It was early yesterday evening and I was double checking my Thorax fit for a roam Kynric, the Sky Fighters CEO, had said he wanted to do that night. I was checking my fit because my alternative 'fill in the time' project was "finish setting up your damned PI already, Karen, you need the income!" but the initial PI set up is a pain in the ass and I was putting it off. Again. >.>
Now, Kynric himself has labeled Sky Fighters as a small, scrubby C2 corporation. It is largely true, especially compared to where they were a couple months ago - a much smaller base of active pilots, flying cheaper ships (I saw some of the pre-split Sky Fighters corp fittings, and OMG. Just... OMG), but having a lot of fun doing it. One thing that hasn't changed, though, is the corp's cultural emphasis on scouting, on having the intel advantage, on being the eyes in the darkness of w-space. We map huge chains of wormholes on Siggy, crossing k-space systems and finding ways to get everywhere. And we all have cloaky alts, and like leaving them around to watch things - so we can see things, like a Proteus approaching a high sec hole and jumping into a system down our chain, then moving into its POS.
The roam plan went on hold, and we quickly hashed out a plan to bait it out over coms. The pilot was still online, and had hopped ships a couple of times, indicating an active player that should (according to the player's kill board) be paying attention to d-scan and be willing to take the right bait. The first thought was to bring in a drake, like some high-sec diver, but the lack of combat sites in system quickly led to that one being rejected. Next up: go mine in their ore site. "Anyone have a retriever?" "..." Nope. A few of us had ventures in the home system, but those can be hard to catch, making it less appealing as bait; I was about to volunteer to try with my venture anyway when Kynric decided he may as well send his alt over in a Skiff.
I like the Skiff. And the Procurer. It has been ages since I've used one, but in my first month, when I was mining in high sec to buy my first Drake, I used a Procurer. I like the tank, and because it's always bait few people would mess with them. >.> And so here we were, with the Bait Skiff, mining someone's ore site.
The rest of the fleet assembled, and we waited to hear how it was going. The Proteus was still online, still active. Someone else logged in at the POS, and we saw an Anathema, a Helios, even a Redeemer. THAT had us drooling a bit... if the Redeemer came out to play along with the Proteus, it would be fun. Sadly, it looked like nothing would bite. Kynric had filled a jetcan with ore, and although we were giving him crap over it, I drug out a Misasmos and went to pick it up. Maybe that would make it seem more legitimate and they'd pounce. Even as I started heading towards the chain, scouts reported that the target pilot had gotten a Procurer of their own and sent it to the site. Counter bait! Of course, we didn't take it; we wanted them to think we were just one guy mining from high sec.
Sure enough, as my Miasmos entered warp towards the site, the Proteus pilot warped off, reshipped into a Flycatcher, and warped back towards the site. Huzzah! We both landed on grid. It bubbled us. Kynric's Skiff kicked out drones and 'defended' itself, and the rest of the crew got ready to swoop in as soon as the rest of the targets in the hole responded.
Except, they didn't. Kynric's drones chewed through the Flycatcher, putting it into armor, and it tried to break off; we ended up uncloaking a Rapier to snag it and keep it from getting away. The Flycatcher exploded. My Miasmos exited system. The Rapier recloaked.
The pod went back to its tower, hopped back into the Proteus, warped off and cloaked. "Great. The guy just got owned by a Skiff, hopefully he's pissed enough to come back. A Proteus can totally take a Rapier."
We waited. And waited. And nothing. I brought my Miasmos back, scooped the second jetcan, salvaged the Flycatcher's wreck, and still got no response. We called the op to get on with the roam. Guess he wasn't taking any more bait after that.
Thursday, May 29, 2014
Friday, May 23, 2014
Warbears!
It has been a bit of a rough week IRL and I haven't been as active on Eve outside of the usual scanning/logistics/a little attention paid to my wallet (I am most of the way to replacing my Stratios. <3 ). Yesterday, though, I started logging in to Eve when I got home from work, and as I was getting online I heard happy news - someone was moving multiple iterons through a couple of systems down the chain. A pilot was linked. They were from Dropbears Anonymous, a corporation in Brave Newbies and in general some cool people I've flown with before.
I tagged my Manticore bomber and took up position on one of the in-use wormholes; the scout went back to reship into something combat worthy, and we waited for the haulers to come through again.
I heard a call of "Iteron on d-scan" over coms, and sure enough it showed up on my own d-scan shortly after; I got ready to hit my cloak and start pointing... and then the hole fired. (For people who are not wormholers: much like a stargate has a distinctive visual effect when it is used by a ship and it 'fires', a wormhole makes a very distinctive noise when it is used.) "What the hell?" I asked myself, since I knew the iteron hadn't landed yet... how could it have slipped past me? No, no, someone new must have jumped through from the other side.
Oh well! I announced the new unknown on coms, and then the iteron landed on grid. I decloaked and pointed it, and fired a salvo of torpedoes, and then the new ship dropped jump cloak - a second iteron! Their haulers had crossjumped. The first iteron jumped through the hole, and I started locking the second; it jumped back through to the other side as well. I called it out, and followed through - the one that had just jumped would be polarized now and unable to get away.
I came out of the hole and loaded grid, and didn't see anything. I knew an iteron couldn't warp away that fast, so both haulers were holding cloak - sure enough, shortly after my jump, one of them dropped cloak and started aligning. I dropped my jump cloak as well and pointed it, then hit my torpedo button... only to loose point. Whoops. I had hit the wrong one, and recloaked instead of hit 'make target explode'. I dropped cloak again, and started locking; the iteron jumpd back through the hole to the other side.
Now, at this point, hindsight tells me that I should have stayed on the far side of the hole to catch the iteron that had polarized itself, and let the fleet try and catch the one that had ran back through. However I was running on instinct, not logic, and instinct said "CHASE! CATCH! KILL!!!"
So I jumped after the fleeing iteron (and saw the second iteron dropping cloak to warp off as the hole fired and pulled me back through), locked it, and pointed it as the other two guys in fleet landed on the hole. The hauler exploded. \o/ It had been carrying POS fuel. The capsule got away, and warped back to the hole a couple of times before the pilot's polarization timer ran out; I kept trying to lock it each time (just on general principle) but we didn't bring a bubble to catch it.
Since they were running haulers, there had to be an exit down the chain; we already had a decent enough low sec connection, but the guys found the high sec C1 the Bears had been using two holes down. (Our static was connected to a C6, which connected to a C5, that connected to another C5 where we had caught the haulers, with that one connected to another C5 leading one way towards the Dropbears' home system and a C4 leading the other way to a C1 that connected to high sec. Chains are fun. :D)
With my bomber on station to guard the chain, I ran my pod out to low sec to pick up an epithal I had ditched in Minmatar space. I came out a couple of jumps from Bosena, and began motoring towards the market-pirate haven known as Hek. It is my least favorite 'hub', but at least the stuff I had was already there.
A couple of jumps into high sec, I passed a gate that had about a dozen red flashy ships on overview. I went 'huh' - there was no CONCORD force in the process of blapping them, no wrecks, so it didn't look like an in process gate camp. Then I remembered that we were at war! LOL! I switched one of my chat windows over to [Local] and sure enough there were a dozen war targets in system, with a few of them swearing at me, someone asking me to bring a big ship and not my (expensive~) pod, and one guy saying I was rude for not even waving. So I waved. "Sorry guys, I wasn't even looking at local! Good hunting and what."
Still... I didn't want to be rude. As I approached Hek, I dropped into their public channel to shoot the breeze. "Didn't mean to be rude. How are you gentlemen doing today?" This was greeted with some derision and some more swearing (I had to laugh at that, poor mercs) but one of them was civil enough to engage in discourse. :D I pulled my hauler out of my hangar, filled the cargo with more missiles and rail/blaster ammo, and set a course for the high sec connection the scouts had just found while we chatted.
Their client was happy with the kills they were getting - one of the EoL guys lost a Caldari Navy Raven in the first week of the war, although now that we were in week three and had finished moving into the new system
war kills were down to a few cheap frigates and one Sky pilot that has lost three Ibis' in the last week. Three Ibisii, those get expensive~. The guy asked when we were bringing them a fight; I told them we already did that a couple of times (we had) but they didn't seem to want it at the time, and now that we were moved in we were pretty much done with high sec for the time being. I invited him to come out to the wormhole to play (and gave him the wrong Null system to come to, of course) but he declined. He complained about being bored, and so I showed him some of the related loss pages for a couple of the bigger fights I have been in over the last couple of weeks and trolled him again about leaving high sec to get into the WH game.
I do hope that whoever is paying them feels it's worth it; I myself don't see the point of hiring high sec mercs if you aren't going to send them to cause any real damage. I mean, sure, if I want to move something pricey by myself I give it to an alt of mine... ooo~. Such horrid inconvenience. I need to quit Eve! Heh. At least they are camping pipes, and not station undocks.
Back in the wormhole, my bomber was almost decloaked by a Dropbear Stilletto passing through; it didn't sweep the hole, though, just passed on through. A Crow followed shortly after, then another couple of interceptors, and Patriot (the Dropbears CEO) in an Ares, all one at a time. It looked like they were getting an interceptor roam going in k-space or something. I let the guys know and we pulled together a half dozen pilots to camp in the chain and pick off ships passing through (hoping for the Dropbears to get a fleet together to chase us out), but I had to take off for dinner.
The hauler gank was nice, but I neeeed more pew. Taking off from work early (yay weekend) and getting my scouts out when I get home; if I can't find anything, I'll buy a cheap Drake or something and try to find a hilarious way to lose it.
o7
-K
I tagged my Manticore bomber and took up position on one of the in-use wormholes; the scout went back to reship into something combat worthy, and we waited for the haulers to come through again.
I heard a call of "Iteron on d-scan" over coms, and sure enough it showed up on my own d-scan shortly after; I got ready to hit my cloak and start pointing... and then the hole fired. (For people who are not wormholers: much like a stargate has a distinctive visual effect when it is used by a ship and it 'fires', a wormhole makes a very distinctive noise when it is used.) "What the hell?" I asked myself, since I knew the iteron hadn't landed yet... how could it have slipped past me? No, no, someone new must have jumped through from the other side.
Oh well! I announced the new unknown on coms, and then the iteron landed on grid. I decloaked and pointed it, and fired a salvo of torpedoes, and then the new ship dropped jump cloak - a second iteron! Their haulers had crossjumped. The first iteron jumped through the hole, and I started locking the second; it jumped back through to the other side as well. I called it out, and followed through - the one that had just jumped would be polarized now and unable to get away.
I came out of the hole and loaded grid, and didn't see anything. I knew an iteron couldn't warp away that fast, so both haulers were holding cloak - sure enough, shortly after my jump, one of them dropped cloak and started aligning. I dropped my jump cloak as well and pointed it, then hit my torpedo button... only to loose point. Whoops. I had hit the wrong one, and recloaked instead of hit 'make target explode'. I dropped cloak again, and started locking; the iteron jumpd back through the hole to the other side.
Now, at this point, hindsight tells me that I should have stayed on the far side of the hole to catch the iteron that had polarized itself, and let the fleet try and catch the one that had ran back through. However I was running on instinct, not logic, and instinct said "CHASE! CATCH! KILL!!!"
So I jumped after the fleeing iteron (and saw the second iteron dropping cloak to warp off as the hole fired and pulled me back through), locked it, and pointed it as the other two guys in fleet landed on the hole. The hauler exploded. \o/ It had been carrying POS fuel. The capsule got away, and warped back to the hole a couple of times before the pilot's polarization timer ran out; I kept trying to lock it each time (just on general principle) but we didn't bring a bubble to catch it.
Since they were running haulers, there had to be an exit down the chain; we already had a decent enough low sec connection, but the guys found the high sec C1 the Bears had been using two holes down. (Our static was connected to a C6, which connected to a C5, that connected to another C5 where we had caught the haulers, with that one connected to another C5 leading one way towards the Dropbears' home system and a C4 leading the other way to a C1 that connected to high sec. Chains are fun. :D)
With my bomber on station to guard the chain, I ran my pod out to low sec to pick up an epithal I had ditched in Minmatar space. I came out a couple of jumps from Bosena, and began motoring towards the market-pirate haven known as Hek. It is my least favorite 'hub', but at least the stuff I had was already there.
A couple of jumps into high sec, I passed a gate that had about a dozen red flashy ships on overview. I went 'huh' - there was no CONCORD force in the process of blapping them, no wrecks, so it didn't look like an in process gate camp. Then I remembered that we were at war! LOL! I switched one of my chat windows over to [Local] and sure enough there were a dozen war targets in system, with a few of them swearing at me, someone asking me to bring a big ship and not my (expensive~) pod, and one guy saying I was rude for not even waving. So I waved. "Sorry guys, I wasn't even looking at local! Good hunting and what."
Still... I didn't want to be rude. As I approached Hek, I dropped into their public channel to shoot the breeze. "Didn't mean to be rude. How are you gentlemen doing today?" This was greeted with some derision and some more swearing (I had to laugh at that, poor mercs) but one of them was civil enough to engage in discourse. :D I pulled my hauler out of my hangar, filled the cargo with more missiles and rail/blaster ammo, and set a course for the high sec connection the scouts had just found while we chatted.
Their client was happy with the kills they were getting - one of the EoL guys lost a Caldari Navy Raven in the first week of the war, although now that we were in week three and had finished moving into the new system
war kills were down to a few cheap frigates and one Sky pilot that has lost three Ibis' in the last week. Three Ibisii, those get expensive~. The guy asked when we were bringing them a fight; I told them we already did that a couple of times (we had) but they didn't seem to want it at the time, and now that we were moved in we were pretty much done with high sec for the time being. I invited him to come out to the wormhole to play (and gave him the wrong Null system to come to, of course) but he declined. He complained about being bored, and so I showed him some of the related loss pages for a couple of the bigger fights I have been in over the last couple of weeks and trolled him again about leaving high sec to get into the WH game.
I do hope that whoever is paying them feels it's worth it; I myself don't see the point of hiring high sec mercs if you aren't going to send them to cause any real damage. I mean, sure, if I want to move something pricey by myself I give it to an alt of mine... ooo~. Such horrid inconvenience. I need to quit Eve! Heh. At least they are camping pipes, and not station undocks.
Back in the wormhole, my bomber was almost decloaked by a Dropbear Stilletto passing through; it didn't sweep the hole, though, just passed on through. A Crow followed shortly after, then another couple of interceptors, and Patriot (the Dropbears CEO) in an Ares, all one at a time. It looked like they were getting an interceptor roam going in k-space or something. I let the guys know and we pulled together a half dozen pilots to camp in the chain and pick off ships passing through (hoping for the Dropbears to get a fleet together to chase us out), but I had to take off for dinner.
The hauler gank was nice, but I neeeed more pew. Taking off from work early (yay weekend) and getting my scouts out when I get home; if I can't find anything, I'll buy a cheap Drake or something and try to find a hilarious way to lose it.
o7
-K
Sunday, May 18, 2014
Laziness
The two biggest killers in w-space are ignorance, and laziness. When someone doesn't know how to protect themselves, or just doesn't put in the effort... that is when you leave yourself open to wandering hunters.
I had one of those weekends these last few days, where I was kind of out of it and didn't take proper precautions. Whoops.
Let's see... Saturday, I lost a Crane. I had planned to get my industrial alt corp set up in a wormhole, making and exporting goods (I've settled on T2 frigates/ammo/some modules as a decent compromise between profit, and assets at risk in the hole) and because my friend had had some people haunting her system, I decided to plant my tower in there with her. I anchored my control tower, put the fuel and stront it, set it to online... then cloaked up next to it and wandered off to make dinner, assuming that the cloak would protect me until the force field came up, and that the force field would take care of me after.
I came back just as my Crane exploded. It looked like a cheetah had spotted the tower onlining, brought a friend for backup, and either swung by and managed to decloak me, or the forcefield going up killed the cloak module but not before the friend could blap me. Either way, I really should have safe spotted instead. Whoops!
Sunday my favorite ship, my Stratios, went kaboom; we were breaking down POCO's in our new system so we could land our own, and the static we had opened the night before was inhabited by One Percent. It opened pretty late at night and there were only four of us online, so we had started rolling the hole; they spotted us part way through, so we called it off and called it night. Earlier today we also had a C2 open into our system, and a few systems down that chain we saw some members of Ixstab running ships in from high sec.
Mistake 1: I brought a Stratios to a POCO bash because it was the ship I was already in, when a Vexor Navy would have done the job just as well and would have put 400 million isk less on the field.
Mistake 2: when the POCO came out of reinforced, only one of us logged in a dual-boxed scout. We decided a potential T3/guardian fleet from Ixstab was a bigger threat, so that scout was watching the C2 connection.
Mistake 3: we had seen no activity from One Percent., and although we were moving into the EU prime time, we assumed things would stay fairly quiet - that even if they jumped us, it'd be a group we could brawl with.
Mistake 4: when the gank came, it was sudden - nobody caught them on d-scan in warp, and the tengu and huginn were joined on grid quickly enough that we should have spotted the inbound fleet earlier. I know I wasn't watching d-scan close enough, and it seems we were all being a bit slow on it.
I was the first ship scrammed and taken down; I reshipped immediately and was ready to get back to the fight, but the FC was already calling for a disengage. The One Percent gang was large enough, with enough logi, that he didn't think we could take them. We ended up losing my Stratios, a Vexor Navy, and an Ishtar in the initial skirmish, without getting enough fire focused on their side to take anyone down.
Still, it is only a matter of time before we connect to them again, and next time I'll give a better showing. Until then, the expensive lesson has been taught again: when you're flying in w-space, don't be lazy.
o7
-K
I had one of those weekends these last few days, where I was kind of out of it and didn't take proper precautions. Whoops.
Let's see... Saturday, I lost a Crane. I had planned to get my industrial alt corp set up in a wormhole, making and exporting goods (I've settled on T2 frigates/ammo/some modules as a decent compromise between profit, and assets at risk in the hole) and because my friend had had some people haunting her system, I decided to plant my tower in there with her. I anchored my control tower, put the fuel and stront it, set it to online... then cloaked up next to it and wandered off to make dinner, assuming that the cloak would protect me until the force field came up, and that the force field would take care of me after.
I came back just as my Crane exploded. It looked like a cheetah had spotted the tower onlining, brought a friend for backup, and either swung by and managed to decloak me, or the forcefield going up killed the cloak module but not before the friend could blap me. Either way, I really should have safe spotted instead. Whoops!
Sunday my favorite ship, my Stratios, went kaboom; we were breaking down POCO's in our new system so we could land our own, and the static we had opened the night before was inhabited by One Percent. It opened pretty late at night and there were only four of us online, so we had started rolling the hole; they spotted us part way through, so we called it off and called it night. Earlier today we also had a C2 open into our system, and a few systems down that chain we saw some members of Ixstab running ships in from high sec.
Mistake 1: I brought a Stratios to a POCO bash because it was the ship I was already in, when a Vexor Navy would have done the job just as well and would have put 400 million isk less on the field.
Mistake 2: when the POCO came out of reinforced, only one of us logged in a dual-boxed scout. We decided a potential T3/guardian fleet from Ixstab was a bigger threat, so that scout was watching the C2 connection.
Mistake 3: we had seen no activity from One Percent., and although we were moving into the EU prime time, we assumed things would stay fairly quiet - that even if they jumped us, it'd be a group we could brawl with.
Mistake 4: when the gank came, it was sudden - nobody caught them on d-scan in warp, and the tengu and huginn were joined on grid quickly enough that we should have spotted the inbound fleet earlier. I know I wasn't watching d-scan close enough, and it seems we were all being a bit slow on it.
I was the first ship scrammed and taken down; I reshipped immediately and was ready to get back to the fight, but the FC was already calling for a disengage. The One Percent gang was large enough, with enough logi, that he didn't think we could take them. We ended up losing my Stratios, a Vexor Navy, and an Ishtar in the initial skirmish, without getting enough fire focused on their side to take anyone down.
Still, it is only a matter of time before we connect to them again, and next time I'll give a better showing. Until then, the expensive lesson has been taught again: when you're flying in w-space, don't be lazy.
o7
-K
Friday, May 16, 2014
Moving Again, and Moving Forward
Note: This one has been on my writing desk for a couple of weeks; I've added and updated a bit as I went, and didn't want to publish before we were all set up. :D
A while back I mentioned a project to open a C2 wormhole training corporation.
That project has been aborted; it didn't make it out of the initial setup phase before being abandoned due to reasons. I do not believe in spreading drama and so I shall not; there were simply some miscommunications on the leadership level that escalated poorly and led me to conclude that it was time for me to leave the alliance. I wish you guys at Infinite Anarchy the best, and when you find your pod under fire from my guns it's nothing personal, just w-space. :D
I am flying with Sky Fighters now; they lost a chunk of players when Rolled Out rolled out, and had just moved out of their old home system. I signed up just in time to join the scanning party - huzzah! So, after spending a day or so moving my ships out of the C2 Anarchist Asylum had set up in, I spent the next couple of days scouting wormhole chains with my covops alt while I consolidated assets with Karen.
I should probably add that I have been doing all of my high sec logistics under war dec - Infinite Anarchy was under wardec as I was moving out, and Sky Fighters had been decced shortly before I joined, which made my logistics work require a little more attention than usual. We even formed up a couple of times to hunt the WT's down, but they seem to want to dock up in station whenever a gang that is actually combat capable swings by. :shrug:
Sky found a few good systems to move into, and the plan was to begin cloaky bomber harassment last Friday after the Lazerhawk roam; however, on Thursday one of our scouts found an even better system, so plans changed, scouts were seeded, and Kynric decided to go straight for the eviction invasion of the new target system, without the harassment campaign first. Assets were moved through high sec, my Rattlesnake and a Paladin got into a brawl with a few war target proteusii (we ended up down a Domi), and by Saturday we had a seige tower, invasion orcas, and the big guns in the target system ready to start 'persuading' the prior residents to move out.
At first it looked like they'd try to pack up and ship out, but by the time we were ready to commence they were still dug in.
A while back I mentioned a project to open a C2 wormhole training corporation.
That project has been aborted; it didn't make it out of the initial setup phase before being abandoned due to reasons. I do not believe in spreading drama and so I shall not; there were simply some miscommunications on the leadership level that escalated poorly and led me to conclude that it was time for me to leave the alliance. I wish you guys at Infinite Anarchy the best, and when you find your pod under fire from my guns it's nothing personal, just w-space. :D
I am flying with Sky Fighters now; they lost a chunk of players when Rolled Out rolled out, and had just moved out of their old home system. I signed up just in time to join the scanning party - huzzah! So, after spending a day or so moving my ships out of the C2 Anarchist Asylum had set up in, I spent the next couple of days scouting wormhole chains with my covops alt while I consolidated assets with Karen.
I should probably add that I have been doing all of my high sec logistics under war dec - Infinite Anarchy was under wardec as I was moving out, and Sky Fighters had been decced shortly before I joined, which made my logistics work require a little more attention than usual. We even formed up a couple of times to hunt the WT's down, but they seem to want to dock up in station whenever a gang that is actually combat capable swings by. :shrug:
Sky found a few good systems to move into, and the plan was to begin cloaky bomber harassment last Friday after the Lazerhawk roam; however, on Thursday one of our scouts found an even better system, so plans changed, scouts were seeded, and Kynric decided to go straight for the eviction invasion of the new target system, without the harassment campaign first. Assets were moved through high sec, my Rattlesnake and a Paladin got into a brawl with a few war target proteusii (we ended up down a Domi), and by Saturday we had a seige tower, invasion orcas, and the big guns in the target system ready to start 'persuading' the prior residents to move out.
At first it looked like they'd try to pack up and ship out, but by the time we were ready to commence they were still dug in.
The Big Cat, ready to play
The guys we were kicking out were running a POS crammed with a double handful of hardeners (about 70% resistances across the board) and lots and lots of ECM, plus about a thousand DPS worth of lasers, a neut, and your usual requisite scrams. The ECM ruled out logi, and the DPS was enough to keep the usual POS Bash Ishtar/Gila/Dominix off field; we went at it with a pair of Vargurs and two Rattlesnakes. It was fun. I knew the marauders would be fine as long as they kept snacking on cap boosters, but I was rather impressed by the snake's massive ability to tank all of the things forever. Plus, I got to try out my Gecko super-heavy drones on the POS lasers and the neut. We left the ECM up, since it did more to help us against potential ganks than hurt us.
Over the rest of the week, we have been shipping in tower, setting up full defenses, and reinforcing POCO's. Soon, we'll be out marauding through C5 chains and blops-dropping into nullsec. Yay!
o7
-K
Wednesday, May 14, 2014
Hooligans
This is not the blog post I had planned on writing today; however, there are :opsec: considerations so it'll have to wait longer. For a quick update, though, I am out with my new corp, Sky Fighters, Doing Things to People.
Yesterday evening was, in fact, full of Doing Things to certain specific people, but last night as I was getting ready to log out I caught a concerning message from a friend of mine - some random people had been camping her wormhole, and at first she wasn't terribly concerned as, well, they were horrible at it and it's not unkown for corps to camp k-space connections in the hope of a juicy gank. However, these guys were remarkably persistent - they had, apparently, been camping her hole for eight or so hours now, and one of them just declared ownership of her system and demanded that she pay rent.
Oh my.
My friend is a very new player to Eve, having started around the end of March. She has also been incredibly enthusiastic about w-space; actively exploring every day, earning her first plex as a newbie by running herons into nullsec and hacking sites, things like that. She's shied away from PvP since she is definitely more of a builder than a fighter, but when I was getting started on my newbie corp I actively recruited her for her awesome YOLO attitude and her motivation to get out and play the game instead of just sitting somewhere 'safe' all day. When the newbie corp failed to launch, she decided to go make her own corporation and do things her own way then, scouting out her own C3/LS hole, shelling out for a POS on her own (I helped her plan the defenses :D), and moving in the fuel and scanner alts and things she'll need to start operations. And, now that she has Things she wants to defend, she's looking at options to get herself set up for home defense PvP.
I am very proud of how she's doing. Like, seriously, I am tearing up a little writing this.
So, when I heard that some no-name bunch of punks were harassing my friend, I took an interest.
Like I said, they were actively camping her k-space connections (she had two low sec ones at the time), but they were horrible at it; one of her scout alts got podded out several times, but she didn't have trouble getting it back in. Once they anchored a couple of large bubbles and brought in a sabre she scaled down the transit activity, but she has everything she needed to sit them out for a couple of weeks.
Although no POS is unconquerable, we had made sure it would require a significant investment to try and bring it down - the hooligans made some threatening noises at her and growled about seigeing her POS, but they clearly didn't have the guns to do so at the time... and trying to starve someone out of a wormhole is a horrible thing to ask your pilots to do, since depending on the fuel reserves in the tower, you might be doing a lot of sitting and hole watching for two or even three months. So after a bit of baiting (what, going to feed your loki to my tower?), they threatened to drop a fleet of Marauders on her POS. That had us giggling.
Just in case you are unfamiliar with Marauders, and their prices, an *empty* hull runs about a billion isk. A properly fit one can cost as much as a dread. They are tough ships, but they are also huge targets. Especially if they're glued to a POS that will only shoot them, and not your friends who come to get on the killmails. :D
My friend baited them a bit more, running her scout (who couldn't cloak) between their camps to keep eyes on them and openly laughing at their attempts to charge her rent, hold her hostage, or threaten her tower. Have I mentioned that I really like her attitude?
Sadly, I was unable to come to help in person, being stuck in a remote piece of uncharted space; instead, I ended up sending one of my out of corp alts to keep an eye on things, and began poking some of my contacts to see if anyone was in the area and interested in ganking marauders, should they actually show up. I discovered that this group of hooligans had in fact managed to piss off another friend of mine to the point where he would gladly bring a dozen or two guys to kick the punks in the nuts and collect their sweet, sweet tears, so I put him in contact with Lori. Bane, one of my corpmates/the diplo for Sky Fighters, also caught wind of it all and helpfully decided to convo the aggressor's CEO to see if they wanted to talk.
The CEO tried to charge Bane a two billion isk ransom.
Their CEO. Tried to charge Bane. A two billion isk ransom.
That got some laughs out of us as well, and I think around that point Bane had got his scout into the C3. This was too much heat for the Rejects - they pulled stakes and scampered, growling about our Huge Fleet (that was still five jumps away, not sure how they would have seen that) and that the POS wasn't worth their time to bash. Bane ran a scout up the chain to their home system; I wouldn't be surprised if he demands a ransom from them tonight.
Shout out to everyone who had my back, you guys are great. Sorry they blueballed you and bailed. To the Rejects: don't be dicks, guys. Yea, we all play rough here in w-space, but when you get put on someone's shitlist they'll come looking for you if they get a good chance.
The evening was sadly lacking in explosions, but it felt like a nice bit of diplo pvp. And hey, I'll remember those guys; I've got a C5 static, so I'm sure I'll run into them again. :D
o7
-K
Yesterday evening was, in fact, full of Doing Things to certain specific people, but last night as I was getting ready to log out I caught a concerning message from a friend of mine - some random people had been camping her wormhole, and at first she wasn't terribly concerned as, well, they were horrible at it and it's not unkown for corps to camp k-space connections in the hope of a juicy gank. However, these guys were remarkably persistent - they had, apparently, been camping her hole for eight or so hours now, and one of them just declared ownership of her system and demanded that she pay rent.
Oh my.
My friend is a very new player to Eve, having started around the end of March. She has also been incredibly enthusiastic about w-space; actively exploring every day, earning her first plex as a newbie by running herons into nullsec and hacking sites, things like that. She's shied away from PvP since she is definitely more of a builder than a fighter, but when I was getting started on my newbie corp I actively recruited her for her awesome YOLO attitude and her motivation to get out and play the game instead of just sitting somewhere 'safe' all day. When the newbie corp failed to launch, she decided to go make her own corporation and do things her own way then, scouting out her own C3/LS hole, shelling out for a POS on her own (I helped her plan the defenses :D), and moving in the fuel and scanner alts and things she'll need to start operations. And, now that she has Things she wants to defend, she's looking at options to get herself set up for home defense PvP.
I am very proud of how she's doing. Like, seriously, I am tearing up a little writing this.
So, when I heard that some no-name bunch of punks were harassing my friend, I took an interest.
Like I said, they were actively camping her k-space connections (she had two low sec ones at the time), but they were horrible at it; one of her scout alts got podded out several times, but she didn't have trouble getting it back in. Once they anchored a couple of large bubbles and brought in a sabre she scaled down the transit activity, but she has everything she needed to sit them out for a couple of weeks.
Although no POS is unconquerable, we had made sure it would require a significant investment to try and bring it down - the hooligans made some threatening noises at her and growled about seigeing her POS, but they clearly didn't have the guns to do so at the time... and trying to starve someone out of a wormhole is a horrible thing to ask your pilots to do, since depending on the fuel reserves in the tower, you might be doing a lot of sitting and hole watching for two or even three months. So after a bit of baiting (what, going to feed your loki to my tower?), they threatened to drop a fleet of Marauders on her POS. That had us giggling.
Just in case you are unfamiliar with Marauders, and their prices, an *empty* hull runs about a billion isk. A properly fit one can cost as much as a dread. They are tough ships, but they are also huge targets. Especially if they're glued to a POS that will only shoot them, and not your friends who come to get on the killmails. :D
My friend baited them a bit more, running her scout (who couldn't cloak) between their camps to keep eyes on them and openly laughing at their attempts to charge her rent, hold her hostage, or threaten her tower. Have I mentioned that I really like her attitude?
Sadly, I was unable to come to help in person, being stuck in a remote piece of uncharted space; instead, I ended up sending one of my out of corp alts to keep an eye on things, and began poking some of my contacts to see if anyone was in the area and interested in ganking marauders, should they actually show up. I discovered that this group of hooligans had in fact managed to piss off another friend of mine to the point where he would gladly bring a dozen or two guys to kick the punks in the nuts and collect their sweet, sweet tears, so I put him in contact with Lori. Bane, one of my corpmates/the diplo for Sky Fighters, also caught wind of it all and helpfully decided to convo the aggressor's CEO to see if they wanted to talk.
The CEO tried to charge Bane a two billion isk ransom.
Their CEO. Tried to charge Bane. A two billion isk ransom.
That got some laughs out of us as well, and I think around that point Bane had got his scout into the C3. This was too much heat for the Rejects - they pulled stakes and scampered, growling about our Huge Fleet (that was still five jumps away, not sure how they would have seen that) and that the POS wasn't worth their time to bash. Bane ran a scout up the chain to their home system; I wouldn't be surprised if he demands a ransom from them tonight.
Shout out to everyone who had my back, you guys are great. Sorry they blueballed you and bailed. To the Rejects: don't be dicks, guys. Yea, we all play rough here in w-space, but when you get put on someone's shitlist they'll come looking for you if they get a good chance.
The evening was sadly lacking in explosions, but it felt like a nice bit of diplo pvp. And hey, I'll remember those guys; I've got a C5 static, so I'm sure I'll run into them again. :D
o7
-K
Sunday, May 11, 2014
In Memoral
On Friday, the Lazerhawks hosted a memorial roam/fleet welping in honor of DJ Destruction, one of their pilots who recently passed away. All interested wormholers were invited, and told to bring battleships with lasers. Lots of lasers.
All of the lasers.
By the time we left the staging system there were a hundred some pilots in fleet, and we paused on the first out gate for some words in memory of DJ. He sounded like a great guy to fly with, and I am very sorry for his loss.
In proper wake fashion, shots were called for, and then the fleet started went up on Twitch and we set destination for a known low sec staging system, ready for a brawl. It didn't take long for the targets to become aware of the Twitch stream - after only a few systems, one of their guys was spectating our fleet as we hopped gate to gate in a controlled, stately manner. It was no surprise that, by the time we were ready to enter our target system, a fleet had formed up to greet us - Ninja Unicorns With Huge Horns, Psychotic Tendencies, and assorted other allies.
We had a fleet of brawling Abbadons, Armageddons, and Random Laser Shit. We jumped into a fleet of Navy Apocs with some miscellaneous support (a smattering of pirate battleships, a few dreads, and some carriers). They were just far enough off the gate that we had to switch from the close range ammo, so we dropped cloak, reloaded, and engaged. The FC (ForgetMyFace) began calling targets, and our cynos went up; a team of five triage archons, a moros, and a revelation landed on our side.
The battle was ridiculously fun. The Psychotic logi carriers did a great job of keeping their ships up when they could catch them, but the combined fire from our lasers melted through quite a few battleships throughout the fight, while our dreads worked on chewing down the opposing seige dreads (we killed a moros!) and then got to work on their carriers. The fight took a dive though when Psychotic Tendancies called in supercarrier support; three Nyxs and a Wyvern dropped on field (escalation!) and it was pretty much game over at that point; the dreads exploded, the archons began going down one after another, and after the last capital on our side was dead we got the order to warp out to a station in system.
'Good fights' were exchanged in local, and it had been an excellent fight; many things exploded in fond memory of a fallen pilot, and we explained the purpose of the roam in local. The brawlees commiserated, and we were informed that the battleships left in the fleet were free to go without being camped. The fleet extracted to our staging system, our hosts thanked us, and most of the fleet began heading for their home holes.
However. There were a few of us that decided we had signed up to welp our battleships, and we weren't going home until the insurance had been paid out. A new (and quite drunk) FC was appointed, our fleet was marshaled, and the FC announced our desto. "Fuck it. Desto is VFK. YOLO. Holy jesus. Come on, scrubs, move out!"
The trip to VFK was chaotic, messy, drunken, and highly amusing. We barely saw anyone on the way, but there were about fifty to sixty other pilots (compared to our dozenish leftover battleships) online in VFK itself. We all warped to the station and, lacking other targets, opened fire; then our scout found an offline POS in system, so we all warped to that instead and began bashing it. We chatted amicably in /Local with the Goons that were on hand, and watched as the local pilot count spiked, and spiked again.
Eventually, they jumped on us, and I could hear many of the guys in fleet giggling - a swarm of sabres, flycatchers, and other small stuff landed on us and space was filled with warp bubbles and disco lights. We began popping them, but within thirty seconds a giant fleet of capitals dropped on us; we laughed on coms and continued free-firing on the smaller targets. The thirty-ish slowcat archons and two dozen naglfars ripped our fleet to pieces, but we actually came very close to breaking even on isk lost.
So, as we were getting blobbed off the field, we waved to the Goons and offered 'gf's in local, then took the high sec express. It was a night that will be remembered.
All of the lasers.
By the time we left the staging system there were a hundred some pilots in fleet, and we paused on the first out gate for some words in memory of DJ. He sounded like a great guy to fly with, and I am very sorry for his loss.
In proper wake fashion, shots were called for, and then the fleet started went up on Twitch and we set destination for a known low sec staging system, ready for a brawl. It didn't take long for the targets to become aware of the Twitch stream - after only a few systems, one of their guys was spectating our fleet as we hopped gate to gate in a controlled, stately manner. It was no surprise that, by the time we were ready to enter our target system, a fleet had formed up to greet us - Ninja Unicorns With Huge Horns, Psychotic Tendencies, and assorted other allies.
We had a fleet of brawling Abbadons, Armageddons, and Random Laser Shit. We jumped into a fleet of Navy Apocs with some miscellaneous support (a smattering of pirate battleships, a few dreads, and some carriers). They were just far enough off the gate that we had to switch from the close range ammo, so we dropped cloak, reloaded, and engaged. The FC (ForgetMyFace) began calling targets, and our cynos went up; a team of five triage archons, a moros, and a revelation landed on our side.
The battle was ridiculously fun. The Psychotic logi carriers did a great job of keeping their ships up when they could catch them, but the combined fire from our lasers melted through quite a few battleships throughout the fight, while our dreads worked on chewing down the opposing seige dreads (we killed a moros!) and then got to work on their carriers. The fight took a dive though when Psychotic Tendancies called in supercarrier support; three Nyxs and a Wyvern dropped on field (escalation!) and it was pretty much game over at that point; the dreads exploded, the archons began going down one after another, and after the last capital on our side was dead we got the order to warp out to a station in system.
'Good fights' were exchanged in local, and it had been an excellent fight; many things exploded in fond memory of a fallen pilot, and we explained the purpose of the roam in local. The brawlees commiserated, and we were informed that the battleships left in the fleet were free to go without being camped. The fleet extracted to our staging system, our hosts thanked us, and most of the fleet began heading for their home holes.
However. There were a few of us that decided we had signed up to welp our battleships, and we weren't going home until the insurance had been paid out. A new (and quite drunk) FC was appointed, our fleet was marshaled, and the FC announced our desto. "Fuck it. Desto is VFK. YOLO. Holy jesus. Come on, scrubs, move out!"
The trip to VFK was chaotic, messy, drunken, and highly amusing. We barely saw anyone on the way, but there were about fifty to sixty other pilots (compared to our dozenish leftover battleships) online in VFK itself. We all warped to the station and, lacking other targets, opened fire; then our scout found an offline POS in system, so we all warped to that instead and began bashing it. We chatted amicably in /Local with the Goons that were on hand, and watched as the local pilot count spiked, and spiked again.
Eventually, they jumped on us, and I could hear many of the guys in fleet giggling - a swarm of sabres, flycatchers, and other small stuff landed on us and space was filled with warp bubbles and disco lights. We began popping them, but within thirty seconds a giant fleet of capitals dropped on us; we laughed on coms and continued free-firing on the smaller targets. The thirty-ish slowcat archons and two dozen naglfars ripped our fleet to pieces, but we actually came very close to breaking even on isk lost.
So, as we were getting blobbed off the field, we waved to the Goons and offered 'gf's in local, then took the high sec express. It was a night that will be remembered.
Saturday, May 3, 2014
Fanfest from the Sidelines
I had a few busy days at work and so I've been unable to follow most of the Fanfest stream as it happens, and have been catching up in the evenings and then watching today (Saturday).
First, OMG, that music video they did before the Eve Keynote... it was incredible, and awe inspiring, and I nearly swooned. CCP has earned my love. Especially CCP Guard. Amazing.
Second, CSM9 was announced. I did not make it in, which did not come as a surprise; I met some pretty stiff resistance while I was campaigning and talking to people, but I am still glad I ran. I met a lot of good people, had fun making connections with other players, and I didn't try to be anyone other than me. I just wasn't the candidate that people wanted.
Aside from Corbexx, I am very pleased that Sugar Kyle, Ali, and Mike will be on the CSM this year. If you mash them together in the right way, I think you get close enough to the views I'd want represented. ;)
Some other cool stuff came up: the summer expansion is dated for early next month (wow! Yay!) and along with the various rebalances and adjustments that have been announced, there are some more new things coming. The T2 Venture looks pretty awesome, and I might fly one just for the looks; the real beauty is that it has a ton of low slots (Venture has one, Prospect gets four?!), and a reduced signature, so if you throw some armor tank mods in it'll be one hell of a tough little frigate. And it's covops capable. And can fit a covert cyno. I can already see another three "OMG NERF CLOAKS" threads on the Eve-O forums from the nullbears.
The AT ships are also pretty cool and I would fly the hell out of a Chameleon, if I were ever able to pick one up. Part of the fun of the Stratios is the extra tank it gets; the Chameleon gets that bonus to shields instead, plus jams. Plus some crazy strong drones - it'll be a nasty gank boat.
The other new ships are the Mordus Angels line. I've been fairly lukewarm towards the Legion in game so far, but the frigate and cruiser are pretty, and they're finally shield ships with an EWAR bonus, instead of just shield ships that do extra damage. Yay!
Anyway, from what I saw, Fanfest looked pretty cool. One year I'll go. :)
o7
First, OMG, that music video they did before the Eve Keynote... it was incredible, and awe inspiring, and I nearly swooned. CCP has earned my love. Especially CCP Guard. Amazing.
Second, CSM9 was announced. I did not make it in, which did not come as a surprise; I met some pretty stiff resistance while I was campaigning and talking to people, but I am still glad I ran. I met a lot of good people, had fun making connections with other players, and I didn't try to be anyone other than me. I just wasn't the candidate that people wanted.
Aside from Corbexx, I am very pleased that Sugar Kyle, Ali, and Mike will be on the CSM this year. If you mash them together in the right way, I think you get close enough to the views I'd want represented. ;)
Some other cool stuff came up: the summer expansion is dated for early next month (wow! Yay!) and along with the various rebalances and adjustments that have been announced, there are some more new things coming. The T2 Venture looks pretty awesome, and I might fly one just for the looks; the real beauty is that it has a ton of low slots (Venture has one, Prospect gets four?!), and a reduced signature, so if you throw some armor tank mods in it'll be one hell of a tough little frigate. And it's covops capable. And can fit a covert cyno. I can already see another three "OMG NERF CLOAKS" threads on the Eve-O forums from the nullbears.
The AT ships are also pretty cool and I would fly the hell out of a Chameleon, if I were ever able to pick one up. Part of the fun of the Stratios is the extra tank it gets; the Chameleon gets that bonus to shields instead, plus jams. Plus some crazy strong drones - it'll be a nasty gank boat.
The other new ships are the Mordus Angels line. I've been fairly lukewarm towards the Legion in game so far, but the frigate and cruiser are pretty, and they're finally shield ships with an EWAR bonus, instead of just shield ships that do extra damage. Yay!
Anyway, from what I saw, Fanfest looked pretty cool. One year I'll go. :)
o7
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