March 16, 2010

Atlas & Intruders

Yesterday was quite adventurous.

No, really, it was.

How, you ask me? Well let me tell you.

I got home from work and logged into s-6. I had left for work with a neutral Ishtar stuck in system with his cov ops alt. He had proven to be aggressive and somewhat ballsy and/or stupid. We barely missed him on his entrance to our home system 5-c due to a cloaky mwd trick (which was done poorly but with a non sensor boosted bc and Tengu on gate proved to be enough to get away). While hunting him I was running an alt into S-6 picking up a carrier spawn I had gotten earlier. While hunting the Ishtar I glanced over at my laptop where my alt was sitting in an Itty V waiting for me to jump her into S-6 when I saw the Ishtar on overview. He was at 200km off the gate when I started barking commands. He warped in at 70km and approached, then lit the hauler up. First volley took me into slight armor. I jumped my alt through and by the time we landed on the gate he was gone.

A few minutes later, low and behold, he jumps both toons into S-6.

Bad move.

For those that don't know, S-6 is a dead end system.

So for you aspiring FC's this is how it goes. We know that this guy has a cloaky alt and is stuck in a dead end system. Logic says when he is ready to leave he will scout with alt first. You put cloaky dictor on gate with cloaky Rapier for webbing so he can't reapproach and some stealth bombers/T3s with cloak for DPS. Have all non cloaking ships at an off grid or nearby planet aligned to the gate. He will jump scout through, see clear gate and bring Ishtar in. You let the cov ops go to get the Ishtar.

Well I waited as the eyes in s-6 with probes out in case he got sloppy (he had cloak, but as its an Ishtar he cannot warp while cloaked). I almost pegged him a couple times but he warped off as soon as I de cloaked. As luck would have it I had to head off to work. I transferred command to an aspiring FC and hoped we would get him. When I got back that night and logged on in S-6 the word came that the Ishtar pilot had done exactly what I thought he would, and our trap sprung perfectly. Pop went the Ishtar. Congrats to Sundiel, who took over and succesfully killed the noob.

So as I logged on, I dropped some probes and scanned down two anomalies. The first was a Radar site. The second was a wormhole. Class 9. Goes to nullsec... directly? I eagerly jumped through and to my surprise, I found myself in Deteroid.

Atlas space.

Jackpot.

Word went out and in no time we had 15 pilots ready to go. In we went, and set course for our old staging system 0-W.

To our dissapointment there was no targets. I scouted into 0-w and spotted a Maelstrom undocking. He warped to a gate and I follwed. I barely missed the tackle on the other side (at this time the fleet was holding 2 jumps away as to not be reported). There were 7 people in system with me after missing the Maelstrom. I found them hiding in a pos. I laughed in local at several battleships, a couple battlecruisers and one cruiser sitting in there all logged on. They tried to snub me with "need more probes", to which I responded along the lines of Bobby Atlas and anal probes. Bottom line was one Maverick had them all safed up. I told them how flattered I was and left.

After messing around in a bascially empty Atlas home space we had reports of an incoming gang back home. 2x Vagabond, 1x Omen, 1x Falcon, 1x Harbinger, 1x Enyo and 2x Scimitar. Immediately we burned back to the wormhole, some 12 jumps away. The gang was already in 5-C went we got back to Delve space, and I immediately opened up the roaming fleet to those waiting at home. Before I knew it we had some 35 people in gang. The enemy fleet was leaving 5-C and we pursued. Immediately one of my tacklers reported he had a Harbinger caught in KEE on the 5-C gate. We were already jumping through and that Harbinger melted in 15 seconds.

As he popped I was already ordering everyone to the next system 4xo. As my scout/tacklers were hitting the outgate that goes to JP4 they were jumping out. We all landed and started popping through. Then I heard the weirdest thing ever. "Enemy is on the D-w gate in JP4 at various ranges". What the hell? "Everyone that has not already warped D-w warp to D-w at range!!" I yelled. Immediately my guys started landing all around the enemy. We popped an Omen immediately. Then the Enyo went down. The Vagabonds got out, as did the Falcons and Scimitars. We started bouncing around trying to find them. Then one of my scouts I had put in 4xo reported them backtracking! He bubbled them and they reapproached. Why, I have no idea. I mean, there were like 1-2 people in there. Burn out of the bubble and run like hell. When they came through, everyone was there. Webs points and bubbles locked them down. The Falcon barely got out (which pissed me off) but the Scimitars went down. Scimitar one, Scimitar two.  Anzac had been joining the party at this point, and in Anzac blobbing fashion the enemy fleet logged a vaga off in JP4. He was probed down and popped by Anzac 5 min later. Falcon stayed logged in and cloaked for several hours, no one ever caught him. Later on the Vaga that logged in 4xo without aggression logged in and burned into Fountain (if I had had a bubbler active I would have tagged him in ZXB, but my Tengu isn't fast enough).

Like I have said before, being an FC doesn't always mean getting on killmails, and the Harbinger was the only one I managed to get onto. The success of the gang left me more than satisfied. The enemy fleet was annihilated, we took no losses (at least Mavs took no losses). There are definately some kinks with some of the new guys in corp. I had to bark some STFUs due to unnecessary chatter, and we had some fail tackling as well. But its coming along quite nicely.

That is all.

No comments: