Three Rounds with the Champ

It's always fun logging onto TS to:

Jay> ‘ello

Fiestyone> Grab an armour assault frigate, if you’ve got one. Got some guys down the chain. Name linked in corp.

[user joined your channel]

Jay> Oh, it’s W.H.O.R.E.

Utari Onzo> Charming!

Jay> er, sorry mate. That was quite unfortunately timed.

Of course, what I meant was WormHole Occupation and Resource Exploitation by way of their charming acronym.  It wasn’t actually a Fozzie-hole (frigate WH), but owing to their small numbers online, they were in the process of arranging a frigate fight and had asked for no podding. Great. RvB in WH space. Oh, well - a fight is a fight.

Unfortunately, I was a little short on armour assault frigates. The only armour frigate I had available was an Astero, but figured I’d send an alt down another branch of the chain to bring in a Vengeance from K-Space. Even if it didn’t make it back for the fight, it might be handy if we find more Fozzie-holes. The RvB style arranged fight (with no podding) was taking so long to sort out, that I had to not only get to Dodixie but also to finish fitting the Vengeance. That was when we were informed that due to numbers they now had, they could upgrade to T1 cruisers.

Wonderful… Although we did have some T1 cruisers in the main POS. A while back, someone had the idea to put together a T1 doctrine with free ships and fittings that had never been used. There were indeed a bunch of Thorax’s, Augorors and Mallers – none of which were fitted and the module stockpile was missing a few vital items. We could put together some logi, but otherwise, things were very kitchen sink. Armour-Jaguar, Ishkur, 2 Augorors, Thorax along with my Stratios and the Vengeance that had made it back from Dodixie. The Stratios was about all I had available and the WH0RE guys didn’t seem to have a problem with faction as they were shipping into Navy Augorors themselves but had strangely requested no Ashimmu’s(but of course!). At which point I asked our scout/diplo if we couldn’t just have a good old fashioned T3 brawl and we’ll pay for their losses. I don’t think the suggestion was forwarded to them.

Round 1: We knew the Navy Augorors would be tough cookies but the key to the fight would be breaking their logi. Focusing on one of their Augorors, I set my dishonour drones on the other one. Very slowly, it started to break, but the second Augoror re-established a lock before his partner hit structure. By now, our own logi was under pressure from neuts. Mid-fight, I spotted a Merlin warp in. I suggested we could deal with it quickly and with our FC’s agreement, we made short work of it before one of our Augorors went down. After the other was forced to jump out and we lost the Ishkur, I found my Stratios being primaried. I wasn’t too keen on leaving 60m ISK’s worth of Geckos behind, but things were looking about as hairy as they get. I abandoned the Geckos and escaped with 19% hull. The Vengeance was still engaged and was able to scoop my drones back up before being forced off the field.

Round 1 to WormHole Occupation and Resource Exploitation.

It’s easy to say how rubbish arranged fights are after losing out like that, but the subsequent spontaneous skirmish was even worse. Scouts reported that WH0RE ships were jumping out of a direct null – Sacrilege, Myrmidon, Sleipnir. Those of us who were still around reshipped to shield-nano to try and catch something so we’d feel better about the bloody nose we’d gotten earlier. Athanor was ahead of me and had engaged the Sleipnir on a gate. At the other end of the system, I’d spotted the Myrm and another Sacrilege. Guys who were passing through their home system spotted a Harbinger, Hawk and a Zealot moving out to the null. The numbers weren't looking great but what was worse was how spread out and disorganised our fleet was. Athanor got caught out on the gate with the weapons timer and suddenly things looked like a really bad idea. Back on the WH to null, Oddic had engaged the Harbinger and got it into mid armour before having to disengage as the rest of their fleet turned up to assist.

Meanwhile, my Orthrus was moving slightly behind Feisty’s Gila to try to at least finish off the Harbinger. We landed 50km from the null WH in their home system, which happened to be right on top of their fleet. Keeping one eye on the range to each ship, I lit the micro-warpdrive and pulled range. Tackle landed on the Gila before it could move off and it went down as I lit up the Harbinger. The intention behind the shield ships was to kite the slower fleet and harry them down, but this is not an easy thing to try solo. The Harbinger hit structure as their Hawk burned out to tackle. My attention was more on the distance between him and me than anything else. I hit the micro-warpdrive and aligned away with the heavy missiles still heading for the stricken Harbinger. I was aware that if the Hawk got a scram on me, it’d be all over and Sacrilege’s could catch up. As it got close, a burst of neut and a flight of warrior drones dissuaded him to continue his pursuit. Crucially, he’d done enough to put me out of range of the Harbinger, which escaped in very low hull and I decided that was a good time to make my own exit.

Round 2 to WormHole Occupation and Resource Exploitation.

With tails firmly between our legs and running low on ships, it seemed like a good time for a break. By now, a couple more of our guys had logged in and we were explaining the whole embarrassing state of affairs to them over comms. That was when they got in contact again.

Feistyone> Sounds like they want a proper fight now.

Jay> Tell them it’s their turn to come to us. We’re not fucking around with these guys anymore. Tool up into armour T3’s.

It might have been fair to say that we might have lulled them into a false sense of security with our previous successive derps. Our scout reported 2 full neut legions, 3 guardians, Hurricane, 2 Proteus’, Sacrilege, Armageddon and an Absolution, which was more or less equivalent to our numbers with a couple of guys dual-boxing. I was keen to bring a HAM Legion to exploit the Black hole that was our static, but the Absolution was likely to be on-grid boosts. I decided to fight fire with fire and switched into the Eos along with a Loki.

From the off, we were looking light on dps, but with a HAM/Neut legion, 2 Tengu’s, plus Oddic’s Armageddon in reserve, I was pretty confident we could break their logi and we assembled the fleet (except the geddon) on our static. We knew they had eyes on us, and our scout followed them. They assembled on the other side at zero and I started to hatch a plan. The static had dropped to half mass after round 2 and I knew from earlier that they weren’t keen to fight in the black hole, so I ordered the fleet to jump. As we started to engage, I ordered the geddon to warp to the hole but the  WH0RE fleet jumped earlier than I expected. The only thing this changed was that we had shown our hand. I didn’t mind this in the position we were now in, but we now needed a HIC to pull off what I was planning. Oknos was having trouble re-shipping into his, but this was fine. For this to work, we’d need to wait for our polarisation timers. Given how tentative the other fleet was, I didn’t rate them going for a prolonged brawl but I intended to force the issue. 5 minutes later, Oknos was warping a Phobos over to the static and I ordered the fleet to jump back.

My first concern was the Armageddon. Along with the 2 Legions WH0RE had, they had the neuting potential to wreck our fleet. Their Guardians burned out to range as we engaged the geddon, but one of the three was caught close and webbed down. It was obvious from early on that our dps wouldn’t be able to burn down even a T1 hull while their guardians were still in play, especially with links active. We couldn’t even scratch it. I dropped the neuts from the Eos onto the stranded Guardian and damps on one of the orbiting pair while calling for the fleet  to switch dps to the close guardian. As it hit low armour, the reps landed and seemed to cancel out our dps. We needed this to work to tip the balance in our favour and I called for the fleet to overheat on it. It was agonisingly slow, with their reps heroically dragging the guardian back into mid armour after the damage started to bleed into hull, but it couldn’t hold. We’d done enough and as the guardian popped, the WH0RE fleet manoeuvred back to jump range – just as I had anticipated.

Jay> That’s it, they’re jumping out.

Fiestyone> You sure?

Jay> Yep, fleet jump-jump-jump.   

I’d been watching and listening out for that moment and our fleet managed to get ahead of some of their ships on the jump. As we decloaked to spread points, the wormhole collapsed. I love it when a plan comes together. I really love it when a plan comes together. I’d like to say that it was the WH0RE geddon burning back to the hole and jumping heavy that made it collapse as it jumped behind our fleet, but the truth is I’m not sure what collapsed it. Either way, all of my fleet had made it to the other side, and the WH0RE fleet guardians were now trapped in our home system, cut-off from the rest of their fleet. Only one thing was missing to make the execution of said plan flawless…

Jay> Where’s that bubble?

Oknos> No cap

Fair play to WH0RE. It didn’t save them totally, but they’d seen the danger in the Phobos and had managed to get a few ships away while it was regaining cap. Here is where it really showed to me where USYSC had really improved as a group and the new and old pilots had got used to flying with each other. In this situation in so many previous engagements, we were lucky to catch one or two fleeing ships, but now points were being called loud and clear and therefore, spread efficiently. We quickly burned down the geddon, the hurricane and the Absolution as the last two WH0RE ships on grid burned in opposite directions out of the bubble Oknos finally managed to deploy. Feisty called that he was losing point on the Proteus and I moved the Loki to assist, the webs thwarting the Proteus’ escape. The Legion that had burned the other direction was about 70km off but the fleet had split up to keep each one tackled and to make sure there was no escape for either the Legion or the Proteus.

Round 3 to United Systems Commonwealth.

As we looted the field, Chesterfield Fancypantz convo’d me. We exchanged “gf’s” (I did make sure they were thanked for content in local) and he asked if there was a way out for his guardians. I told him we’d scan the new static for them. Since one of the guardian pilots was an ex-Blackstar member in Sool Nera, it was the least I could do. Our fleet managed to make its way back to K-space via a deep lowsec connection, but WH0RE’s stranded guardians had a more convoluted route to safety. Our new static happened to be Blue-Fire’s home system, and with their usual subtlety, they started shooting at our customs offices in between attempting to catch our scanners. I had to let them know that the fleet went balls deep, so no fight would be forthcoming until we fixed that. They let me know they only had 4 EOL nulls in the chain, which was kinda the end of that. The only other possibility seemed to the direct null into our home. Sure enough, the guardians were escorted 1 jump through null, through another C5 and into a direct lowsec 1 jump from highsec.

Thanks for the fun, WormHole Occupation and Resource Exploitation. Can’t wait for round 4.

P.S. Once again, no fraps. Apparently, my last efforts weren't HD enough, so apologies but this is all the fault of Alzuule and O'nira.

The Sum of All Fuck Ups

Even for me, it's more of an abstract title for a blog entry than usual, so I’ll start by saying that at first glance, it may be slightly misleading. So, a small explanation: It’s not referring to a monumental catastrophe that happened through a series of terrible mistakes, but rather a play on reddit’s TIFU (today I fucked up) threads, which a corpie introduced me to a while back, combined with Tom Clancy’s The Sum of All Fears, in which I suppose the protagonist, at least in some of guises can be called a spy.

Earlier in the week, I’d sold a toon that could fly everything sub-cap. Once again, I’d probably done this way too early as a while back I sold a perfect carrier toon months before any of my remaining toons were even thinking about sitting in carriers (and a week before I moved back into a C5). Then a couple of guys brought in some black ops battleships for the usual hotdropping fun. I thought this was great news until it dawned on me I’d just got rid of my blops pilot and the two characters I had left didn’t even have recon ships trained up to a respectable level. However, there was the option of bridging with a Crane incase someone needed jump fuel…

Now, in real life, one of my former colleagues introduced me to one of the new starters as a ‘Jack-of-all-trades’, which I took a slight offence to as it would imply the sentence should be affixed with: ‘master of none’. Sadly, in Eve, convoluted and ridiculously long training plans have meant that Jay is a Jack-of-all-trades toon and master only of the minmatar cruiser. As far as black ops goes, this isn’t terrible news since a Rapier is handy to have around on a hotdrop, if I would spend something like 4 days training it up to level 4 – except that would have interfered with other plans (like actually training some skills that would justify buying a Naglfar).

That was when I realised there was a more expensive alternative; yet another Loki! I hadn’t flown a covert ops fit loki for a while and was becoming bored of the Stratios and fit one up from a hull I had lying around. I’m actually a big fan of the Loki aesthetically, which is handy when you can’t fly any of the other T3’s and I’d taken to using my new toy as much as I could, instead of the scouting Legion on my other toon. Besides, what sounds cooler than a “Cloaky-Loki”? Not many other ships have the same assonant charm when describing their fit/function.

So it’s a quiet night in the chain. There’s a Euro football match on, so corp chat is quieter as a consequence but there is a couple of highsec connections which people exploit for a couple of trips to the market hubs. Galmas uses to opportunity to replace a Bhaalgorn he lost in a fight with Sleeper Social Club. O’nira is already in Jita and offers to haul in things for people, but has no room for the Bhaalgorn hull. This isn’t a worry, since there is one fairly cheap nearby one of the other highsec connections, so the mods get bought in Jita while the ship itself is flown in through a different route. While this is going on, I’m buzzing around the chain in my cloaky-loki (and not a legion), which conveniently puts me in the perfect place to scout the bhaalgorn home.

At this point, it is completely unfit – not even any rigs, but the chain was quiet and I’d not seen anything on my way through. Galmas jumps in from highsec and I throw him a web-warp just to get the vulnerable ship home quicker and warp after him towards the connection with the static. The cloaky-loki is about to land when I hear “Oh. Disavowed are here.” A cloaky-proteus (see, doesn’t have the same ring to it) had arrived on the WH at the same time as the Bhaalgorn and subsequently de-cloaked. There was about 10 seconds of all three pilots sitting there, each wondering quite how precarious the situation was. From Disavowed’s point of view, the Bhaalgorn could turn the Proteus into a floating spectator in a one-sided fight, at least until the inevitable back-up arrived. From our point of view, it looked quite different. We had no idea where they had connected to, so the safest option would have been to warp back to highsec and hope it wasn’t bubbled. The proteus obviously had faith in his reinforcements and put a point on the Bhaalgorn before we could take the safe option, forcing Galmas to jump.

Apparently, the cloaky-loki’s autocannons weren’t enough to grab the attention of the Proteus and it jumped after Galmas, which left me a second or so behind. This meant that Galmas was pointed jump before I was able to webwarp him. Discouraging the tackler with point/webs/dps probably wasn’t going to work at this point, since there was no response from the Bhaalgorn, but it was about the only option I had aside from wishing I was in the Legion instead of the Loki. Neuts would have all but guaranteed the escape from a single Proteus. Here’s where my multi-tasking prowess fell down a little. I was trying to log in said Legion while putting point/webs/dps on the tackler, but in my haste I hadn’t unlocked Galmas and the point went on him for a cycle (along with the webs from the failed web-warp). As I rectified the situation, a Negative Density Proteus jumped in (oh, apparently Negative Density have joined Disavowed). At this point, I started to wonder how much neuts might have been in the system where Galmas had bought the Bhaalgorn.

Prompted by the panicked screams being broadcast via teamspeak, O’nira had turned up with a Falcon and Sherpa also reinforced us with his own Proteus. Even with ECM, we weren’t able to save the beleaguered Bhaalgorn. O’nira only managed to jam both the DE-NY proteus’ after their target had popped. By now, I had put some distance between me and the hole, but Sherpa was at blaster range just as the rest of the Disavowed fleet jumped in, adding a Proteus loss to the night’s woes as I decided that discretion was the better part of valour, and found my way back home.

“Ah, the Spy strikes again!” It had completely passed me by that my little miss-click would put me firmly on Galmas’ Bhaalgorn loss as an involved party. I’d already received plenty of ‘spy’ banter from the Marmite Collective connection just after I joined USYSC, but tonight’s derpage was about to trigger another round.

“Jay, isn’t that your old alliance?”

“er, yeah.”

“Is that why you tackled Galmas?”

“Wait, what? No, I can explain!”

Realistically, it made no difference. I’d have provided an ‘assist’ from the webs but as the point showed rather than the webs, the casual observer might think it suspicious. For us, it was a good way to make light of a good number of things that just plain should not have happened.

Ah, well. At least I christened the new cloaky-loki with a killmail. Even if it was my own CEO.

Wrecking-Brawls-Deep

Who says nothing happens in Eve over the summer?

I’ve mentioned before the main reason I dropped out of Serene Vendetta was the lack of PvP. Or at least the willingness to PvP. The guys kept asking me to organise roams for them but when I did, two guys turn up and only one of those was on time. That’s not to say the leadership weren’t up for it – they were just bad at it.

Rubix>Guys, there’s an Orca on the static. Looks like he’s slightly off the wormhole

Traba>Quick, everyone warp to the static!

Jay> Who’s the pilot?

Rubix> He’s from TLC

Jay> There is no way that is not a trap.

Traba>I don’t care, I want an Orca kill

To be absolutely fair, they did get themselves an orca kill. In exchange for a zealot, two proteus’ an Armageddon, a buzzard and four pods. There are other gems like a reluctance to engage a 6 barge mining fleet in a C4 because it looked like a trap (which I guaranteed them it wasn’t). The gung-ho FC  then ordered everyone to reship to T1 to engage them – just incase. It wasn’t a trap, and some got away.

I had mentioned my lack of pew lamentations and in typical ‘I-told-you-so’ fashion, Ludis did say “well, what did you expect from an ex-Li3 corp?”. I didn’t even know what that meant, but I’m sure it was a brutal putdown to anyone fluent in the machinations of dullsec. Just as I left, they were forming an alliance to, according to Natasha Donnan’s forum post, “We want to be able to form a 40 man t3 fleet and go stomping down the c5 superhighway.” Glad I got out! Been there, done that, then used the t-shirt to wax my car. Can’t win fights? The solution is simple; bring moar guys!

While they were busy assembling WH space’s new blob, I was getting blueballed hard. Monday night and after rounding off some finishing touches to the previous blog entry, comms were alight which battle-chatter. USYSC were heavily engaged with Mordus Angels in a direct null. Logi was going down, so I ship up into a scimitar and join Gibs in his on the K162. Apparently, the guys were at the gate to a complex after scanning down some ratters. The only problem for me was the fleet was full and the boss was AFK. After 6 minutes of cursing and cussing, we managed to find a solution and get me on grid. By the time I landed on grid, the Angels had warped off. Our guys started to loot the field as a few of them went home to go AFK, but they were taking their time about it, so I burned out to orbit. A minute or two later, I was just about to mention we really want to not be here when the reason for not wanting to be here warped back in and started tackling what was left on grid. The Mordus Angels had the numbers now and it was looking grim, so ‘get out’ was called. Already being clear of the melee before it started, I had no trouble warping out and getting home, leaving a couple of tackled ships behind.

We reshipped to armour and exchanged fire in small skirmishes on the WH, but by the time we had enough people back at keyboard, Mordus Angels had re-thought committing to an engagement and docked back up. It was looking like that was that, but my hopes of getting a fight were rekindled as a new signature appeared. Jumping into my Stratios, I found an incoming WH from a C2. A bunch of frigates and an Exqueror Navy waited on the other side. As backup arrived, the frigates scattered and the Exqueror was pulling away from me fast. Zooming in, it looked like it was a shield tanked, railgun-boat and it was going like the clappers. I could see the idea behind it, but surely there’s a better hull he could use. That’s unless the purpose was to blueball tacklers, in which case, it worked a charm. I was getting a strong feeling that it was time for me to take a break.

Upon returning to the keyboard, I saw that O’nira was scouting the other incoming null we had and had found another C5 connecting to the same system. He’d posted a D-scan result in corp and I recognised the tag instantly – Serene Vendetta “Oh, we’re fighting these guys.” O’nira got a D-scan of their fleet, which was moving and I reshipped an alt into a cov-ops legion to keep eyes in the nullsec while I got swapped the Stratios for a Loki. The Brawls Deep fleet headed O’nira off at the connection to our WH and bubbled up. They definitely had the numbers on us and had brought plenty of logi. None of that bothered us. You fly smart with a balanced composition, you can negate the numbers advantage. 6 Legions, 4 Proteus’, 2 Loki, 1 Arazu, 1 Falcon, 4 guardians and a devoter. O’nira skipped through their fleet back home to reship. Of course, the disadvantage of all this happening in null was, thanks to local, it was obvious my alt was sat there watching them.

Traba Regina> o7

Val> Hey there Trabs

Traba Regina> we got a fight here mate?

Val> Give us a sec

Val> Can't quite pull your numbers, so you'll have to wait ;)

Some of our guys were worried about the sheer number of Legions they were fielding, but while I was chatting to Traba in local, I was using the opportunity to take a closer look at their ships.

Jay> They’re all HAM

Myst> If they are HAM, they’ll have neuts fitted

Jay> No, they’ve not got the right subs. They’re full HAM, all 6 of them.

That made things a lot easier. It was a fleet devoid of any subtlety. All dps and no flexibility. It’s like some guy turning up on your doorstep in full plate mail and holding a Morningstar, asking for a fight while forgetting you can simply slip a simple poignard under his bascinet. With a number of us dual-boxing, we prepared said poignard. 5 Proteus, 4 Tengus, 2 Lokis, 2 Legions, Phobos, an Astarte and an Archon to level the field. As the fleet assembled, Natasha Donnan decided to add a cheeky comment in local.

Natasha Donnan> aww, we didn't kill your venture fleet :)

Now, that was a real shame because Nat is just about the nicest guy you’ll meet in Eve. Easy going and a good laugh, but haughty remarks that imply he was entitled to kill the venture fleet are a good way of making yourself primary. Although I can kind of understand why he’d do it. Brawls had obviously scouted the system, seeing it was my new home, had the intention of making me regret leaving by showing everyone they were big boys now. I’d probably want to do the same, had the situation been reversed. However, I’d probably not be so brazen about it – just incase.

So, as we’d already established, Nat was primary. Our Tengu’s had rendered their mass of Guardians ineffective, and Nat’s Legion did not stand upto the punishment for very long [apologies for those links - eve kill was borked at time of writing - will amend later] and my autocannons sent his pod on the highsecexpress. Secondary had already been called but I threw in a couple of names over comms of who their likely FC’s were. Another Legion went down along with an Arazu before we brought the DPS to bear on their likeliest FC, Traba Regina. A couple of cycles of reps landed on his Legion but nowhere near enough to prevent him following Nat in decorating the battlefield with his own wreck. I made sure not to leave him any time to unplug his slave set. Traba may have been off the field, but with so much new blood in their group, I had no doubt there would be a secondary I didn’t know about. Cutting off the head of the beast didn’t seem so important with their reps all but nullified. Just to be sure, I’d positioned my Legion in a position to intercept the guardians. Decloaking, I burned for them to neut out the cap chain they’d managed to establish.

At this point, Brawls seemed to have adopted a similar tactic. I found both Jay and Val jammed out by the Falcon and my Loki was being lit up. What was unfortunate for them was on this occasion, I wasn’t FC. It was called earlier for someone who wasn’t dual-boxing to call targets, which ruled me out. Then, over comms, something reassuring from our carrier pilot:

Myst> Guys, make sure you broadcast when you’re in half shields

Jay> Err, I’m in half armour. Gonna need them reps.

Happily, I didn’t hit hull before the Archon attended the Loki, but annoyingly, the Falcon had me locked down. At this point, I take my hat off the that Falcon pilot (I believe it was Blackmoon Thrawn?). There was no let-up in the jams and without the Legion disrupting the Guardians cap, Brawls Deep were able to hold reps and I was becoming frustrated as another pod was there for the taking and just begging for some 220mm mercy. He was keeping Brawls very much in the fight and our damps were doing nothing to stop him. Fair play.

>Kill the pod. Come on, somebody, kill that pod!

Jay> Still jammed…

I decided to do something risky to try and get back into the fight. Jay was no longer primary and able to burn back to the WH though the bubble while Val was out by the guardians not tackled at all. I jumped Jay in and out, chancing polarisation while warping Val back and forth to a celestial to remove the attentions of the Falcon. It wasn’t long before I was back on grid, by which time Brawls Deep had brought reinforcements in the form of an Archon of their own and had upped the ante with a Naglfar. This was where our preparation fell slightly short. The response would have been a similar escalation on our part, but O’nira was realising and regretting that we still hadn’t brought several caps, including his Phoenix, back home. To make matters worse, the Naglfar pilots were engaged in subcaps. The Moros option was still there. It was just a matter of finding one.

Our Archon was suffering. Their subcaps were trying desperately to keep it out of jump range while the Naglfar gave it a pounding. Their own carrier wasn’t reacting quick enough to our dps, and with the neuts finally engaging the Guardians, we were able to pop a loki (+pod). We still had no Dreadnaught and the Archon didn’t look like it was going to last its triage cycle. All we could do from here was to get everything back into jump range for when it did happen. Brawls Deep responded by moving their support ships on top of the hole as well. As the Archon exploded, our fleet jumped home and I breathed a sigh of relief that the polarisation gamble worked in getting me back into the fight, but wasn’t done too late that I was left hanging out to dry. The Brawls Deep HIC pilot was quick to follow and put the bubble up. Our pilots who hadn’t already warped off held cloak, intelligently.

I say intelligently because from our point of view, it’s our home system. From here we can field not just another Carrier (which was called for when we realised they would pursue), but several. Not to mentioned the dreads. Brawls Deep must have thought they could smell blood. Our reps were gone (until we warp some more in, that is) so surely it would be a simple case of mopping up the field, right? I might have been thinking the same thing, but I would have been sure to check the mass on the WH first.

We primaried the Devoter. As their Guardians jumped in, the neut legions were right on top of them and soon took a hammering after the Devoter was forced to jump back out. Some of the guardians followed until the collapse of the WH meant the end of any kind of contest. The fleet jumped on blubess’ Legion and tackled the remaining guardians as 3TEARS tried to make a break for it in his Proteus, which hadn’t escaped my notice. 29km, 30km, 31km… links were down, so I had to apply a little more heat to the Loki that already had heat gauges full on the active racks. I started to close the distance and then – jammed again! The Falcon hadn’t returned to torment me, but Bigiboi had put dishonour drones on me, briefly jamming me until his Guardian went down. The Proteus still hadn’t managed to warp and I re-establishedlock and tackle before the fleet closed in to finish the job. Last off was a familiar name, but not from Serene Vendetta. Themad boatman I knew from a nullsec pewliday. He was formerly a member of the truly terrible ‘King’s Bastards’ whose fleets I delighted in wiping the floor with whenever they took one of their frequent roams through our space. As we finished off themad boatman’s guardian and capsule, Bigiboi greeted us in local.

Bigiboi > gf

Bigiboi > :)

Bigiboi > hey Jay

Jay Joringer > Hey Bigi

blubess > good fight. who wants to come over to my place and spoon?

Bigiboi > hehehe

Takashi Haul > gf guys

Takashi Haul > shame we jumped in =d

Normally I’d either try and hunt down stragglers in their pods if they were stuck or leave them to the indignation of having to safe up and self-destruct, but Bigi is a genuinely cool guy. He is absolutely terrible at impersonations or mimicking accents, and I think that is being quite kind. I thought it would be rude not to offer him bookmarks to highsec in exchange for a song. He was so gracious about it we gave him and blubess shuttles to go with their bookmarks out, and I got back in the stratios to make sure the way out was clear. I’ll apologise for the video. The delivery of Wrecking Ball was so heart-rending that it reduced me to tears. At least, I think heart-rending is the right way to describe it. No. Painful. Painful is what I meant.

It’s hard to convey a sense of time while describing all this, the fight with Mordus started before 1900 GMT and the end of the Brawls fight was at 22:30. The busy night didn’t quite stop there. While I was scouting the wrecked brawlers out, our C2 neighbors started jumping into system for a small skirmish with our guys. As I was heading back to reship [Natasha Donnan is inviting you do a conversation]

Natasha Donnan > fun fight

Natasha Donnan > i guess you guys won the isk war?

He went on to complain about the amount of EWAR we fielded. I didn’t apologise. You want to beat superior numbers, that’s how you do it. He did also mention that they were going to petition the WH closure, which we did laugh at a bit about. They must have assumed it was a fresh hole. Oh well. I’d like to take this opportunity to formally welcome Brawls Deep to Jay-space.

[Dizzy Uzzy is inviting you do a conversation]. Another one? Interesting.

Dizzy Uzzy > Ffs Jay why you take our fight?

Dizzy Uzzy > We were waiting to hit Brawls

Dizzy Uzzy > lol

Dizzy Uzzy > Looks like you had a good one though

Apparently he’d lost a Cynabal to Brawls Deep earlier in the night and his lowsec group were waiting to jump their fleet until they saw a few pods trickle back down the chain. He left saying that if I was ever around Kor-Azor, there’d always be a fight there for me. Well, that’s one connection I just might have to look out for and hope they bring the fight as good as Brawls Deep did.       

How The Mighty Have Fallen

Oh, where to begin here? Let’s start with a little James Brown. It’s not my usual taste, but he has released some real gems in an expansive back catalogue. “The Payback” being one of those gems and quite suited to the subject of this entry. Sadly, this musical segue has given me a ridiculous theme to write this entry by, and I am a sucker for ridiculous ideas (like drake roams). Think of that what you will but There was a time when I thought it was a good idea (apologies - it wont get any better than that, but don't stop clicking those links!).

Payback. It’s easy to get wronged in eve. Thieves and scammers have become so accepted as a part of the game’s culture that there are a few well renown. As far as infamy goes, Awox hit the jackpot to get his name used as a verb for blue-tackling. Maybe it’s because many pilots see the appeal of fame or infamy and want their own little slice, and here I reference Skunkworks. They weren’t the ones who invented the various methods of awoxing incursion fleets or using aggression mechanics to gank the fleets, but they are the ones people associate with it. The story about it being a protest about the ISK people generated by running incursions and therefore raising PLEX prices was about as flimsy as they come. It was about the attention and the lols.

I used to fly with a guy who, through innovative use of the in-game notepad, kept tabs on everyone that had ever wronged him with the intention of paying back every single one. From the guy who first popped him when he first discovered lowsec wasn’t safe to take shortcuts through in your best ship, to the old friend who popped his ship in a wardec. Payback is not always forthcoming and tends not to be particularly noteworthy when it does. I’d love to say that for all these pages of notes, my former cohort didn’t hand out one ounce of retribution, but he did get the latter of the two I mentioned. He’d tracked his target to Dodixie and waited for him to undock where he waited with his Arty Thrasher, and moments later payback came in the form of a shuttle killmail. Epic.

Personally, I don’t mind little things like who popped my ship once upon a time, so why Bring it up? Well, some things I do mind. Slander, for example. Running a corporation in Disavowed. Was one of The things that I used to do. After I left, some things were stolen from inside the forcefield of one of the Blackstar Privateers corporation towers, but crucially, not from inside the hangars. I believe a couple of guys lost an Orca, a Legion and a couple of other smaller ships. It was initially assumed that one of the game patches had made them bug, which was reported to have happened to another corp within the alliance. Odidi Peyo, who lost the Orca (which I had built for him) petitioned it. His response was that the items were still in game, but the GM couldn’t reveal where they were or who had them, ergo, stolen.

This was never announced publicly, but I was blamed for this. I know this because I was in contact with the guys who had lost ships. Odidi had asked me directly whether I’d taken his ships, apparently just to clear up the issue and accepted my ignorance of the thefts and was Bewildered at the news. At the time, Odidi was one of the officers within Blackstar, under IamSeannn and Dizzy Uzzy and relayed this information back to them in the command channel.

IamSeannn> Odi, it was Jay. It’s the only logical explanation.

Now, let’s ignore how I got the chatlog for a minute and work through Sean’s logical reasoning here. Firstly, I had been out of the corporation for 4 weeks and had all my toon out of the wormhole for at least a week longer than that. On the exact date that the ships went missing, I was on holiday with my wife, celebrating our 10^th wedding anniversary. The hotel did have WiFi, but I had made a point of not bringing a laptop – just had better things to do. I mean, if you go to Amsterdam with a significant other, you just have to Let yourself go.

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that this particular set of circumstances won’t stop a determined thief, but Iamseannn always struck me as one of those people who have a habit of Talking loud and saying nothing. The important thing to me was that no one who had anything stolen believed that I did it. My own theories on the theft implicated either himself or Dizzy. Before I left, he was moaning about leaving ships floating in the forcefield – free intel or something. Circumstantial, I know, but combine that with the chips the pair had on their shoulders about me leaving. Certain people in Blackstar would send me snippets of the corp chatlog which showed how insecure Dizzy in particular was at stepping into my shoes, feeling he needed to point out that they could manage without me etc. Just words though, and they needed something to cement this. Something that could either prove their quality as leaders or discredit mine by painting me as a thief. This is why I suspect them of stealing the ships themselves, but like them, I have no proof. I believe that the total of this Grand Heist came up to slightly less than 2 billion ISK. If I was going to blacken my name, it would be for a lot more than that. I’d just sold a carrier toon as well, so I was in a situation where I could say I've Got Money.

Fast forward a couple of months to just after I joined United System’s Commonwealth where I was enjoying small gang PvP (not massive blobs) and just being able to play the game instead of being The Boss. Jay was on pewliday in highsec at the time, and my other toons were living out of an Orca in the USYSC C5. Disavowed roll into us one night while I was busy in highsec. Their scouts buzzed the towers to see who was home while their fleet was waiting the other side of the K162. From their public channel and several others, I could tell who was online, who their FC (Max Leadfoot) was and could guess at the size and composition of their fleet. Knowing they had roughly 3 times our numbers in T3’s alone and had undoubtedly Max’s links and Nag ready to jump us with other caps on standby, it was looking less like a potential fight and more like a lossmail donation. Our own scouts confirmed my suspicions. Obviously feeling Superbad from the fleet backing him up, IamSeannn’s alt piped up in local.

Maya Scorsese> Hi Val. miss u

There was some other smacktalk, but nothing witty or noteworthy enough to mention. This many not appear noteworthy itself, but I tend to remember These Foolish Things. Especially when, as Sunday night, we roll the connection to find a way to bring some caps back in but instead of finding a viable jump location, we find the Mighty Disavowed. The timing was interesting, since I was on dotlan looking at a jump-plan when I noticed the top alliance movers on the right which listed Disavowed as having -254 members in the last 7 days. Looks like they had a clearout. Everyone except Viperfleet had amalgamated into Pandora Sphere.

While the rest of the chain was being scouted, Galmas did his usual trick of intercepting scouts leaving the hole, catching an unsuspecting covert ops and Poerkie’s Enyo that had gone in to get rid of the Eris. At some point, a Gila even warped in and thought better of it, leaving some poor Anathema to bravely scoop the Gila’s discarded drones. One covert ops did manage to make it past the one man blockade and find his way into our home system – an obvious alt of Jezza McWaffles, also creatively named Jezza. One of our guys asked if we could still get a fight out these guys, which left me thinking; Please, Please, Please! Jezza was obviously scouting the POS’s to get intel on our numbers and fleet comp. This is the sort of thing I would use D-scan for, but Jezza is pro and uses combat scanner probes.

On his way out, he found three of our ships, including a bubbler attempt to catch him on the static. He bravely jumped back into our home system and hid, giving me the perfect opportunity to provoke them. I had a feeling that everything I said in local would get relayed back to his alliance. Actually, I was counting on it. I dropped a bit of light banter in local, as well as a few gifs as a way of saying Bring it on… bring it on. While this way going on, IamSeannn’s alt, Maya Scorsese seemed to go AFK next to Galmas for a full minute. This tends to be a good way of waking up in highsec. Oh, it’s a cruel world.

Jezza> I’ll probably just yolo out at some point.

This told me two things. Firstly, Jezza was the type of cretin to still be using ‘yolo’ and, secondly, it was now time to deliver my coup de grace in local.

Jay Joringer > DE.NY don't fight anymore? 

Jay Joringer > jpeg

Surely no self-respecting PvP alliance could suffer such a slur. Especially from a small, independent corporation such our ours. I was not disappointed. The scouts reported IamSeannn in a Vagabond, backed up by Poerkie in a Dominix as well as a couple of Gilas and an Oracle. Catching them out on a cross-jump, we caught them between two interdictors at different ends of their static. Most of their kitchen-sink fleet warped off to safespots, but Bloemkoolsaus’ Oracle was slightly behind and was given the pod express for his tardiness.  

From there, our fleet split up. With Galmas inside their home system, myself on their static K162 side and the rest of the fleet on the only other wormhole out of their system. Sherpa chased them around with combat probes until they decided to Get it together and make a run for it back to their new home. Poerkie landed first in his Domi and returned fire. Poerkie’s backup arrived and jumped through the WH into their home as my own backup arrived. The Domi lit his MJD while one of the Gilas jumped back into the static to escape. Sadly for IamSeannn, his Vagabond couldn’t burn away quick enough to escape my webs or Galmas’ scram. As the local tank sputtered its last throes of resistance, I decided to say ‘hi’.

Jay> Hi Sean. Miss u

IamSeannn> bye

IamSeannn> :(

IamSeannn> ransom?

The guns answered that one.  OK, it’s only a couple of kills, so the build-up might seem a little overindulgent but I’ll admit the accusation of stealing irked me. I didn’t think possessing the frozen corpse of my accuser would provide satisfactory consolation, but the wait has been long enough. It even left me thinking to myself I Feel Good, and perhaps more than a little smug. Well, there it is. It might seem a little thing, but there’s all the ‘knowing’ that goes with it. I think Sen put it best:

Sen Cate > he'll love it that you are top damage

There's that too, as well as seeing the mighty Disavowed run from little old us.

Looking for Content

Content is always there. You just have to be patient.

I had spent a week watching content pass me by. With only a few people around, I was reduced to being a spectator in a couple of WH fights. We had shared a static with Ministry on Inappropriate Footwork as well as Ash Alliance, who spent an age setting up a brawl in said static. Ash obviously didn't like the odds and asked us to help out. I think 3 out of the 5 guys we had were up for it. Either way, we enjoyed the view.

Later that week, One of the guys got a fleet together because he saw someone log in at a POS about 7 jumps down a chain. Sadly, the unsuspecting pilot didn’t even move inside of his forcefield and the guys decided to bait with shield-nano in one of the lowsec connections further back.

I had the opinion that something was going to happen and waited around. It took a while but more pilots logged in. Maybe I should have waited longer, but when an Epithal started moving, I followed. I didn’t think that this particular C4 group were likely to escalate an engagement with a PI hauler. I didn’t mind waiting, but not for too long so the Epithal would have to do. Well, it would have if the pilot wasn’t switched on. Following him around wasn’t the problem, but there wasn’t enough time to lock him up at the customs office before he warped, even with a sensor booster on my Stratios. Instead of warping back to the POS, he confidently carried on with him hauling, which said to me that not only did he have agility mods fitted, but probably stabs too and that prompted me to leave it at that.

Jumping back through the chain led me through a lowsec system. There was a reasonable number of people in local (I can’t remember the exact number, but it was between 10 and 20), but what was striking was that all but one were flagged as suspects. OK, not unusual for lowsec and usually the result of a gatecamp with the non-flagged pilot tending to indicate a victim. A quick D-scan came back with a bunch of battleships, some of them faction, along with a Phoenix and a Naglfar. This all but ruled out a gatecamp – I have seen dreads on lowsec gates before, but that kind of thing tends to be a rarity. And suspect?

Either something was going on, or I had just missed it. Whatever it was warranted a quick D-scan of the system. As I narrowed the angle, the gate was ruled out, but the ships did turn out to be in line with a station and a celestial with a POCO and a POS. Warping to the station turned up blank, and the ships seemed to be back the opposite way, towards the planet. I made the assumption that they were at the POS, although the absence of wrecks from outside the station (and on D-scan completely) didn’t explain the suspect flags. I quickly narrowed the POS down to a specific moon and checked it out. There I was thinking that I’d missed the action and they were safe inside the forcefield either waiting out their timers or waiting for the next victim. Whichever way it was, as soon as they left the safety of that forcefield, I could have a fleet prepared to jump them.

Landing on grid I discovered they were indeed at the POS, but were outside, shooting it. Battleships, an Attack Battlecruiser, sieged Dreadnoughts and a Nidhoggur in support. Here was the content I was looking for. I told the guys on comms to get home a get themselves some proper ships. Apparently, the baiting wasn’t going too well and when I reeled off what I had seen on grid, there were no arguments.

Legion, 4 Loki, 2 Proteus, 1 Tengu, Ishtar, Arazu, Stratios, Curse and a couple of Guardians. To top it off, most of those were dual-boxed (hence the oddments of that fleet comp), which included my Loki and Legion, and while I was pleased to see other Loki’s around, reducing my chances of being primary, I was slightly concerned by the fleets dps or lack thereof. The absence of neuts (Curse aside) was a conscious decision since the consensus was our best chance of any kills was to down battleships as quickly as possible as it was unlikely that so few of us would be able to bother the capitals, if they were set up right. Only one way to find out.

>Who’s FCing this?

Well, I was kinda hoping you were going to. Oh well…

> Jay’s got this.

Sending the Arazu ahead to get us a warp in, I reflected on breaking my own rules – ones that I’ve discussed in ‘the art of cheesecake’. Truth be told, capitals are little out of my comfort zone. I’ve not flown them much at all and have avoided FCing any engagement involving them because I just don’t know enough about them. To be fair, it had been a shitty week. Activity had been low and we’d had to decline a couple of fights because of this so confidence probably wasn’t on a high. At least I managed to sound confident in taking charge.

We stacked up on the WH to lowsec as I gave instructions to the Arazu for our warp-in. People were eager to get in there despite the reservations we may have had while discussing it moments before.

>I’m 30km off them.

>We going?

>No, that’s no good. Get right on top of them. I want scram range. They might have MJD’s and I don’t want anything getting away.

I was well aware how tall an order that was. With drones flying around and ships moving, it’s not easy, but not impossible. Still, our scout did the job perfectly and our warp-in was ideal. Our primary was a Tempest Fleet Issue which we started to burn down while scrams were spread around the other Battleships. The dreads were still in siege and the carrier, well, that did a 'Brave Sir Robin' as soon as we landed and warped off along with any chance the rest of his fleet had of surviving. A Dominix had already taken some punishment from the POS guns and soon followed the Tempest and a Tornado as a couple of Maelstroms burned away from the beleaguered capital ships. They did try to go for the weaker ships, but it soon stopped being a fight. We had reps and there was no sign their own was returning.

We dispatched a Rattlesnake and an Abaddon before turning our attentions to the Naglfar. He resigned himself to his fate and became a victim of his own self-destruct two minutes after we started shooting at him. The Phoenix pilot didn't give up so easily and his tank was holding up pretty well, although with little chance to fight back, and his companions seemingly uninterested or unprepared for a rescue recognised the inevitable when his tank began to fail.

Explosions are explosions and it makes it all thebetter when they leave behind a pretty capital wreck. My assessment of the whole thing is we got lucky. We went in thinking we'd be happy with a couple of Battleship kills. I was even fully expecting to lose a few ships. Whether it was luck or not, I've always said you need to put yourself in the position to benefit from the good luck in the first place.