Titan Tackled

I had limited time to play last night due to... the need for some sweet luvin. Lucky for me, I signed on at the right moment. I had just scanned for anomalies (and found none. You European bastards in the corp! :) As I docked up to bio for some food the word came throug opsit and the IT FC pinged. Titan tackled in YZ-LQL.

Sweet Mother.

Immediately I started screaming in Vent. "GET IN FLEET GET IN FU**IN FLEET. EVERYONE OUT OF RATTING SHIPS AND INTO FAST SUPPORT ON ZXB GATE NOW NOW NOW". Chatter went up as people formed. I scrambled to get more intelligence and verify what was going on. -MVN- is right next to fountain, YZ-LQL is around 10j away. Caps can't jump from Delve to Fountain directly so the only option was fast movers to help kill support and whore on mail.

Some background here. GK inc. (Panda Team) was created about year and half ago as an alt corp for eve players from GK community . As much as I hate the guys who live in NPC 0.0 the Panda Team is usually made of smart PVPers. They have some idiots (don't we all), but are excellent at dictating terms of an engagement by managing range and stealth. Usually found in pirate frigs/cruisers and cloaky gangs, they did have larger ships including capitals.

And one titan.

They often used the titan to bridge hot drops on people (gang/fleet within range of Titan, bait ship/tackler pops cyno next to target in system several jumps away, titan opens bridge and target pisses themself as local jumps as they die in a ball of flame). Occasionally doing a drive by (for noobs, drive by is cynoing in titan one shotting the capital ship and jumping out after cool down. In this case, a bait carrier was placed at a pos and despite knowing it was a bait ship the Panda Titan warped onto the pos and tried to pop it. The titan got bubbled, and despite Panda Bombers the dictors were able to keep it locked down. By the time I got into system the titan had dissapeared in space, and all that was left were the 4 carriers. Those popped, and shortly thereafter the node crashed, and then EVE crashed. CCP ftw.

Panda Titan Pilot tells story:


"A more accurate battlereport from a triggerhappy titan point of view:
Carrier is repping POS again, in serpentis prime. I already killed one there yesterday, after taking 5-6 hours to solo incap POS mods just in hope I'd get a fish hooked. 2-3 of us pandas enter a convo and start setting up a trap for their obvious trap, we cargo scan the chimera and see it has ozone, scout surrounding systems and don't see much online. I assumed since it was BLAST they must be too dumb to pull a logoff trap on me. Went fuck it, let's go, worst case with what they could gather it wouldn't be enough to kill me. We had bubles ready for the chimera and the only gate in system plus 9-10 people active fucking around YZ. I jump in, the chimera survived the doomsday and just bleeded into armor. Now we know for sure it's a bait (ship scanner anyone? none on market v0v). A dictor or two log on in the system, I don't have my smartbomb fitted, oops, start warping off as their sabre lands on me and buble 3-4 seconds before warp speed, start yelling on vent for bubles on YZ- gate, bombers and snipers. Not so quickly local start going up, I still had a chance to make it out of the buble and was hoping for bomber support to come in. Too late, hictors are in system and on my ass, I logoffski. Yell for armor carriers to get ready and bombers, our few people did an insane job bubling the YZ- gate and slowing the enemy down for a very long time. Few minutes into my logoffski, caps are getting in, I didn't really check what was there, but in early stage it was only about 20 carriers and a handful of dreads. Few more minutes later, erebus, mothership and a crapload more carriers and random shit are in system (local topped up 190 actually, not 140). Archons warp in, nobody has triage ready or whatever because : panic : but yet we pull some repair on the titan and it gets out after a short while, probably shouldn't have sent the carriers there but since I can afford to pay them back rather take the risk.

Titan makes it out and unlike my first one it actually goes off scanner and I get to keep it, yey.

What died: 4 archons, bunch of small ships on both sides and about 10 cigarettes.

Who came: IT (maverick navy and dark-rising mainly, the others didn't make it in), HUN, BLAST, Talos, BLADE. Panda team. tl;dr expected a trap, didn't expect -that- kind of a trap.

Good job for once IT pets, was fun."

http://gkkb.dante.se/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=23892

It was quite fun, most fun I have had in NPC space in awhile. I agree that it was stupid to risk a Titan in that scenario but go big or go home. I also agree that it was pretty fail with the number of IT & Allies that the Erebus survived. I kept my guys (Maverick Navy) on our vent due to what I knew would be mass chaos on BLAST comms. Just looking at the fleet chat after we joined the BLAST fleet was a damn nightmare. No discipline with flooding on stupid questions and useless information as well as dumb jokes and nonsense that no one needed to read. As a result we were able to get in, whore killmails and get out despite Panda Teams attempts to catch idiots/stragglers.

Sure this is a fun story. Many of you have probably never seen a Titan before. They are huge, monstrous and sweet looking. Certainly epic ships. So enjoy the story but remember the lesson here. Those that are in a professional PVP corp/alliances or are ever part of a large alliance fleet as renters and what not remember these lessons whether you are grunt or FC.

1. STFU on comms. Scout is allowed to speak. FC is allowed to speak. You do not speak. Unless you have life or death intel, shut up. Even when it is silent on comms to YOU, FCs are talking with other FCs and other scouts on Channel Commander and need to hear. Unless you are instructed open comms you are ALWAYS on battle comms.

2. Fleet chat. STFU. The only time I leave fleet chatter open is in small gangs, or with an order of comms open (bio, gate camp. etc.). For specific questions for FC and semi pertinent intel use fleet chat, but only if its important. If you have a joke to tell or a story about that epic kill you got yesterday leave it in Corp/Alliance chat.

3. Listen. Yes this is basic but you would be surprised how many stupid questions I get because people don't listen. Having to repeat information clogs comms that would otherwise be clear for pertinent intel/orders. The purpose of comms discipline is that when too many people are talking the FC's orders aren't able to be heard, and the intel from scout/other FCs cannot be heard by the FC to give you valid orders. This means delay which can result in bad things, from losing out on kills to being killed yourself.

That is all.