In a few hours official deployment to the North begins. Myself and plenty of others are already there (impatience is a virtue). My reporting from this point forward will be as accurate as possible, with as many battle reports as possible. I apologize in advance for the ambiguity of some situations, as I have to maintain operational security for ongoing activites.
Last night was an exciting evening. I logged onto EVE in Torrinos. Talos Coalition had an active gang and I joined up. The situation was a random gathering of United Alliance Front(?) Defiant and Vangaurd with numbers that fluctuated up and down from 30-40. Mixed battleship composition, with Ravens, an Abaddon, Geddon, Dominix all camping Torrinos in EC-. No RR, no logistics and a crap ton of Drakes and random stuff. I jumped into EC-p8R and got eyes on them while coordinating with the Talos FC. We formed up a gang with roughly 30 people, around 7 RR BS and a crap ton of Hurricanes. After fleet was assembled and bouncing safes in Torrinos we set the plan in motion.
I had the bombers on gate drop bombs. This did two (2) things:
1. Smaller stuff either jumped through or warped if they were in doubt as to tanking ability.
2. Everything else absorbed damage to some degree (minus a few that were outside splash of bomb blast)
Battleships at this time were in warp to gate. Battlecruisers/logisitcs/all else entered warp 5 seconds after.
Battleships hit the gate, jumped on contact and and anchored on the Abaddon pilot while providing repote repairs. Their job was to get enemy fleet engaged and to provide DPS on bs fleets. There primary was called, a Raven, who went down quickly. I knew the fight was over before the Battlecruisers even loaded grid. From my position off the gate cloaked in my stealth bomber (yes, I did not get on any killmails, but as I said in an earlier post as FC its about the gangs success, not my own killmail stats) I saw the enemy fleet (those that weren't stuck in their own bubbles) aligning off and bailing out. The battlecruisers all aligned away from the gate and spanked microwarp drives for one cycle and began their orbits. This tactic was executed flawlessly, moving them out of range of close range damage dealers and keeping transversals up to minimize damage from enemy fire. I continued calling primaries, secondaries and tertiaries as enemy combatants ran/were destroyed. We took down Aribtrator, Drake, Thrasher, Gila, Myrmidon, Brutix and Raven. The rest made it out. No losses.
I am under no illusions that if the enemy fleet had stayed we would have taken losses. I know, however, that they would have been very few, and would have been battlecruisers. The tactics were sounds, excecuted perfectly to maximize our capabilities at the time. Targets were chosen perfectly (still pissed the Cerbs, all three, made it out) and fire was focused. Hats off to Talos for listening to orders despite my worries about their fleet discipline. With one or two exceptions they all followed orders without questions.
After this engagment we camped the gate, popping a Defiant Scorpion who jumped into our camp (failure to read intel channels?) This may have been more satisfying to me than it should have, because of my history. Within 1 week of starting EVE Online, I was in 0.0 as a pet of a pet. OWN Alliance was renting from Defiant, who was a Pet of Mostly Harmless. I was part of XENO corp, which was a mainly industrial corporation. I learned quickly, and loved PVP far more than any carebearing. Due to political bs that I still don't quite understand, OWN was booted from Defiant space. Open hostility ensued, with Defiant kicking us out quite quickly (superior numbers/FCs/tactics). After that it was all downhill. OWN stationed itself in ROIR, and got handed defeat after defeat. XENO ended up leaving a short time later. I remember the Defiant just as people who were arrogant and seemed superior (which, given my position at the time was correct.). Looking back I now realize the true pecking order of things, and have to smile at the current situation. Being back in Pure Blind is comforting, like the exiled returning home to curb stomp some fools. Apparently OWN has some space nearby, who knows how many are still in from a year ago, I'll have to pay them a visit.
We camped for a bit longer, popping several pods, shuttles, and assorted small crap. We also nailed a Nighthawk trying to get into Torrinos. Ouch.
Not too long after that, our camp started depleting in size as Euro's went to sleep. The NC had formed up a large fleet to counter an IT logistical move, but we had good intel and were able to prevent a second hot drop. Earlier in the day (while I was at work) the NC had dropped 600 people including several titans and a large cap fleet on one of our travel fleets. We lost some, they lost some, but in dropping that many in system they crashed the node. Which meant that their superior supercap presence, well, didn't mean crap. After server came up, our caps stayed logged off. Nice job, NC.
Some elements of that NC fleet, which disbanded when their targets refused to show, came to our camp. They sent in the typical bait Dominix, which I promtly tackled. The order was not to aggress (we had seen local climbing and figured it was a trap). Sure enough directional filled, then overview with hostiles. I bailed out and warped off, and only one Hurricane who started shooting the Dominix and couldn't jump into Torrinos was killed (fail).
I zipped around local talking with some random guy in local. His name was Kay Rizen and for being in a pet of a pet alliance he talked some epic smack in local. My only experience with him was watching him orbit our camp at 200-500km in his Dramiel laughing about how we couldn't catch him. Epic. I told him he wasn't close enough to our "lawn" to be a nuisance. He certainly did love having his masters come in and drive us off the gate though, and let everyone know it. lol
15 minutes after our camp was broken up I warped in to an off gate, where a different Dramiel was orbiting. Rest of the NC gang was gone. I warped at 0, burned through the bubble and jumped into Torrinos. Docked up, off to bed.
In one hour it will be 00:00 GMT (EVE time). April 1st. Go time. Yippe Kay Yay.
That is all.
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