Been Awhile.

Between iPhone 4 pre order launch and a day off from work, no entries. Been awhile, I know.

Three nights ago was a night that pissed me off, and made me happy as well.

Started off with an alliance roam. Short range BC/HAC/Recon. Went through Period Basis and into Stain. I was catching up to gang and missed out on an Ishtar kill... and continued. Caught up with gang, and FC set destination to HED-GP. Scouting was going ok... but one of the scouts kept losing comms/disconnecting. Thats a problem.

SO after about 40j we reached the Catch/Curse gateway of U-QVWD/OSHT (OHSHIT). We were holding one out of U-QVWD and scouts reported a gang of decent numbers on our in gate inside U-QVWD(Note: No numbers or shiptypes reported). He reported them warping off to OHSHIT gate.

FC ordered everyone through and to the OHSHIT gate. Order was to hold on the OHSHIT gate. Scout reported "a lot of people in local" inside OHSHIT. (Still no information on the gang that had been in U-QVWD we were following.)

My shady alarm went off. So I typed in fleet (so as to not break fleet comms) "how many is a lot? 10-20-30?"

...

No answer from scout. In fact, FC was asking for more information and wasn't getting it.

Finally he spoke up. "They're engaging me and burning off the gate at 60-70km now"

I didn't like this one bit. I asked in fleet "Are they in snipe HACs... or what?

Still no response.


This was whack. We had "a lot" of people next door, and a gang of similar size and unreported (not unknown) composition burning off of a gate. Obviously they wanted a fight, and thought they could win. Burning off the gate led me to believe we were jumping into a snipe gang, which is exactly the lemming shit that Soho gets up north and rapes with his snipe HAC gangs.

But.... order to jump through is given and jump we do. Remember, we are in short range BC/HAC/Recons... so loading grid I see all hostiles 90km or so away. I think one or two guys in our gang can even hit that far.

"burn at them, get tackles" was the order. I finally knew what it felt like to be on the opposite side of the rape train HAC gangs that I had killed repeatedly up North. Our dictor died burning at their gang with no transversal.

Local was also around 80... 90.... hmm. We had about 25 in our gang, and about 30 enemies on the gate burning off. I was getting more and more worried.

Then grid started spiking with neuts. Landing on our in gate at 0. I was in a Curse and had been reapproaching gate, but wasn't at 0 yet. As the first few neuts were jumping through (presumably to catch anyone trying to bail through the gate back to U-QVWD) I spammed warp to planet 2. I was at 1/2 speed (so close) when a dictor dropped a bubble.

Shit.

By this time another 20-30 neuts had landed on the gate at 0. I burned out of the bubble... locked up the ceptor that was tackling me... uh oh lots of yellow boxes all of a sudden.

Then my shields, armor and structure dissapeared.

I was sitting in my egg in space cursing this retarded, avoidable scenario but managed to warp my pod out. This was a relief, as I had a full set of +4s in.



Lessons to remember... first off, scouts need to report ACCURATELY. If that doesn't happen, FCs need to ASK or REPLACE THE SCOUT. "A lot" in local is bullshit. Solid numbers: "60 in local and rising". That information may have saved our losses.

Shiptypes! Composition is as important as how many. Jumping 100 short range bcs into 30 Snipe HACS at 70km is going to lead to 100 BC lossmails.

What are the enemy ships doing? When they have you scouted, you have advantage in numbers and yet they are going to fight you, they have either A. A very dumb FC or B. A Wild Card you don't know about that will rape you.

In this case it was option B, as they had only part of their force skirmish with us. Sadly, they didn't even hide the rest of their fleet next door or anything; it was sitting local with us and landed on the gate when we committed.

Lucky enough for us, most of the gang was buring out towards their skirmish force and didn't get bubbled.

Battle report shows the Reckoning/Primary gang losing an Ares. We lost Deimos, Vagabond, Curse, Pilgrim and a Sabre. Ouchy ouchy.

My anger at the situation was extreme, however. Over an hour wasted, 40 some odd jumps covered for no kills and an expensive Curse loss that was completely avoidable. I dropped a -1 Curse in fleet and docked at a station. Emo logged and went for a motorcycle ride and gym visit.

The FC was new, not one of ITs FCs but there were several leadership including me in the roam. Later discussion in FC channels revealed he was newer to IT and was thought to have been more experienced than he was.

Later that evening (after the emo was done) I hopped back on and ninja'd my pod back to 5-C. I decided to seek retribution and took my Pilgrim back to Catch. Easley met me there and we started lurking around. In WLAR-J I found an Armageddon ratting, on scan with wrecks. I warped at 10km (this avoids decloaking off asteroids and usually puts you close to the target without decloaking on him).

I spammed 5 degree scan as I was in warp... he stayed constant to the belt. Landing in the belt I saw rats and.... bam! Armageddon 17km off of my cloaked Pilgrim. I approached slowly (plated Recon FTW) and at 11km decloaked and started spamming lock while I spanked my afterburner. Decloaking delay was short but seemed like forever. I had overheated the scram and finally got my lock and my point reached out and snagged him. I set a nice tight orbit and turned on my neuts, dropping Hammerhead IIs as well. His shield was already gone and his tank appeared to be holding... for now.

He had 1 battleship and 3 frigate rats on him.. and he was still repping but I was starting to win. There was one other neut in local but he was UFO. Still, I spammed 360 directional just to be sure nothing was going to drop on me. My tracking disrupors kept me safe, speed script loaded and working like a champ. Easley was burning to help out, and the Geddon was at 75% armor when Easley entered local. He warped to me and got in close on the Geddon. Combined with my drones and his guns/drones he Geddon started dropping... slowly at first. Then he capped out, which was apparent as his remaing armor just dissapeared. Structure was short lived, and bam, down he went.

We checked the loot and got excited. Check out the Armageddon Mail. Nice drop for us... very nice.

No more kills that night, but the Geddon made me feel better :)

That is all.