The Hunt

Last night we had a corp roam up into Detroid. We started off in Delve and worked our way up there. For many it was a breath of fresh air after all the logistics we had been doing over the past few days.

We started in off in Outer ring in the wonderful little NPC pocked of 33FN and NM-OEA. We picked up a couple Drakes and a Merlin kill by baiting one of our Drakes on the gate. Fail tackling/bubbling led to a Drake getting away from that fight (should have been 3) but hey, for some of these guys it had been months since they were in small gang action (we had about 15 people).

We then headed up to 4c-, where we gangked a Drake on station. He had a Crow for support and we lost a Taranis to the Crow, which scrammed the Ranis and the Drake hit it. He should have burned away or popped the Crow... but you live and learn. I talked with him about it and next time the right decision will be made. The neuts actually undocked a Chimera with the Drake in low shield, but the carrier couldn't lock up the Drake in time to save him. I ordered the fleet out of the system as soon as the Drake undocked. My thoughts were that the 20 something neuts in local would mobilize soon enough, and with fighter support I didn't want to chance it. As we were jumping out the neuts from NM- started coming in local as well. Ninja kill executed perfectly.

We burned up through Cloud Ring without much more than a Drake kill. That poor guy jumped right into our gang, as our scout reported him coming down a pipe. He had no chance.

Once we hit Detroid we hit a bit more traffic. We ended up getting a Lachesis and Sacrilege, and lost our Sabre pilot in the process. I consider that a bargain, and the loot we got from our roam more than paid for both losses. We had bubbled up one end of the pipe when we got two neuts in local. They came in through the other end and landed in our bubble. The Lachesis was first and popped. A Curse burned through the bubble and jumped through, and the Sac tried the same but we got webs on the guy and he melted.

At this point it was on to YA0 and 2-4CRW. These were the first station systems I had been in when I came out to 0.0 10 months ago. I still had bookmarks and such, and the memories surfaced of my baptisms by fire. Seems like a lifetime ago (EVE lifetime) that I was the noobish pilot with his first Drake in the big leagues of 0.0.

Well we found no fights in the area, and let me say the guys were playing quite a bit of marco polo in local. I mean it took some of them 2-3 min before they realized there was a neut in local and shut up. Quite entertaining. One of them even said safe up reds inbound etc. after I (I was scouting at this point) was in system.

We set course for home and had a fairly uneventful trip. We hit a Tempest that jumped right into our fleet and the guy just melted. Turns out he wasn't fitted at all. This kill was in Fountain on the edge of a regional gate to Cloud Ring. We tried to come up with ideas on how this guy was traveling in an unfit Tempest and came up empty. Only somewhat feasible idea was he used to have docking rights in one of our stations, and had a Tempest there. With no fitting services and not wanting to travel to Fountain Core which is constantly camped with randoms, he tried to ninja it home. Unfortunately for him my gang was in position to gank him.

The roam lasted almost three hours, and was an obvious success. We lost one Taranis and one Sabre (they saved their pods). We killed 4 Drakes, 2 Noob ships, 5 capsules, Lachesis, Sacrilege, Hound, and Tempest. Feels good to be taking out the corp roams again, after all the huge laggy fleet battles we have been fighting.

Today we ran numerous corp ops, to help pay for upgrades for our new systems. We ended up running into a Black Wings of Kartok in a Vagabond, named Gengis Khan. He likes to chat in local, and was running up through Delve trying to get into Fountain. We ended up trapping him in ZXB, a pipe that leads into fountain. He had shot at our hictor and had aggression, and logged off with the agression. Noob. I had a sisters launcher on my Tengu and probed him out in a few minutes. We then proceeded to all point the Vaga sitting in space, and popped him. He may not talk as much in local with us now. Oh well.