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.
Saturday, August 31, 2013
Saturday, August 24, 2013
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.
Saturday, August 17, 2013
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.
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.
Saturday, August 10, 2013
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.
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.
Saturday, August 3, 2013
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.
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