Ombeve

Further to our Sylph WarDec of a few days ago, Goonswarm decided to ‘dec us. They had finished with Kenzoku (used to be Band of Brothers), and Kenzoku had withdrawn to Empire to decide their next move. You need to keep 5426 pilots occupied, and they ‘decced a few other alliances beside us. Just to complete the trinity, we decced Fidelis Constans (FCON), another Providence dweller under CVA’s protective umbrella.

The wars have gone well, our killboard shows a healthy ratio of ISK killed to ISK lost. Sometimes Sylph and FCON team up with a large fleet and come into Empire where they can legally shoot us, but we are used to avoiding large fleets and have eyes all over the place, so losses have been minimal to these large fleets.

As for Goonswarm, we have lost more ships than killed at the moment, but have killed more in ISK. I suspect this is due to us using T1 ships against T2 ships in those instances. Goonswarm have a lot on their plate at the moment with empire wars, so we aren’t seeing a lot of them unless we venture down to Agil, or other trade hubs.

I have been ship loss free, until yesterday when I lost my Taranis. I try not to get attached to ships, but this ‘ranis had been involved in a lot of kills over the week. At least it went down fighting.

I had just been made aware of a Typhoon and Rapier in Shintaht on the H6- gate, by Rye Contini. He had scuffled with them but got away. He would warp back and make them engage him while we mustered in H6. There wasn’t many of us, and we were mainly in small ships. While we gathered a handful of ships, a Typhoon and Arbitrator joined the Rapier. We could still take them providing we took the Rapier out quick-sharp. They aggressed Rye, we jumped in. Conlin was in a Rapier also, so if I did get webbed, I’d MWD like hell- the Rapier would be webbed in return and I’d manage to burn out of his range before I died (hopefully!).

Shintaht appeared to me, I wasted no time getting into close orbit on the Rapier, ejecting drones and laying into him, afterburner blazing…waiting for the webs. The Arbitrator jumped out, but the Typhoon weighed in with his drones. The Rapier’s shields collapsed and he went down very quickly to the torpedoes of the SBs we had with us, and we quickly switched to the Typhoon, allowing the Rapier’s pod to escape.

It seems that Rye was soaking up most of the incoming fire in his Jaguar, including from the Sanshas on the gate. The overview showed a bomb launched, which confused me momentarily, then I realised it was one of ours- uh oh. “BOMB BOMB BOMB” I shouted over comms, but I knew I’d be OK. My AB was on, not MWD, so my speed was high and I’m a small target…. it still wiped my shields out. I saw a blue flash, and my heart sank- it was Rye’s Jaguar. The small damage he took from the bomb was enough to finish off his smashed up ship.

The Typhoon had taken full damage from the bomb, buckling his armour and the ship’s reactor went up in a massive explosion . The bomber pilot apologised profusely, he hadn’t meant to fire off the bomb. He settled things with Rye via a quick ISK transfer.

The gang spread out, and I made my way back to Y-M where most of the action generally was. As I materialised in Y-M, there was a Malediction on the gate, quickly joined by a Jaguar. OK, I can take the Mala quickly, then i’ll see what happens with the Jag. The Mala was only 10km away, so I decloaked, orbitted and scrammed, drones and guns. He was getting chewed up immediately, but then a Rapier either decloaked or warped in… followed by another. I was webbed to a crawl. Oh crap. OK, I was going down, but I’d try to take the Mala with me. It went into structure as I (again) forgot to overheat my guns, but then my ship was shot out from under me. I quickly got my pod out to the Kari gate and into Esa.

Time for a new Taranis… or maybe something else…

My Vagabond re-appears in normal space as I exit warp on top of the Jita gate in Perimeter. I take a breath, request a jump to Jita, and promptly vanish in a flash of energy.

Jita appears to me as I materialise 13km off the Perimeter gate. There are so many ships here. I check the local channel for a count- 935, and this number is fluctuating up and down by the second. Apparently, the best of the best gate operators work in the Jita system and adjoining systems. You have to be good to cope with the staggering volume of ships that come through here constantly.

As expected, a Sylph war target is in local, and presumably in or near 4-4 Caldari Navy Assembly Plant. I hold on the gate to see if maybe they are warping here, but nothing doing. Warping to the station from the Perimeter gate puts you behind the station, so I orient the sharp nose of the Vaga and MWD over to the undocking point. Many Privateer Alliance members are there in battleships, no doubt prosecuting their many war-decs they have running.

My patience wears thin quite quickly- I hate Jita’s crowds- so after 10 minutes of watching the ant-like slow procession of ships undocking and warping off, I cut my losses and head back to Kari, but don’t see any Sylph on the way. In fact, Sylph in empire have suddenly become a rare site. U’K did get some kills earlier in the day, but not much since. Most of the kills subsequently have been in 0.0 as you’d expect.

I tune into the gang’s comms that are in Y-M/ Kari area and it sounds like they are getting some sporadic action. 10 jumps later I am in Esa, and I pick up a small bubble  and enter Y-M. The gang are a loitering at various ranges around the gate. I warp up to a spot a few hundred KM off the gate, then back to a spot 50km off the gate that I bookmarked the other day. That spot is the place for a drag bubble. I launch the bubble with a hydraulic SWOOSH, and instruct the bubble to anchor. It’ll take 2 minutes. I get some range, and cloak up.

We don’t have to wait for long, and a CVA Typhoon exits warp, but from a different direction and doesn’t get dragged to bubble. He seems to be within jump range of the gate, but we attack him anyway, suspecting he’s bait. He is starting to go down quite quickly, and doesn’t seem to jump out. As suspected, local channel count spikes, and in come the first of the CVA fleet, interceptors arriving ahead of everything else due to their fast warp speed. The Typhoon is in structure and we are aligned out already. I enter warp as the ‘phoon explodes, and warp up to my spot off the gate. I see the CVA fleet have been sucked into the bubble, which buys us some time, but an U’K Zealot and Thorax are caught and despatched.

Now our gang is cloaked and safe, the CVA fleet destroy the small bubble and after a few minutes warp to D6 and disappear from local. All apart from one, an Abaddon who’s name seems familiar. Sure enough I run a check, and find out it’s the Abaddon from a couple of days ago that our gang attacked, was repped by the Guardian and I lost my Rapier over.

I take the opportunity to warp to the gate and go get another couple of bubbles from Esa, when the FC decides to have a go at the Abaddon. It’ll probably jump through, but what the hell. I leave them to it, and listen to the engagement. The pilot doesn’t jump through…. and loses his ship AND pod. I review his CONCORD kill record, and to my amazement, he had fitted two frigate size lasers, one cruiser sized laser and two battleship sized lasers. I rarely criticise other people fittings, but I couldn’t work out a good reason for a fit like this. I shrug mentally.

I re-enter Y-M and put up another bubble, but no-one is playing ball, CVA fleet re-appears and shoots bubble then goes again. I jump out to Esa to chase a Sylph Condor when Narahashi says he has found a Wormhole in Esa, and that a POS inside it is being assault by several battleships, including a Hictor, and the W-Space side of the WH has three large bubbles on it. The POS owners are at the POS and asking for help.

After a few minutes where we re-assemble outside the station and our FC talks to the POS owner over NeoCom, it turns out Narahashi can’t exit the WH for us to warp to him as he doesn’t have a cloak, and the entrance is bubbled and guarded. I dock up, strip the cloak off my Vagabond, buy and fit probe launcher and scan down the WH.

I warp to it, expecting a scout, but nothing. The rest of the gang warps to me, and we put in a couple of ships to see. They are attacked by a Megathron, Prophecy, Drake and Myrmidon, so we all pile in. As the WH dumps us out in W-Space (J172052), my ships shields get 25% stronger due to the Pulsar effects in here. Great! I am in a bubble, so zoom out and see the hostiles. The Mega is called primary, and we go about it, spreading scramblers onto secondary and tertiary although they are in the bubbles at the moment.

As you’d expect it’s a one sided fight, and their pods are also despatched. Having done our white knight bit, we all get out of the wormhole as it’s close-ish to collapsing- I go last as I have a probe launcher fitted and make it back into Esa OK.

We hear of a medium size camp in Y-M on the Kari gate, reship up to Battleships and go to meet them head on…

Recently, 20+ Titans gathered in an extreme show of force and Doomsdayed a Carrier, just to show it could be done.

This would provoke a reaction in most people, probably polarising opinion into “OMG cool”, or “Terrible for Eve”. Fellow alliance mate and blogger Wotlankor feels quite strongly about it. Read his opinion here.

[OOC] Just like to preface this with a hello to my readers from the CVA forums. Hope you are enjoying the writings of a terrorist/ freedom fighter (delete as applicable)

The Y-M area that I wrote about in the last installment was now a trickier place to operate in. The last couple of days had seen the ProviBloc adapt to us and respond with a  mix of ships and numbers to effectively counter our ships. We were getting kills here and there, but on the whole we lost a ship at the same time.

Seeing the way the wind was blowing, I decided to roam further ’south’. It seems a couple of others had the same idea, Dalv and a couple of others were in the U-H area, and reported a Zealot sat at a planet.

I jumped in, and our force reported in- we had me in a Rapier, Dalv in a Rupture, and a couple of the others in SBs. As the search was on, I waited on the gate with the SBs, seeing what we could catch. An Abaddon jumped through, so we engage it, I put myself into an orbit of 19km quickly, my 220mm Vulcans still missing occasionally, to my annoyance (I made a mental note to stick to artillery from now on with Rapiers!). His shield vanished quickly, and we were chewing into his armour quite nicely. His armour repairer was overwhelmed with the job at hand, and … that’s when it started to go wrong- a Guardian logistics cruiser jumps in. Oh crap.

We stayed on the Abaddon, hoping to get it into structure quickly, but nothing doing, the shimmering nanobot stream from the Guardian was repairing the Abaddon faster than we could damage it. We do the logical thing and switch to the Guardian, but we were in trouble as a Malediction, Taranis, Punisher and Incursus now join the fray. I immediately switch to the Taranis, double web, scram and start taking him apart. I begin to think perhaps we can get out of this, as I can take these frigs down without too much problem. As the Taranis enters half armour, it suddenly shoots up to full armour- the Guardian is repping him also. OK, I am now in trouble. MWD is knocked out by a scrambler, my shields are starting to fail. With any luck I’ll have bought time for the others to get out, and I instruct the crew to abandon ship.

Looking around for a celestial to warp to once my pod is spat out, I switch my attention to the more fragile Incursus who I can probably take with me before the Guardian can do anything about it. My armour is taking a battering from the drones and various munitions, but the Incursus is taking a beating too, and enters structure… just… one…. more…. volley….

[ 2009.06.16 18:47:07 ] (combat) Your group of 220mm Vulcan AutoCannon II hits speedcat <CVA>(Incursus), doing 162.5 damage.
[ 2009.06.16 18:47:09 ] (combat) Your group of 220mm Vulcan AutoCannon II lightly hits speedcat <CVA>(Incursus), doing 143.2 damage.
[ 2009.06.16 18:47:11 ] (combat) Your group of 220mm Vulcan AutoCannon II is well aimed at speedcat <CVA>(Incursus), inflicting 170.2 damage.
[ 2009.06.16 18:47:13 ] (notify) Ship is out of control

Meh. I get my pod out to an asteroid belt, saving myself the annoyance of waking up in a clone bay, and warp straight back to the gate where I just was, and jump out. Good fight, the Guardian pilot swung the battle for them.

I make my way out to Kari, taking the chance of ending up in a bubble, but nothing was there to impede my travel. As I dock up in Esa, a message comes through from U’K Council- everyone return to F4 immediately, for an announcement. Curious. I have an Executioner in my hangar, set up for fast travel, and I get back to F4 in about 30 minutes with no incident. I see Wotlankor in his Jaguar approaching the very busy docking ramp, ships flitting around. Last time I saw him was 12 hours ago, he was being shot at by an Abaddon at long range. I don’t think it was doing much damage, but I’ll talk to him later.

I dock up, it’s really busy- busier than I’ve ever seen F4, no-one seems to know what the announcement is about. Naturally we all gravitate to the bar, and I am recreating my Rapier death with glasses and cups representing ships and gates when Wotlankor arrives. I haven’t seen him in person for over a week, so we bearhug and I buy him a drink. Conversation is loud in the bar, raucous even, as comrades are reunited in person and not just voices over comms.

After a while, an announcement is made over the intercom, which can be heard throughout the station.

“Your attention please, brave warriors. Your attention please.” A momentary pause to allow the hubbub to subside. “Thankyou for your hasty return to F4, I hope your journeys were trouble free… at least no trouble for YOU.” Some laughter and cheering. “You have been brought back to F4 for an announcement which will take place at 0900 sharp in the Conference Hall. So, please eat, drink and be merry, the bar is free for tonight!” Much cheering and applause, and the noise levels soon rose again.

The rest of the evening was a blur, I don’t really remember a great deal. I woke up with a pounding head and a furry tongue, but at least I was in my berth. I got myself up and activated my DETOX1F implant- a miracle of modern Cybernetics to be honest. Within 10 minutes, it would clear my head, but I had to drink two pints of water or it wouldn’t work properly. I drank the water then stripped off my clothes from last night and had a shower.

Sure enough, I was feeling much better when I stepped out, got dressed in some light clothes, strapped on my boots and walked up the Conference Hall. I was slightly early but found a seat next to some corpmates, and we chatted as the room filled up. At 0900 sharp, Kerth Gersen, the Alliance leader walked onto the dais at the head of the room, and approached a stand with a microphone. The noise subsided to complete silence.

“Warriors, I hope you enjoyed last night, and that your heads don’t hurt so much now. The reason you have been gathered here is to let you know something of great importance, and I wanted to tell you in person. As you know, we have quite a history, and a black spot on that history is the actions of Sylph Alliance. We have been regularly hitting them in Catch and Providence, but today, we are stepping it up a level. We have just issued a CONCORD sanctioned WarDec, and in 24 hours we are cleared to fight them in empire.”

My longing to fly a Rapier again came back to me in waves as I docked up in Agil on a supplies trip, and on an impulse I bought one that was reasonably priced.

I had always fitted artillery to the Rapier, keeping my distance but close enough to keep their ships webbed. However, when solo roaming you have to be within 24km to apply disruption to their warp core. So, the extra range arty buys you is largely useless. Autocannons are easier to fit, requiring less load on the ship’s powergrid and output more damage.

So after doing some calculations, I purchased some 425mm Autocannons, absolute monsters that spit massive shells out at a frightening rate (almost double the size of the usual Vulcans I mount on cruiser hulls normally) and various other modules, including a couple of Small Bubbles. They’re called small but I could only fit two in the cargohold.

Making my way to the Kari entrance point to Providence, I received intel that there wasn’t a hostile camp on the other side and jumped in, immediately enveloping myself in the safety of my cloak.

I have included a map of the area for reference, above.

In the local channel, I see some U’K pilots, but we have settled into a pattern of leaving our ships powered up and cloaked even when we are busy doing other things in our pods other than hunting. This means they never know when we’re active or not.

On comms I find Wotlankor and Lilan are actively on the prowl, so I synch to their voice channels. They are both in Stealth Bombers, which is good- I can keep the small ships off them that are usually death to SBs, and they can provide much needed damage output. I hook up with them in D61, and we prowl around. I don’t have to wait long.

I am near to the H6 gate, and observe Lilan jump through to me and warp off. He’s followed by two frigates, a Hawk Assault Frigate and Raptor Interceptor. I don’t really want to take on the Raptor as he can keep outside my web and AC range and pepper me with missiles. I doubt he could kill me before I made the gate, but he’d be an annoyance. However, the problem is solved as he warps off, presumably chasing Lilan.

The Hawk just sits off the gate, 16km from me, not moving. I decloak, wait the agonisingly long time before my sensors re-calibrate, finally resolving a lock. I scramble and web the unlucky AF, and unleash the full fury of the 425s. A second later, my complement of drones are despatched, hungrily rushing to the Hawk like a hungry man to a buffet table. To my annoyance I notice I have Barrage loaded, not necessary at this range, and the Hawk will likely be shield tanking.

Sure enough it takes a bit of time to chew through his shields, not helped by the fact some of my rounds are missing their target- something I am not used to. The Raptor doesn’t return and no-one comes to save the stricken ship as it explodes. The pod gets away as I am more concerned with recalling my drones and cloaking again, which I do.

As it turns out, Lilan has dealt with the Raptor- it had warped to a small Provibloc gatecamp in the same system and Lilan likes nothing better than lobbing bombs at camps. A concussion bomb had taken the Raptor apart- no other casualties, but since a new production method had been found to manufacture bombs, they now cost around 700k ISK and not the ridiculous 15m that they used to be. So, for a 700k bomb, a ~15m ISK Raptor was killed (plus fittings). Not a bad swap.

After a bit more hunting, we decide a drag bubble is a good idea, so I launch one during a quiet moment, in an attempt to snare the fairly heavy industrial ship traffic warping to the H6 gate. I make my way 50km behind the H6 gate in line to the Y-M gate, and anchor the bubble. A couple of ships warp to the gate while it’s being anchored, I can only assume it’s been reported. As the bubble goes up, a Sentinel Electronic Attack Ship warps in and gets pulled to the edge of the bubble. Wotlankor is cloaked with me, but we don’t engage the ship- his torpedos won’t do much to it, and it’ll just jam me. It warps off, and an Onyx Hictor and Malediction arrives on gate, but from a different direction and don’t get sucked into the bubble.

The Onyx starts to move slowly toward the bubble and Maled MWDs away from us, presumable to get 150km between it and the bubble (the minimum warp distance possible), so he can warp to it. In the meantime a Bestower exits warp and gets dragged to the bubble. Perfect. We decloak and make quick work of the ship, Wotlankor’s torpedos doing huge damage to it. It goes up in an explosion. As soon as the Maled sees me (I assume), he turns off his MWD and slows right down- still outside of my web range. The Onyx starts peppering me with missiles, but they are Kinetic based and not really doing much to me. The Malediction once more runs at me and Wotlankor, and gets within 40km, 30km, 20km…. and I web him now he’s within range of my guns.

Again, my tracking isn’t great, and in the back of my mind I realise it’s the Barrage ammunition- due to the immense charge to increase it’s range, it negatively effects tracking. On 220s it’s not so bad but the big 425s tracking isn’t great to start with. However, my drones chew him nicely, and he’s done. Wotlankor has sensibly cloaked up already, SBs are too fragile to be anywhere near an interceptor or an Onyx for that matter.

I warp off to get rid of the Onyx’s lock, and cloak. I assume the bubble will now be destroyed, but no big deal,  I have more. Our gang keeps growing in size slowly as more U’K become active, or hear the chatter on comms and come to area, like sharks scenting blood in the water.

We manage to snag a Sacrilege a bit later on, then I safespot and power down for a break and to give the crew time to rotate and rest.

Couple of hours later, back up and I hear the gang has grown again and is camping Kari gate in Y-M. This is quite amusing seeing as this is one of the main entrypoints to Providence. I arrive and set up a drag bubble behind the gate, to drag warpers from D61 gate past. While we wait, I peruse the killboard. In the 2 hours I was offline, the gang have killed: Buzzard, Manticore, Armageddon, Falcon, Arbitrator x2, Harbinger, Hawk,
Iteron Mk5, Iteron Mk4, Ares, Caldari Navy Hookbill, Kestrel and Drake with zero loss.

The drag bubble is clearly known about as a few inties warp to the gate at range or from different angles and don’t get sucked in. A Muninn is buzzing around at about 90km from us, and as we decloak to kill as Kestrel, it starts shooting at us. I stay decloaked to see what we he does- he’s using Tremor ammo, so it’s not doing much to my shields at all when he switches to me.

The interceptors start getting closer and a Stiletto races in very close. Lovely. I have pre-locked him, now apply scram, webs and guns, and then drones. As his speed bleeds off, the rumble from my ACs rocks the ship and tracers arc toward the ship, starting to hit home as the guns start to track him. I am taking damage from the Muninn and now a Malediction, but I am concetrating on hitting the Stiletto and also on the scanner to watch for more incoming- the interceptors must be trying to hold me down for a larger gang. The Stiletto pops, and immediately switch to the Maled.

The Stealth Bombers wisely stay cloaked, the Muninn would kill then very quickly. However, a gang-mate in a Taranis (a neutral pilot who has an axe to grind with the Provibloc for his own reasons) helps me call the Malediction and it goes down. Not a moment too soon, scanner shows ships incoming so I warp to a spot 300km off the gate. The Muninn loses lock and I cloak… and watch a gaggle of ships arrive on the gate. Too late.

We decide to move to D61, keep these guys guessing. As we camp the H6 gate, it starts hotting up. We are all cloaked, and an Ishtar lands on gate and pumps out T2 sentries drones- nasty, very nasty. A Drake warps in at lands 90km off gate. For some reason he starts moving toward the gate… which is odd given his missiles will easily fly the 9okm. Quickly I realise his spot is aligned with a planet/ belt cluster behind him so I tell the gang to stand by, warp to the planet, then back at 70km from the gate. As I exit warp, I see the Drake get closer, closer, I can pick out individual windows on the hull… oh crap. Luck is on my side as I end up 4500m from him.

“Gang, warp to planet 4, then back to Ombey at 0km. Go!” I instruct the gang. They tell me when they are in warp back to me, and I decloak having put some distance between me and Drake. I scramble, web and start attacking him, my drones getting a good feeding today. The Ishtar lights me up and I tense to see what damage those T2 sentries can do at 70km. Ouch. My shields take an almighty hit as the rest of the gang decloak and start attacking the Drake. Next volley, my shields and part armour gone. Drake is going down hard now, into 50% armour. I recall drones and align. BANG, I actually feel my ship’s armour plates vapourise and I’m into structure. I won’t survive another volley so I immediately warp as the Drake dies.

I am not sure if Sentries can hit SBs at that range, but I was glad he was firing at me rather than them. Especially as I got out OK! I get repaired by some armour maintenance drones a gang-mate was carrying.

By now, some hours after the carnage had begun the Provibloc were responding in a co-ordinated manner. Our gang ended up split into 2 systems, with a gatecamp in the middle of us- D61 and Y-M. I was in D61 with roystonvasey in a Vagabond and Meera in an SB, and the rest of the gang were in Y-M with the camp. That didn’t stop them killing quite a lot in there, including 2 Abaddons in belts apparently, while the camp stubbornly refused to move off the gate.

In the meantime, Meera found a Myrmidon in a belt killing some Sanshas, so we gave the Sanshas a hand, despatching the Myrmidon who was under Sansha fire from a couple of Battleships until the end. After we picked the wreck  clean the Sanshas started to fire on us, clearly not happy that we ’stole’ their ‘kill’. Their damage was pitiful, so they were ignored.

It became clear the camp wasn’t going anywhere, they had the gate locked down nicely, and although i was confident I could’ve run it and got past, I wasn’t going to risk ending a great few hours hunting with a stupid loss, so I safespotted and powered down the ship. The crew were jubilant, I was happy- not often we get to kill lots of interceptors in one day.

I spent the time doing fitting calculations- I was going to have to either down-gun to the 220m Vulcans (the 425s were missing too much with Barrage, and with EMP you’d have to get too close for comfort) or switch to 650mm artillery. The loss of range by down-gunning to the 220s was only about 0.8km, so I think I could live with that.

A good day

To follow in the recent fashion of posting a picture of the universe map showing where you’ve been, I present mine (click for larger image):

Aside from some of the drone regions and some of the more ‘Western’ regions, I’ve dipped my toe into each region. I’ve never been in an alliance or corp that has spent any significant time in the West, mainly North, East and South/SE. I was sure I’d been to Fountain though….

You might get the impression that life in Ushra’Khan is all about fun fights and derring-do, but a lot of the time our existence can be quite frustrating. However, the fun times more than make up for it, so we persevere.

Today was one such example of the frustrating side. Undocking from the ‘Curse Watchtower’ outpost in F4, I instructed my Hound class Stealth Bomber to warp to one of the Jump Bridges in-system. These were marvellous pieces of technology, quietly efficient as long as you kep them fed with fuel, flinging ships light years to their distant partners. However, care had to be taken these days as Stealth Bombers had taken up a new strategy of sitting cloaked near Jump Bridges and popping unsuspecting haulers before the automated targetting systems of the POS could react. It only took one volley for most haulers anyway.

Reaching the JB, and jumping through, I made my way to the D-GTMI gate in F9E-KX. Normally, I’d have been more cautious jumping through, but I was in a cloakable ship with MWD and this wasn’t a time of day when they were most active. Sure enough, the gate was clear. Now in Providence, I was on the prowl. Tuning into Alliance comms, I listened briefly and sure enough, there were some more of us also hunting around.

Dalv Fliteo had tackled a Caldari Navy Raven in an asteroid belt, presumably he was killing some of the local pirates in order to gain ISK and favour with CONCORD. A few of us responded, I was 4 jumps out. Making best speed, I jump into the next system, and smack dab into a ~10 ship camp. Scanning the ship types quickly, it was mainly T1 frigs and cruisers, with no ‘dictor. Easy enough. Seeing the gate activation, they all disgorged their drones, in anticipation of the kill.

Engaged warpdrive and cloaked, my Hound aligning and entering warp without any interference. Leaving their camp behind, I quickly make my way to BK4-YC. En route I see another U’K pilot in a Claw coming to join (forget his name, sorry), and we jump in together and warp to Dalv. I warp at range, my fragile little bomber loves it’s range. Also in system in Micia in a Sabre.

As I come out warp, the fight is on. Dalv’s Jag, the Claw and the Sabre are all up close to the Raven and I am at 30km. Perfect. I decloak and open up on the Raven, while aligning to a distant planet. The Caldari Navy torpedoes leap from their launchers, making the ship vibrate slightly. They are Bane torps, designed to do explosive damage- not brilliant against shield tanking ships like the Raven. Sure enough, the damage they do isn’t that great, even though the Raven would be EM hardened against the local pirates.

I get enough time to do a couple of volleys before an Eagle warps in. Uh oh. Eagles are great sniper ships, which meant I was in trouble. We switched primary to the Eagle- again, a shield tanking ship, and my torps weren’t doing a lot to it. I was hovering over the warp button, but the Eagle locked me and never fired. He was, however, hitting the smaller ships buzzing around it- on closer inspection it seemed he had a blaster fit. Which meant I was OK, but the others weren’t.

Sure enough, they had to warp out, but I kept up the torp assault on the Eagle who wasn’t MWD equipped. The Raven, however, opened up on me- his Paradise torps ripped my shields away in 2 volleys, whereas I wasn’t doing quick enough damage to the Eagle to kill it before I had to leave. If I got armour damage, I couldn’t easily repair it and I wasn’t going to go back to F4 to repair. I warped out.

We went back for another go, as they were so confident they stayed in the belt. However, we lost the Sabre and the Claw as our DPS just wasn’t enough to quickly kill the Eagle and it’s nasty Tech 2 blasters. Once down, the Raven’s torps would’ve been ineffective against the smaller ships.

There were more U’K around the area, but I assume they were sleeping in their ships, cloaked somewhere as there was no response. We called it off, Dalv’s Jag and my SB wouldn’t have stood a chance. Saluting in local channel to acknowledge a good fight, we jumped out.

Next time!

Forgive my absence, I have been busy…

To bring you up to speed with the politics- a relatively new alliance called Aggression. had decided to take the space belonging to United Legion (UNL) as most it was lightly POS defended. Aggression were working with the blessing of Atlas Alliance and we were blue to them both. UNL had held a few outposts, but now were pretty much finished in the area- for now.

A big operation had been planned. No-one knew anything more than the brief we’d been given, which was: “Two hostile towers out in HZF tonight 18:37 and 18:40, resistance is expected.”. We were basically helping out Atlas kill two Goonswarm POSs.

I had been planetside for a while, taking care of business, but upon arriving in F4 and joining Alliance comms I was aware that the fleet that had set out earlier were making their way back at some speed, and a second fleet was getting ready in F4. The FC was calling for either Dreadnoughts or tackle- preferably Heavy/ Interdictors. I was curious as to what had gone on, and I asked some questions in Alliance channel. Essentially the fleet had gone to HZFJ-M, and hooked up with an Atlas fleet after an uneventful journey. Atlas cyno’d in a huge Dreadnought fleet and wiped out two large, heavily resisted, POS towers in one siege cycle each.

Following the destruction, a 120+ member Krautbreak fleet was reported heading in the direction of HZVJ. Intel was trickling through that the fleet had diverted from heading toward HZF and was attacking the Aggression station system of I-NGI8 which they had recently taken off UNL. Further to this, 50 Dreads and 50 Carriers had arrived in I-N, belonging to Krautbreak, Cult of War and Minor Threat alliances.

It was at this point I arrived back in F4. The HZ fleet was rushing back to re-ship and we were going to hotdrop the Dread/ Carrier fleet with Against All Authorities (-A-).

Wotlankor pinged my NeoCom, he too was moving at speed back from Upper Providence and would be back shortly. I gave him what information I knew- which was basically we (support) were to meet up on ZXIC gate in F4R. The Dread pilots were prepped and ready to go.

I orbit the ZXIC gate in my Broadsword, a ship I don’t get to fly that often, and quickly re-familiarise myself with the ships systems as other U’K ships arrive. We muster quickly, radio chatter co-ordinating the fleets. I am not paying attention to my overview when we hear “BOMB BOMB BOMB”, and sure enough, there is  a Paxton Federation pilot who’s been in system all day, launching a Concussion Bomb toward us from a Manticore. I don’t move from the bomb as it can’t kill my Broadsword due to the massive shields and resists it has, but try to lock the bomber.

20:02:13 Combat Concussion Bomb belonging to rioot hits you, doing 1101.8 damage.

No-one dies to it. A few minutes later, he pops up again, and we are told by the FC to jump through to ZXIC as another bomb is launched. This one catches a Sabre full on and it goes down.

As we regroup to the gate, we are told a Hurricane has warped to the gate in F4 and is jumping through. Then, a Taranis is also announced. We wait on the other side, and as a bubble has been put up, I switch to a focused scramble on my Warp Disruption Field Generator- in case he tries to burn out of the bubble- highly unlikely as it may seem.

The Hurricane appears suddenly, 16km from me- a Razor Alliance pilot. Lock resolves, eventually (damn cloaking device interferes with the targeting system lock time), and I open up on the Hurricane along with everyone else. We don’t kill him quickly enough, and he jumps back through to F4 in very low armour. He’s pretty much done for. The ‘ranis, in all the excitement, either burns back to the gate or warps off.

As we finally get clearance from the Gate operatives to jump back through, we hear the Hurri isn’t going anywhere as it is scrambled. I appear in F4, but the Hurri is 41km from me, too far for either my guns or focussed disruption. No matter, he goes down and the Manticore re-appears and flings another bomb our way. This one is better placed and a Crow, a Claw and an Executioner succumb to the bomb’s deadly payload.

20:19:10 Combat Concussion Bomb belonging to rioot hits you, doing 641.0 damage.

The Manti pilot doesn’t get away with it this time, and is fallen upon with savagery. The fragile hull buckles under the munitions hurled at it, and it explodes. Looks like he was out of bombs anyway. His pod is summarily despatched.

The FC tells us to regather on the F4 gate in ZX as the hostile fleet is in 9-8, and local channel shows 120+. We have scouts in there, reporting on their composition and movement- they have a largely sniper BS with assorted support. -A- are in ZXIC with us now, bolstering our numbers to about 200. The waiting game begins.

We suddenly hear the hostile dread/ carrier fleet have cyno’d out back to Utopia without firing a shot. The hostile fleet move into KDF, next door to ZXIC, presumably they want to go back to Utopia the most direct way. Their scouts jump into ZXIC and are presented with 200+ of us. Not liking the odds, they position their snipers in KDF off the ZXIC gate, and bubble it, hoping we’ll jump into it and be slaughtered by their snipers. But this isn’t going to happen.

Once they realise this, and once they realise an Aggression. fleet is heading toward them, comprised of mainly BS, they decided to rush to U-QVWD and the only way they have left open to get out into Curse. -A- use their jump bridges to get ahead of the fleet, whilst Aggression. and ourselves tail-chase them.

Our scout reports they’re in 36N, and have stopped and set up a killzone. I assumed this was because our numbers have split and they stand a good chance of killing one of our 3 fleets when we’re seperated. But perhaps they didn’t realise this, as -A- were now between them and U-Q.  Aggression. had caught us up and our combined fleets was an impressive size.

Scouts said that the hostile fleet was making a break for it, not heading toward U-Q anymore, but rather the only route they had left- into HED-GP or up into Providence. If they headed into Provi, they’d run into the D-G permacamp hosted by Paxton Federation… and I wasn’t sure CoW, Krautbreak or Minor Threat. were blue to them. I didn’t think so, and it’d be a HUGE fight if they jumped in there and we followed. A bigger three way fight I would never had seen.

However, we caught them in SV5. Here is a report excerpt from our brave scout BHaddow: “I arrived in Sv5-8N and saw their fleet warp towards the F9E-KX gate I followed but somehow their support fleet had arrived before their sniper BS and bubbled the gate catching their sniper BS fleet 50Km off the gate, This was our lucky break!. They knew that our fleets would pour into the system and rain down hell on them if they tried to burn the 50Km to the gate, they had to warp off.”

Once we had them, they were doomed. The FC ordered HICs and DICs to cover gates to prevent escape. It seemed that the hostile fleet was warping from planet to planet. We had more than enough ships and dictors to cover the planets, and basically, it was a cage from which they couldn’t escape. They seemed to continously warp from planet to planet rather than safespots, and I have no idea why. We would catch up to, and bubble, stragglers- any ship caught would be despatched very quickly as bloodlust was up.

The final tally is hard to gauge, as is always the way when multiple alliances are involved. We killed almost all of their 120 man fleet, the battle summary is here. It doesn’t show any kills by -A- or Aggression that no U’K pilot was involved with, as there was quite a few of those, so hostiles losses are probably slightly higher

As the dust settled, I went back to planet 4 to pick up some abandoned drones by one of the hostiles as they’re always useful. As I was scooping the last one, a Paxton Federation pod warped almost on top of me. I’m not sure who was more suprised. I quickly bubbled up and despatched the pod. It turns out he was killed minutes before by a couple of U’K pilots. Talk about wrong place, wrong time. Twice!

All in all, a very enjoyable fleet operation, with a good outcome. It’s nice, for once, to actually have more numbers than the enemy.

Article from New Eden News, today’s edition:

Seems it’s not a very good time to be at war or roaming in hostile space. Yesterday, an unknown organisation managed to simultaneously upload a worm of some sort to many jumpgates. The hostile code spread with each ship that jumped, snaking out to all corners of New Eden before anyone really knew what was going on.

Ships were adversely affected by the worm- when they exited jump they were rendered useless for a few seconds after their post-jump cloak dropped. This lead to high ship loss initially, pilots were putting it down to their individual ships being glitched, but as word about the ‘glitch’ spread inside corps and alliances, CONCORD were contacted.

They began preliminary investigations themselves and quickly isolated the problem to the gates themselves and not the ships. This quickly lead to them finding the malicious code, but removing it without taking the jumpgate network offline has been proving difficult. Once they released a travel advisory, most capsuleers were of the opinion that a 3 second delay was better than losing the ability to move between systems. All the major corporations were of the same opinion- that it would be a disaster for commerce should the network be disabled.

In the meantime, CONCORD’s best scientists are hard at work, as are their investigators. No-one has claimed responsibility for this terrorist action, but it seems to be a wake up call for gate security measures.

At the other end of the spectrum, most of Eve’s combat pilots are taking a break for a couple of days. A three second delay for them means certain death in most circumstances.

We will continue you to bring the latest news on this as it breaks.