October 26, 2010

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.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well fought. You got hit with a phenomenally tough counter and still managed to get most of your guys out.

reaper cross said...

(if any are left after Capsuleer was taken down (are there any left?)

+1

Carry on good sir!

Seer said...

Have been waiting for you to post--still will read even with Capsuleer dead.