Tuesday, April 1, 2014

Surprise! \o/

There are three things a scout can say that will get a fleet mobilized quicker than anything else in w-space:

  • "Miners on d-scan, in an ore site."
  • "Hey, an active orca."
  • "Carrier on grid, alone."
Late late last night, Takusen was scouting out our static in his cloaky Loki and I had just said my goodnights and logged off to go to bed when something he said caused me to freeze with my mouse hovering over the "disconnect from Teamspeak" button: "I've got an orca and a scorpion on d-scan.  No tower."

I logged back in.

The first report had them at a mining anomaly, but when Tak moved in to get a better look he saw that they were past it, at a cosmic signature; he moved out of scan range and dropped probes, nailed down the signature, pulled his probes and warped in right as the orca jumped back into the C4 from the C4's static, popping the hole.  They were closing down their system, and our static was the only other hole on the signature list.

I had shipped into my Vexor Navy, while Nate grabbed his Ishtar and Sabre.  The two of us moved to our static hole and cloaked up within jump range, forming the ambush fleet; I logged my covops alt in as well and put her just off the hole in a bomber, giving us a third long point if needed (or extra DPS if they brought the scorpion and it had to die quickly).  The 911 ping went out, as well, and we sat on the hole and waited while Takusen watched their POS, where a third pilot was sitting in an orca as well.

They had probes out in their system - it was a fourth pilot in a buzzard, we saw after he jumped the hole into our system.  The hole activated, and I almost held my breath for a moment - after about ten second the buzzard dropped the jump cloak, 8km away from my vexor, and reapproached the wormhole.

"I want to yell "BOO!" at him in Local so bad right now," Nate muttered on coms.  We laughed.  The guy hadn't even scouted out our hole before he jumped back into the C4.

One of our corpmates had responded to the 911 and logged in both of his characters, getting into tengus; I brought my own tengu alt online as well, giving us three of the T3's in reserve.  All in all, it had shaped up into a rather nice little gang; I really wanted those orcas, but hopefully the fact that they had a K162 from an occupied C5 would trip enough flags that they'd send an escort for us to duke it out with as well.

It took them long enough to decide.  Tak watched the pilots at the POS bring out a pair of orcas, one of the orcas swap to a Tempest Fleet Issue, the Scorpion hovered around... we imagined the conversation they might be having, and patiently waited them out.

Just as Nate was about to have the tengus move up to our static and log out, the buzzard came back through into our hole.  We quickly logged the tengus off where they were, in the POS, to keep them from showing up when the buzzard scouted them out; this time he cloaked up and we assume he warped off to have an actual look around.  And we remembered that one of our pilots had gone AFK for the night with her pod floating in a POS.  Whoops. >.>

That didn't deter them, though, and Takusen reported that both orcas had entered warp, heading towards our static.

The scorpion was still behind at the POS.

"Alright, log the tengus back in and get to the C4.  Vexors, jump through and hold cloak."

I was the only vexor in the ambush fleet, but I wasn't about to nit pick with explosions to be had; Nate and I jumped our ships through, Taksuen warped his loki back to the K162 side of the wormhole, and after dropping a warp bubble on our side of the hole Nate ran his sabre through as well.  I put my tengu back in fleet even before the e-warp ended, and immediately jumped to our side of the static.  Hitting the bubble, but the tengus weren't going through; they were there to keep the orcas from breaking through and getting loose in our system.

The two orcas landed on grid, and the sabre dropped a bubble immediately.  Nate and I dropped the jump cloak and kicked out our sentry drones, getting the DPS going on the primary while pointing both of the orcas as well; Takusen doubled up his scram with my point on the secondary orca, and we got to work.

The scorpion landed 100km away from the action and began locking us up to try and jam; the primary orca jumped through the hole, but between the tengus and and the HIC bubble it quickly jumped back into the C4.  I pushed my bomber through the static into the C4 and began burning towards the scorpion, afterburner on; I was hoping I could point it and keep it in the fight as well.

The scorpion got a few jams off, but I was able to relock the second orca and reapply my point before Nate had to refresh the sabre's bubble; the second orca jumped into our C5 while we were getting the first one into structure.  The bubble in the C5 had dropped, so the orca began aligning away from the hole; the three tengus quickly pounced on it, and just as quickly we realized that none of the three had a point on them.

I had Karen in my vexor on my PC's main screen, my tengu on the second monitor, and my alt's bomber on my laptop; the bomber wasn't too far from the hole at this point, so I turned her around and jumped back into the C5.  She burned towards the orca and began getting a lock so I could put her long point on it; it had taken too long to get her into the system, though, and the orca made it into warp before the lock finalized.  It was that close.

Back in the C4, the first orca was dead and the scorpion had warped back to their POS; we pulled our drones in and orbited the K162 just in case.  In the C5, we gave chase.

"Did you see where it warped to?" Nate asked.  Of course I was watching it warp away, but Jij answered first.  "Yea, it looks like they warped to the sun." "Well, warp to the sun then and finish it off."

So I warped my bomber to planet 1. *shifty eyes*




To be fair, both planet one and the sun were in line with the warp path the orca took, but personally I wouldn't warp to a system's sun unless I had friends waiting there for me.  I also had my bomber land at 100k from the planet's warp point; I almost never warp to a planet at zero.

Orcas are sloooow.  My bomber was already on grid, and I was already feeling slightly disappointed that the grid was empty, when the orca warped in and landed.  It turns out the pilot had warped in at 0, so I called it out on coms (over the report of nothing at the sun) and burned in towards it.  I missed the window between end-of-warp and cloak activation, so I couldn't lock the orca, but three tengus, Tak's loki, and the sabre all landed on the planet at 0 and quickly bumped the orca out of cloak.  It exploded.

http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=22734226
http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=22734224

We got the pods as well, at a couple hundred million each.

It was an hour after I had originally told myself I had to go to bed and logged out the first time, which had already been an hour after my bedtime, so although Nate invited the pilots left in the C4 to chat us up in our public channel I only hung around a little before I took off for bed.  It had certainly been worth staying up.

o7

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