Battles for the Gate

Last night I logged on after work and joined the gate camp in EC-. That spot has become one of my favorite places due to its strategic importance and the number of idiots who travel through it. I was checking my history and found that my first kill, ever, was in EC-P8R. Intriguing.

I had made plans to go to a friends house last night to play EVE. He recently joined the Mavs, and wanted to show a friend of his what the game was like outside of high sec (this friend is on the trial right now). We popped TNT Myrmidon right I headed over to his house. After arrival, I set up my latop and jacked into EVE. I logged onto our gate camp and waited patiently. Shortly thereafter local spiked by about 20. As it stood I was handed command of the fleet as soon as I appeared on comms (sometimes I love it, sometimes I hate it) and therefore responsibility over the fleet of 30 or so. With no intel I ordered all drones in and everyone to 0 on the gate while we saw who had come in, and their intentions.

Let me ask you all, what is the point of a stealth bomber? I believe that a stealth bombers strength is its ability to cloak. AMIRITE? Well, for the third day in a row I watched my directional scanner begin to fill up with stealth bombers. This time it was 15-20 instead of 4 or 5. A lol moment for sure (NC. Cloak your damn bombers you noobs), but the bottom line is our battlecruiser heavy camp would have been at a severe disadvantage should we have engaged. Assuming they had decent fc and competent pilots (which, given the funny attempted bomb runs we've seen may be a bit far fetched) they would be able to dictate range, warp in and out as they are locked and throw down severe DPS with torps. They wouldn't even have to use bombs, just torpedoes and target painters.

All this ran through my head in about 3 seconds, and I ordered everyone through the gate. This was repeated several times with increasing volume as grid started filling with flashing reds. I loaded grid in Torrinos and started aligning towards a safe when my cloaky eyes in EC- reported in "IT guys get off the gate get off the gate they're jumping in!!!!!" I repeated that command several times and heaved a sigh of relief when confirmation came through that all of the IT guys had made it off gate. If you are wondering why, remember these were all flashy red wartargets. Something I am still getting used to. Wardecs are so lame.

At that point the enemy controlled the gate, and we didn't have the numbers to drive them off. I spammed intel/alliance/corp for the next two hours until we got about 2/3 of the numbers of the enemy gang. With superior pilots/ships/fittings I was ready to go. Our attempt to bait the wartargets into Torrinos failed (due to idiot pilots not listening to my orders, I won't go into details because it pisses me off thinking about it). So we just warped to the gate and jumped through. Plan was for the Eris (dictor) to hit a little early and bubble the other side. Well he was a little late and everything except one ship got away (yes they all ran away in what should have been a decent, even fight). Well at that point we controlled the gate, held the system, got a few kills including a Dramiel that, in dancing around gate trying to be cute/annoying/coolawesome got to close and got scrammed. Unfortunately for him, he didn't have dual propulsion fitted. With a web on him shortly after the scram, he was dead in the water. POP!

At this point it was approaching downtime, and 5am for me. Sleepily, I led the fleet down from Torrinos into x-7 for the approaching op. After the 4 jumps we arrived, and off to sleep I went. Eagerly looking forward to seeing what has happened today while I have been at work!

That is all.