December 31, 2010

Another night, another roam.

Yesterday I saw Tron. 3D Imax. It was awesome.
Daft punk put together a legit soundtrack... in that theatre the bass reverberated my whole body. I agree with critics on one point: the 3D aspect could have been much more developed. But on an IMAX screen the movie was more than satisfying. As a lover of sci-fi, it kept me more than entertained.

After I got home Cardking and I took out a snipe hac gang. Again. Easley was off for the night after arguing with corp leadership (for me basically) over a new zinger.

Alliance doesn't support snipe hacs. They are not reimbursible and I was told in several varieties (not all friendly) that I wasn't to continue leading them.

So we took out a snipe hac gang as a "corp roam".

Wouldn't you know, we got about 20 or so alliance guys in fleet in addition to the 20-something MVN, even after I told them it wasn't reimbursible. Maybe it has something to do with the fact I don't get our guys killed (often. and tackle doesn't count lol). Or the fact they are hard to counter for the enemy, and when I can barely get 50 in fleet and want to fight 200-300 NC (Goons, Fidelas Constans, Mostly Harmless, Wildly Innapropriate, etc) the only thing that can actually engage without instant annihilation is snipe hacs.

As it was I was told to "just get in bombers if you don't have numbers"

My first few months of FCing thats all I did. All it takes is one idiot and everyone dies. That and we are told to use torps. Let me tell you something, you may find it obvious...

Bombers with torps going toe to toe with any other kind of gang that has any kind of numbers is really really dumb. Bombers with bombs is effective but will not hold the field. Yes, for a gate camp they are okay. You need a Falcon to keep them alive. But thats the random gank, not the fighting.

Snipe HACs fc'd well and piloted well can seriously hurt an enemy gang thats slower and larger.

Ok, I'm done with my rant. On to story time.

So basically we took out our "corp roam" and headed north looking for a fight. We didn't have to wait long for the fight. I jumped with a Blade gang (not with us, numbering about 10) in to XF- from 4-EP. Hostile Drake on gate was aggressed on the Blade interceptor scout. I immediately decloaked and grabbed the Drake. Hostile count in system was about fifteen, all friends of the Drake. Fleet was landing on other side, instructions were to jump on contact.

Blade had already broken cloak and was taking down the Drake when the Wildly Innapropriate gang landed in a bubble on the 4-E gate. Their Drake had already died, and they were looking to kill the Blade gang.

That idea was short lived as my fleet bumped local and immediately broke cloak. Several of their ships were already burning out and immediately warped off.

Eight, however, were stuck in bubbles on a gate with aggression. They died very quickly.

We looted the field and were preparing to move on when a Scorpion from the same gang jumped into XF- from 4-E. Not sure why. He died really really fast. Full Battle Report Here

We moved upwards towrads G8, Blade gang ahead of us. They engaged an NC gang and the convo I had opened with their FC said "30 hostiles in 9-4R come on"

In my head I though "thats a station system, usually has a few hostiles" and I asked for clarification.

Silence.

I moved quickly into O-BD in time to see local spike with NC, about 20-30 in number. I dropped probes and warped to the 9-4R gate. The NC gang was all 200 above the gate, and before I could move the probes they warped off and pos'd up.

The Blade FC finally responded with something like "why didn't you come in! i told you to we can't take that I couldn't respond I'm dual boxing!"

Cardking simply responded "we are in snipe hacs. without intel we aren't warping blindly anywhere"

I found a Geddon warping to the 9-4R gate in G8... selflessly pointed him and pushed him into the waiting gang. The Armageddon died within seconds. Looking at his fit, you can see why. All resist and no buffer.

A Rote Kapelle gang moved in from FQ9W, armor hac/t3 armor heavy. Very mean, 6-7 Guardians, Loki's Proteus', Phantasms. 20ish in numbers. The kind of gang that we would shred at range and would shred us close. We danced with them for a few minutes before they bailed south towards Fountain and we kep going north into Pure Blind.

In P-2 I found a Mostly Harmless gang, but with hacs 2j behind me, we couldn't get them there in time and they bailed into B-9 and took the JB there to RQH-. I did find a Harbinger and Omen dicking around on P-2 station. I decoaked and grabbed Harbinger... he docked as local filled. I grabbed the Omen who appeared to be off station and gave him a bump to make sure. Fleet landed and down the Omen went. Not very satisfying. We caught a Caracal shortly after, also not too satisfying.

We roamed up towards L-C and O-C... didn't catch anyone. Even the Wayfarer station hugging crew docked up (carriers included!). 50 and 30 in local and nothing.

We headed back home and caught a Drake in Cloud Ring.

In QXW- PG and I found a Mercenary Coalition gang waiting on our in gate. Gang was two jumps behind... and the Mercenary Coalition Scout in a Sabre followed us through. As soon as he left, we jumped gang in and got them to the QXW- gate. I broke claok (PG in his Sabre had already burned back and jumped through). Their gang landed right on top of me. Vaga's Falcon Rapier... fast and survivable gang. Which is why I was surprised they all aggressed me whilst sitting in PGs bubble at 0 on the gate. I (barely) managed to make it back to gate and get out in low shield :)

I jumped tackle in, then full fleet 2 seconds later. They started running. That gang composition is highly survivable. They all could have survived had they not been in the bubble. As it was we got their Falcon and two Vagabonds (battle report here). We lost a Muninn in that engagement... who yelled for reps on comms instead of broadcasting... which means he died.

We moved one more jump and ran into the remnants of the Rote Kapelle gang from earlier. We managed to kill their Stiletto scout first, then drop a Phantasm and lastly a Guardian.

From then on it was smooth sailing home. A very productive evening.. losing one dictor (in the initial engagement with WI) and a Muninn (who shouldn't have died) for lots of kills.

That is all.

December 29, 2010

Holidays&Finals&Catch&Fountain&SnipeHacs

As I logged into blogger today I realized that my last post was over 2 weeks ago.

Pretty sad I know.

Finals kicked my ass. Christmas fed it.

I'm back now, and will try and post like I used to.

The past few nights involved snipe hac gangs for the most part. Alliance participation early USTZ has been piss poor, as such we haven't been able to match NC numbers in Fountain for timers. Last night J5A and PNQ TCU timers came out... and I got crap numbers in fleet. I disbanded after an hour of begging for pilots, and sent them to fly with a bomber gang that was up. Goons had around 250, WI had 50 and I wasn't going to suicide on them.

Later that evening Cardking and I took out our posted snipe hac op. Easley barely made it, but together he and I scouted and grabbed targets on our way up through Cloud Ring and into Pure Blind. We got our CEO, Avicenna, to join fleet. It was an historic occasion (Avi hasn't been on a roam with us for months). We got him to pod to 6VDT and shit fit a Vengeance to fly with us. Market in 6VDT is horribad... his Vengeance had point no guns... and not tank... FIT HERE

First kills came on a jump in to a bubble camp in J5A, on our in gate. They had no scout on the gate they were camping. They were lucky we only snagged this Hurricane and Stabber-the rest managed to bail out.

We moved on into Cloud Ring. Our scout died one jump ahead of us in a drag bubble to a cloaky Goon camp. The Goons were extremely proud of their interceptor kill and spammed local from their cloaky safe spots. We congratulated them on their great success.

In 9-4RP2 Easley found a Drake sitting on station. He aggressed... Drake aggressed back! In jumped the HACs and the Drake went pop! Either his buddies next door didn't report us or he wasn't watching intel.

I moved gang to the G8 gate, I was scouting the system already (I missed out on the majority of these kills... such is the life of a scout and/or FC). Bubbled up station with dictors and brought gang in. As gang started jumping a Drake landed on the G8 gate. Card immediately started yelling "push him through push him through". He got pushed and jumped in. So did the majority of the gang.

Drake held session timer... broke cloak and died.

Gang warped to station with close range ammo and speed scripts. I wasn't planning on camping long-the previous night a Dramiel undocked and broke session timer early. He insta popped. I figured we might get lucky tonight.

After 3 minutes I sent scouts to out gate and aligned gang. As I was about to give the command to warp...

"ishkur undocked" Cardking announced.

"kill it" I said.

Ishkur broke session change and died.

Nothing else wanted to play so we moved on into Pure Blind. On the out gate in 7D- a Nemesis jumped into the gang (I saw it as I jumped into Y-C). Gang managed decloak and one Nemesis down.

We moved up into Fade area, to O-C. I followed an Iteron V into O-C, holding gang back 1 jump as scouts were in VRH- (neighboring system). I grabbed Itty and started pounding it, hoping he would call for help.

He did.

I had brought tacklers into VRH- the moment Itty broke cloak. They were landing on O-C gate about the same time an Abso, Vexor, Cane, Dramiel and other assorted ships were landing on me.

"All fleet jump jump VRH- warp to O-C" I yelled. "Tacklers into O-C, grab everything!"

The spike in O-C wasn't unnoticed... as all the Wayfarer guys started running. I was just out of range of the Absolution and had no MWD cooking as I was taking damage and didn't want to amplify that at all. I grabbed the Dramiel but the double webs weren't enough, and the Vexor was the only thing I was able to hold...

fail.

Oh and the Hurricane... he never aggressed. He cross jumped the initial tackle and safed up in VRH-

Sad day, but chalk a T1 cruiser kill. We warped to station, where the locals had undocked 2 carriers (scary!). As we landed, all the sub caps docked without hesitation. I was going to have snipe hacs move above station and bump off the one carrier left (the other docked), as the minmitar station has a small undock radius... but then he docked too. 40 in local and no fights. no station games.

ugh.

We moved next door to L-C... same story. We landed on station, the one Drake there docked up. Then two carriers undocked followed by a Vaga...

"Spam lock on Vaga spam lock! If he breaks undock early melt him!" I said.

He broke early.

We hit him hard... and he may have gotten one cycle of reps from the Chimera before his Vaga went pop. It was pretty funny, not gonna lie.

After messing around that constellation for a few more minutes we headed towards ROIR- and EC-. EC- had one Drake on Torrinos, who warped before Easley or I could tackle him. Time to head home.

We started burning towards P-2 when I hit a dictor bubble set up on the out gate. Only a few hostiles in local... no dictor to be seen.

Weird.

Nothing on scan, Easley poking around the center of system. Time to move on. I jumped fleet into B-9 and warped them to the P-2 gate. I jumped into P-2.

I started aligning out when Cardking started yelling.

"Local spike local spike out of bubble align sun go go spank MWDS!" followed shortly by "Domi is primary get out of bubbles go go".

Apparently that cloaky dictor had bubbled the P-2 gate. Fatal used a jump bridge and warped to the gate we were landing on. Dominix landed first, whether by design or happenstance. Snipe HACs were safely at range when the mainstay of the hostile gang landed. I had jumped back into B-9 at this point and helped with primaries. We switched off the Dominix to hit a Basi that landed... he popped quick. Back to the Dominix, he popped. We melted the tackle that burned at us with not transversal. Rifter down, Worm down. Only one, a Malediction, actual kept his transversal up and managed to warp out before he died. Second Basilisk primaried... down Then a Tengu landed... Cardking immediately got a hard on: "Tengu primary Tengu primary take him down now now now!"

Tengu was going down slowly (2 Basi still alive propped him up) when a Cane started burning out closer and closer to our gang. We switched primary to the Cane, who died. Then right back to the Tengu, which Avi still had hero tackled. Tengu finally died, I warped gang off to a celestial. Hostile gang warped to a pos... leaving the tackle I had left (we lost 2 dictors and Avi's Vengeance) with a Basi and an Ishtar...

I had fleet warp to me asap, landing 60km off of the 2 hostiles on field. Tacklers grabbed them as fleet was landing and we added a third Basilisk and the Ishtar to the tally. Final battle report here. We lost a Hound in that fight... which I was perplexed with. Bombers should very rarely die... you never engage (decloak) unless you can safely warp out. In hot situations you should already be aligned lobbing torps from 50km away and hovering over the warp button when you get yellow boxed.

We gave them a GF in local, looted the field and headed home. 7D- had one red in it as I was scouting. I hit scan.. nothing. About to warp when the red landed in his Manticore on the in gate. I prepped fleet for decloak and locked him up. I dropped point/webs/guns on him to push him on when... he started burning off and red boxed me?

I laughed as my 425s 2 volleyed him. I hated his fit.

A forward scout (he had been heading home) reported a Drake camping a drag bubble in QXW-. No eyes next door (fail) so we positioned gang up on the gate. Easley jumped in... and Drake warped off. Talk about touchy! I had Easley leave local and we waited....

After a couple minutes I said forget and had fleet jump. As we were initiating warp... the Drake landed in his bubble! So this guy freaks with one and warps back, probably half way to his drag bubble when we spiked. Poor guy melted, and his name "Deadtired" didn't help him in local.

We moved on, picking off another Drake and Brutix on the way.

The joke was we couldn't get home with all the kills being thrown at us.

Finally we made it to 6VDT and we called it a night. Good times.

That is all.

December 14, 2010

Screenshots

Just finished first final today, figured I would post some of the screenshots from the last few weeks. I burnt out my old graphics card last week and got an Nvidea 460 GTX. Its pretty sweet.

Enjoy





December 7, 2010

Fights

Got home from work and saw we had action brewing. We had a fleet up and running in GE-, sandwhiched between NCdot in V-3 and a Drake Army by -A- and friends.

NCdot jumped in from V-3 as we were burning off gate, we fought. -A- warped around as did NCDot. It was a good fight, and our heavy Maelstrom count really did a number on both enemy fleets.

NCdot bailed out the back door route, burning through 5-N in a giant loop. We got fleet on titan and plan was to jump to cloaky hic w/cyno but his client failed hard. We ended up bridging to an INIT cyno, catching NCdot by surprise. By last count 2 of their BS made it out alive by logoffski's.

Important Internet Spaceship League was reported en route with 50ish bs heavy as we probed down the last couple of NCdot in EX6. We formed up in GE- on the V-3 gate, and burned gang out to 70 off gate and waited. Dictors were cloaked and waiting below and above the in gate.

IISL entered V-3 and warped GE-. We waited for a couple minutes as they deliberated, and then they jumped in. We fought for several minutes, Cflux calling targets. Aligning  We counted about 26 of their wrecks on gate as their remnants warped out. They were bouncing safes in GE-, so I sent scouts to all gates.

They were reported landing YHN- a couple minutes later. As luck would have it I was in warp to that gate and jumped with most of their leftovers. Bubbled up,and I died, but our gang jumped in and was able to kill more of them, about 10, that got caught in the bubble.

Last count had the remaing 15-20 IISL hiding in a -A- pos in YHN. We held in system for the last 5 minutes of the TCU onlining, and stood fleet down after that.

I took a snipe hac gang out at that point, found a few targets, and burned home when TEST showed up. Their scout spotted us returning, so the only kill we managed was him  (Stabber). The rest ran back home.

It was a great night, we took very few losses and inflicted heavy casualties.

Oh, and it was fun.

December 6, 2010

Sunday = Football & EVE

Yesterday was half assed camping in my Sabre combined with some late night fleet action.

We hit a -A- TCU in YHN, I didn't FC as I hate no brainer structure shooting. I did camp the V-3 gate in GE-, however, and snagged cov op kill after cov op kill coming in. Let me tell you, those Covert Ops Cloaks add up quite nicely.

After the fleet action was over, I decided to take a roam out for a little while. We found a True Reign gang, but they dissapeared before we get to them (found out later they went to Curse, but poor scouting couldn't find them). Important Internet Spaceships brought a gang, and we managed to kill a few of them and the rest dissapeared.

We moved into Providence, grabbed a Deimos in X-3... but missed the Tengu Curse and Cynabal on gate. Curse was actually tackled (scrammed) but neuted his only tackler and GTFO'd. My cloaky eyes I had left behind watched the Important Internet Spaceship League gang log back in... smart but I still laughed.

We rolled back to GE- and I was about to stand down when INIT convo'd me for help, as -A- had a 25ish man gang next door of LR BS and BC hitting their TCU. -A- had also onlined their own TCU.

We went in together scattering -A-, and started hitting their TCU. No kills, as INIT had one bubbler and not fast tacklers so the enemy just warped off field. -A- formed more numbers, and due to our horrible turnout in Aussie primetime (often weak, as its between US and EU prime), we weren't able to hold the field. INIT ended up getting hit hard on the -A- warp in (after they bolstered their numbers considerably), we didn't lose anyone but didn't kill anything either. No tacklers or bubbles to keep them on field. I called it after deliberating with the INIT FC.

This Sabre has lasted me 2 days... I think thats a new record.

Oh, and I used Hail yesterday for the first time on a Harbinger we found running the HED- GE- pipe. My Cane was pummeling him for 500-600 a volley... which isn't bad at all. Cheaper than Republic Phased Plasma... I was happy.

That is all.

December 3, 2010

Back in the Sabre

Yesterday I headed to Catch. I picked up a Sabre in Agil (I lost my last one weeks ago) and headed through HED-.

Convo'd by some INIT renters who were camping the SV5 gate. They were interested in sorting standings, so I got some important diplo types involved and let them run with it.

In the mean time, these neut guys were camping with Cane, Drake X2 and Flycatcher. They also had Cynabal running around the system somewhere. Psyco and King Curt were there shortly after I arrived, and together we moved into SV5. Flycatcher tried to catch me, but I had already broken cloak and recloaked in my Sabre before he even loaded grid.

We moved to WD- gate, and Castlekin joined us. Castlekin is an industrialist (miner) who got thirsty for blood and is PVPing more than half the "PVP"ers in corp at this point.

The Flycatcher had jumped in twice in the past couple minutes, bubbling both times for stuff (but not catching it). So we set up on HED- gate and sure enough, red bumped local and in comes the Flycatcher. Loki decloaks and cloaks (if I was bubbler I wouldn't have even tried, 9/10 times in null sec hes nullifier fit). Yet the Flycatcher bubbled way late... game time.

I broke cloak and immediately warped in the Flycatcher's bubble aggressing him. Decloak delay meant it took 10 seconds to lock his ass, but he sat in the bubble not moving. I aggressed him again as the 3x bombers decloaked and lit him up. He started to realize the problems facing him at this point, and tried to burn off. I was able to lock him at this point, however, and a scram/web combo kept him still.

His buddy in a Drake came through, which I expected (I had eyes on the other side), but his DPS was minimal. The Flycatchers tank was starting to break at this point.

Then I noticed blue drones hitting me. Hard. wtf???

I knew that INIT had these guys blue and that tomorrow they would probably be blue... but for now, they were neut. I switched overview and a blue INIT Myrmidon was beating the hell out of me.

I started burning off, fast, outranging the Hobgoblins that were eating me alive. Flycatcher popped, I was in low armor. Volley of heavies slammed into my Sabre, sending me into structure. I kept burning, overheating MWD. Align and warp was impossible; I would get volleyed. I saw a flight of heavies coming towards me... slowly. I held my breath, in the hopes I would outrange the bastards. Closing every so slowly, distance approaching 70km from Drake... my mail flashed.

Dammit!

The most annoying shit in this game is the insurance mail appearing before your ship even "dies".

So I warped my pod off, while dropping a wtf in local to the INIT Myrmidon. Without his dumbass, that would have been a clean kill. Looking at the lossmail (Sabre) he dealt 57% of the damage. In my calculations I hadn't planned for a blue Myrmidon to shoot me. Standings issues in 0.0 are always a concern, but I stick with NBSI 100%. Even in gangs where some of the guys aren't blue, I will say "Hey, if hes neut to you, we hold back go have fun". Gentleman's law.

That guy screwed up, and after some discussions he realized the grave error. He mentioned alcohol, but the simple fact was that I was still blue. So I got a new Sabre and fittings... which was nice... but the thing I disliked the most was a lossmail that shouldn't have been on my record. Oh well...

Shortly after I snagged a Manticore that came into 9KOE-. He was smart in burning off when he saw Sabre, but he burned straight up with no transversal, so I ran him down and decloaked him.

While we were messing around with the wreck, we got a new neut. Ares on scan... he landed. I jumped through before he landed and cloaked up. Sure enough, he came right on through. I decloaked and bubbled... bam. He stopped moving completely. I burned him out, spamming lock waiting for my decloak delay to finish.

Still wasn't moving.

Finally he started reapproaching but it was too late, as scram/web ensnared him. Gang was jumping through, but his died instantly. His Ares was carrying some random goodies of goodness, which we snagged on got safe.

Another new neut in system... Everyone cloaked up except for my cov ops alt. Sabre on scan... interesting. He landed on gate with my decloaked cov ops, but jumped through. So I jumped the cov ops too.

On the other side he was a bit more ballsy. He reapproached the gate, pre cursor to a decloak attempt. I broke cloak with my alt and started moving... he bubbled. Funny part was, the bubble was 8km short of even catching me. Yet he tried to burn me out anyways, but I was already moving away from his trajectory. He kept burning and aligned to the outgate.

As he was burning off I jumped my Sabre in. As I bumped local he warped off, and I called gang in while spamming warp in my cov ops alt to aggress him.

"everyone to the out gate, everyone go go go"

My Sabre landed on the outgate and sure enough, there he was at 0. I immediately bubbled and he was trapped. I tried to warp my alt again for good measure and dropped web/scram on the Sabre.

"light him up!"

We did.

After what seemed like an eternity his Sabre popped. I was excited... the little maneuvering had worked and due to his incompetence (sitting on a gate when you have aggression is dumb. the gate, to you, is basically a locked door). My enthusiasm was dampened when I found out PG had died. He had landed at 0 on the Sabre and tried to burn off. Next time he will know that in that situation he needs to align off, spank mwd and cloak. Once at safe range (15+km) he could have decloaked and started firing, as he would have been out of the range of the Sabre, and since the Sabre was scram/webbed he wouldn't have been able to pursue.

The Sabre was double MSE fit, which explained why he took so long to go down. Bomber for a Sabre was an okay trade... but I would have rather we had no losses.

Next door an Important Internet Spaceship League black ops gang was on scan, but not really doing anything.

We reset and waited. Then a familiar name popped into local... Dark Templari. Nothing on scan...

We waited... and waited...

Prorator on gate. I decloaked and jumped with him. Loading grid the Prorator decloaked... 5km off of me! I saw where he started burning to and decloaked aligning the same direction. 1...2.....3 seconds went buy and BAM got him! I overshot and he started reapproaching. He managed to cloak back up but I decloaked him a second time, and this time one of the bombers got a lock on him too. As we were sitting in system with 11 hostile IISL (black ops gang) I instructed everyone to overheat to take the Prorator down. After what seemed like forever the cloaky transport popped.

"Cloak cloak cloak everyone off cloak!" I instructed, assuming the neuts in system would be on the way. I popped the pod in my Sabre and burned off the gate.

The neuts never even came to check it out.

Prorator was empty, sad day. Those things are pretty hard to snag too. Managed to snage one more bomber before gang was getting sleepy, and then I popped a pod too. Eyes getting droopy, I logged off for the evening as well.

Heres to more kills in Catch :-)

December 2, 2010

1 Day 2 Losses

Couple days ago I took a snipe HAC gang out heading north. I jump out of Fountain we snagged a Fatal Ascension Muninn, all by his lonesome self. Heading North, I received intel that Wildly Innapropriate had a 50 man hac gang incoming. Given our numbers of 25 (including dictors/tacklers) I figured it would be a bad idea to engage.

Behind us was a smaller PL gang made up of mainly light stuff. We formed up at snipe position off the gate they would come in through, and watched as their scout bumped local in a Dramiel. He waited session timer and reapproached, but mis-timed his jump and bounced way off the gate. Within a couple seconds the Dramiel popped. As I was cloaked I didn't get to whore on the mail :-(

Dramiel pilot wasn't happy, as local chat lit up. But we had no time to chat. PL had turned around and was burning away, and WI was very close to catching us. We started burning on the tails of PL, local bumping behind us.

I had dictor leave FU bubbles behing for several jumps until we got clear. Instead of Pure Blind we headed to Syndicate. No targets to be found, until I jumped into FD-...

I entered FD- local with snipe hac gang 1j behind. 11 neuts, scan showed clear. I broke cloak and started aligning off gate with the intention to drop probes (usually there is a gate camp in that system, with off gate warp points). As soon as I dropped cloak all hell broke loose...

3x Sabre decloaked as well as a bomber and a Falcon. I immediately started reapproach, but was webbed by at least 4 webs. Falcon got a jam cycle off immediately. I called gang into next door system; they were landing when I popped.

Whelp... I had been slapped in the face by the infamous Zhoul. The Sabres dealt the majority of the damage, and being a probe fit Rapier I didn't have much in the way of DPS (Rapiers usually don't anyways). Not that it would have mattered, I was permajammed until I died. Pro camp and it got me.

I had King Kurt FC the fleet home, as I was in a fresh clone in 5-C. I went out with Easley on a Vaga + Rupture roam (I have a new found love for the ruppy). For some odd reason, my MWD was bugged. I noticed it in our first fight in Curse. I needed to reapproach to get back into a system I had left to help Easley. I hit MWD and got the "due to external bla bla bla you cannot MWD" message, the one that usually means you're scrammed. Except I was the only person in local and wasn't scrammed. This continued to be an issue, and about 15 min later it killed me.

I jumped into a gate camp, with a ceptor on gate. The rest of his gang was camping a drag bubble 50km off the gate. I saw why when an Initiative bomber landed in the bubble and the pounced on it. Figuring this was a good time to try and make it back in my 1600mm plated triple trimarked Rupture of pwn... I broke cloak and spanked MWD.

Except the MWD spat out that error message again and my glorious reapproach turned into a crawl back to gate.

All was well until that lone ceptor on gate noticed and tackled me. I held onto hope as his point was not followed up by a web.

I continued crawling to gate... but my hopes were dashed when DPS from the bubble campers started impacting. But... my tank was holding!

Then I saw the webs ensnare my ship... and my crawl turned into a really slow crawl. 5km off the gate I died.

Seems to be my theme lately, killed on reapproach. I filed a petition, not that the Rupture was that expensive. It was more the fact that CCP failed and I now have a lossmail I shouldn't. Playing with a Russian Goonswarm gang, cynabal and Maelstrom that evening with Easley and a gate camp that shouldn't have gotten me got me. Damn the new patch and its fail.

Ideally I would have reapproached and jumped through, the campers all agressed except for one lone ceptor that had jumped through in case I made it. That ceptor would have died or warped off.

Oh well.

Until next time...

November 29, 2010

Ensnared.

I'm going to preface this one by saying I decided to buy a Vagabond yesterday, because the things are so damn addicting.

I also lost said Vagabond later in the day to a TEST gate camp. She popped 4.5k from the gate on a reapproach. I call bullshit.

With that out of the way, I did manage to cap two test guys running the Delve pipe. It went something like this:

I had just logged on, wiping the sleep out my eyes when I saw a red pop into 5-C local. Inquiries into intel revealed he was in a Vagabond with a friend still in ZXB- in a Curse. This later turned out to be incorrect, as his accomplice was flying a Pilgrim. Similar... but very different ships.

I sat my Abaddon on the KEE- gate in hopes of a fight, and got none. The Vaga was reported entering M-2, so I went to the M-2 gate in time to see the Pilgrim jump through.

Jackpot.

I jumped my Abaddon through, and there they were. Drones out and waiting. M-2 local was also much more empty, always helpful when baiting. I held cloak until it dropped (like a noob), and sat there for a couple seconds before reapproaching. Sure enough, both red boxed me instantly. I started my lock time on the Pilrim as the Vaga was kiting at range... 6 seconds to go and gate fire, Pilgrim cloaks and Vaga burns off.

wtf

I had told the guy in gang (Falcon, taranis, Cane) to hold the gate.

Alliance Viator. Dammit.

Viator decloaks and warps, Pilgrim decloaks and locks me up again. I start the locking...

At that point our Ranis and Falcon decided to come through too.

fml

Sure enough, Pilgrim cloaks again. This time, being combat ships they bugged out.

I emo raged on comms for 20-30 seconds before dropping to a different channel. The reds messed around in M-2 for 5 minutes or so, and I decided to try again. I had played the noob in M-2 local very well, maybe they would fall for it again.

Cat and mouse games all the way to D-W (road to NOL-) and they finally tackled me on the in gate in D-W. My Abaddon's tank held well, so I put ECM drones on the Vaga to aggress myself in a noobish way. It worked. Pilgrim closed to 10km, Vaga was kiting at 20km. As I hit 90% armor :-) with my gang on the other side of the gate, I hit approach on the Pilgrim. He didn't move. Vaga was approaching 0km on the gate in his orbit, the time was now. Overheated scram/web ensnaredthe Pilgrim as I activated my guns. My 24km point grabbed the Vaga, but not for long.

"Everyone in everyone in! Grab points/webs on Vaga, he is primary!"

Low and behold, our Ranis pilot was able to get scram/web on Vaga. He was screwed. Pilgrim was slowly going down (large pulse lasers with 2x tracking disruptors on you don't hit hard) when Vagabond popped. He was finished quickly.

TEST was pretty chill about the losses; they knew they had taken the bait hook line and sinker.

Later that evening (after football), we (Cardking and I) took a roam to Pure Blind and Deklein. We grabbed some decent kills, including this WI Sleipnir who must have not been paying attention to intel when he jumped in and aggressed me scouting. Gang came in and warped to me, Falcon got jams and he died. I was worried about getting caught in any one of the Deklein pipes, as we knew WI was forming a response gang, and TEST as well.

So the earlier engagement made it all the more ironic when I jumped into the TEST camp in Deklein, waiting for our gang to try and leave. I don't know why its so hard to reapproach gate these days, but I died within fingers reach of it. Sad day, happy day.

That is all.

Its been Awhile

Finals are coming up dear friends, I fear my posting has grown lax.

Let me bring you up to speed.

I've been running snipe hac gangs with more frequency. Last week we had a run and gun fight with WI/TEST/GOONS in J5A after they SBU'd the system.

Due to low turnout (~60) in USTZ all we could do was long range snipe hac engagements, while NC had 100-120 on field at all times. After a 4.5 hour fight, they reinforced the i-hub.

Initially our losses were not good; several hacs and logistics died. I was on field in a cloaky watching as the first three died... careening upwards into the enemy fleet. Why? Spamming ctrl-left click... which makes you approach. In a paper thin snipe hac traveling at 2km/sec... you close the gap real fast. They died.

As we were burning off the enemy gang, I noticed logstics falling behind. Very bad. Logistics should always be at the front of the gang, warped in 20km shorter if possible. Not behind. In one particular instance, we held alignment on field for several minutes, as idiots from WI burned out to us (and died). I kept yelling at Scimitars to spank MWD... and yet they died. The culprit was finally revealed as a frustrated Scimi pilot yelled "I DON'T HAVE A MICROWARP, I HAVE AN AFTERBURNER!"

Fucking fail.

The inexperience level had led to 4 logi deaths. Inexperience in snipe hac tactics. IT shield fleets consist of Maelstroms, Apocs and Drakes with afterburner Scimitars. Many had brought these Scimitars, unaware that they would not meet the criteria. Ironically, IT has a snipe hac fit for Scimitars on our forums, and has for over a month. I have now been verifying that the Scimitars are mwd fit, and turn down Basilisks (as there aren't any viable MWD gang Basi fits that I have found, and they are just slow anyways).

After a couple hours, the fleet started getting into a rhythm, and our losses (except dictors) dropped to nothing. Every warp in we would kill one or more, and force them off field. Unfortunately, NC reinforcements were streaming through from Pure Blind in ones and twos. Blast suicided a bs fleet on the NC gang at the onset, and had reshipped to BC. I requested he form bombers to kill the sbu (bomber damage is hella pro on structures) but he didn't want to. They couldn't hold the field (neither could we) and they couldn't scrap with the NC gang (due to similar compostion and inferior numbers), so I didn't understand why he chose to stay with the ships he was in. I also asked him to camp the path from Pure Blind to Fountain, in the hopes he could gank the one and two man reinforcements coming into the system. He didn't listen.

In different circumstances I would have exploded on the ally FC, but I was just too damn busy to do anything about it. Next time I will send one of my co-FCs over to help sort things.

Battle report here: http://www.killboard.it/?a=kill_related&kll_id=221107

The day before that we had a fight in Period Basis, in which Goons brought a 50 man gang down to harass IT/Sys-K while we pounded on the SBU. Havoc was in local doing their little 10 man gang thing (5 unprobable snipe faction bs, with 4 Dramiels buzzing around). We got ready to pound Goons when they came in, but weren't able to pin their gang on the gate and Goons warped off field. So Sys K and IT continued to hit the SBU, interruped 2-3 times by Goons warping in, turning around and warping off. I snagged a Zealot on one of the warp outs, but other than that Goons hid in the -A- pos that was provided for them. Their victory came when spy gave up the pos password to the Sys-K pos we were using to stage out of, and they stole some ammo in cans that was supplied for us by Sys-K. You would have thought they re took delve with the local chatter that ensued. :-)

After SBU died we headed back to Delve, the majority of the gang re shipping to snipe hacs. As soon as we left another sbu was anchored, but Sys K ninja onlined it (anyone can online an anchored SBU). Oooops :-)

Goons left shortly after... with their 50 man gang.

We were waiting.

Using jump bridges and fast speed snipe HACs, we engaged the Goons all the way through Delve and into Fountain, ending in KVN-. 7 Goons were online and left into Cloud Ring. 10-20 had logged in various Fountain and Delve systems, and the rest died.

I lost 2 interceptors and a Keres.

GF

This weekend EUTZ actually took a snipe HAC gang into Catch/Providence. Nilie FC'd, and the gang didn't die! It was loads of fun, but the EUTZ was just as bad (worse) as USTZ at the snipe hacs. But, due to the safety net of no real opponent and overwhelming numbers, their mistakes weren't fatal. Clearly lots of work to be done if they want to actually be succesful with the snipe hac gangs. But the USTZ must become effective at using them due to the lack of overwhelming numbers we have.

Yesterday was quite a bit of fun with smaller gang PVP, which I will write about in my next post.

That is all.

November 22, 2010

Saturday Night's Fight in 68FT

Hopped on EVE Saturday night. Roads were terribad due to snow, so I figured I would stay inside for the evening.

Joined comms and found an active gang in 68FT- Burned from 5-C to 49- and waited for a travel fleet which "would be there shortly"

45 minutes later the travel fleet arrived. The FC couldn't find the equilibrium between getting reinforcements to the front and grabbing those last few stragglers and so I sat, next to a titan that would bridge me to the front.

When travel fleet arrived it was told "no titan available, manually jump 26 jumps to 68FT".

FML

So we rolled onwards, and held 1 out from destination. After a couple minutes of deliberation, we jumped into 68FT.

Took me 5 minutes to load system, once I did local was at 750 or so. Fighting on station was horribly laggy, and being in a Rapier I went back to our in gate to try and snag traffic.

I ended up killing one (1) Manticore from Dirt Nap Squad. Manually cycling guns it took about 5 minutes to kill him. That was my reward for 2 hours of Eve time. Needless to say I logged off shortly after and played some CoD Black Ops.

Not much of an action report, but to be honest its been a boring Fountain Campaign.

On a bright note, my supercarrier is on the way :-)

November 10, 2010

Yesterday's Fight

I was at work, but here is the basic battlereport I got from Kugu's from NCdot, which falls in line with what I heard when I got home:

"We formed up in RR BS with the intention of killing caps as they were moving about. Due to us ganking a chimera in a Sanctum we were a little late forming.

We had missed a few JFs and some carriers but got formed up on titan to bridge. Hictor pilot saw a rev come through the cyno/gen and Twink decided to go for that at least. We killed the rev, incapped one warp disrupt and burned into shields.

Dest home was set and whilst aligning off towards our out gate guy says on TS that a carrier has aggroed on the station. We get there and a whole bunch of carriers undock and we work on one archon who is outside of docking range.

We kill dictors but nothing else as he is being repped by the carriers. They warp in a BC gang to station at this point as well. Lose a couple of BS here but warp off to out gate. Up until this bit it is all in a days work really local was at 170 our gang was like 70 at that point.

Scout reports carriers warping off and like 5 or 6 land then more. Super carriers are rage logged on or where in fleet before. Twink orders a cyno up and the caps we had jump. I hadn't been on channel command or whatever at this point so assumed we had intel etc
Fairly soon after this a bunch of the carriers die but it quickly becomes necessary to scroll the overview with just dics/hics selected :S
Support tries to kill some and a cap or two gets out but sadly more and more come in and it is a case of waiting to die really. My abaddon burned through a few times trying to kill dictors but kinda in vain...most of us decided to stay and die to help anyway...

After the last aeon dies we actually have an amusing smacking/piss taking chat on TS for a while with the mothership pilots taking the jokes well."

From IT (not my grammar):

"6VDT-H fight 9th November, 5 NCdot SC dead

So how did it happend?

We had an idea in x13 to try and bait NCdot caps on a cynogen, with the help from fountain allies. We got a few caps from blast to play as the initial bait, and intell came out that a small Ncdot roaming gang was moving around. This was just perfect. So we started to notice some more supercaps from IT about what we where trying to do. And thank god they where still happy to join another x13 waiting game since we had tryed 3 times earlyer with no success.

But then Ncdot started to gather a fleet of 40+ bs with gaurdians and hics as support, on a titan. It began to look interesting, where they expecting us or not?.

None the less, we where just about rdy to get the bait rolling, when suddenly Ncdot fleet bridge. Where did they go? Anyone know?.

6VDT local spiked, SCOUT TO THE CYNO!!!, what are they doing. Fuck they dropped on a friendly dreadnought (stop using the cynogens guys). So ncdot is in 6vdt with a decent bs fleet, wtf to do, now everything was fucked. Well atleast we could fight the bs in a carrier blob. So I ordered all x13 to switch from dictors and back to carriers, since at this moment the hope for supercap kills was long gone, so no need for a dictor fleet.

Small skirmish on station, we killed a few and had no problem to rep up their damage. So ncdot bailed as a 30man it roaming gang just came back and joined us at station.

Ncdot went to the b17 gate, hell we might get lucky to kill a few more before their aggression is over, so x13 followed with our 15-20 carriers.

We start to shoot, ncdot launched drones and opened fire aswell, cool fight is on.

Suddenly I hear on ts, Nuker!!!, I see ncdot caps locking on. would they really come in ?

well everyone get rdy, get to login screen, as you never know.

But then, cyno opens, ncdot supercaps appears. EVERYBODY LOGIN ITS HAPPENING RIGHT NOW!!!. Dictors to the gate at 0 NOW and bubble. our 15 carriers on the gate took alot of beating from 150+ fighterbombers, we had already lost 7 carriers before our supers and caps started to flood in, but they arrived just in time to save Sir rup at 90% hull in his thanatos.

from here on, it was just a matter of keeping ncdot bubbled, and get DPS on them. Rest is on the Killboard

So:

3 made it out, 5 wasnt so lucky."
.





November 9, 2010

On a Brighter Note

http://www.killboard.it/?a=kill_related&kll_id=216414
According to Aurora:

"we bridged rrbs onto some caps that were jumping in and out for a few hours then IT undocked a handful of carriers and sat on undock taking shots at us with fighters, when we warped out to a gate the carriers followed us and twinkey welped the supercarriers onto them, then IT mass logged on and the rest is history"

Ouch.

:-)

Tactical Mistakes

Last night was embarassing for epic reasons.
I may get into trouble posting my thoughts, but at this point I don't really care.

Forming up a fleet to hit an NC.dot tower coming out in Serp Prime. I had just gotten home and had about 10 minutes to get to YZ-LQL for eyes. I was not the FC, but was asked to be sub cap fc. Fleet was forming up snipe bs. I asked what tank... was told both...

wtf?

I told FC "I will be sub cap FC but I want it on the record that I'm protesting the shiptypes". Its retarded as hell to have both armor and shield. Armor tank is slower and sacrifices damage and range for tank... shield gives better agility (barely) and range and damage but has shit tank (vulnerable to bombers). To mix it up means that the armor guys are slower and either A. holding gang up or B. going to get left behind. I was not happy with being handed a catastrophe in a bag and asked to run with it.

As I entered YZ- and got eyes on enemy tower, I watched them forming up. I noticed 10 guardians and hacs. Armor HAC gang. Our shiptypes were snipe bs.

"FC, change the shiptypes. They're in armor hacs, this is a nightmare waiting to happen"

"Hmmm.... welll.... maybe, but this is what we have"

"I'm not FCing subcaps if you want me to take mixed snipe bs against armor HACs"

"Ok. Fleet, switch out for bcs". Then a rant to a supposed spy on comms about watching us or something. I mentioned that that isn't the most professional or intelligent thing to do. Sure there are probably spies but yelling at them on comms doesn't actually help.

So after switching out, with the tower timer comign down to 0, NCdot moved into Serp Prime to the tower in question.

I mentioned on comms that none of their supers were online, which is unusual. Usually a few are online during their ops, floating in POS' and such. This tingled my sixth sense and I mentioned it, but no one was listening. The armor HAC numbers were also rising, and asking for our numbers and composition over CC was not yielding great results. So when timer hit 0 and cyno was lit on friendly pos, I didn't have information on what I was supposedly FCing.

I also wasn't sure why we lit on a pos, as FC called only for capitals and not supercapitals to jump. A station would have been more appropriate, but I didn't bother asking questions. Sitting on the hostile POS I watched them warp to the cyno the moment it lit.

Uh oh.

I followed as quickly as I could, with FC yelling at me to start helping. I found this amusing, as I as told to sit on their pos and provide warp ins and FC. We never got there.

I yelled for everyone to get inside POS shields over comms... but FC had capitals ALIGN off POS towards hostile POS. This took them directly away from shields. As enemy ahac gang landed, he told capitals to warp. I landed shorty after and surveyed the situation:

Some made the warp, about 5-6 didn't. They were stuck aligning off of pos, in bubbles. I immediately had sub capitals start kiting in and out of the pos shields, trying to kill bubblers, but it didn't matter. The reps were too strong (Phobos was cycling bubble like a champ, allowing for the numerous Guardians to prop him up), and the sub capital gang (which was outclassed and didn't have "blob" like numbers which allow shitty ship types like that to survive against ahac) was popping like moths in a campfire.

Meanwhile the dreads on the hostile target pos were told to siege.

yup...

I saw in someones after action report that the sub capital FC "dissapeared". I found that hilarious, as that person was either not there or had their head up their ass. I was told to shut up numerous times by the FC... and after half my guys popped I just told them to chill in pos. Capitals were lost at this point, no use throwing more meat into the grinder.

Then NCdot lit cyno and in came those supers. After their cyno went up FC finally told capitals who were getting face raped outside the "friendly" pos to start approaching.

Too little too late.

They were well outside shields and webbed to hell. They went down like sacks of shit with 12 supers on field. After they went down the hostile supers warped to the sieged dreads. At this point I told all sub caps to gtfo before the YZ- gate was camped.

Dreads had 3 minutes left on siege, and spread their cheeks when the supers landed on them.

I hobbled back home and answered the several convo's that came my way asking what the hell happened. I gave a couple people the full report, but for the most part deferred them to the person in charge, who wasn't me.

Things that went wrong.

A. Insufficient numbers. We should have never engaged with the sub cap numbers we have.

B. Capitals. With insufficient numbers of sub caps capitals should never have been called for.

C. Cyno location. With no supers being used, it should have been on station.

D. Sieging. Assuming A-C are ignored, dreads should never be sieged with hostile sub caps in system without sufficient support to counter.

E. NCdot supers. Most NCdot have super alts. They are not logged on and not seen. This is unusual and should be treated as such, and even if they did have the usual few on, you have to say to yourself "if they bring the hammer, do we have enough to counter 20-30 supers"

We didn't.

We should have scrubbed the op, which I suggested but was rebuffed by "there are towers to hit and I will not let them go untouched"

When I say scrubbed the op, I mean forget the damn towers, which NCdot doesn't give two shits about (they want kills/fights) and switch to something fun, like a snipe hac gang or ahac or anything mobile and fun, and go shoot things. Leave the capitals at home, and the fail snipe bs at home.

As it is, we gave ncdot nom nom nom and honestly accomplished nothing. It was embarassing as hell to be a part of, as we could and should have done better. Playing right into your opponents hands never ends well. Ever. It wasn't as if we didn't know what they had to bring; it was just ignored.

That is all.

November 8, 2010

Vagabond

I have lost two Vagabonds the past week... not too happy.

I may just run with hollowed out Canes for the time being. Almost as fast, slightly better buffer slightly worse resists, comparable damage and 2x Medium neuts instead of one.

The first I lost to a Black Ops hot drop. Camping in Pure Blind I noticed a Rapier decloak 30 off of me. Suspicious, but with eyes in the next door system and a 40 AU warp to the other gates I decided to go for it. When he aggressed first, however, warning bells went off.

I had him in very low shield when local bumped. Time to get out!

Except they were all on field, and I sighed as my Vagabond, immobilized by 3 Rapiers and jammed by 2 Falcons died to one volley of torps from about a dozen bombers.

The second was on Saturday. Easley and I were roaming around Deklein, when I decided to warp straight to an out bound gate with 30 or so TEST in local. Perhaps a bit cocky/confident after just raping Goons and TEST face the past 3 systems, including a Stabber Fleet Issue I burned out my guns on.

So when I landed in a catch bubble put up by a HIC amongst 4-5 bombers and a few assault frigs... I couldn't even instapop any of them before I died.

So, I think for the next little roam I will just bring a Hurricane... hurts less when you die.

Oh, and check out this Falcon we killed. Wafer had pro bubble and I had pro decloak. Our Falcon kept him jammed.. wasn't sure why he didn't get any of his own jams off. We also wondered how he was living for so freaking long. When he died we check out his fit and found this http://www.mavericknavy.com/killboard/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=44707

Whelp :)

That is all.

November 2, 2010

Me and DOOM corp.

Apparently my post a week or so ago upset people in DOOM.

Now, many of those people can kiss my ass, ass I don't know you and don't care what you have to say.

However, there are some friends in that corp that I do respect/admire and miss flying with.

Soho Torres, skilled pilot pro girly screamer and lover of all things Dramiel. Haven't seen him much.

Vince, despite his trolling (which only idiots in alliance respond too). Never failed to make me laugh.

Wicked, whos giggles I miss. Local chat just doesn't compare.

Quesa, who is and always will be an ass but cool none the less.

Glitterbomb. A never ending fountain of emo rage. It was better when we trolled together.

No, this isn't back pedaling. You guys still fly the same shit every day and as a result you're good at it. You only have top end pilots, as you kick anyone less than excellent as a result you don't bring more than 40 to a fight. Props for that, but even NC.dot had to form to bring numbers to the game. Part of being a space holding alliance is that we have all aspects of EVE, from PVP to carebear. /me shrugs. To each their own.

DOOM has set up shop in Fountain Core and is farming the residents endlessly. Our alliance continues to send shield bc gangs against them and takes losses every time in the USTZ. I don't even bother trying to lead those gangs anymore. Until I'm allowed to lead snipe hac gangs against them, I don't feel its worth it. Even if I can get the alliance into snipe hacs, the Fountain residents don't usually fly them, don't understand the tactics and don't have the skill training done necessary to fly them effectively (a generalization with some exceptions I'm sure).

Sunday was a notable example, as MVN (Psyco Groupie) was asked to lead a last minute gang to help BLAST. Scimi/Shield BC was called for, yet I saw all kinds of random stuff from the Fountain residents. He asked me to lead the actual fleet engagement, which I had reservations about given the circumstances. But I burned down from Pure Blind to take over gang.

A different FC, however, was moving the fleet from staging system in Y-2. I had eyes in YZ-LQL and saw the formup of NC.dot. Saw them plant dictors on the 75FA gate. Saw their prober in position. Saw their ceptors making snipe points.

The other FC, however, didn't hand off gang. He jumped it into YZ-LQL. I yelled on channel commander "I would reapproach right now".

His response?

"I disagree" and he instructed fleet to align towards Serp Prime (where the station was that was coming out of reinforcement".

Snipe HACS warped in at range, fleet was bubbled and we held our alignment for almost 2 minutes until fleet "cleared the hostile bubbles"

When the order to warp off was given I counted 13 wrecks on field. With about 150 in fleet, we lost 7.5% of our capability before hitting target system. We didn't kill anything either.

"We just lost 13 guys on gate, without a kill. Horrible ration" I said. His response? "I don't care about k/d ratio"

Well maybe we should. Not necessarily for "statistics"... but you just lost almost 10% of your firepower for no reason.

Had we reapproached gate, they would have warped in, giving away their postion. Maybe shoot the dictor and deaggress, jumping when aggro was up (thats a big maybe). Force them to jump into us. I know they would, with their SNIPE hac fits they have decent buffer and can burn out of range rather quickly. Rather than 13 deaths 0 kills it would be a bit more even.

I was pretty emo at this point. I had burned 20jumps to take fleet, and was kicked out by somebody I'de never heard of. He basically told me to screw off on channel commander and it just wasn't smart.

Anyways...

Fleet hit Serp Prime and started hitting station. I finally got in after the DOOM gang, and provided a warp out (I was asked to).

Then I was asked to provide warp ins... I told him to make up his mind. I was in a probing Rapier, so I got a couple warp ins on the hostile gang, but as I have explained time and time again...

a warp in on a snipe hac gang is good for 10 seconds, tops.

A Goonswarm fleet joined the fight, putting nails into the coffin of our fleet. We managed to pop lots of tackle on the DOOM gang, but the Goons had that covered when they arrived. I later asked where Goons came from and why there were no reports until they were on top of us... never did figure that out.

After HEAVY losses... I "suggested" over cc that we gtfo. "I agree" was the response. Well gee whiz, thats a first.

I also suggested that we fleet warp to gate, as spies were an assurity on comms. The FC had been fleet warping all day, I figured it would be a shoe in. I personally disagree with fleet warps... for scouts in fleet (dual boxing) it can screw you. But in this case it worked, and NC.dot was late getting to the gate.

We made it to J-R jumpbridge with only a few slow people getting caught. Vince's Broadsword died on the jump bridge POS.

All in all, a pretty one sided fight. IT kb doesn't really show it, as Blast losses were excessively high. I always right realistically on this blog, whether its good or bad. In this case, it was bad. At least long range BC would have had a chance to make a few kills... but short range with mixed other crap.... I mean I saw a damn Domi (he warped to me at 0 like a noob) and sure enough, it was blue. Unbelievable.

Alliance considers me a "loose cannon" of sorts. I don't hesitate to speak my mind (which gets me into trouble) and I think psychologically. This is against the mentality of many of the old guard, who find change a very hard thing. Perhaps I could be more tactful when being confronted in FC channels... but it often feels like a caste system... USTZ and -MVN- (-MVN- not being an old BOB corp) means we start with a handicap in many scenarios. Given our top tier performance (especially relative to other corp's current performance) it seems a bit odd. -MVN- in the past 6 months has become a pretty mean pvp machine. Given, we still have an indy wing... but with excessive deadweight kicked and performance evaluations ongoing... yeah.

So being challenged on every call I make, from people who aren't in fleet over even on comms.. frustrating. We recently promoted Hom3 to co-director of PVP, due to his cap fleet experience and his soothing relationship with alliance. Hopefully that will help. :)

That is all.

A Weekend of Fun

Logged on way late after staying up till DT with Dezzy and Sabre6 on Sunday night. Day off from work meant homework + EVE.


First ran some logistics. Brought some ships down to Delve to sell :)
We will be bringing general membership down later this month (possibly). I need all of you to become pro in the area and be able to lead gangs when they do.

WI was hot in 0-N, with supers and other ships. Never did figure out what was going on. We scouted L-T gate, found it was clear and gtfo'd. Headed towards P-2. Camped in B-9 (next door to P-2), killed some random ships (Taranis, shuttles, etc).

A neut gang (with blue elements funny enough) was reported in F-N (thanks Null for being pro eyes). We had 2x Falcon at this point, so even with our small numbers I felt good. Arazu jumped into us, I was the only non cloaky ship (Vaga). I started locking... he locked back and aggressed. I was pointed... but not scrammed! Kiting him at 20 I rained down hellfire while Falcon decloaked for jams and Arazu kept him pointed. Sabre and I dropped him dead while his gang started jumping in. I burned off while Zealot and Phantasm jumped in. It was at this point we figured out half their gang was blue. Had I known earlier I would have dropped the Zealot ASAP (while he would have been jammed) and then killed the Phantasm. But... better safe than sorry and we watched them for a minute before deciding to engage. Unfortunately, they had all reapproached and were humping the gate, and they jumped out.

A red gang of random NC composition came into local shortly after and trolled local for 20 minutes before shooting our bubbles and leaving. With about 20 ships, from Brutix to Drake to Dominix and everything inbetween (with one scimi) I decided to just let them chestbeat. To honestly believe we would engage with 4 recons and a Vaga is funny.

We moved back to L-T and encountered another hostile gang who smacked us in local for not fighting. These guys had about 35-40. TEST alliance is worse than Goons. Goons have original material and make me laugh in local. Test just ctrl-c and ctrl-vs random gibberish. Like Goons in potty training.

They jumped into X-7, and a Sabre I had been watching on the 0-N gate was still sitting there. I had eyes next door in O-N and it was visibly clear.

Toast.

I warped down from my 400 off spot of the 0-N gate and hit MWD/approach. I had gang landing around me, with PG's triple web "Cloaky Loki". Bumped the shit out of the Sabre, who was either afk set on approach or just not smart. He allowed himself to be bumped 20km off gate and then webbed and scrammed. Sabre = tin can and he popped. Anticipating a bump in local as his buddies would come save him... nothing. We looted and off to low sec we went. Apparently that gang actually did start chasing us, but they were just a little late.
We then made a low sec run up to Nonni.
We caught a Drake in Aunenen. He jumped into us from the high sec island system and just died. Didn't even try to reapproach. TEST wins again...

We rolled back towards null sec, me scouting when Hom3 reported an Onyx on the out gate jumping with him. He tried to tackle on other side and missed. I was one ahead, so I reapproached gate. I had no MWD (low sec Drake) so I was pretty slow and he jumped in while I was 10km off... so I was nervous. He held session timer, however, and Titus jumped in in a Cynabal which sealed the deal.

Finally he broke cloak and yup, he reapproached. I held the rest of gang on the other side. 1st mistake... he was opposite me on the gate so far as spawning distance goes. Had he A. Burned off or B. Just warped, he would have had a chance to live (especially if he warped to station).

Yet, he jumped back through and bam, tackled by our Onyx. I had gang hold fire as he reapproached. This allowed whole gang except Onyx to jump in with him. This time we got a small bump and heavy fire on him... but he made it back, albeit with almost no shield.

Time to think...

Our Onyx was by itself. Bad guy was holding cloak. Do I keep gang this side or jump them in...?

Based on his previous actions I chose to keep gang on this side, crossed my fingers. Sure enough, he broke cloak and didn't burn away.

Instead he aggressed!

Jumped whole gang in, he wasn't even reapproaching. He died.

That was his 3rd mistake. Had he burned off gate, he may have escaped our Onyx. Not an assured thing, but a good chance thing.
Instead he died.

We moved back to null sec halfway there the server crashed. We were pretty pissed, as no one was safe and we had no warning.

Sure enough, server comes back up. EC- is dead, Torrinos is dead. Decide to camp Torrinos Ec- gate. Had a Myrmidon jump in, but no webs available and he made it back to gate. Caught a hauler hauling a crap ton of T1 Loot... and then made it to safe spots in time for the early down time.

CCP fail for making us lose valuable hunting time.

That is all.

October 26, 2010

Bubble Art












From Easley's Blog

A Fight. And A Bloody Nose

Been awhile. Had some small fights in the past week, but no real time to write. Figure I will throw you readers a bone, if any are left after Capsuleer was taken down (are there any left?)

Last night was an ass kicking. In retrospect, it could have been worse.


Formed up 30 bc + 5 scimitars in 5-C. Headed to Fountain, found no targets.

Lost PG in his Scimitar due to RL halfway into roam. Moved up into Cloud Ring. Sat on a gate scout 2j ahead probing for a Severance plex crew in MJYW

Moved gang 1j up to be on gate ready to go. Bomber jumped into us, bubbles up failed decloak. Scout reports over channel command 5 NC.Dot enter local in MJYW. I debate, hear cynabals and fast stuff. My sense tingled but I kept gang on the gate. Too much fuckin chatter in fleet overpowered Sabre6's (scout)  initial report of local spiking. I thought I heard 10, but had to ask again to clarify.

He said 30. Snipe HACS.

Now I know people are arguing "snipe hacs, meh, we should work on a counter"

There is no solid counter. NCdot run snipe hac gangs every day. They are GOOD at it, because that is ALL they do. Not invincible, but good pilots in a shiptype thats hard to lock down. Their logi pilots are also quick on the ball, and many of their opponents (not saying always, but often) have TS spys who give their logistics pilots a supreme edge.
that being said...

I ordered everyone to GTFO gate asap. No time to waste. Warped back QXW gate (we were in MJ) jump on contact, warp XT, jump on contact. Idea was to bail through Cloud Ring in hopes they wouldn't figure it out until we were out.

Bonecaya in a command ship got caught on the in gate in QXW... sad, but he was in a slower ship. We also lost  a Scimitar... not sure how the fuck we lost him when Drakes got out but we did. And... he didn't report it a couple minutes later... which is perrtinent information (logstics are survival).

I also heard 4 scimitars for NCdot... turns out they had five...

Anyways, we jumped into XT and held on the 5-ML gate. Their scout entered XT and I jumped gang 5-ML, hoping they would think we went to Syndicate.

Didn't work.

Their tacklers were on us in 5-ML on B-DB gate; also snipe hacs are FAST. Fast warpers, fast aligners, etc. they were bumping local when we landed with the tacklers on the out gate.

I made a decision to fight at that point, rather than losing 1-2 people each gate. After discussing with Molle, I made the right call... to a point. Molle said 30 bc vs 30 snipe hacs lose every time. I know this, but 30 running bc quickly dwindle to 30 snipe hacs at each jump. His plan would have been align, burn, kill Sabre, warp. You would lose a few on the warp out, but the majority of the gang would survive. I did about 3/4 of those things. Unforunately I missed the last step... warp.

We jumped O-BD and aligned to sun. Why? DOOM always aligns to sun. I needed to keep us in range as long as possible, as DOOM would be spanking MWDs to outdistance us so that our guns couldn't hit while they were well within optimals.

Primaried their Sabre, he died. Primaried Vince Draken's Alt... he got to low shield and reps were on him. Switched primaries several times, but it was pointless. Logstics kep their pilots alive, no matter who I primaried.

As discussed, I should have popped the Sabre and warped everyone out. We were all out of the bubble, and they only had 2x Stilettos and 1 Cynabal for tackle (Scimitars had points but they didn't come back to the gate until later). Hell, I was primaried as we were warping out, and they didn't have a manual point on me and I laughed as I warped off the field. We would have lost 3-5 more guys and the rest would have survived... I just hate the idea of leaving people behind. I also thought we had 4 scimis and they had 4, and figured we would drop a few of their HACS as they aligned out. I figured wrong...

As we were boucing safes I sent scouts to the gates, and pinned down the location of the NCdot fleet. It was a large system, with multiple exits. Choosing an exit gate 60AU from hostile fleet would be good, as all gates had scouts assigned.

The plan I came up with was allow myself to be tackled (DOOM love/hates me, and would not resist warping entire gang to kill me) while gang escaped through Outer Ring. I mentioned this over channel comms, and got tackled at a moon. As soon as DOOM fleet showed up on directional I had fleet warp 5-DMLT and jump on contact. Cardking took over at this point (I can hear you screaming, why let FC die, but we had two great backup FCs on comms, so no worries), but due to miscommunication he jumped gang to X-T. I was trying to kill my tackler and didn't notice, until he jumped gang into QXW... at which point I was like WTF, as we went in a circle and I was dead and they were hunting again. So, Hurricane down fleet was on the run with a 1/2 jump lead again. With long warps, that was a bad situation.
So Cardking decided on a logoffski in MJYW, Doom gave up after half hour, the survivors killed a Test gang and home they went.

It hurts, but we gave them a fight. Lost 2 ships before the fight (the Sleip and slow Scimitar) and 10 ships in the fight. Only killed a Sabre. As we were BC heavy it wasn't horrendous, but being unable to kill even one HAC or Recon is depressing.

Needless to say, the stragglers won't be straggling next time...

Vince (CEO of Doom) had nothing nice to say afterwards, which is no surprise. He insists he caught us running, which contradicts the fight they got... but meh. I have no beef with DOOM, but the consistent shit talking is a bit old. They have failed at holding space time and time again, which has turned into "we didn't ever want space anyways". They aren't strong enough to help Evoke out in Cloud Ring and farm pets of IT and teh NC instead. To each their own I suppose, but as Molle said. 30 BC vs 30 Snipe HACs, what did you expect?

That is all.

October 14, 2010

Sick = Fail

Been sick the last few days, leaving not much motivation for EVE. I'm hoping to be back in commission soon.

PK

October 10, 2010

A Decisive Engagement

Last night was pretty sweet.

I can't go into huge detail on the prep, but the synopsis is as follows:

Convo'd by someone as soon as I logged on. I had just slept for 8 hours (sick) and wasn't really in the mood to do anything, but there were reports of LAA Alliance capitals on a CVA pos.

CVA wanted help, and were willing to help us, help them.

Hmm.

Got more info, and arranged some stuff with CVA leadership while getting a fleet up. We formed up capitals and support.

Looked as if the LAA caps would leave any moment... so we bridged in 40 support inititally, using a CVA cyno. All the LAA caps were warping, but two were caught by CVA in bubbles.

My idea was to keep LAA interested and to "show our hand".

What happened was just funny.

We killed their two carriers.

As the second carrier was dying, the LAA support fleet numbering 60ish landed on the POS. I told fleet to warp out towards sun, we lost one Phobos and one Scimitar.

We safed in system as second half of the fleet finished forming. After 10 min or so, LAA got cocky,

They brought in more caps.

We had cyno set up... and warped the 40 I had, along with another 40 bridging in. We kept caps on standby, due to the number of enemy support in local. And after all was said and done... we didn't need caps at all. :)

CVA bubbled all the caps, we started the fight. I was sucking at target calling, as I was in a nano cane trying to sort macro movements.

Hom3grown took over and executed it perfectly. We engaged their subcaps whilst holding their caps down.

It was a massacre. We lost 2 more ships. One was a Cane that we killed, overview glitch showed him as neut. Second was some idiot who lost a Manticore to one of the enemy carrier's smartbombs.

We killed approximately 83 of their ships. Including 7 carriers and a dread. A second dread self destructed before we could knock him down.

Battle report here.

Due to the smartbombs the "sides" of the battle report are a bit messed.

Hom3 was awesome at the target calling, and I arranged the chess pieces to make it happen. a one-two punch.

Lots of people would say IT is full of carebears etc. Yes, there are many carebears. But there are quite a few killers in the alliance, and MVN is unorthodox and good at its job.

I got quite a bit of flack from other alliance leadership afterwards, because they didn't fully understand the situation and I didn't have time to spoon feed them details as events were unfolding. But, we had things under control (MVN leaders, scouts, etc) and it went EXTREMELY well.

Interesting to work with CVA, even if it was a temporary situation. Thanks for the kills.

That is all.

October 6, 2010

Capsuleer

As many of the other bloggers on the blog pak have stated... I first learned of the blog pak through the Capsuleer program for iPhone.

Without Capsuleer I would never have started writing about the Eve experience. I also would be much more lost as to my skill que and market playing.

The fact that CCP is letting Capsuleer go is... not too intelligent. "Mobile experience" hmmm....

Then again, I am never astounded at CCP's lack of foresight these days. This latest expansion is a perfect example... with not one but 2 emergency patches!

I lost quite a few solo kills in my Sabre due to the new patch blowing ass and not being able to decloak, bubble and approach like I used to. Instead my grouping of buttons would keep coming up...

Joy.

So, there are some petitions and stuff going on, although my confidence in the power of petition is pretty weak. But maybe someone with a half brain that can actually make decisions at CCP would open their eyes and see what every business likes to see.

$$$$$$$$

Yes.

Money.

A successful mobile platform, whether free to the player or not, is an opportunity for sponsorships, advertisements, etc. Maybe a one time fee? Monthly fee would be a bit steep... but you would still have some people bite on it. Equilibrium would probably be a one time download fee. iPhone OS, Android, maybe even BBY or Windows Mobile. It would be so pro...

But instead CCP is being... CCP. It will probably take some time of 20/20 hindsight for them to pull their collective head out of the giant ass its in.

That is all.

Same old story.

Not much happening in the life of PK this past week.

Inbetween studying and taking tests, I have been involved in clean up of sov structures in Catch.

I grabbed all my stuff from low sec (Yong) this week, as well as a couple of corp mates stuff.

September 30, 2010

Hot drops = Emo Rage & Tears in Local

Last night I got home from class, was doing some dishes when I noticed intel pick up. Incoming controlled Chaos Gang from Fountain.

I dried off my hands and hopped on comms. Fleet was already starting to form, and I took the reigns. We got carriers on standby and prepared to ambush them.

Initially we were going to hit them on the in gate (from ZXB into 5-C). This quickly turned impossible as the first CC scout entered 5-C local. I had the bait Geddon warp to KEE- @ 10km and sit there looking dumb.

Scout landed (Rapier) and decloaked. Our cloaky Phobos was late, however, and noticed (or should have) the Phobos cloak up under the gate. I waited, wondering if it would work. I was 900km off the gate at a bookmark, and gang had all warped to me and we were full speed aligned KEE-.

Their gang started landing on the Armageddon, and they all aggressed.

Bam, I had Phobos decloak bubble up and cyno up. Gang warped down to gate, but tackling was pretty fail. All we nailed was a Scimitar (I primaried him as he was close and I got scram/web on him) and a Caracal who, for whatever reason, sat 10km off the gate during the engagement while his friends ran.

They all dissapeared from local and we scrambled to get eyes on them... not into KEE-, not backwards into ZXB, I assumed I-E to M-2 which allows them into KEE- and down the pipe.

I was right, they were reported into JP4 a minute later. We got Hom3 in a bait Astarte into JP4, and held everyone on the jump bridge into JP4 (I didn't want to spike local while they were in there). As the last man was leaving JP4 Hom3 jumped to NOL via JB and we all followed him in. Carriers were already in NOL- aligned to the O-I gate (where the fleet would arrive from) and Hom3 set up shop on the gate.

I jumped ahead of gang into NOL- and warped to a nearby moon aligned down to the gate. Scram + Web + Long Point meant I could hold onto a couple targets. I kept gang in JP4 on the jb to keep local count moderate.

After a couple minutes we were starting to wonder if they had gone south to Querious... when the Rapier scout entered NOL-

Jackpot.

He cloaked off Hom3, who smacked him in local. Local spiked shortly after, Rapier decloaked, and they all started pounding on Hom3. I warped down and tackled an Arazu (short point + web) and Scimitar. Hom3 was going down fast and carriers were taking awhile to get on field.

I dropped the Arazu solo (my alt with fighters whored on the mail only) and moved onto the Scimitar. Hom3 become more and more frantic, "Guys I'm bleeding structure", "Ok I am going to die... wait a little love there! Need more come on guys!"

My carrier landed and was locking hom3 up with both reppers flashing. My reps hit about the same time as the other carriers, and hom3 went from 10% structure to full armor. The pucker factor was intense.

I was extremely busy dual boxing my carrier and my Cane, so Hom3 called primaries. Their gang was in fast moving ships (as described before) but we knocked down Arazu, Scimitar, Rifter and Vexor. The Rapier, Ishtar and Stabber bailed out.

No losses (barely) and some decent kills. In retrospect I shouldn't have allowed Hom3 to be bait for a couple reasons.

1. T2 Command ships, with a couple exceptions, are mainly active tanked with high resists. This tank becomes marginally diminished when confronted with large amounts of DPS all at once. This lack of buffer leaves him out in the open.

2. He only had one point and no bubble. My Cane would have been a better tackler (although it may have died).

But, we ended up doing alright despite the shortcomings.

Oh, and earlier in the day Staffe O of Godfathers was sneaking around 5-C local with a gang waiting in ZXB-. I knew this, doubt he knew I knew.

Found him sitting on ZXB- gate, after he said something about "too many people to fight" in local. We had like 20 over half were docked afk but whatever.

Me and a Harbinger were on gate, I had Harbinger point him. He, of course, jumped into ZXB-.

I did too. Knowing full well his gang was on the other side.

Sure enough, they were all waiting, drones out etc. I held cloak, with gang landing on the other side. As soon as we were in position I started my approach.

Tanked Cane = Win. They all agressed, and I called fleet in.  Only slow thing on field was... Staffe's Hurricane.

I jumped out, as my tank was almost out of armor hitpoints. But Staffe died.

Rest of his gang (ceptors, bombers and a Rupture) got out except for a Hound. Staffe emo'd in local, about blobs and such... but the bottom line is, he got greedy without eyes in 5-C sat on the gate without aligning out. Slowest ship on the field should always be ready to get out asap.

His salty tears fueled my happiness.

That is all.

That is all.

Providence

Couple nights ago I took a fast moving gain up into Catch and into Providence.

In retrospect it was stupid.

We got 24 kills... all frigate hulls (many were T2, but all frig size).

None were in Providence.

I'm not going to go into details... but needless to say there was only one group who formed up rather quickly and gave us a fight (which we couldn't have won or even broken even with, so we had to bail). Important Internet Spaceship League. Thanks guys... wish I had brought heavier ships, but ceptors dictors afs and bombers are horribad against 3 Drakes Cane Cynabal and Onyx.

The rest of the Providence dwellers (CVA included) ran. Even with 20+ in local. I was dissapointed.

CVA was the best. We took a side trip to R3- (near Yong, my happy old dear pirating home). I held gang 2j behind because I was so sick of neutral eyes scouting us and no one wanting to fight. Jumping into R3 I was confronted by a Onyx with bubble up, and a Malestrom/Cyclone combo 70km off the gate.

I held cloak, looked at local (which had several more CVA) and waited to see who would come to whore my "supposed" mail.

No one else. Just the same 3, drones out waiting for my cloak to drop.

"K guys jump in warp to R3 jump on contact. Go go go!"

Fleet started moving, and I prepared to burn back to gate and bubble the Onyx, while making contingency plans in my head. Onyx bubbled down, I figured he was hoping that I would think it was clear and break cloak, at which point he would cycle bubble up (thats what I would do).

Imagine my surprise when Malestrom and Cyclone warped off... at which point I broke cloak and started burning at Onyx (I was 23km off). Unfortunately he warped before I could drop bubble.

So 7 guys scared CVA, who obviously had neutral eyes next door. In small little ships that wouldn't have been able to break an Onyx tank. With two of their own ships in perfect sniping position. It could (if they were smart) been an easy victory for them. But they ran.

We went back to Catch, killed another couple bombers on the way and headed in for the night. None of the kills were epic or worth going into detail on. It was largely unsatisfying.

Funny story... I had 10k of nanite repair paste in my Sabre the entire roam. I meant to bring it to 49-u to sell and have available for me (I overheat lots) but forgot to empty my hold. Thats over 100 mill of repaire paste. In a dictor (aka flying coffin). Scouting. :-)

That is all.

September 28, 2010

Daredevil Down!

Got home from a night of riding to find an op ending, one in which we took a station. Dienekes had found a potential target, so I grabbed yet another Sabre (I lose those lots) and started towards 49-U.

When I hit NOL- I noticed a target in local, who shortly dissapeared. On a whim I jump bridged back to JP4 and started up towards NOL via gates. When I hit D-W I noticed a neut in local (not the same guy) So I reapproached and waited.

Daredevil on scan.

Hmmm.

Local bumps one more, same corp.

Hmmmmmmmmmmm.

Daredevil lands, Flycatcher on scan. Interesting. I could demolish the Flycatcher, but the Daredevil could demolish me.

As the Flycatcher landed, he aggressed. I jumped through and waited session, Daredevil followed. Reapproaching, he aggressed and I jumped back into the Flycatcher. Daredevil hit hard, had me at 50% shields... not allowing me to safely take on the Flycatcher.

I bounced back and forth for a good 5 minutes. Meanwhile Dienekes was burning up from 49-U in a Scimitar.

I ended up disengaging as things got a little sketch. I tried to sucker them towards NOL-, but they ended up continuing on their original course towards Fountain.

I had held them up just enough, however, and Dienekes and I jumped into I-E and then to 5-C ahead of the two former Atlas guys.

First whim was to sit on KEE- and wait. Upon jumping into 5-C and seeing empty local, however, I decided to be more sneaky. I warped to ZXB- at 30km, with Dienekes warping at 0km. Plan was to put me in a position to make tackle and keep DK safe while he repped me. I also jumped my alt into system and assigned fighters.

Sure enough, after about 2 minutes of waiting local bumped by two neuts. Immediately I bubbled up and waited.

First, Flycatcher appeared on scan. He landed barely touching the bubble (the smaller the ship, the less they fall into the bubble on warp in. Pods and shuttles usually land outside the bubble in fact). I started locking, and cursed as he warped off. My Sabre had a cloak on it and it cost me, and single bubble had yet to cycle.

Daredevil was on scan at this point, despite my worries that his buddy would notice the Scimitar on the gate. Daredevil landed 4km off of me, and luckily I had a bubble ready. He had yellow boxed me prior to bubbling him, perhaps he would have fought. Regardless, I bubbled the Daredevil, which allowed me to finish locking and drop a point and web on him. Unfortunately I was not scram fit... but it didn't matter as he kept a tight orbit and started hitting me hard (Neutron Blaster IIs, very very short range on frig size, but good damage). Dienekes saved me with reps, and the Daredevil started to take damage. Fighters weren't able to track him, so it was my guns that were doing the damage and it was taking forever.

As he hit half shield he started to move away, perhaps realizing this was a bad situation to be in (derpa derpa). I was never going less than half shields and I had started overheating guns to finish this quick. With the web on him he wasn't able to move far. He started webbing me in an attempt to break free, but in doing so he started moving directly away from me.

Ooops.

0km/s transversal meant wrecking shots from my autocannons, and it certainly wrecked him. Down he went.

His pod was on the edge of the bubble... so I popped another one to keep him still until I finished locking. I held him until DK got on the mail, and then we sent him home the quick way.

In local he had one sentence, "Man bad luck"

Dienekes simply wrote back "Nah".

Good planning with good execution made that kill possible. It may have been overconfidence from our previous meeting that led that Daredevil to stick and fight when he should have immediately started burning off when he landed in the bubble.

We warped to the station (I needed to rep overheated mods) and noticed the Flycatcher sitting on it... weird.

33km off and he warped... damn. Warped to empty space... alt-x and moons popped up... bam! 5-1

Warped to 5-1 and he logged.

We sat and waited for almost an hour but he didn't log back in. Oh well, we got the Daredevil. Good stuff. Only 2 kills, but it was a well executed plan with a satisfying ending.

That is all.