No Content, Please. We're Funding SRP.

Chronologically, this all happened before “Three rounds with the champ” but it kind of got parked and forgotten about - probably because of posting 3 articles in 3 days, which made me take a bit of a break (plus I actually had some work to do). As fantastic as it is to have things to talk about that thick and fast, it was equally a relief to have things just slow down so people could chill. It sounds odd since we spend so much time in WH’s looking for PvP, that after a couple of days straight of it, that a lull would be most welcome – but probably only because of the intensity of what is now being referred to in United System’s Commonwealth as “Content Day”. The relief was pretty obvious logging into TS the next day:

Jay > Evening chaps

Alzuule > No

Jay > No?

Alzuule > No. No more content!

I’m not quite sure how I got the blame for all that, but there are worse things to be accused of! With things being less intense, we could worry about things like SRP. Normally, this is done from accumulating PvP loot and selling it to members or the market, which might not seem as robust a system as a lot of other people use (as well as being reliant on the members to loot wrecks and ensuring that said loot goes to the right place), but it seemed to be working out pretty well. ‘Content day’ did leave us with a few ships to be replaced, most notably an Archon. Apparently, we also lost a couple of Tengu’s from the pilot forgetting that he could jump through a wormhole. At the time, it was looking like there might be a bit of a hole in the SRP fund for all this.

This is where The Gorgon Spawn comes into things. It’s always interesting to see off-shoots of null entities jumping into WH space. We rolled into Gorgon Empire’s poorer cousins with an open mind. Could these guys be here to enhance the WH community and revel in the environment, using the convoluted chains of C5 space for PvP? No, they were there to farm. I seem to remember the Gorgons being Russian or at least eastern European, in the main, meaning their primetime was a couple of hours ahead of ours and indeed, it looked like we’d missed them ratting. Moros’ were sat at the POS’s, but what was interesting was that there were several mobile tractor units still in space. The sites were scouted and the MTU’s were there, but 300km off. Given that their dreads were fitted with rails, it looked like they were using the capitals at long range and leaving the MTU’s in the sites until the site despawned. We may have missed their fleet ratting, but we were in time to see one of their Loki’s emptying the MTU’s. A gank, for sure, but PvP loot all the same and enough to plug the gap in SRPing ‘Content day’. Thank you, Gorgon Spawn.

Then came Hyperion. Looking for content once more, scouts spotted a Lazerhawks tagged Vargur which must have been clearing a Gas site in a C5 magnetar, later confirmed by the appearance of 4 NPC wrecks and a pair of Lazerhawks prospects. That’s about where the confusion began. There were a lot of connections to that WH. What really didn’t help was that a significant number of them were the useless frigate wormholes that we can all thank CCP Fozzie for. 
“Isn’t Lazerhawks’ home a Pulsar?” 
“I thought it was a C6” 
“No, that C6 in here is a frigate hole.”

Galmas scouted the pulsar and found the Lazerhawks there with a few ships starting to assemble on the WH. I kept eyes in what would be their static, which was a magnetar. The rest of the fleet was moving through our static (which had a wolf-rayet effect) to the magnetar to try and catch some of the Lazerhawks and hope that things escalated. Galmas ordered the fleet to jump into the magnetar and align for the Lazerhawks hole when I spotted another fleet on D-scan. Viperfleet Inc’s tags alongside DE.NY’s distinctive [˄˅] and a special [Jez] tag for Disavowed’s resident special snowflake. It looked to be a small fleet of Gila’s and Ishtar’s and a Scimitar, but we had no idea where they were or where they came from. 
“They definitely live in a C6”,
“That one’s a Frigate hole…”
 “Null?”

By the time we checked out the null (which did have a connection to a C6 – but through a frigate hole), there was no sign of the Disavowed fleet and the Lazerhawks had moved from the WH and the prospects had also left. Apparently, Lazerhawks had caught a Disavowed scout amid the confusion and the [Jez] tag on D-scan was replaced by Jezza Avada’s Capsule. The Lazerhawks own scouts had obviously spotted our fleet before we moved it back into our static (the wolf-rayet) and started to form up for a fight. They looked like they had similar numbers, so Galmas made the call for him and I to switch our respective Proteus and Loki for Bhaalgorns. The Bhaals stayed in our home system with a couple of guys who just logged in as the Lazerhawks made their way to the Wolf-Rayet to engage the ships that waited there for them. The Lazerhawks jumped through to the fleet, de-cloaked and started to engage just as our reserve landed on grid - perfect timing . With two Bhaalgorns on grid, I knew Galmas would focus on their Guardians, so I put neuts on a couple of the Proteus’ and a Tengu to reduce pressure on our logi.

As far as numbers went, it was pretty even. The Bhaalgorns swung things heavily in our favor and it started to look like more of a gank than a fight. Lazerhawks, facing the prospect of capped out logistics, ECM and hybrid dps jumped back out of the wolf-rayet, into the magnetar. I still had my Legion scout on that side, which decloaked and attempted to catch something on their rout. A few ships warped, but some stayed to engage the Legion as my Bhaalgorn waited to finish off a guardian that had strayed out of jump range on the other side. As the rest of the USYSC fleet followed the Lazerhawks, more ships decided against staying around, leaving a Proteus engaged with my Legion. The fleet managed to tackle the remaining two guardians and a Tengu as they dithered.

In the end, it was not much of a fight at all, but I made sure to thank the Lazerhawks for content. Incidentally, TFC seems to be spreading. I had a bit of a dual-boxing error while engaging Hole Control. in their home system in what was, initially, a decently balanced fight, until the point where they upped the ante with a Bhaalgorn, an Archon and a Thanatos. Broadly speaking, we were ready for this and jumped out into their C4 static. This was when I noticed my error in that my Legion was 30km off the WH in some random direction. Needless to say, it didn’t make it back, but as I warped the pod away, they did drop a “Thanks for content” in local, so despite losing a Legion (and electronic subs 5 L), I still felt pretty smug.