleet and the last pilot is triple boxing a sensor boosting Blackbird, a Scorpion and a Falcon.

The hostile fleet lands with a Navy Brutix, 2 Proteus, 2 Legions, 2 or 3 Lokis, a Hurricane, and a Vigilant. At this point, I stop watching and get the impressed Bhaalghorn pilot headed for the wormhole. They begin jumping and before everyone gets in, the wormhole crits. We engage and they immediately pop the Blackbird and the Falcon. I think the Falcon got too close to the wormhole while trying to manage multiple accounts at once.

The Archon and Bhaalghorn are in route, but their firepower overwhelms the Navy Armageddon before the Archon can land. While they are killing our Navy Geddon, we kill their Navy Brutix and once the Archon lands they start jumping out. I have locked 5 strategic cruisers and start applying neuts across the board as they begin jumping ships back out of the wormhole.

The wormhole collapes leaving six or seven of them in the wormhole. We spread our points and lock the Proteus of Hapachu, the Legion of Rall Mekin and the Legion of Clickless. The Bhaalghorn has all of them nueted out and while they have massive buffer tanks, they have no ability to do any meaningful damage. At this point, anyone who isn't pointed abandons the field. Hapachu initiates self destruct so we focus our limited firepower on him. Mindful who lost the Navy Mega is now back with a Devoter and puts the bubble up a few seconds before Hapachu's Proteus explodes. We return the favor he gave me and send him on the pod express to high sec.

Next up is Clickless in a brick Legion. When Rall sees the Devoter, he abandons ship and escapes in his pod while we are killing Clickless. We clean up the field and bring a pilot in to fly his legion back to our corp tower.

Part 1 shows the fight in our wormhole and the Legion abandoned by Mr. Mekin was fit identically to the one of Clickless. Part 2 shows the Absolution we lost in the C4. Part 3 shows the Sabre and pod that I lost in the C4.

In total, just over 2.5B ISK was destroyed in what I believe amounts to a draw. Regardless, the encounter was fun! We managed to leverage the mechanics of our static connection and field a fight while vastly outnumbered. Since they brought a good fight and were pretty good natured about the whole encounter, we scouted a route and helped the stranded pilots who escaped the field back to k-space.

Thanks for the fun guys! In the chatter after the fight, they revealed that the Bustard had cargo worth many billions of ISK. Therefore, the escort and the quick response once we engaged it. Their pilot told me that I came very close to decloaking him in the C4. Engaging them on that wormhole started a chain of events which made the evening interesting for both groups. Fly Dangerous!

Low sec shenanigans

Let's have some fun! Ok. What should we do? We should roll the wormhole. That is not FUN! Maybe not, but anything is better than the current chain. Ok. But, what should we do after we roll the wormhole? Do you ever have those days? Looking for something exciting and feeling like it is just around the corner. You just cannot figure out which corner to turn.

The day had been pretty typical  weekend day for us. People came and went throughout the day and we scouted a number of lengthy chains. We had a couple of kills to show for the day including a Navy Apoc, but nothing overly exciting.

This was the point where I decided to do a frigate roam. Everyone jump in a T1 frigate and we will go to Faction Warfare space and roam around and see something blow up. Probably ourselves! But that has it's own fun factor. After this announcement, the discussion on comms went something like this.

Player 1: I don't have any T1 frigates, will an assault frigate work?
Player 2: What about a blackbird? I don't have any frigates.
Player 3: Does anyone have a fit for a T1 frigate? Any race?
Player 4: Do you want logi or e-war?
Player 5: I think I might have a frigate in high sec somewhere.
Player 6: I will bring an interceptor, it is the only frigate I have.
Me: Oh dear god! I need something stronger to drink.

After I returned from getting some water, the only available beverage in my house at the moment, people had shipped into a mix of T1 and T2 frigates along with a single Blackbird. We were set and everyone headed for the Tama system a few jumps away from one of our high sec exits.

Let the fun begin! We head into Tama and proceed to look for targets of opportunity. Since we are in small ships, our plan is to find people running faction sites and avoid fights on the gates. On our first loop, we find several people running sites but did not manage to catch anyone.

As we circle back around, we have a couple of people dropping out and a couple of additional people joining us so we take a short break and head back for another round. This time, we find a little more action. Right off the bat, we catch a Caracal running a site in Tama.

From there, we catch a Kestrel in a site in Kedama. However, he has friends which included a Corax hitting me from nearly 100km. I would not have thought that was possible. But the sniping destroyers seemed to be effective. At this point, we lost one a Retribution in the ensuing brawl as he was tackled just moments before the command to warp out was given. Bad timing on that.

The rest of the group continued with one of our members yelling RP statements about Gallente terrorists in every local channel to the amusement of our entire group and even a few of the people we were passing. I finally located a station and docked to repair my ship just as the group tackled a Merlin which turned into a escalating brawl. We lost a Harpy here but everyone else got off and we regrouped to continue the roam.

We decide to head for Dodixie which isn't too far and let the guys in newb ships get another ship. We jump into Old Man Star and there is a flashing red Gnosis on the gate. After about 3 seconds of discussion we decide to engage and he is about 50% through armor when an entire fleet jumps on us. It was bait and we took it! LOL! http://fightingcarebears.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_related&kll_id=20612491

Now everyone except me needs a new ship. My Merlin was not a big enough threat for them to waste a point on me so I warp off once I am the last one alive. There is some advantage to flying the cheapest ship in the group.

Several players head home and we have 3 left at this point. We undock in Dodixie and discover a flashing yellow Vexor about 20 km off the station. No reason to allow that kind of foolishness so we pop him before continuing back into low sec.

We make it back to Tama before finding the last and best fight of the evening. In Tama, we warp into a site and find a Thrasher who is quickly joined by another Thrasher and a Malediction. Our group consists of 2 Harpy's and my Merlin, so we have a straight 3v3 fight. We focus on the initial Trasher and basically trade ships. They kill one of our Harpy's while we kill the Thrasher. Not exactly winning an ISK war here. Next, we shift our focus to the other Thrasher, but our second Harpy goes down before he dies leaving the Merlin alone.

At this point, I am not scrammed and I have a decision to make. Do I stay and fight 1v2 or bug out? Is it really a decision if you didn't think of it? I was focused on making sure the Thrasher didn't get outside my point range. I finish him off but had to consume the charges in my ancillary shield booster to stay alive. The Malediction is out around 40km and it does cross my mind to bug out now. However, I decide it is all for one. I am not going to be the only pilot going back to high sec in a ship. I turn and charge toward the Malediction with my microwarp drive running. Evidently, he decided at the same time that he liked his odds 1v1 and charged toward me. My move caught him by surprise and he overshot and ended up within my scram range.

I scram him which shuts off his microwarp drive and apply webs for good measure. He points me and this battle is now fully engaged. We are wearing each other down (slowly I might add) and we are both about 30% into structure when my shield booster finishes the reload cycle. I can only imagine his frustration when he saw over a 1/3 of my shields regen instantly. A short time later, he explodes while I am at full shields although my armor and structure have taken a beating. Manu, one of the Thrasher pilots announces that the Merlin has cleaned house and we exchange good fights in local before I, once again, fly back to high sec alone. At least this time, I feel good about being the only survivor! That was a fun fight.

An interesting evening

The month of the Orca is upon us. No REALLY, why do you seem to get activity of a certain type in cycles. We have confiscated 2 Orcas trying to collapse wormholes this month and killed 2 other Orcas. After zero Orca kills for several months, we suddenly get a whole fleet of them. Maybe wormhole inhabitants are getting more careless or maybe Bob has decided the Orca herd needs thinning a little. In either case, we have caught more than our share this month, including one that got away later in this story.

The first kill of the evening was a battleship that I found running a site in low sec. I actually feel bad about ganking this newbie. Tech 1 guns, tech 1 drones, and we drop seven pilots on him in an outright gank. I thought he was playing bait since there were 10 other people in local, however there was no response after I tackled him so we dropped the entire fleet on him.

The next kill was more entertaining and demonstrated the power of the new warp mechanics. One of our scouts jumped an EOL wormhole and found a retriever mining in an ore site. The guy spoke up in local as soon as we jumped in and ran back to his POS. He was nice enough and we chatted with him while We bookmarked the rock we think he was mining. We then said goodbye in local and left since the wormhole was EOL. At this point, we had every intention of going back and seeing if we could catch him in the site.

The key to our plan involves the new warp mechanics. If you haven't tested them out, you should get in a fleet with an Interceptor, a cruiser and a battleship. Then warp all of them independently (not fleet warp) at the same time to another object. We did this test with a 10 AU warp. I was in the interceptor and I had time to go get another beer while we waited for the battleship to arrive. That is only a slight exageration. The interceptor was 15-20 seconds ahead of the battleship and this was with us warping from full speed and aligned so that the only difference was the warp speed. An interceptor warps at 8 au/s while the battleship warps at 2 au/s. The difference is very noticable.

We finished scouting down the chain and then decided it was time to go back and see if we could catch the miner. I grabbed a Sabre which warps at 7.9 AU/s and everyone else grabbed some fast ships. We decided to make sure one of the scouts came along with probes since the wormhole was EOL. We meet up on the C2A wormhole and I explain the plan. We are going to jump and immediately warp to our bookmark. Any questions? Nope! GO! GO! GO!

I jump the wormhole and warp the Sabre to the bookmark. It is only a 1 AU jump and I nearly land before I left. It was quick! The Retriever is in the belt but he is mining a different rock and is 20 km from me and moving. He saw us jump in and is trying to warp out. I burn toward him and activate my scram making sure he cannot escape. I put a bubble out just seconds before he ejects and I lock and pop his pod as he yells NOOOOO in local. The new warp mechanics allow a small fast ship to get on someone before they have a chance to react. This guy was paying attention, it just didn't matter when I can warp and land on grid so fast.

After this little trap, we roll the static and hunt down another chain. The new static C2 had another C5 connected to it so I jump in with my scout and start poking around. This is the home system of Semper Ubi Sub Ubi. I have been here before and these guys have always been willing to give a fight so I scout their towers and find that they have 8-9 pilots online at the moment. Which is probably only 4-5 people. Our numbers are at 4 since it is now quite late in the evening. But we decide to engage them anyway. Complicating the matter slightly is the wolf-rayet effect on their wormhole.

While we are trying to decide how we want to bait them into a fight, an Orca appears on d-scan. We move cloaky T3s to their connection in the static in hopes that they will try to roll the wormhole with the Orca. Maybe Bob will smile on us and we can kill the Orca before they have a chance to overwhelm us with their superior numbers. We have just gotten into position, when the Orca lands on their static connection where my alt is sitting. We decloak and wait on the Orca and he doesn't disappoint us. He jumps and holds cloak. Our devoter pilot and my main jump the wormhole and prepare for incoming hostiles. The bubble goes up to slow down their response fleet at least a little.

As you would expect, the Orca pilot wastes no time in calling for help. He waits out his timer while they scramble a response fleet. Which basically consisted of whatever the pilot was sitting in at the time. The Absolution lands first and I engage him while the rest of their fleet is incoming. A cloaky proteus against an absolution in a wolf rayet! Hmmmm! That could have been a real interesting fight. But he is soon joined by others.

Meanwhile, the rest of our group (2 pilots) are pecking away at the Orca which we discover is hull tanked. Boo!! I was hoping to get a kill before they could save it. With the announcement that it is hull tanked, I immediately know that isn't going to happen. By this time, they have landed a sizeable fleet on the wormhole and he jumps back. Their fleet consists of an Absolution, a harbinger, a brutix, a vigilant, a really annoying falcon and a couple of other ships which didn't imprint on my memory in the heat of the moment. I think they had 8 combat ships and the Orca. We were fighting outgunned in their home system. We skirmish for a while on their wormhole but they neut my proteus dry (in spite of the cap booster), and they were almost perma jamming the other proteus and our tengu. At this point, we are applying almost zero DPS so I call off the fight and we escape back through their connection and disappear.

Several of them, including Longinius Spear followed us through the wormhole and we exchanged GF in the C2S. In a couple of minutes, they bring a Phobos to the wormhole and crit the wormhole on the way out. They ask if I want to get my eyes out of their wormhole and I take the opportunity to pull my scout out before they jump the Phobos back and close the wormhole.

Funny Quote from the Orca pilot, "my balls slammed into the roof of my mouth when you guys decloaked on me!". Overall, this was fun even though we didn't get a kill. The response fleet they brought was effective in saving their Orca. Bob was appeased in the fight they provided. Great fun!

You can check out Longinius Spear's blog at http://www.invadingyourhole.blogspot.com/. Given the name of our corp, I had to laugh at the animated banner gif for his site.

Target Breakers, Stolen Orca and Trash Talking

What makes a kill satisfying? It can be a variety of things; a well laid trap, an expensive fit, or basic trash talk in local. Nothing in my opinion is more satisfying than killing someone who spouts off in local. This is a story about trash talk. Don't get me wrong. I have nothing against trash talk and have engaged in it quite often. But it can be a double-edged sword.

The day has been fairly uneventful. We found a Scorpion rolling a wormhole earlier in the afternoon and discovered the absolute annoyance factor of a target breaker. (Kill Link) I cannot even remember how many times I had to retarget the Scorpion during this engagement. I would get 2 shots off and then have to re-target. Between the bubbles of the flycatcher and the number of people with scrams, we managed to keep him from using the micro jump drive or warping off.

We head back to our wormhole and notice that the C2 pilots have woken up. They suddenly have 10 pilots online. Two Armageddons, a Dominix, a Hurricane Fleet Issue, an Orca and 2 Guardians along with a variety of scanning ships. Is this a combat fleet or a rolling fleet. In a few minutes, the entire group warps to our wormhole.

We scramble ships to the wormhole to engage them as they jump the Orca through the wormhole, then swap pilots and make the first half of the second trip. Umm guys! You should probably investigate the mass on wormholes before jumping Orca's through them. The Orca finds itself trapped in the middle of our landing fleet. I tell the pilot in local that we will help get his pod back to high sec safely if he jumps out of the Orca. I have never seen someone abandon a ship so quickly! It makes me wonder what the guy has plugged into his head.

We grab the Orca and take it back to our tower and then go to find the new wormhole. Hmmm.... The wormhole has multiplied. There are now two of them. One is an incoming C5 with a group wanting to kill Kalseth. Unfortunately, he isn't around and we are down to 3 pilots online. So we continue scouting to get our Orca friend back out. The C5 groups curses us for being no fun and rolls the wormhole away.

We find a low sec which is only 2 jumps from high sec and after some negotiation we convince the Orca pilot that he has no options but to trust us and join our fleet. With much reluctance and moaning about it, he joins our fleet, warps to me on the C2, jumps and immediately warps off while dropping fleet. My curiosity about his implants is very high but we roll our wormhole and head out looking for more targets. We did leave him a can of bookmarks to all the wormholes and the name of the low sec system.

Things were quite for a while after the Scorpion kill. We rolled several wormholes and scouted a few chains without finding anyone to shoot at. Pilots in POS shields and cloaky scouts dominated our afternoon. Unt

We have rolled into a new C2 and not seeing any ships on d-scan, we drop probes and start scanning. There is a high sec, a low sec and 2 C2 connections. I have jumped the high sec wormhole to see where it goes as one of the other scouts lands on one of the C2 wormholes. As he lands a Dominix appears on the wormhole.

GO! GO! GO! With absolutely no idea what may be on the other side, I make a snap decision to engage. The Dominix is probably trying to roll the wormhole. Our scout makes the tackle and the rest of the fleet scrambles to join him on what we designate as C2B. As I am landing, Walton Simons jumps through the wormhole in a Proteus. As our fleet is landing, he makes the following announcement in local.

[01:59:57] Walton Simons > pussys need logi

We have an mixed fleet based on the quick decision to engage and most of us are in cloaky ships so our DPS is not what I would call stellar. But the numbers are in our favor. The Dominix and Proteus jump back through the wormhole and we follow and tackle. At this point, they bring a Thorax, Brutix Navy, Exequror, Talos, and an Oracle. Ships came and went at times so I am not completely sure which pilot was in what ship. Especially since a couple of them reshipped during the fight.

The Proteus had a very large buffer tank so we were focusing on the other ships and keeping him pointed. The kill order was the Thorax (who may have been an alt or a 3rd party). The Brutix Navy went next. Then the Exequror. What? They make fun of us for bringing logi and then bring their own. Of course, we have quite a few armor ships and our logi pilot brought a Scimitar. When I say GO! GO! GO!, the pilots brought whatever they happened to be sitting in at that moment. Good job!

Next we kill the Dominix and then lose an Enyo. The Enyo pilot is giving the Scimitar pilot grief for not keeping him alive but he heads back to get another ship. Next we kill a second Exequror, once again flown by Layla Eryn. Maybe she has another and can keep bringing them. The Oracle goes down next, while the Talos has burned out of range. Layla brings a Hurricane next so maybe she ran out of Exequrors. Of course, the Hurricane fairs no better than the logi ships. It dies in a ball of fire. However, the last warp in by the Hurricane allowed the Proteus of Walton Simmons to jump the wormhole yet again and this time he manages to evade us and warp off.

Next up is yet more trask talk in local along with a couple of gf's.

[02:14:59] Layla Eryn > and 2 logi?
[02:15:01] tellmewhen Yvormes > gf
[02:15:07] Holznar'ar Eoner > gf
[02:15:28] Kalseth > learn to count .. that would be one logi
[02:15:34] Kalseth > to your 2
[02:15:35] tellmewhen Yvormes > you know we would have kicked your ass in a fair fight
[02:15:38] Resilan Bearcat > gf
[02:15:39] Layla Eryn > to my one
[02:15:40] Layla Eryn > dumb f**k
[02:15:44] Layla Eryn > t1 logi aswell
[02:15:52] Davion Thule > <url=showinfo:1373//90432996>Holznar'ar Eoner</url> i hate you lol

We are now chasing the Proteus pilot around the C2 with combat probes. He manages to elude us and eventually logs out. However, we had combat probes on him and have his last location. We warp a phobos and a couple of tackle ships to that location and begin the wait. The Proteus only has 10% armor left and after his opening comment, I want that ship badly.

It takes a while, but he eventually he logs his alt back in who lands 70km from our trap. He scouts a bit and then disappears. A neutral pilot in a buzzard drops probes, scans out the low sec but immediately comes back into the wormhole, cloaks up and is never seen again even though we have scouts sitting on all the wormholes.

It takes 2 hours and 15 minutes before Walton Simmons logs back in. What remains of our fleet immediately scrambles for the C2. He lands within 3km of our Phobos who immediately uncloaks and bubbles him. The tackle ships decloak and apply webs and points. The rest of the fleet lands and we destroy his Proteus and pod him back to k-space.

He moans about our persistence in waiting the 2+ hours and congratulates us on killing his cheap fit Proteus. His opening remarks and then the moaning about the lack of a fair fight from his group, made this kill extremely gratifying. The 2 battle reports are shown below.

Battle Report - Part A
Battle Report - Part B

Some kills are more rewarding than others. I must admit, killing Walton Simmons was worth every minute. Why do people complain about not getting a fair fight. You got a fight and made a good showing against a superior force. Instead of calling people names and thumping your chest, exchange good fights and you will find that people are much less likely to wait around 2+ hours to kill you.

Baiting a Trap

We open a new static and the scout reads off the list of ships on d-scan. This has become standard operating procedure for us as we roll a lot of wormholes. However, the list of ships the scout reads off is anything but standard. Guardian x3, Vindicator x5, Dominix x2, Armageddon, Abaddon, Tayra, Iteron V. Followed by an observation that nearly all the POCOs are reinforced. Hmmmm!

The scout bookmarks the back side of the wormhole and goes to find the fleet. It takes a couple of minutes since the fleet is not bashing the POCOs as expected. Instead, we have found Last Chancers bashing a Tower. Evidently, the locals had decided to move in and remove the POCOs which provided an excuse for Last Chancers to stir up a fight. LOL!

The POS bashing fleet has not noticed the new signature in system, so we decide to set a trap. We quickly mass down the wormhole and put a cloaked Scorpion in the static as the cage door for the trap. Once we are ready, everyone moves off the wormhole and we leave a lone pilot (Wolwen) sitting on the static in a Hyperion as bait.

The next step is to get their attention since it is obvious they are not paying attention to new signatures. It is likely that they will notice a hostile tag on d-scan and scanner probes. Sure enough, that gets their attention. While our scout finds the high sec connection, their scout probes down our K162. A few seconds later, a Proteus appears on the K162 and jumps into our home system.

He immediately engages the Hyperion and puts out the call to his fleet that he has a target. They warp 4 Vindicators, a Scorpion, 2 Guardians, a Sabre, a Legion and an Abaddon to our wormhole. The 2 Guardians, 1 Vindicator, Legion, Sabre and Abaddon make it through the wormhole before it collapses.

Our cage door Scorpion pilot (Seercher Visteen) is unnecessary and dies stranded on the wrong side of the wormhole to the ships that did not make it through.

As soon as we have confirmation that their fleet is jumping, we warp the rest of our fleet to the wormhole. This includes an Oneiros, a Dominix, a Proteus, a Megathron Navy Issue, a Bhaalghorn, and an Archon. The trap has been sprung!

The Oneiros pilot has to overheat the reppers to keep our Hyperion alive until the Archon can land. Meanwhile, the rest of us spread our points. With the Bhaalghorn nueting the Guardians are completed taken out of the fight. The Guardian of Orrin Danestar goes down first.  Followed quickly by the Guardian of SiTodd. Due to the Sabre's bubble, Orrin Danestar is trapped in the bubble and gets podded before he can escape the field.

Next up is the Vindicator of Niborina, followed by the Legion of onthewagon. The Proteus pilot manages to burn out of our point range and escape and points were never applied to the Sabre or the Abaddon which also manage to warp off the field.

The Proteus pilot is their scanner and the remaining pilots bounce around while both groups drop probes and locate the new static exit. We strike up a conversation with the remaining members of their fleet and agree to let the rest of their fleet escape without pursuit. However, the new static has a null sec / c5 static. Once we realize this, we invite them back into the wormhole and roll it looking for a better connection. The next static is a C3 / High Sec and conveniently, the high sec is only 5 jumps from Jita.

They head off to rejoin their group and reship, while we roll our connection and continuing looking for targets.

A Capital Engagement

Have you ever had that feeling that you just grabbed a tiger by the tail? Letting go is not an option, but holding on might be even more dangerous.

Last night we rolled into a new static connection looking for some pew. There was nothing in the static so we continued down the chain and soon found some guys moving around in a C5. We put a couple of scouts in there watching the activity.

Based on d-scan and tower observations, we deduced that they were rolling a wormhole using an Orca. It made a couple of trips out into space, disappeared off d-scan for a minute and then returned to the tower. Evidently, we caught the tail end of this process as a battleship made the trip on the third pass. The Orca then warped to yet another point in space and repeated the process while another pilot jumped into a Revelation.

While there were no pilots on d-scan in the immediate vicinity, we deployed probes and found the null sec connection the Orca had jumped last. The scanning scout pulls probes and warps just as the other scout sitting on their tower announces that the Revelation has warped to the wormhole. Sure enough, he lands and jumps. Then jumps back and crits the wormhole.

Our scout sitting on that wormhole returns to the static connection we entered thinking they will attempt to close it next. We are expecting an Orca or a couple of battleships at the static connection. However, one of their pilots jumps in a battleship (Dominix) I think and warps to the null sec. A few seconds later, the signature disappears but the pilot does not show back up on d-scan or at the tower. We assume he was trapped outside the wormhole. Pro tip: Jump the battleship and Orca before the Revelation!

Will they roll the wormhole we are sitting on? Evidently not, they ship into Archons, Lokis and Revelations for site running. Really! They are going to run sites without closing their static? Yes sir! Bob is going to be happy tonight!

At this point, we make a bat phone call. Our band of pilots is ready and able to make the tackle, but we are going to need more firepower to take down a C5 escalation fleet. Several people answer the call and we get the expected "absolutely" we will come for a capital kill. Followed by the unexpected announcement that they are only 7 jumps out! Sweet! Bob must really be anxious for some blood to be spilled this evening.

Their fleet comes rolling in and is sitting on the high sec of the targets static connection as they finish the first site and warp back to their tower. One of the pilots jumps in an Anathema and we scramble the fleet off the wormhole quickly in case he heads toward high sec. Sure enough, he warps straight to the static and then straight to the high sec. Another pilot warps to him in high sec and they both burn back to the targets home system to start the next site.

At this point, they have 2 Archons, 1 Loki, 1 cloaked Falcon, 2 Revelations and 1 Moros in their escalation fleet. We regroup on the high sec and assign points as they near completion of the site. With 2 Guardian sleepers left, we jump the wormhole and warp the entire fleet on top of them.

All ships are immediately locked and pointed except the Loki who flees the field. That is certainly Ok with us since he was the biggest threat to us anyway. However, we are now at that moment when I realize that my plan worked perfectly. But now what? I am certainly no expert on capital fleet fights.

And thus the grind begins. We pick a carrier and apply both nuets and dps. It is immediately apparent to all involved that this is not going to be a short fight. The carrier pilot is well skilled and their group is not panicking. They are working together and trying various things to thin us out.

The first option they employ is snipers but our heavy interdictor quickly makes them back off this strategy. The second option is Falcons, but the swarm of hostile drones coupled with some very eager T3 pilots at various ranges from the celestials scuttles this option after a couple of attempts as well.

The static wormhole is a 1B wormhole and is only stage 2 after we jump our fleet in. Therefore, we send a couple of our pilots back home for higher DPS ships and a bunch of ammo. We are in the process of bringing another pilot in with an Armaggedon when the targets decide to roll the wormhole. One of them jumps in a hole rolling Dominix and jumps the static both ways killing it before we can get the Armegeddon into the battle.

The race is on for the next wormhole. We get it first and land several ships, the Dominix lands 100km off then warps away and back. We have 3 people now on the hole to catch him when he comes back, but he still gets away with 7 points of disruption on him. However, we partially accomplished our goal as he gave up after this attempt.

We send a scout into the c2 and find a route to k-space. The new high sec connection is 18 jumps from the last location and we get several more pilots in route.

Since we are having little luck breaking the tank of Lennah (Archon), we decide to push the carriers futher apart so that they cannot refit off each other. In addition, the targets decide to kill the trigger in the site and spawn a wave of battleships to put more pressure on us. While this is going on, several pilots (including myself) end up colliding with each other and get blapped by the dreads when our transversal drops. Oops! During the push operation, a couple of the dreads manage to drift out of range of their tackle and warp off. This actually helps us as it reduces the threats we are dealing with on the field.

In the meantime, the targets who escaped have reshipped to bombers and are making near constant bombing runs on us from a variety of positions. The damage isn't killing anyone, but it is forcing us to pay attention. Between the dread left on the field, the sleepers and the bomb damage, the Guarian pilots are being kept quite busy.

Finally, another nueting pilot arrives who also has a ship scanner and we confirm that we are nowhere near to draining Lennah so we swap our attention to the dread. He eventually sieges and we are able to take him down before he can get back out of the siege cycle. George Jetfather is the first to fall in the Revelation.

We now turn our attention back to Lennah in the carrier and the death of the dread seems to have taken the life out of him. At this point, we are waiting for him to run out of stront and it appears that we have successfully outlasted his supply. Lennah falls. Surprise, he still had lots of stront, evidently with the death of the dread, he decided to quit prolonging the agony.

With only Assault Force left on the field in an Archon, we manage to transfer a Hobgoblin to one of our Guardian pilots and the last kill rolls in pretty quickly.

We loot what we can carry and head back home happy with the 3 kills. I learned a lot from this engagement and would like to say a special thank you to the targets for running sites without securing their static connection! You gave us a great fight.

I am off to buy a couple of Bhaalgorns. It takes a lot of neuts to bring down a carrier!

That's all Folks!

For a little over a year, I have been writing stories about my encounters in wormhole space. Everything from ganking miners and hole rollers to some pretty good small fleet engagements. Real life has finally begun to take it's toll and I am finding that it is a choice between playing or writing. I simply do not have as much free time these days. I am still around and playing but I will not be posting regular stories for the next few months.

That's all folks! I hope you enjoyed the stories.

Opening to Adhocracy

We have been rolling wormholes and scouting chains for a couple of hours without seeing a single living soul. Unfortunately, this has been the norm for the past couple of weeks. Tonight's activity has found an unusually high number of wormholes which are at the end of their natural life.

We open a new wormhole and for the third straight time it is a null-sec/C5 static. Exciting! Ummm, that is said with extreme sarcasm. There are a couple of after downtime signatures so we start scanning and locate the outbound C5, the outbound null sec and an outbound C4. I have never seen a periodic C4 in this type of wormhole so that is at least new, if not exactly interesting.

In both cases, we appear to have opened the connections when we land. The jump to null sec reveals we are deep in Pure Blind and with no stations, it isn't exactly a surprise that there is no one in local. I jump the C4 and start looking around while one of my corpmates jumps into the C5.

WRECKS!!! SHIPS!!! Lots of them! After reminding him to take a breath and calm down, I get a list of ships which includes a Thanatos, a couple of Revelations and a couple of Lokis amid a variety of other ships. From my notes, I realize that we have connected into Adhocracy's home system and caught them running sites on a Friday night.

They put probes out almost immediately and I order everyone back home. We cannot take their fleet heads on, but I intend to set a trap and use their natural aggression to potentially get a couple of good kills. I have tangled with them before and I am expecting them to field a solid T3 fleet with a boosting command ship and possibly logistics if they have any suspicion of finding something to kill.

We quickly jump battleships and then cruisers through our wormhole and get it very close to crit status without tipping over into crit condition. Meanwhile, we leave a cloaked ship in the C2s ready to jump through and collapse it when we are ready. Now we sit back and wait for them to come searching.

It takes about 10 minutes for the first scout to jump through the wormhole. At this point, all they have seen is the Tengu which initially jumped into their system and we are pretty certain they do not have any names. The scout comes through in a cloaky Proteus and scouts around a little before deploying probes. Once he deploys probes, a Legion pilot joins him in the C2. At this point, we de-cloak the waiting ship, wait a few seconds and then re-cloak to make it appear that we are collapsing a wormhole.

The probing ship locks our wormhole and then the Legion pilot jumps into our system and crits the wormhole on the way in. We have a couple of innocuous ships on d-scan and an Absolution and a Navy Hookbill sitting on the wormhole. Our original intent was to let his reinforcements arrive but with the wormhole going crit, we are afraid our trap might be suspected and he will just jump back to the C2.

We jump the battleship, collapse the wormhole and de-cloak our fleet which consists of a Devoter, a Legion,  and a Proteus in addition to the Abso and Navy Hookbill already visible. The wormhole collapses just as their wormhole flares and I see a Legion, Hurricane Fleet Issue, a command ship of forgotten type, and a couple of Proteus. It is really too bad that the wormhole crit as their scout jumped in, the fight would have been a good one.

The Legion pilot burns away and cloaks. However, we are quickly able to de-cloak and lock him. He makes no attempt to agress and appears to abandon ship just before it explodes to preserve the skill points. A very cool headed move in a situation where he had no hope of winning. The Legion explodes and we provide a free trip for Loch Verus back to his cloning vat.

Hostiles running our sites!

I log in and the only pilot online informs me that we have a multitude of active pilots in the static. How many pilots does it take to make a multitude. Evidently, my concept of a multitude and his differs since it was only 5 active pilots and one of them was in a covert ops ship.

While we are debating whether to engage against 5v2 odds, I decide to jump my scout into their system. I jump to their system and no sooner get cloaked up when a Tengu and a Raven land on the wormhole. They got here way too fast to be a response fleet and that would be a really strange fleet comp to attempt catching a buzzard. 

Are they going to roll the wormhole? They sit there for a few minutes and then jump into our home system. And shortly thereafter warp to a data site in our system where they are joined by a covert Loki. First, this is going to end bad for them. Second, I fully intend to help things along.

Since they are out of range of d-scan of out tower, I have my corpmate jump in a Devoter and warp to the wormhole while I get within jump range of it with my Proteus. The Tengu explodes from sleeper fire before we even get the trap in place. There is the first part of their bad evening.

They manage to get the Raven and the Loki out of the site and warp them back to the wormhole. I decloak while they are landing on grid and we follow them through the wormhole with a Devoter and an Armageddon from another corpmate who has just arrived. The Loki quickly disappears on the  other side and we tackle and start pounding on the Raven.

It takes a minute, but the Raven pilot decides to jump back. We follow and bubble up back in our home system. Of course, we are all polarized so someone is going to die. Yep! The Raven decloaks and we start applying DPS. He is 30% into structure when he jumps out of the ship. We quickly stop DPS and manage to avoid blowing up the Raven by the narrowest of margins. Morias Enkieemon, on the other hand, is not so fortunate. We give him a free one way ticket back to k-space.

The wormhole is now crit and we collapse it and quickly scan down the new wormhole. Their scout is still in our system. As soon as we have the new wormhole, we warp 2 dictors to the new wormhole and jump. It takes a few minutes, but finally the scout deploys probes, finds the wormhole and jumps into our trap. I stay on this side while sending the other pilot back on a cross jump. The trap is sprung. I lock the covert ops ship and start shooting before he jumps back.

The scout manages to evade the second pilot and I race him to the other wormhole in our system jumping right on his heels to null sec. However, I was not able to decloak him so we go ahead and collapse the null sec leaving him cooling his heels deep in the Greater Wildlands. He and I chat for bit before he decides to work his way out of null sec.

Since everyone is gone, we now check out the static and find that it has a hi-sec just a few jumps from Jita. A couple of us head out for some shopping to restock supplies and a new pilot joins us to watch the hi sec connection.

We have been at it for nearly an hour and are in the process of running haulers back and forth when the scout watching the wormhole announces that there is someone in local offering 50M for a route out. He links the pilot name and it is a member of the corp we encountered earlier. What?

Evidently, the Loki pilot had jumped back to our system instead of cloaking. Then was trapped without a scout when we rolled their scout out into null. We ended up accepting the 50M ISK and giving him the route to k-space. All things considered, this was an interesting evening.

Fleet Fight!

We have activity in the static but it doesn't appear that the pilots live there. Kalseth and Wolwen have killed a Heron and there is a Enyo warping around the system. I jump in a Proteus and warp to our static connection.

The Enyo lands and Kalseth engages as Wolwen and I jump into the C2. Well Kalseth started to engage until the Enyo almost instant popped him and then managed to snag his pod as well. Boo!

By this time, Wolwen and I have the Enyo pilot locked and we proceed to destroy his ship and then get lucky and snag his pod as well. Not sure how you manage to catch a pod with cruisers and no bubble but we will take it. That was a fairly expensive pod.

A little scouting and we confirm that these pilots are coming from a connecting wormhole. I jump a scout into their system and see a Proteus and a Guardian on d-scan but there are two planets off d-scan and I find a second Guardian at the outer planet. By now, another pilot has shown up and shipped into a Kronos.

We decide to engage with a Prophecy, Oneiros, Proteus, Vexor Navy and a Falcon. We jump the Prophecy into their wormhole and they warp the Kronos and Proteus in to engage. The Prophecy burns away from the wormhole and once some distance is established, we jump the rest of the fleet into the wormhole.

The fight is on! They have a Kronos, Proteus and 2 Guardians against our fleet. The battle rages for several minutes with neither side gaining a clear advantage. We get one of them to below half armor and then the jams fail on the Guardians and they rep back up. They get one of us low before a jam hits on the Proteus or Kronos and we catch up.

Eventually, they break the tank on the Prophecy and we break off the engagement to reship hoping for another round. However, they warp back to their tower and log without even looting the field. We loot the field and head home when it is clear they are done for the evening.

Round 1:
http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_related&kll_id=18686353
Kill: 550M
Lost: 182M

Round 2
http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=18689769
Lost: 69M

This was an interesting fight and a lot of fun. The Guardians made the difference for them in the second engagement as we did not have enough DPS or enough jams to break them.

Solo Guardian (Really?)

I have been on holiday at the beach and out of game for over a week when I log in this evening. While I was gone, my corpmates managed to find all kinds of trouble which includes a wardec from a corp (Righteous Immortal Pew) that was upset about an encounter we had with them. /shrug

Since the static connection is crit, I grab an Oynx and pop the wormhole. Once the crit wormhole is dispatched, I scan out the new C2 and jump into the static. There is 1 medium and 2 small towers on d-scan with one force field. The unusual aspect of this is that there are 2 SMA's, 1 CHA and only 1 small autocannon between the three towers. Ok! After checking my overview settings, I decide to investigate. Sure enough, one of the small towers has a force field, 2 SMA's and 1 CHA with no protection. The gun must be at one of the offline towers.

There are still two planets out of d-scan range so I go to check them out and find another small tower with a SMA, CHA and Mobile Lab. This tower is also completely undefended. After deploying probes and locating all the wormholes, it is time to conduct a stront check.

A couple of corpmates and I jump into a variety of ships and start working on the tower with the mobile lab. We are at 50% on the shields when a covert ops ship jumps in from the C4. Let's hope he has friends. He is out of d-scan range of our tower bash fleet and he immediately drops probes.

Eventually, the covert ops pilot ends up finding the c2 static connection near our POS bash fleet and shortly thereafter the probes disappear. However, the covert ops ship doesn't appear to jump any of the connections. This makes us assume he has seen us on d-scan is trying to locate our position. The C4 activates again and a Tengu appears and cloaks. We are at 32% on the shields when another activation on the C4 occurs and I squad warp the group back to our home so that we can get proper PvP ships.

The second pilot from the C4 was in a Typhoon and he warped directly to the tower we were bashing. That confirms for us where the covert ops pilot was located. We reship and park a couple of cloaky T3s on our connection. In the meantime, I jump my scout into their C4 and find a lone Guardian sitting at zero on the wormhole. Huh? There has to be more to this fleet. No one flies a single Guardian, they are always in pairs. However, these pilots live in the C4 and I do not see any additional ships.

It takes a couple of minutes for the hostile scout to redeploy probes again in the static. Another couple of minutes and our static connection activates producing the hostile scout. He burns off and cloaks up able to see 1 Proteus on d-scan. The wormhole activates again and the Typhoon appears!

We decloak the T3s and engage the Typhoon. The Proteus pilot warps to zero and the Typhoon jumps back just before he lands. We follow through the wormhole and wait for the Typhoon to appear. While the Typhoon is holding cloak, the Guardian jumps into the C2 and warps.

The Typhoon appears and deploys Hornet ECM drones. The drones manage to jam me but we have multiple points on him so he is not going anywhere. The Guardian lands at zero. What? Get a point on him quick! Swap the neuts to the Guardian as well. Primary the Typhoon! Overheat all weapons!

The Typhoon explodes quickly and the pilot warps off and jumps into the C4 along with the cloaky Tengu. Obviously, the Tengu pilot did not want any part of this fight. The Guardian pilot jumps into our home system and I follow and tackle him on the opposite side.

After screwing up and warping to zero, jumping the wormhole in hopes everyone will follow and be on timer was a decent ploy. Unfortunately for him, it did not work. We left someone on the other side and his Guardian goes down. I guess he was flying a solo Guardian! Which worked as well as expected.

We managed to achieve the rare and elusive profitable and entertaining tower bash. The inhabitants of the C2 have no idea how close we were to reinforcing their tower. Since we had some fun, we decide to leave the small towers for someone else to stront check and go looking for more piloted targets.

Ambush

Based on the local chatter as we gank the Drake and Naga (see previous post), we know there is someone else around. We branch out and discover that their are 3 piloted ships in the adjoining wormhole. Two drakes and a legion. Wait, one of them just reshipped to a Drake. We now have 3 drakes. Wait! One of them just reshipped to a Talos. Wait! One of Drake pilots is now in a capsule. Back to a Drake. The second Drake pilot is now in a capsule. Back to a Drake! Ok! This is getting old.

In a little while, one of the pilots warps off, followed by a second pilot and disappears. Thanks to our scouting earlier in the day, we have both their static null sec and the incoming K162 from high sec. We put cloaky scouts on all three wormholes in the system and continue watching their activity. 

The high sec is only 4 from Amarr and we suspect that may be where they have gone. We put a scout in the null sec but they are not in there although there is a Cheetah visible in the system and +1 in local. Hmmm! Data or Relic site? I wonder if he is paying attention. We drop probes to find out and sure enough about 10 seconds after the probes go out, the Cheetah disappears. He was paying attention and it was a relic site. We bookmark it and recall our probes.

One of the pilots returns from high sec, warps straight to his tower and then 2 pilots go offline together. Crap! It looks like we caught them on the end of their playing time. In a bit, the second pilot returns from high sec and warps to his tower. Reships to a Drake and warps to the null sec.

We wait a minute and then jump a ship in behind him into null sec just in time to see him disappear from local. The chase pilot picks a random gate and warps to the next system. He enters the next system just in time to see the pilot disappear from local again.

We setup on the null sec wormhole to wait for his return. It takes a while but eventually he shows up in local again. The wormhole flares and he finds 3 Proteus' sitting there waiting on him. He waits out his timer and then jumps back to null sec. We follow and immediately burn back to the wormhole while activating our weapon systems. As soon as he decloaks we start burning his shields.

As he gets low on shields, I call a halt to the DPS while we wait for our flycatcher to arrive. He announces "Oh Crap, good trap!" in local as the flycatcher arrives and bubbles him. We finish killing the Drake and send Macgunner Trivanne back to the cloning vat.

Almost instantly, I get a private convo from him and he wants to know if we came from the C2 or from null sec. Evidently, he had been running a site escalation several jumps away in null sec. Knowing that he was the only one online and we weren't going to get any more action, I let him know that we had been watching him and his friends for some time.

Ratting Naga = Gank

I log in and almost immediately am told that we have a couple of targets ratting in the C2. Fantastic! I jump into a cloaky Proteus and warp to our static. Our fleet comp is 2 cloaky protues, a devoter, an astarte and an oneiros.

This is overkill for a couple of ratting battlecruisers but that is Ok. The wormhole is out of range of the site they are running so I jump into the wormhole. While I am in transit the scout reports a third party chatting in local. Crap!

Well, there is no reason to be stealthy, we need to see if we can get them before they escape. Our scout decloaks and surprisingly manages to point both ships. Our fleet lands on the scout and we make short work of the Naga and the Drake. Thanks to the bubble of the devoter, we send Zshootz Enaka and E Shootz back to the cloning vat.

We loot and shoot the wrecks and head back home. Now that we have ganked what appears to be a dual-boxing day tripper from k-space. We should see if we can find the third party who thought this was bait.

The maths of wormholes

I log in to discover that we have active pilots in our static. My corpmates are watching at least 8 pilots and they are fairly active, moving around but not doing anything of consequence. Their wormhole is fairly clean of signatures and anomalies so we can assume they stay busy and keep it clean.

The reports from the scouts indicate that they are aware of our wormhole although they haven't sent anyone through it yet. There are 4 of us and we can count at least 8 piloted ships. However, most of them are in T1 cruisers so we put together a fleet which is designed to fight outnumbered.

Now that we are ready we need them to engage us. To that end, we put a battleship through the wormhole and leave it sitting on the other side for a minute before jumping it back. The brings no response so we have our scout in the wormhole put out probes. This takes a minute but we do get a response this time.

A Manticore shows up at our wormhole and jumps into our home system. The battleship is sitting at zero and an Oneiros is orbiting the wormhole at 60km. Nothing else is visible in system. A second Manticore jumps into the system and immediately jumps back out. During all of this, our battleship pilot has made no move to engage.

We give it a minute and then jump the battleship into the static. This brings an immediate response with several ships warping immediately to the wormhole to engage the hole rolling Armageddon. The battleship jumps back and their small fleet follows with a Caracal Navy Issue, a Caracal or two, an Arbitrator and both stealth bombers. 

As soon as the wormhole flares, we decloak with a Legion and a Proteus and the fight is on. My alt is in a Falcon which I decloak and start applying jams. The Geddon is nuet fit and the enemy realizes quickly that the battleship was bait and that they are outmatched. They jump back through the wormhole and we follow with our T3's but we are only able to lock one of them in the scramble on the opposite side. Boo!

Jeromis' Arbitrator goes down quickly with the assistance of a bomb from one of his corpmates. He instantly warps his pod out and we loot the wreck before jumping back into our home system. In a couple of minutes I start talking to one of the members. Since most of them are flying T1 ships, I ask if they would be interested in a fleet engagement limited to T1 cruisers. They say sure so we start preparing.

A couple more members have shown up at this point bringing our total number of online pilots to 5 leaving us outnumbered. The wormhole is crit and we are taking bets on whether they will jump it or not. With almost everyone believing they will not jump the wormhole.

Using alts we are able to field 3 Moa's, a Vexor, and a Blackbird with our mains. In addition, we have a Scythe, a second Blackbird and a remote sensor boosting Blackbird with alts. The enemy has a Caracal Navy Issue, 2 Bellicose, 2 Caracal, 1 Blackbird, 2 Scythes and a Talwar. 

I notify them that we are at the wormhole and ready for them to jump when ready. They say Ok and jump their fleet into our system. Remember that crit wormhole? We live in a C5 static C2 which is a small hole with only 1B in total allowed mass. They knew it was crit, but they also knew there had only been 3 cruisers and a couple of bombers through it from the point it went crit. Thinking there was plenty of mass left for their cruiser fleet, they jumped in and got everything but the second Scythe in before it collapsed. 

The fight is on!!!

I call primary on their Blackbird who manages to jam one of our Blackbirds but gets jammed in return by the other Blackbird we have. The enemy Blackbird goes down fairly quickly and I call primary on the Scythe. The Scythe doesn't last long which leaves them without support. At this point, we lose our remote sensor boosting Blackbird since the pilot was dual boxing and forgot to warp the ship out once the fight was engaged. We also lose our first Moa as we are killing the first Bellicose.

At this point, they are putting a lot of DPS on my Moa and I am deep into shields. I call for primary on the Caracal Navy. With 15% left on my shields, I overheat my guns and my shields. I am still going down so I ask for overheated reps from the Scythe and all DPS ships to overheat their weapons. The Caracal Navy goes down and the overheated reps begin bringing my shields back up. The rest is mop up until only the Talwar is left. He is kiting all over the place and we can't get in range of him so I ask for a sniping ship to take him out leaving their entire fleet sitting on the field in pods.

http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_related&kll_id=18334008

These guys jumped in and gave us a good fight, even though it was a crit wormhole, so we agree to scan them back to k-space instead of podding them and send a scout looking for a route. Our new static has a low sec static which ends up being 2 jumps from high sec near Hek. We escort the fleet of pods to the low sec system and they head home.

This has been one of the most entertaining fights I have had in a long time. Many of them appear to be fairly new players but they were willing to fight. They made no effort to run and chose to fight to the last man. Hats off to a great group of players. Have fun and fly dangerous!

Engaging a fleet in wormhole space

I log in to find one of our scouts 20 jumps away down a chain. Not really, but there were quite a few wormholes mapped out and all of them had 3+ connecting wormholes. He was 5 jumps away down the chain reporting activity in what we were calling c2b.

(impressive paint skills below)

The corp living in c2b had 7-8 active pilots. Most of them were in drakes and the scout thought he may have interrupted their site running. We grabbed some armor ships and a couple of us moved up to c2a in preparation of trying to engage them. The rest of our fleet was still assembling when the hostile group warped from the tower with a Broadsword, Astarte and innumerable drakes.

We fell back to the c2a -> c3a wormhole to see what they were going to do and I had the second pilot fall back to the c3a > c2s wormhole when they jumped into the c2a. I stayed in the c2a and waited until they warped on grid with me before warping to a nearby planet and making a safe in route.

I landed at the planet and sure enough about the time I hit warp back to my safe, they landed several ships on me. This told me quickly that they were looking for a fight. In the meantime, the rest of our fleet had gotten organized.

Our fleet comp consisted of 1 Buzzard (go Kalseth!), 1 Armageddon, 2 Prophecies, 2 Oneiros and a Falcon. Since I was being actively chased, I passed fleet command off and the call was made to jump into c2a. The Broadsword and 2 drakes were sitting on the wormhole. With the Astarte and 2 Drakes chasing me. I'm not sure how innumerable drakes became 4 but it seems like a fuzzy math kinda day.

At this point, I was in warp to the outer planet (68 AU) away so I turned and headed back to the wormhole as soon as I landed. By the time I landed, their full fleet of 6 ships was on the wormhole.They killed our Falcon as soon as it decloaked. Jumping it into the middle of fleet engagement on a wormhole was a mistake on our part. That call should never have been made. 

One drake went down before I landed and I started locking up the Astarte. The secondary was called as another Drake and since I was slightly out of range on the Astarte, I put my point on the second Drake just in time to see the Broadsword and 1 Drake jump out. What? There is no longer a bubble on field.

They are bailing! Spread points! Ummm..... That call should probably have been made earlier since I now have to wait out the cycle for my jammer. Get the Astarte! Of course the rest of their fleet now warps off leaving the second Drake pilot to his fate. 

We had the Broadsword and Drake trapped for a while in the c2s, but ultimately got bored and headed home. This was a good fight! However, the enemy fleet bailed as soon as they saw the second Oneiros uncloak on the wormhole.

http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_related&kll_id=18209952

MOAR Lowsec

I login to discover that we have two outbound C140s to low-sec. It has been a couple of weeks since we roamed around (i.e. lost ships) in low sec and the sirens call cannot be ignored.

After some debate, we decide to go armor and field a rag tag fleet with a Brutix, Navy Omen, Arazu, Blackbird and an Exequror and a pilot who is AFK in system in an unknown cloaky ship. We jump into the low sec and I warp to the first gate where I land on top of a Typhoon who warps off before my warp engines disengage.

I track his direction and follow as quickly as I can to one of the other gates in system just in time to see him disappear through the gate. Odd! It is almost as if he wanted me to see him. BAIT! According to the map of the area I have sitting in front of me, the route he jumped only has 2 systems and then becomes a dead end.

Expecting him to come back that way in a few minutes and most likely with friends, we setup on the gate. Sure enough, in about 3-4 minutes, he jumps back in system. At the same time, our AFK pilot returns and we discover he is in a Tengu.  We engage the Typhoon and sure enough local spikes with 4-5 additional people. A quick check shows they are his friends. WooHoo! We are going to get a fight. Based on local, it will be a 5v5 on the gate. This should be fun!

We have the Typhoon heading into structure as his mates arrive on the field in a Raven, Tempest, Stabber Fleet Issue and a Cynabal. The Typhoon pilot jumps back to the other side of the gate as his friends pour the DPS on my Brutix. I call the Cynabal as the second target which was probably the third or fourth mistake I made in this engagement. :P

The Exequror is doing a fairly good job of keeping me alive, and the enemy fleet decides to go after the blackbird and the exequror. Both of these pilots are too close which was another of the mistakes I made as I called for them to warp in. In spite of overheating all reps on the Exequror, the Blackbird falls and of course the Exequror is next. 

In the meantime, my Brutix also goes down leaving our Navy Omen pilot on the field by himself. Three of the enemy pilots are approaching structure with the Typhoon back on the field as the Cynabal falls and shortly thereafter our Omen Navy pilot goes down as well.

The Tengu pilot wisely decided to stay out of the fight. In the end, they cleared us off the field and we were only able to take one of them down. The engagement results are linked here. According to the kill report, we lost 380M while destroying 275M. Even though we lost the engagement, it was fun and we learned a number of things.

Thanks for the great 5v5 from Wolfsbrigade!

A Failure to Scout Properly

The current home system is empty. Well, it is almost empty. The sleeper sites do not count as far as I am concerned. They aren't bothering me, so I see no reason to stir them up. According to the helpful notes of a corp mate, the static from last night should be dead.

I check the location for the static and sure enough there is no wormhole. Time to start scanning. I drop probes and locate the new static connection. I bookmark the new connection and jump in to see if any targets show up.

The initial d-scan reveals a tower with a force field and little else. I warp to the outer planet and find another tower. With no apparent pilots in the system, I drop probes and start scanning. While I am scanning, I periodically check d-scan and am surprised to find 2 Dominix in system. I warp to the observation post on their tower and sure enough, the pilots are sitting behind the shields.

While I finish scanning the system, a couple of corpmates show up. I notify them of situation and we continue watching. Since the Domis are just sitting behind the shields, I jump the connections to map out routes and see what is around us. After jumping back in from high sec, I find probes in system and return to the observation post. By this time we have a Devoter, Armageddon, Sleipnir, Drake and an Ishkur sitting on the wormhole.

Shortly after arriving back on station, the Dominix pilots start moving. Sure enough, the Dominix pilots align to our C5 and warp off. I instruct the Devoter pilot to cross jump the Domis and everyone else engage and then follow. The wormhole flares and our Devoter pilot jumps. The Domi pilots apparently want nothing to do with our welcoming committee and immediately jump back home to find our trap.

We follow and engage the polarized pilots. Volcano Vapors is called as primary simply because he is the closest to my Sleipnir. The pilots put up a fight but they are outnumbered and even with the strong tank, the first Dominix goes down. Our Ishkur pilot is forced to jump back through the wormhole to avoid losing a ship, while we move on to Cleopatrra in the second Dominix. Both ships were well tanked and took quite a beating before falling to our fleet. We announce good fight in local and then provide a free ticket back to the cloning vat for both Volcano Vapors and Cleopatrra.

Pro Tip: You should always scout the opposite side of a wormhole before attempting to close it.

SURPRISE!!

The new patch has arrived and we have several people curious about the new hacking mechanics and a convenient low sec connection in our home system. The curious hackers jump to low sec and spread out to find the new data and relic sites.

The first pilot finds a site in the initial low sec and warps in to try the new mechanics. While he is there, a neutral pilot warps into the same site in a Helios and starts hacking as well. That is unacceptable and the call goes out for a DPS pilot to come take care of the neutral pilot.

One of our corpmates borrows my sniping Naga and heads to the low sec wormhole. The corp mate in the site has him wait until the nuetral pilot starts hacking the next can and then calls him into the site. The sniper warps in at 70km and starts locking the Helios with weapons hot. The first indication he has that the Helios is gone is the notification of a sec status hit.

At this point, I am laughingly imagining the confusion on the part of the Helios pilot as he gets a notification that the can is no longer accessible due to the correct module being unavailable. Our sniper decides not to shoot the pod and take the large sec status penalty.

The dangers of low sec

The night gets off to a slow start. The static c2 wormhole is EOL and there are no other interesting sigs in the home system. I collapse the c2 and then scan down the new static. The new wormhole has nothing of interest so I scan down the connecting low-sec and c2 and then jump the low-sec.

There are 2 pilots in local and my interest perks considerably when I notice a ton of wrecks on d-scan along with a Vargur and a Ferox(?). Really! The pilots appear to be sitting in empty space so our scout warps to the outer plan and drops probes.

We scan them down without being particularly quick about it and warp to the entry gate of the complex. At this point, we send a tackler through the entry gate and he lands on top of the Ferox. We warp the rest of the fleet into the site and destroy the Ferox in short order.

We loot the field and start to head back when we notice the guy has reshipped to a Navy Megathron. He warps around a bit and we finally locate him on the entry gate to the site. This looks like bait but there are only 2 ships in system and one of them is a Thanatos. We decide to jump him and see what happens. We do not really believe he will warp the Thanatos into the site.

We line up and jump the Navy Mega and have him about 50% through armor when to our surprise, the Thanatos lands on field and starts repping the Navy Mega and neuting the hell out of us. In the end, we lose a Proteus and a Loki to this guy.

It is cool to see someone willing to engage a small fleet with a capital ship. Even though we lost badly, this was a fun engagement. I wish more people were willing to give you a fight instead of hiding when hostile pilots show up.

New Data and Relic Sites

This post is a departure from my normal tales of carnage. The Odyssey expansion has been released and I decided to go try out the new hacking mini-game. Since I did not have analyzer modules in the wormhole, the first step was a trip to the market. Once I had a brand new data and relic analyzer, I headed across high sec looking for an appropriate site.

The first three systems contained 3 wormholes apiece. Really? Why can't I be that lucky when I am looking for wormholes. Of course, none of these systems had a data or relic site. However, persistence usually pays off and the fourth system contained a relic site.

I warp into the site and find 5 containers. I start with the initial container and activate the relic analyzer which pops up the interface for the hacking game. With no idea how the game works, I simply figure out where I am on the map and start clicking things. I find a wrench, which turns out to be a beneficial utility. I find several defensive nodes which lock me out of all the surrounding nodes and then I find a data cache which turns out to be another beneficial program.

At this point, I cannot go anywhere else on the map so I decide to attack one of the defensive nodes. A couple of turns later, I have defeated the defensive node and unlocked the blocked route which leads me to the data core. Successfully attacking the data core closes the interface after telling me I succeeded in my hacking attempts and spews 10-12 containers into space.

I chase down as many of the containers as possible by double clicking them and discover that I have a grand total of 41K ISK in loot. Awesome! That is decidedly underwhelming considering the time it took me to find the site and hack the damn thing. I repeat the process for the next 4 containers and the total value of my loot climbs to 600K. At least I did better on some of the later containers but the loot haul is pretty still skimpy.

The second site goes exactly like the first site with even less impressive yields. Before I attempt a 3rd site, I decide to go back to the market and get a cargo scanner. I am curious if I can figure out what is in the container before I go to the trouble of hacking it.

Once the cargo container is equipped, I head back out and find a 3rd site. Once I land in the 3rd site, I lock the 4 available containers and scan them with my cargo scanner. All 4 contain nothing but salvage material which I could acquire by killing rats in ore belts and salvaging their wrecks. I decide it isn't worth my time to hack these containers and head back home with my curiosity satisfied.

The mini-game itself has some potential. I would really like to see CCP add the ability to play it in a multi-player mode to increase the challenge and the rewards. However, the loot spew mechanism is terrible.  It should be prioritized above bug fixes for removal from the game at the next patch. In my opinion, the mechanic adds absolutely no value to the gaming experience of Eve.

At some point, I will try the sites in low sec and null sec to get a sense for how much value they have compared to the high sec sites I was running today. However, I am done with hacking sites in high sec. It ain't worth all that. :P

Losing a Hauler

Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. We have experienced both sides of this equation and while I often write of our wins, sometimes the story of a loss can be just as entertaining.

When I log in for the evening, there are a couple of other pilots already online. The route through our chain had been scouted earlier in the day. We have an incoming low sec which I head out to investigate while one of the other pilots decides to run some PI stuff to high sec.

He loads up and jumps into the C2 to find a Stilletto sitting on the wormhole. I jump back into the C2 and reship to a Moa. In the meantime, the other pilot in system warps to the C2 in his stealth bomber just to give him something else to shoot at while the hauler attempts to escape.

Part 1 of the plan works. The Stilletto engages our Nemesis allowing the hauler to escape and warp to the high sec. Unfortunately, the Stilleto pilot also manages to get Wolwen's pod just as I land on the wormhole. I lock the Stilletto and disable his warp engines along with his MWD but he jumps before I can kill him and is out of range on the other side of the wormhole very quickly.

In the meantime, the Badger pilot discovered an anchored bubble on the high sec and was killed within sight of safety be a Drake sitting on the high sec. He manages to get his pod back home and we both reship into cloaky T3 ships and move back into the C2.

The Stilletto pilot reships to a Cyclone and warps to the C2. We engage him while the Drake pilot burns out of the high sec bubble and comes to join the fight. Meanwhile, one of our other pilots jumps into a Exequror and warps at range on the C2. The Cyclone is ASB fit but we are burning him down. However, they are making a pretty good dent in our Legion as well.

We jump home and get reps on the Legion expecting them to follow us. However, they never jump the wormhole after us. Overall, this was a fun engagement where they ended up with the better end of the deal. Good fight!

Incoming Null with Hostiles

I log in and find a null sec already bookmarked in our system. Someone has been on earlier and marked a new signature in the home system. I decide to go check it out and discover that the null sec is in Impass. Nothing much to see and no one in local so I head back into our home system and jump into the C2. Some scouting around in here find nothing of any signficance.

I jump back into our home and go AFK to take care of some chores around the house. When I return, a couple more pilots have logged in. We are discussing what we want to do when we see a Helios on d-scan. Since I am sitting cloaked at the current null-sec and another pilot was at the C2, we assume there must be a new sig. I throw out probes and sure enough, we have a new K162. I lock it up and warp to it to find we have a second null sec now in our system.

I jump my scout into null sec and find that we are still in Impasse, only 6 jumps from the other null sec. This time, there are three pilots in system not including the scout which we know to be in our wormhole.

It takes a few minutes but eventually more pilots show up and they warp a Loki, Legion, Tengu, Hyperion to the wormhole and jump into our system. The Loki burns away from the wormhole and cloaks while the rest just sit on the wormhole.

Is this a bait fleet? Looks like one, smells like one. They are wanting a response and we are the fighting carebears so we decide to give them a fight. We field a Drake, Sleipnir, Rattlesnake and (wait for it ....) an Archon. Yep! A shield repping Archon. We reship and align to the wormhole assuming they have eyes on us. There is no spike in local so we warp to zero on the wormhole.

We engage and I call the Hyperion as primary while they focus on our Rattlesnake. The Hyperion explodes very fast and the rest of their fleet jumps back to null sec. There has been no spike in local, only a late arriving Omen Navy so we follow them into null sec. The Loki and the Omen escape while I lock the Legion and call him as primary and the Legion pilot locks the Tengu. The Legion is going down slowly but he has burned well out of range of my reps leaving me vulnerable if they counter. I ultimately decide to let him go.

I swap primary to the Tengu and we scoop our spoils and jump back into our wormhole which leaves the connection crit. I jump into a hole rolling heavy interdictor and finish off the wormhole for good measure.