The Centre of the Universe

Blogged by Jay Joringer

Being honest, I started the week pondering whether I should re-subscribe to Eve. Game time was running out and I took a look over my toons and started to wonder if I was getting the most out of them – an industry focused toon in a PvP alliance frequently topping the corp killboards and a PvP toon rotting in highsec, killing me with incursion boredom. If I looked at this arrangement sensibly, you might say there was a simple, obvious fix. 

“And always, he fought the temptation to choose a clear, safe course, warning "That path leads ever down into stagnation.’" – Frank Herbert. 

So, almost on a whim, I left Blackstar. To say that left a few people bemused may be quite an incredible understatement. In the meantime, I’d been talking to several groups through an alt to try and keep a low profile. One group in particular caught my attention: Void-Legion. There were a couple of reasons for this. Firstly, what they were trying to was very similar to what I was trying to achieve with Enigma Project before Blackstar formed the splinter corporation and left. From what I gathered, the way they were organized was impressive and the leadership was dedicated with ambitious plans to make a name for themselves. And if WH space needs anything right now (aside from new content, CCP!) it was another big name . 

The second reason was that they were being invaded. Reading between the lines, a couple of their ex-members left disgruntled and joined Daktaklakpak and that turned into a full on grudge when they failed to break up Void-Legion by stealing their members. The previous invasion failed, but now Daktak were under the banner of the Red Coat Conspiracy. With Obstergo also in their alliance, they had someone to do their heavy lifting and hit Void Legion on Friday night when their EU contingent had logged off. 3 Dreadnaughts, 1 Carrier and a 40 man subcap fleet had reinforced the Void-Legion towers without much reply from the residents. 

I had to get involved. Void-Legion looked to me like having a lot of potential. And any chance to get at Obstergo was a bonus. The only problem was one of Void-Legion’s Directors, Viscis Breeze was pretty sharp, so I had to come clean about my identity and motivations, which meant dropping out of Blackstar, leaving Dizzy in charge while I hooked up with ‘13.’ to keep my involvement neutral. 

Saturday, Void-Legion sounded pretty demoralized. They knew they couldn’t deal with a subcap fleet of that size and were looking at the possibility of losing everything. Lurking on their comms, the whole thing sounded like a total clusterfuck. The Directors couldn’t get anything organized from people going AFK or simply logging out. I gave a little advice on reinforcement mechanics, but there wasn’t much they could do. They knew what they needed to do, which was re-establish hole control. From there, they could decide whether they wanted to evac or bolster their defences, but as that looked like an impossibility, I was beginning to wonder whether putting myself in limbo was worth it. To make things worse, one of the Void-Legion pilots, Relic124, had made a deal with the Red Coats. He had traded them his Naglfar for safe passage out. Absolutely unbelievable. Sure, people pay to play, so you should play it how you want, but how did this moron make it past the learning curve? Quit the game, Relic124 – no one sane will take you on after a stunt like that. 

Sunday was indeed a different day. I logged in to just move some ships around on my laptop while I chilled out with some Mount & Blade on the main PC. Just as I had a few things organized and was about to hit autopilot when I noticed the invite to convo. That was when Void-Legion gave me the news. Apparently, before I logged in, they had fleeted up and regained hole control, destroying 2 Red Coat Dreads and their Carrier in the process. Suddenly things looked very, very different and Mount & Blade would have to wait. There was also a direct null with mass left for 1 capital jump. I hadn’t realized it until this point, but the Red Coats had also wardecced Void-Legion, so it was difficult for them to exploit hole control and move things about through empire. I could move unimpeded and began mobilizing Orcas and Carriers to assist. The VL guys rage-rolled for a highsec through their C3 static, finding a connection close to Amarr, which was unfortunately EOL. Seagray brought the bookmarks to Amarr and a few minutes later 13 cyno’d in an Archon through the direct null. 

While this was going on, Viscis got a unsolicited convo from No Holes Barred. It was obvious how they knew about the situation. Red Coat Conspiracy were now on the back foot and were bat-phoning every known PvP entity in WH space, telling them they needed some help evicting some farmers. Given the stigma of a group simply farming WH space and not adding to the environment and ‘generating content’, there were bound to be a few people to answer the call – even if was, in this instance, untrue. Especially with the Rubicon changes to looting SMA’s. I warned him “Your wormhole is about to become the centre of the universe.” Lame doesn’t even begin to describe Daktaklakpak and Red Coat Conspiracy’s tactics here. 

VL had decided they didn’t want to moved things in and out through the EOL highsec. The C3 residents (whose name I won’t mention – only partially because I’ve forgotten) offered their help to roll it- which was very cool, by the way. I sent an Orca to help out while readying a humble Loki for when it did finally kick off. And one way or another, it was going to kick off. 

With a new highsec connection and a Loki and Archon from 13 deployed in system, Red Coat Conspiracy seemed reluctant to get involved in another engagement without support. Normally, I’m not one to engage in smacktalk or chatting in WH local in general, but here I made an exception. 10 minutes of belittling the would be PvPers while they sat in their own reinforced staging tower while I was sat on the WH in my Loki with Viscis dual-boxing an Archon and a Proteus as well as 2 VL HIC’s and another Loki seemed to do the trick though (which was good because I was running out of annoying ‘come at me bro’ gifs and witty retorts). How do I know it did the trick? The fact that the Red Coats 15 man T3 fleet primaried me was a bit of a giveaway. 

Tentatively, I edged around the WH, staying well within jump range, but Viscis was on the ball with reps. Then on comms, someone asked for a primary. Then the request was repeated. Letting out a deep sigh and wondering for the briefest of moments how I got myself into this, I started calling targets. There was a request to primary someone, which I denied. There was no time for personal vendettas while they have ECM and Logi on the field. VL support started logging in and warping in to support the bait fleet. Our reps were holding and so were theirs on their solitary Tengu. It was time to see how ‘switched on’ their logi were and I called a switch to one of their guardians, while any available neuts and ECM drones hit the others. It was working. The targets armour started bleeding precariously towards hull. Before we could finish the job, he jumped through the WH. It was time to force the other guardians off field. 

By now, scouts were reporting a dire situation through the highsec side of the C3 connection. Surely You’re Joking and Anomalous Existence were massing in system and preparing to jump in and join the fight- explaining Red Coat Conspiracy’s new found confidence. The defence fleet persisted, however, and forced another Guardian off field. I called for a HIC to follow them through, but before any of the pilots could act, the familiar sound of multiple WH activations went off before it collapsed entirely. Disavowed had joined the fight and the size of their fleet indicated they were going to have the last say in the evenings proceedings. 

Did things look bleak? Well, yes. At this point, it might be worth mentioning Disavowed were on the Red Coats’ bat-phone list. They were sold the same bullshit story about being needed to assist in evicting some farmers. There were reinforcement timers to meet, loots to be had yadda, yadda, yadda. I know the guys are always down for pew and Red Coats trying to get them involved might have been a good idea… had I not beat them to the punch. Obviously, there’s a somewhat tenuous link there anyway, which made me laugh when at one point during the pre-fight smacktalk, one of the smarter daktak pilots asked the question: “Who the hell are you?”. I’m quite glad the depth of his research ended there, however. Long before I had fired any shots, Disavowed were formed up and rage-rolling for a K-space connection. When Void-Legion get a new highsec, they also scanned out a C4 connecting to the static C3 where the Disavowed fleet hid until the action started. For sure, things looked bleak. But not for us. 

Their joining the fight shut out Red Coat Conspiracy’s would-be reinforcements and all that was left was a massacre. I ceded fleet command back to Void-Legion while we along with Disavowed mopped up the field. The fight  

Following the battle, contingency plans were discussed. The grim reality was that the Red Coats, despite failing on their latest invasion attempt to the tune of 30 billion ISK, weren’t going to give up. And given who they tried to bring along on this occasion, it was probably an indicator that next time they would not be alone. All for some for some irrelevant grudge. Void-Legion then burned down their own WH. That might sound like an odd thing to do, but it took a lot of resolve. They weren’t going to let Red Coat do it for them, and lets’ face it, they won here so they can do whatever they like. I’ve got a lot of respect for Void-Legion and I’m sure they’ll come back stronger for this. 

For me, the night ended shortly after with me returning ISK people had sent me for helping them out. The gesture didn’t go unnoticed or unappreciated, but I believe getting involved was the right thing to do. I’ll do good things for free all day long and I knew it was a good thing when I got this feeling somewhere inside. I couldn’t place it at first, but then I remembered what someone had told me only a few days earlier: “Fuck you, Jay Joringer, you smug bastard!” and then I remembered. Smugness (Thank you for that little reminder, Dizzy Uzzy). I said ‘goodnights’ to both parties on TS which was reciprocated by most. The voice of the aforementioned Mr Uzzy rang out apart from the crowd, “See you back in corp, Jay”. 

Yeah, we’ll see ;)

Notably Un-notable

Blogged by Jay Joringer

It’s been a while since anything was put on here. There’s been a whole lot of not much going on. Certainly nothing much of note. For various reasons, activity in Blackstar dropped off and we brought in several pilots who were ex-Black Rain Cartel to plug the gaps. I’d always liked what that corporation were trying to do, but I wasn't too interested in bringing in that many people from one group until I saw that Boris Johnsons Love Children wanted to absorb them all into their corporation. After we turned down a merger offer from Boriz (to which Demorest left us with thinly veiled threats), I was delighted to learn that they had also tried to recruit Complex Potential before he decided we were the better option, so I couldn’t turn resist this little coup either. While these guys were settling in, we went through a period where we losing a lot of engagements and a few expensive ships in them. We needed to get our PvP swagger back. I was sure just one good win would do this. Sure, we were still keeping the killboards ticking over, despite a couple of big hits, but hit and run ganks don’t give that satisfaction. 

An opportunity arose in the form of a previous resident of our C5, Blackstar Zion, resubbing his account and logging back in, in his Revelation. Finding himself stranded, he logged out before anyone could land points. His alt was also in system without probes, but had a cloak and was keen on negotiating a sale with us in local and desperately asking any passers-by for “books to empire”. While we were plotting what to do with this guy, a new signature appeared and eventually scouts reported back a chain that had been opened to us by Polarized. We’d been in the C5 a while, but so far we hadn’t had any serious encounters with the so-called “notable” Wormhole corporations or alliances. According to local chat, they were keen to provoke such an encounter: 

JamesWyh> I’m here to declare my intentions 

I was intent on doing my best AFK impression in my Crane, so I left this one to Diz. 

Caius Beriat> Declare away good sir 

Very eloquent. Missing some vital punctuation, but eloquent nonetheless. 

JamesWyh> I’m here to violence your boat. 

JamesWyh> It’s only me and a cloaky proteus 

Riiiiiight. Although there wasn’t anything sat on WH to Zion. Not anything that wasn’t cloaked in any case but Sean was reporting a lot of movement one system down the chain. He was punctuating each report with varying degrees of “we don’t want to mess with these guys” and that kind of thing. It seems Cadava’s ‘Brave-Sir-Robin-Syndrome’ was contagious. 

I was sure the others guys were up for a scrap, even if we lost so I gave the order; “I don’t want Polarized to roll out of here screaming about how Blackstar don’t want to fight. Get in something cheap and let’s get to it.” 

Now, I’ve always attributed WH PvP to one of two things: 

1.) A trap or 

2.) Something to which you can apply the phrase “Always bet on stupid”. 

I wasn’t prepared to associate Polarized with the second of those principles, which meant, well yeah, it was obvious. However, we did have a couple of things on our side. We had eyes down the chain so we could give intel on their inevitable reinforcements and maybe try to disengage if it wasn’t looking pretty. The other thing was that D-scan in our hole was looking like carebear central with Orcas, ventures, retrievers and me sat in my Crane doing my best AFK impression. The only one they’d had contact with was Caius and he’d shown them a Tornado and a Proteus. People started to reship into Battlecruisers and Dar was batphoned via steam and logged in two guardians. Sat next to the SMA, I was ready to get into my Armageddon as soon as the Proteus showed up and test it out for the first time. Also breaking out a ship for the first time, Kais was about to attempt his first fight as a Falcon pilot. Two Hurricanes, a Harbinger, Rapier, Armageddon, Falcon and two Guardians might seem overkill for an Omen and a Proteus, but I refer you back to my first principle of WH PvP: Trap. 

But I’m actually quite fond of cheese. Even the proverbial form that sits in metaphorical traps. And especially if it’s in cake form –which may be a good time to mention that ‘Cheesecake’ is the corporation warcry and has also become a pseudonym for PvP. 

So the boys warped over to the WH and started to engage the Omen. Right on cue, the Proteus decloaked and started to assist his buddy. Caius called him being point blank and I jumped into the geddon and warped in at range. The plan was to land at 30km away, but it was 30 in the wrong direction, so I had to burn to close range and get into the fight. As this was going on, Sean was calling out their inevitable reinforcements as they moved down the chain. I was still closing range when they landed on the connection to Zion; Proteus, Legion, Absolution and two Guardians. 

They jumped through just as I got into neut range. Kais decloaked and jammed out one of the guardians and I dropped neuts onto the other and one of the Proteus’. The Legion started to burn towards me so I started moving away and applied a couple of neuts on him. Briefly, I was pointed. It’s hard to say whether it was the neut cycle or Kais’ ECM that broke it, but the Legion pilot suddenly thought better of being off the WH when the first Proteus went down. One of the guardians was in structure before their fleet decided it had had enough and jumped back through the WH. Cleverly, their Legion pilot stayed engaged while the rest of their fleet made their exit before jumping out himself. Somewhere in the fight we lost a stealthbomber, but I’ll take that for a Proteus kill any day of the week. Especially if it means the end result is that Blackstar Zion was successfully defended against the mighty Polarized. We might have even got more, but bringing that fleet low with some T1 BC’s was a good enough job for the night and a decent fight for the guys.

Fanfest 2013

Blogged by Jay Joringer

The following is taken from Heathrow Airport’s security FAQs:

How do you decide who has to pass through the security scanner?

Our security officers select passengers at random, or when there is a particular security concern (such as the activation of a metal detector).

If I'm asked to pass through the security scanner, can I choose to be screened by an alternative method?

No. If selected, you will not be offered an alternative method of screening. Refusal to be screened will result in you not being allowed to travel.

Do I need to remove my shoes at security?

Only if you’re asked. Some passengers will be asked to remove shoes in order for them to be x-rayed. We can’t comment on the selection criteria.

So, for those who haven’t travelled through Heathrow recently, the security arrangements they have in place are incredibly significant compared to how they used to be a number of years ago. There is the passport check before you pass your luggage/electrical items through the X-ray machines while you pass through the metal detectors. Behind the metal detectors, there are trained security personnel on the lookout for a certain ‘profile’ of person. Then there is a bag search station and body scanner. They say all this is random, but apparently wearing a thick jacket, baseball cap and backpack will particular aforementioned ‘selection criteria’ or ‘security concerns’.

This may all just be speculation on my behalf, but it’s the only way I can explain why Sen was stopped at each of these security points –bag check/body scanner/metal detector- as well as being asked to remove his boots. I wasn’t laughing. Well, much.

On the plane, we were sat next to what you might describe as a portly gentleman with the vague beginnings of a neckbeard. Yeah, it was pretty obvious why he was headed to Iceland, which we confirmed shortly afterwards, and just before Sen uttered the immortal words “you’re not a goon, are you?” His hesitance gave us an answer before he officially confessed it. And while we were at confessions of heinous crimes, he also admitted to being behind the invention and supply of Diamond White cider.

So, as far as making friends and influencing people went, we were off to a good start. A trend that continued when we got off the bus at the hotel. There was a fairly normal looking guy who had gotten off the bus the same time as us. Well, as normal-ish aside from being notably twitchy. He confirmed he was also attending fanfest. Sen responded with; "Cool. Who'd you fly with?"

"Icelandair." Was the witty reply.

So, we left him to it while we went off to explore Reykjavik. Spotting the Harpa centre wasn't difficult. Generally the buildings around the city were drab, pastel coloured and rather plain. Harpa was positively ostentatious by comparison. We bought a couple of tickets for the Eve Symphony and killed the time in between by finding a pub. We unadventurously chose "The English Pub", which unfortunately was a lot like English pubs in that it was showing a football game and it was on so loud that holding a conversation was difficult. It was the Dortmund/Madrid game and the fella next to us got quite excited when Dortmund scored. He was then quick to show us a picture of himself in a Dortmund kit. Apparently, he was a former Icelandic international and used to play for them.

The Eve Symphony turned out to be worthwhile attending, despite the extra cost. The arrangement was quite an achievement and undeniably innovative in places. From a nostalgic point of view, hearing some of the pieces was spine tingling. My only criticism was -and this is a very minor one- that the Eve soundtrack is, in the main, an ambient background soundtrack and I think the concert reflected that, lacking any moments with any real gravitas. That's not to detract from a superb overall performance that I would recommend people watch on youtube if you didn't catch it on the live stream.

Second day was cold. Really damn cold, so I was less than thrilled about standing in a big line outside the Harpa centre waiting for the passes to be handed out. Found out the guys in the queue next to us were a bunch of highsec carebears, two of which were from my town. I couldn't decide whether that was awesome or not. When the group was joined by the Twitchy guy, I confess I was leaning towards 'not'.

The WH round table was pretty awesome, but only in that the Dev's realised just how much interest there was in unknown space. From what they were saying, it sounded like they were so happy with it they weren't planning on doing much except for balancing escalation payments and making it more dangerous and random. Hopefully the numbers that turned up will provoke a little more attention for us WH pilots and give the environment a little love (and new content *fingers crossed*), but I can't see it happening too soon. Other than that, we learned that the original name for the Venture Frigate was in fact the Dasher. Glad they changed that one.

On my wanderings around Harpa, I spotted the sign up table for various events. Despite Sen expressing his dislike for what was available, I thought the poker tournament would be a laugh and signed up for that and the combined Eve/Dust 514 tournament since there was a sign up sheet for individual players who hadn't pre-organised a team, which was aptly named "People With No Friends."

I think the less said about the poker tournament, the better. I didn't check what was happening on the other table but I may have been the first one out. The next day was the start of the PvP tournament though and a Canadian we had a cup of tea with the night before promised to teabag me in Dust as he was on one of the teams. Given my performance in the poker, I was determined not to let that happen. Team No Friends was in the last match up of the first round against "Littlefinger kills Joffrey/Catlyn becomes a Zombie" which was basically Pandemic Legion trying to ruin Game of Thrones for anyone that hadn't read/watched that far yet.

Their teamleader hijacked the mic and called all his guys over. Once huddled, they were talking tactics - arranging squads composed of heavies and assault suits and another squad with logistics backing them up. And I know this because they gathered in an area that was convenient for me to eavesdrop on their preparations.

This information was all relayed to Team No Friends when it assembled. At the very least, there were 5 guys there who had never played Dust before. As luck would have it, the CEO of Dust Uni was on our side and was happy to give them a crash course. None of us seriously expected to get out of the first round, but with some good organisation and probably quite a lot of ignorance, we proceeded to punish PL for including plot spoilers in their team name. There were raucous cheers after the first and then the second wins, and rightly so. Team Littlefinger didn't even run us close and No Friends had exceeded all expectations, including our own.

Between out rounds, I watched team Chronos dispatch Designed to Hurt. DTH's eve pilots were apparently carried through their first round by their Dust mercs, but this time both sides of their team were getting bent over and ridden like ponies. I went over to the Eve screens to see what was going on and saw their guys undocking individually and trying to solo the enemy fleet. Not only that, one guy was fitting a Dragoon with lasers and missile launchers before he warped in by himself. Instead of trying to give himself a chance, he just sat still while he locked up targets and died. The pilot was none other than the Twitchy guy. I spread my hands in disbelief of such piloting ineptitude and the guy next to me even told me he'd been doing that all match. One of the Devs even noticed our discussion and stepped over and said "You know what's the best thing? The other team thing they're pretty good. They don't realise that these guys just don't know what they're doing."

Up next for us were Haggis Reloaded. I'm not certain of who they were, but there was a reasonable amount of goons watching them. One of the Dust rookies took it upon himself to do the team pep talk.

"More of the same, guys, more of the same."

"Er, what did we do the first time?"

"I don't know! But more of whatever it was!"

I'd watched Team Haggis in the previous round and they also won quite convincingly. They were certainly going to be a much more difficult prospect that Team Littlefinger. At least, so I thought. The No Friends steamroller charged right over the stunned Team Haggis in the first bout, at which point I had a realisation. One that I relayed to the rest of the team and their new found self-belief: "Guys, you know what this means? One more win and free beer."

Suddenly there was a glint in everyone's eye and a reason to win. Haggis put up much more of a fight this time, taking an initial lead on damage to our MCC. We had no intention of letting this fight go to a decider round though and reorganised our squads before counterattacking the null cannons and eventually securing an advantage. In the end, it was a lot closer than the previous rounds, but no friends were victorious. This time the cheer was replaced by a new battlecry "Free Beer!"

The next day, No Friends faced Team Chronos who we later discovered contain 3 members of the Council of Planetary Management, which were chosen not by a vote, but by CCP as outstanding players. It showed. The self belief that No Friends had accumulated began to melt away as Chronos showed their dominance, but we didn't go down without a fight. It was always going to be too much to ask of a pick up group to fend off such well organised competition, but we'd already secured second place and more importantly, free beer.

Sadly, during the prize collection, we were can flipped in real life. Beer can flipped. Some of the guys made off with the crates instead of allowing me to distribute the beers among everyone.

No free beer.

Not for me at least.

But, on the last night of fanfest, the unlikeliest of saviours crossed my path - The Twitchy Guy. After regaling them with my glories in the tournament and then my subsequent predicament. he and his equally useless cohorts told us about the pubcrawl on the previous night. Apparently, some particularly unscrupulous pilot had stolen one of the Dev's jackets, which happened to contain all his free beer tokens. They were sure to mention that it wasn't them... just before offering me a handful of beer tokens. All in all, a very satisfactory end to a good weekend.

Operation: Lazarus (Part 2)

The following is taken straight from Anselm Cenobite's After Action Report.

I went to bed when the Saturday night fleet disanded, so I missed the final action when Jay and the British lads logged on, so he'll have to fill in those details in a part II eve-mail. However, this part I message will summarize the first half of the night/morning's events.

A few of the US lads stayed on in the wormhole during the day (Saturday) to keep an eye on things. We had originallly discussed with Ludis and Jay the possibility of using the Orca to roll wormhole entrances, but decided not to do it. (There were only 3 of us active in the Wormhole, and a 4th mostly AFK, so we didn't feel we had the muscle-power to protect the Orca while rolling holes).

Ludis eventually had to go to bed, and about this time, the hostiles starting getting friskky. There were three we knew of, one in a cov ops, another switching back and forth between Talos and arbitrator, and the third in a Talos. The Talos started nosing out of their POS while the, shooting at the bubbles we had put up the night before with a Talos. I maneuvered out in a pilgrim tried managed to get close enough to decloak and bump him a bit away from the POS shields, but the forcefield broke my cloak, and he ran back inside with no significant damage. I cloaked up and retreated, as his buddy showed up in an Arazu and the two of them together, cautiously, took out the last bubble.

We did by luck find a nice K162 leading directly to high-sec, 4 jumps from Jita about two hours before it would come out of reinforced, and when the enemy starting showing signs of activity, I was worried they would find this new entrance. So, I hollered in alliance until JeanPaul and a few others showed up, and eventually we gathered a fleet large enough to do some damage, and collapsed the high-sec exit in the process. The last two or three pilots would have to use the low-sec exit, and we moved the main fleet to sit on the U210 lowsec static.

About 25 minutes before the POS would come out of reinforced, we had sent one pilot through the low-sec as a warp-to person for stragglers, when he discovered there were a big bunch of ships sitting on our wormhole waiting to come in. He hollered in coms, and I called for everyone to warp away. (We actually slightly outnumbered the attackers, we discovered later, but we had no logistics ships and they had four logis). Our fleet tried to move back to the friendly POS, but at least two pilots got stuck and scrambled by the newcomers. We lost a hyperion and at least one other ship in that encounter.

The hostile fleet turned out to be a mixed bag of mercs. About a dozen sat on the wormhole exit while others helped escort the locals in moving out ships from their POS into known space. It looked like the locals were giving up and tearing everything down, including offlining their tower. We decided not to engage and let them move out, since our ultimate goal was to take the system after all. We did, however, scan down an alternative exit so our pilots in pods could reship. (We ultimately found a route to high-sec through several intermediary wormholes).

It turned out a bit more complicated. We were soon contacted by one of the mercs, who informed us that the locals had decided to leave the system, and they had hired the mercs to negotiate a sale of the wormhole. If we were not willing to buy the wormhole from them, the locals were willing to pay us [the mercs] to "uninhabit" us from the wormhole ultimately. I made general diplomatic noises, and told them they would have to talk to Jay. 

Then, we saw the locals had not just offlined their tower--they had immediately rebooted it and started onlining it again during these discussions. There was much groaning, because we thought they had restronted it and we were going to have to do the big POS bash all over again. About this time, it looked like the night was over. The other Brits had not yet come back online, and it was 1:30 a.m. here on the East Coast, so we started to break up the fleet, with several members feeling blue-balled and a little frustrated. I left Anselm logged in, parked cloaked in system, but went to sleep for about four hours.

Blanks filled by Jay Joringer

I logged back in  ready for the reinforcement timer and couldn't believe what people were telling me. Re-anchored then re-filled the strontium bay? And threatening to kick us out if we don't buy. It didn't wash with me.

Firstly, I didn't believe those friends of theirs were mercs. I knew Max and his guys rolled with AAA and a various assortment of lowsec nobodies, and that's what the killmail looked like. The only part that might ring true was the lone member of Aquilla Inc in among their gang.  But given that they tried to bluff the guys with the tower being re-anchored and re-stronted, I liked the odds that merc thing was also a bluff. It seemed like Max just called in a few favours from individual pilots who sent a few alts to help him out. Whether what I thought was right or wrong was soon to be a moot point anyway.

More of the fleet logged on, and I called their bluff. Maxemus Payne and his scanner alt, Ennrion were sat in the forcefield. Seeing the fleet re-engaging his tower, Max burned out of the forcefield to take potshots at one of our own Talos', but warped away when Ludis Drakava and Keeley Ellis broke off the main fleet to pursue. The Anathema in the forcefield warped off towards the U210 and the scout confirmed both ships jumped out to lowsec.

I wasn't going to take the chance of him getting a warp in for any friends who might be able to help him out so we got the Orca to mass it straight away. I posted sentry on the lowsec side in the Loki. The Anathema probably had eyes on the whole time and I wasn't disappointed to see Max warp in to engage  He wasn't doing alot from 50km out, but I wasn't going to change that by burning straight at him. I took a wide arc, then cut back on his orbit with MWD and Point overheated. When he realised what had just happened, he went offline, but too late - Kill: Maxemus Payne (yeah, for some reason he engaged a Phoenix moments before).

He logged back in a minute or so later, cursing his ISP. I'm reliably told by Riley that Ennrion is one of Max's alts and he was online the whole time. Now, I'm not saying it wasn't a legitimate d/c - I'll let people make their own minds up on that one.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the fleet had the tower back down at 26% and had started reciting Blackstar's adopted mantra: always bet on stupid. On the face of it, the threats and posturing seemed like a good idea, but then again, a bluff is still a good option if it's the only play you've got. We collapsed the U210 before the scanner or any support could arrive and it wasn't too long before the [BOOKS] tower made a pretty explosion. They'd managed to clear out anything of any value while the US guys were on their watch, so we didn't have a piñata party, but that didn't matter so much - The system was ours.

Operation: Lazarus (Part 1)

Blogged by Jay Joringer

Blackstar's Jericho Wing had been complaining about the amount of traffic that was moving through their highsec static, as well as the amount of K162's that were prone to appearing in their system. This was making difficult for them to do their production. As much as this sounds like it's coming from a true bunch of carebears, it's part of the game. Those guys have stuck with Blackstar through thick and thin, so I wasn't about to ignore them. Besides, a quieter system might see Jarett on the wrong side of the killboard a little less. With that in mind, a C3 with a lowsec static was probably the best place to move all the guys from the C2 into. 

As it happens, we had spotted a decent one. Respectable PI, all Interbus customs offices. There was someone living in it, however; The Board of Education. It took me a while, and a small amount of digging to remember where I'd heard of them before. It was on their killboard that I spotted the familiar name of Riley Augustin, CEO of The Inheritors, who we've roamed with a few times. I chatted with Riley and asked if he was up for a little payback. Pirates never seem to say 'no' to those kind of opportunities. He did mention Max from [BOOKS] was a cool guy, but they were "sworn enemies".

Fleet up for the op was delayed a little while we waited for the U210 to despawn. [BOOKS] had a medium Amarr tower with no shield hardeners anchored, so we'd opted for a shield fleet. In the main, Ravens with Mjolnir Torpedoes, but a fair few Oracles, Tornadoes and Talos' backed up with a couple of Basi's. The EU corporations provided the bulk of the fleet along with a couple from [RINGS], but Universal Novatech Inc. conspicuous by their absence once again.

We'd set up the staging POS which we named Lazarus as we were once again starting C3 operations earlier in the day. As luck would have it, the C3 spawned a connection to another C3 that had a highsec static and to top things off, it was owned by The Flying Dutchmen, who we'd flown with while part of B274. Thankfully, they were cool about us moving an Orca an a couple of T3's through (although while they happily agreed to it in convo, who wouldn't expect a trap, right?). True to their word, they let us pass without incident.

The fleet had moved to Skarkon the connecting lowsec system when Lord WhoDAT decided to show up. Only 45 minutes late, so for his standards, that was pretty good. We'd even met up with Riley and his contribution to the op (1 other pilot) by then. The combined fleet was already engaging the tower when Whodat finally got his shit together. I called for a scout to guide him into the system, but he'd somehow managed to get himself camped in a station by a Brutix and a Typhoon and was screaming over TS for the fleet to stop shooting the tower and go help him. We could only spare one scout to go help him out, but he was AFK, so I asked WhoDAT to undock to see what was outside the station and where. He announced that a Machariel had joined the party, which changed things dramatically. Ravens would be pretty useless and it would eat the attack Battlecruisers for breakfast. Of course, with the numbers we had, we could work something out, but we'd need the scout. For the time being the order was "sit tight." Apparently, that order was too complicated and someone was about to learn the hard way just how good a Machariel is at bumping ships off an undock. Shortly afterwards, the alliance recieved this:

_________________________________________________________________________________

TO ALL THAT WAS IN THE PUSSY FLEET
From: Lord WhoDAT
To: Enigma Project [EXIII]
_________________________________________________________________________________
FAIL ASS SHIT, THATS WHAT I THINK OF ALL YOU PUSSY FUCKS THAT WAS IN THAT FUCKING FLEET,
YOU ALL ARE DEAD TO ME, YOU YET AGAIN PROVED TO ME THAT YOU ARE A BUNCH OF PUSSY NUBS

27 IN FLEET AND NOT ONE OF YOU PUSSIES WANTED HELPED ME OUT .

FUCK OFF

_________________________________________________________________________________

And for completion, here's the lossmail. Feel free to leave a comment.

Funnily enough, the alliance CEO's were discussing whether The Cleansing should be booted from the alliance. It's amazing how one guy being a complete tool on an a lowsec undock can save you a lot of delicate diplomacy.

Unencumbered by [CLNZ.], Enigma Project  finished the first phase of the op smoothly.  At least this POS was set up correctly and shot back, but then again, with as few guns and  ECM as there was on the tower, it may has well have been unarmed. The fleet moved seamlessly from one module to the next and it wasn't long before the guns were trained on the tower itself. It was too much to hope for that they had neglected to fill the strontium bay, although it wasn't completely full.

Once again, it was awesome to see the numbers committed to it. Even though POS bashing isn't the most exciting thing to be doing, it was good to get the guys together and talk shit over TS while ruining someone's day - that's the part that makes the ops worthwhile. With Lazarus firmly in place and the [BOOKS] POS into reinforced until 7am the next morning and all the defence modules incapacitated, we called it a night early so we could be ready to hit it again once it came out of RF. The US guys didn't need to do anything, but we left Anselm to keep watch until we logged back in...

(to be continued)

(over)heated Battle in Oulley

Guilty Parties:

Ludis Drakava - Blackstar Privateer Consortium

Keeley Ellis (blogger) - Blackstar Privateer Consortium

It was some Friday night. Can't remember which, but when it was doesn't matter so much. Friday night and quiet in Babylon, our C4. It's enough to make a couple of pilots wander off looking for some alcohol... and inevitably, some other pilots to waste some ammo on.

The corporation next door in the C3 apparently weren't interested in themselves being those "other pilots" but their U210 presented some possibilities. The system seemed to be pretty busy. Just as I started having a look around, there were some tears in local as some poor anomaly hunter got jumped by a pirate gang. A quick d-scan hunt could track them down before they left system though, but there was plenty of traffic moving from highsec down the pipe to wherever. Plenty of that was small faction war ships not worth bothering with, despite being eager to 'christen' the Rapier with its first kill.

By now, Ludis had shipped into his weapon of choice - a dual rep Sacrilege - and was eagerly awaiting a target, sat on the U210. That was when we spotted a couple of Ewoks jumping into the system, one in a Drake, the other in a Hurricane. It was frustrating to see them both jump out to highsec. Another one had appeared in local though and it wasn't long before the Hurricane jumped back through and started to orbit the gate. Ludis didn't need any further invitation and warped in at short range, delivering an invitation for the Hurricane to follow him off the gate in the form of a HAM volley. The 'Cane obliged and was shortly followed the Drake who jumped through from highsec. Being fit with HAMs, the engagement was already out of his range. It was looking good and I was about to de-cloak when the third Ewok pilot de-cloaked himself. His Falcon jammed out Ludis as he kited the 'Cane away from the gate. As the Drake closed in, it was looking less likely that the Rapier would do much good. Ludis  burned away and warped to safety. *bell chimes* End of round one.

The Ewoks remained on the gate, giving us plenty of time to ready ourselves for another bite of the cherry. Ludis warped in and tried his best to fly in way that said "shoot me", but the Hurricane didn't want to give up the advantage of gate guns backing him up, despite having the greater numbers. Instead, he warped to the sun and our intrepid Sacrilege pilot followed and the two ships started exchanging fire. The Drake appeared moments later, with Ludis in between him and the Hurricane, then right on cue, the Falcon de-cloaked. I had to be quick here. I'd had plenty of time to reship to my own Falcon and specifically fit a Caldari and Minmatar jammers, but the gambit would only work if I could de-cloak a split-second after their pilot and lock him before he locked me - pretty much the reason why I also roll with a sebo on a Falcon.

It worked. All three of the Ewoks ships were jammed out. What little dps I had on the Falcon was on the Hurricane, which was going down pretty quick. The Drake, despite being jammed started burning towards me while their own Falcon kept range behind him. Not keen to wait for the ECM to fail, I started burning away from the Drake as the Hurricane entered low armour. The distance to where Ludis was fighting the Hurricane was getting beyond optimal for both the ECM and the railguns. The jams still held on the Drake and Falcon, but the 'Cane was free to engage again, but by now was into structure. My railguns were barely scratching it at this point, but Ludis was still knocking chunks out of it in the Sac'. That's where things fell apart somewhat.

"Oh bugger!" I heard over comms. It was all going well, surely there was no cause for concern. Still, a statement of alarm should not go unheeded;

"er... what?" My reply.

"I've burned out my launchers." Was the response. The 'Cane was at 40% hull, but the Falcon had no chance of finishing it off. Strangely, he had also stopped firing. Ludis warped away and I hit the cloak. The conversation then moved to local:

[ 2013.01.11 23:21:20 ] EVE System > Channel changed to Local : Oulley

[ 2013.01.11 23:32:05 ] Ludis Drakava > damn, too much overheat :(

[ 2013.01.11 23:32:17 ] Flarty ShaftFast > same here ;)

[ 2013.01.11 23:32:22 ] Flarty ShaftFast > weapons burned :P

[ 2013.01.11 23:32:23 ] Keeley Ellis > lol

[ 2013.01.11 23:32:26 ] Keeley Ellis > gf

[ 2013.01.11 23:32:29 ] Ludis Drakava > GF guys

[ 2013.01.11 23:32:29 ] Flarty ShaftFast > gf

[ 2013.01.11 23:32:40 ] Ludis Drakava > that's the most fun I've had in a long while

[ 2013.01.11 23:33:27 ] Flarty ShaftFast > same here

[ 2013.01.11 23:33:30 ] Flarty ShaftFast > :)

[ 2013.01.11 23:33:41 ] Flarty ShaftFast > nice pvp instead of gay ganking

[ 2013.01.11 23:33:45 ] Flarty ShaftFast > :)

[ 2013.01.11 23:33:55 ] Ludis Drakava > yeah

No kills to speak of. No losses either, but there was no denying it was fun. However, I'll happily take the dubious moral victory for taking on superior numbers once again.