Roams in Syndicate

Quite a bit yesterday in the land of EVE. First, I logged on in Syndicate and joined the gate camp from Reblier to 6-C. My intention was to work on homework while engaging in low brainpower PVP.

That lasted all of 5 minutes before someone dragged my name into fleet (making it that bold yellow color that grabs attention). It was followed by "you want to FC".

Whelp...

I turned on my headset and asked what was up. Apparently the guys (most of them at least) wanted to go hot drop something. So I put my schoolwork aside and formed a fleet.

At first we only got like 5 guys, but word spread quickly and soon enough, we had 25 guys sitting on Home's titan in 6-C, ready to go.

I was in my Dramiel, and MorbidAngel from Anzac was in an Onyx with the cyno fitted. We first headed down to TXW-. Didn't find anything... so I took our duo back towards 6-C and stopped by Pf-... which leads to Orvolle, a high sec system.

Low and behold, I found a Moa on the gate, and on a whim I jumped into Pf- from FD-. I made sure the Onyx was in warp to the gate when I jumped, making the Dramiel scouting Onyx gig complete. Sure enough, about 15-20 hostiles on the other side.

"Morbid, when you hit the gate jump asap". I held my cloak, but I didn't trust the reapproach jump gig after losing my Sabre a few days ago. Composition was mainly T1 Cruisers, with a couple battlecruisers and HACs mixed in. Onyx jumped in, bubbled up and popped cyno. I reapproached and jumped out, to avoid death and tackle anyone coming through into FD- to avoid death from us.

All those itchy toons waiting in 6-C right clicked titan and jumped...

Moa on the other side, I tackled and started shooting... but a Hurricane warped in 200 off the gate, and I decided to burn off, as Canes with 425's can hurt me, albeit slowly but surely, and I wasn't sure how the Moa was fit.

Listening to comms, I heard primaries called and a Deimos and Devoter went down. The rest of the camp had scattered the moment the cyno went up. I had started burning out the Hurricane (keeping a decent transversal in case he was arty fit) when a Prophecy came into FD- that he de aggressed. I was too far away to burn back quickly, but not far enough to warp, and the Prophecy warped off as I was landing on gate. A little more warning and I would have been waiting for him, and +1 BC kill. But all in all, we got the two most expensive kills to be had. Even though I got none, the gang was succesful and thats what matters. I kicked myself over the Prophecy getting away, but you can't win them all.

We roamed back towards 6-C, where Buxaroo of RKK had asked me to lead a gang to kill an Evoke POS. He had a family emergency come up and would be unable to take it out. So I got the details, CIS- system, Minmitar large, no guns reported as of 1 hr ago, etc. Bux had called for Drakes (because he "wasn't great at FCing" and didn't want to get a gang of expensive ships killed). Looking at the numbers in fleet, I decided Drakes would take forever and called for close range BS. We formed up on titan and off we went.

20/20 hindsight, I should have double checked gang composition. At first formup I had guardians, scimitars and seemed good to go.

What bridged in, however, was a lone Scimitar. Fail.

But this was an unarmed POS, so off we went. We were only able to bridge in 4 jumps from target system, so we moved the 4 jumps manually and entered targets system. I gave fleet their warp in, only one Evoke in system.

Unfortunately, full set up of medium artillery was online. No ECM (points, webs, neuts, etc.) though, so I decided to give it a go. It was slow but steady until a Drake warped into the POS and manned the guns. Never underestimate the value of a POS gunner. A POS, unmanned, is inherently stupid. Those guns are pretty deadly when manually told who to shoot though, as they don't cycle.

Within a very short period of time, only half of my gang was on the POS due to needing reps. Conferring on channel command, I decided that this was not a good situation. 4 more hostiles had entered system (3 in Drakes, 1 in an Onyx), and were creeping towards the bottom of the POS where we had been hitting the artillery.

So I called it.

Off we went towards home, which took us several jumps through a pipe. CIS- was at the very end of a dead end constellation, and looking at DOTLAN my sixth sense tingled. The hostiles followed, and one of them stayed up at the front, in a cov ops.

Sixth sense was literally on fire at this point. Next system had a neut in it, anticipating cloaked dictor and a cyno from the cov ops, I sent in scimi and Caldari ships only. Getting nothing after 20 seconds and with the report of the Drakes and Onyx landing on gate I had fleet come in. Hostiles jumped with, and I reacted quickly.

"Fleet jump in jump in, align sun spank MWDs GO GO GO". My fleet aligned and started burning as the Drakes and Onyx decloaked. Vampiress, and ex-MVN with authority (daddy) issues was in the Onyx and bubbled immediately. Unfortunately he was off from our gang and bubbled 2-3 battleships which promptly burned out. Only one Drake was within reasonable point range, I primaried him immediately and had all DPS on him.

I think this confused the enemy gang a bit, as the Drake popped I had everyone warp planet 1 at 100km. As we were warping I saw only 2 ships tackled on the gate (by the Drakes). As gang was in warp, I instructed them to warp to Planet 4 at 100km. At this point I was sitting in a safe, and the order was to warp to PK at 10km. We lost two battleships on the gate, and a third was tackled at Planet 1. Not sure if he was just slow or got unlucky. Given that there were 79 hostiles on our bs killmails... I'm quite happy with the results. Whether it was Soho Torres (DOOM) or another FC, they failed hard. As did Vampiress in his Onyx. One cycle of MWD towards the gate before bubbling up and it would have made it harder to disengage.

Later communication revealed that one of the Drakes had tackled one of our Scimitars; a poor decision given that the Scimitar was probably the fastest ship on the field, and he was able to escape easily.

We bounced safes, and scouted a couple jumps ahead. Having flown with many of the guys we were now shooting at (such as Doom, Evoke, and DT), I knew there was no way they had just given up, even though they had exited system and it looked to be "all clear".

Conferring with MVN Command we decided to evacuate unconventionally. Light-year wise, 6-C was close. Gate wise, we had a long ways to go with very little intel, except for a 20 man Cry Havoc gate camp. We got a couple carriers fitted for max cap transfer and brought in Psycho's titan two jumps from our safed up fleet. Watching local we moved the gang out as the titan was capping up with the help from the two carriers. Burning the two jumps, with an enemy scout 1 jump behind, we had gang jump and warp to titan. We bridged all but one Pilgrim (who was fine) and one battleship out (not sure why he was slow but he was way behind gang). With enemy scout in system, there was no time for a second bridge, and titan + carriers jumped back to 6-C.

The battleship tried to go home by himself... which was a bad idea. Syndicate is like the North's Curse... a free for all with camps and random gangs. He died instead of waiting to be scouted home. I take responsiblity for the 3 bs lost when we were hot dropped, and given the circumstances was quite happy thats all we lost. Major props to Homegrown, Psychogroupie (titan pilots) and Exoduss (cyno pilot) as well as Cardking (other cyno pilot). It was a pro evacuation, risky but worth it.

I took out a small, assult frig/interceptor/dramiel/dictor gang afterwords, and managed a Cyclone kill. Bounced him into the gang, who promptly killed him. Tackled a Geddon as well (as Cyclone was dying) but the Geddon was stabbed and off he went. We played around with some neutrals on the Orvolle gate in Pf-, but for too long and with no results. Another POS gang was going up, so I brought the roam back to 6-C and worked on homework.

I wanted to take that fast moving gang to Cloud Ring but time just ran away, so hopefully more good fights tonight. POS roam didn't sound all that engaging, and I had homework to do (that I had tried to start 5 hours before) so I called it a night and hit the books.

That is all.