Saturday, December 21, 2013

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. 

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