Roams and HED-

Wish I had time to write yesterday... while roams were still fresh on my mind. Unfortunately my work had their annual audit and there was all hustle bustle and no down time.

Basically, two nights ago, we roamed around Catch. Roaming on the way to HED-GP to cover for Bonecaya. Earlier that day we had taken one of the very few moons in HED- and dropped a tower, but it was unarmed at the time.

I had an op planned that evening (USTZ) but the emergency op to take the moon in HED- bled into my departure time, so I postponed leaving by about an hour. But when the time came, we had a very nice shield gang set to go.

First stop was GE-. PL and -A- were at it again, but this time PL seemed to be in control. I played on the GE- gate in V-3 and waited. Sure enough PL started peeking around, and a Dramiel + Rapier + Ceptor came into V-3.

Dramiel kited.... Ares pointed... then Dramiel got in close on my Cane and started hitting me. He was slowly breaking tank, emphasis on slowly. I called Hom3grown in with his Ceptor, as the Dramiel was taking decent damage from my 425s. He started burning away best he could, which was tough given I neuted his cap to shit with 2x Medium neuts. Warrior IIs were hitting him as well. Hom3 landed as the Dramiel was burning away out of overheated point range.

Problem for him was... he was burning straight out. Barrage + 0 transversal = pwnage. As he hit 40km out, Hom3 still holding him, the Dramiel popped.

GF

Nothing spectacular about his fit, but he didn't call his buddies in. I was assuming my gang was scouted waiting next door. Catch right now is a madhouse of people evacing and people shooting the evacing residents and neutral alts everywhere.

After realizing the futility of baiting PL or -A- we moved towards head. In 36N we caught this Blackbird, who cloaked after Hom3 jumped in with him. We called gang in to help decloak, just as they started hopping in Hom3 found him and BOOM went the Blackbird.

At this point we covered for the pos guy of MVN, Bonecaya. I had thought this would be a short cover op... until he told me it would be 12-14 trips and Agil was 4j.

Eff that.

"Everyone in fleet who can fly an Iteron X up"

Lots of X's.

"Everyone who X'd and isn't an outlaw, jump Keberz and move to Agil. Once there you buy an iteron and open trade with &^%*&^%"

So we covered while 14x Iterons moved all of our POS equipment in one trip.

While this was going on a Drake who had DC'd from gang (and not spoken up, nor asked if it was clear before logging in) started yelling about being tackled. I was not happy; one, he ended up dying. Secondly, if I had known we could have used him as bait. The other thing was I had mentioned, several times, that there were skirmish forces moving all around Catch, and lone travelers or people trying to catch gang in a non cloaky were in trouble. So basically, it was "I told you so". Although he was in my fleet, I took no responsiblity for his lost Drake.

As it was he had jumped into SV5 (next door to HED-) and a skirmish force of En Garde (10 guys, give or take) tackled and started hitting him. They had Legion, Apoc, Hyperion, among other ships. I ordered everyone to the SV5 gate and only light tackle through. My gang size was approaching 70 at this point.

I should have been more specific on fast tackle. I mean, to me, this means ceptors recons and dictors.

I am very OCD about fleet, both in terms of composition and ship locations. I knew how much light tackle I had. My plan was to send them through, only bumping local about equal numberwise to a much heavier (compared to light tackle) equipped En Garde gang. En Garde would certainly stay on field, hoping to kill a weaker force, at which point committed and tackled/bubbled I would bring in the hammer.

What actually happened was a good 1/3 of my fleet including Drakes and other big shit jumping into SV5 and spiking local way more than I wanted.

Guess what the En Garde gang did? Yup. They burned out of the bubbles my dictors dropped and we caught one Brutix.

One.

Brutix.

Out of battleships and a potential T3 and some reconds and other BCs.

One.

Brutix.

What transpired afterwards for the next 2-3 minutes was PK emo raging the shit out of comms. Verbal lashing in fleet chat by many other angry/disappointed fleet members also went on.

The selfish needs of a few cost the gang many good kills. Stupid noobs. I calmly ended my rant with this:

"Next time I see that shit you will be kicked from fleet and comms. You will find your way home yourself."

We finished the POS part of the roam and moved out towards my original destination: Providence. I knew I needed to wrap the roam soon, as it had been 2 hrs already and gang was gettign tired I was sure. Hom3 was forwards scout, I was scout. This combo works great, as the forward scout can skirmish and bring in the secondary to either box it in or bring a bigger fight.

First kill was a Vengeance he started tussling with in T-RPFU. Vengeance aggressed his Stiletto (no brainer) and I jumped in my Cane. Neuts from my Cane allowed Hom3 to GTFO when he started to crack, and gang followed in shortly and repped him up. Vengeance died.

We poked around the closer Providence systems, trying to find targets. Nothing. Some systems had plenty of neuts but no one wanted to fight. Then we hit the Important Internet Spaceship League constellation. I was +1 of gang, Hom3 in an offshoot. Local spiked... with some neutrals I was not familiar with. I held on our in gate, and directional popped with lots of T1 stuff. No other gates in scan range...

"Fleet be ready, fleet be ready"

They all landed. Yellow boxes popped, turning quickly to red. I orbited gate at close range, tank slowly dropping but not alarmingly fast. All agressed...

"Fleet jump jump, grab whatever you can and kill it. Reps on PK"

No need for primaries, more important was to grab as many of the fast movers as possible. As I hit 1/4 shield reps topped me off, and we killed lots. We lost one dictor... not sure how, but he died. Other than that we killed 15.

Fleet moved home without incident. This roam also had plenty of other, smaller kills. Shuttles, noob ships, things the gang knocked off especially while camping HED-.

Long freaking roam, but the little tussle at the end made up for it.

That is all.