Small numbers of high-value kills

So yesterday we spent about 7 hours reinforcing somewhere in excess of 20 Ev0ke structures. Today we went back, reinforced a couple more then got intel about some hostiles.

The FC kept us in the dark about the nature of the targets until we were right on top of them. We jumped in and what did I see but Alazais, of triage video fame, in an archon and about 30 battleships including a number of faction and pirate models. Fortunately for us, somebody brought neuts.

We primaried the archon. I started taking some damage and overheated my guns, but our support saved me from half armor and we ended up with a handy win -- 2 battleships lost for archon, 2 bhaalgorn, one navy battleship and 3 battleships killed.

Battle report

Triage special -- if you haven't seen it, start downloading right now.

Best news I've had all year

With the current oh-shit-oh-shit-we're-going-to-die political situation (helpfully illustrated below) I've been pretty worried about the coming war.

(yellow is neutral)

Today we formed up for "weekend ops" (it's Thursday, but whatever) and found ourselves shooting an evoke jammer tower with a bunch of blues from SOLODRAKBANSOLODR- whatever in system. This means that:

1. We have an ally.
2. We're finally killing evoke, and goons will be taking their space.
3. The coming war might not be entirely hopeless.

I for one welcome our new goon overlords.

Daily update and 0.0 forecast (shitstorm)

Today we formed up at 1930 after an earlier fleet got home, with the objective of hitting a reinforced tower. The destination was a system in Geminate near the NPC stations. We got a warpin on an enemy fleet, titan bridged to the system, warped, bubbled and killed everything we could. Unfortunately I fail at following target calls and only got on a few kills. Oh well; they were going down faster than my guns cycle anyway.

After this we went up to IRC space and reinforced a tower (which had NO GUNS) with a nyx building in a capital ship assembly array. We'll be coming back to kill it, which will cost them 8b, allegedly the current price of the hull.

We shot another tower a bit, but got word that there might be cap kills available and burned back to the staging system. Shortly thereafter somebody reported that IRC was posting tears on their internal forums (we have spies there, in case you hadn't guessed) and preparing to evacuate the region. Meanwhile the target capitals, 40 jumps away, heard that we were forming up and ran away.

The array of forces who want the NC dead is frankly scary, but when things like this keep happening it's hard not to overestimate the size of our epeen.


In more important news, rumor is that hostiles - I have no idea which alliances, there are so many enemies these days - are moving capitals to NPC pure blind for another offensive and IT will be attacking us in about a month. Should be interesting; I'll have to get a spare dread.

I am worried, though. IT, AAA+ROL+friends, Tri+friends, Atlas+friends and now the entire drone lands coalition are trying to kill us, not to mention the little people who live in and around our space (evoke, cry havoc, white noise, etc). That's a lot of numbers.

Fail; and win

I woke up to find the fleet in north Venal, heading home after losing a fight against AAA in n5y. The fleet re-formed immediately after getting to the staging system and we headed out to Black Rise.

We wound up in Kehjari, with an enemy fleet of 150 reported a few jumps away. We engaged a tower that had come out of reinforced and dropped about a dozen caps. A few minutes later scouts gave word that the enemy fleet was headed in our direction.

Support and battleships set up on the gate they would be coming through; our job was to keep them from reaching the caps at any cost. Reds jumped in and local went from 200 to 400, but lag was in our favor. Nobody's guns were working, but drones got the job done - slowly - and we drove them off the gate. While this was happening the enemy hotdropped our capitals. Most escaped because their support fleet wasn't there to tackle, but we lost two dreadnaughts.

Aftermath
Killboard link

Shooting more towers

As I write this I've been up for 40 hours. This time has been consumed with POS bashing; I keep staying awake for the next op, and they're practically nonstop. Currently there are 25 hostile towers reinforced across 3 or 4 regions.

Lazors are pretty~

The towers started coming out of reinforced, and at the end of a pos kill somewhere in the west we received word that a hostile gang of 40, with 3 carriers, was at and/or repping a pos in east Vale. We burned there and found the subcapitals still in the system, though the carriers were gone.

We started by bubbling a damaged small tower which had about a dozen targets in the shield. It was clearly unstronted because they tried to burn out of the bubbles; we caught all but a few. Shortly thereafter a sniper gang warped in at about 90. We were bubbled by our own dictors, but between excellent logistics and enough people being able to hit to that range they were driven off with a single loss on our side.

A second, battleship gang warped in at 150 km. We warped, bubbled and killed some. Another gang warped in, again at 150. Rinse and repeat. In the end we came out with maybe two dozen kills for minimal losses; it was a good way to end such an extended operation with no kills.

Then we went to Venal and shot more towers.

Random update

The last few days have been more or less around-the-clock ops, scheduled and otherwise. It seems like every time I log in there's a fleet up for pos bashing, and there are 7 scheduled ops over the next two days.

I'm learning a bit about flying amarr (including that best named t1 guns are f*ing expensive). I think the apocalypse might actually be the best solution because of the range and cap use bonuses. With abaddon I have to use cap boosters to keep firing unless there's a really good fleet booster, and armageddon is even worse. Apoc can be easily fit cap stable, and the optimal range bonus means you're using higher-damage ammo than geddon and abba at the same distance; so except at very close range, ~18 km, the damage differential isn't as bad as it looks on EFT. Apoc can also hit over 80 km, while the other two stop around 50. T2 guns are a month or two out for me still.

T1 close-range apocalypse

Tri are doing ~wulfpax~ in empire these days; there doesn't seem to be a real war on, but our enemies in the area include xdeath, atlas, AAA and red overlord. The three russian alliances aren't people who have ever attacked us before, which is worrisome; with the demise of PL and goons, every space-holding entity in the galaxy wants us dead... except for CVA, and I don't think we can really look to them for support.

Random towers

n5y hippie love fest

We arrived in n5y, where some towers had been reinforced the day before, with a fleet of about 170, capitals, supercapitals, short-range battleships and misc support.

Fleet and pew

Hostiles in local totaled about 100. We made short work of one tower (I discovered that an abaddon with no capacitor mods or rigs is very nearly cap stable with proper fleet boosts), subcaps warped to a second and started shooting when enemy sniping battleships warped in at 150 km. We got a quick warpin, bubbled about 8 that didn't escape and killed them. Unfortunately I had moved in the direction of the enemy fleet after landing and wasn't in warp range; by the time I got a warpin the targets were dead.

The enemy fleet ended up around the 6W gate and we got a warpin, bubbled and got a few kills; this time I got on two or three.

We switched to another tower... then got another warpin on the enemy fleet. This time we got good bubbles and a decent few kills. Landing on an enemy fleet with a larger force of close-range battleships is a heady experience; targets go down so fast that the fc is calling targets to point instead of primaries, and you just lock by range and try to get damage on as many as you can before they die.

Somehow I managed to lose a single light drone. I am still puzzled by this.

Moar poasting

The last few days I've made it to a couple ops, mostly pos bashing with no resistance. The 10ish kills I've gotten on were the result of clever traps used by our FCs against small roam fleets (black ops kill was a nice touch).

There has been some fighting against xdeath, who apparently are operating out of venal and taking our moons. This resulted in a couple hilariously one-sided - in our favor - battleship fights. Currently the mop-up in Pure Blind is over and we're redeploying to Tribute in order to deal with the russian menace.

Fleets have been calling for close range battleships, and due to the inadequacy of the tempest when it comes to shooting towers (or anything over 20 km) I've finally gotten around to fitting an Amarr battleship. I went with an abaddon (which turns out to be barely better than an armageddon, but I'll just repurpose it as a medium range ship later). I can't use t2 lasers yet, but at least this way I'll be able to hit something. Amarr short range is nice; you can easily hit over 50 km. Try that with blasters, autocannons or torpedoes.

EFT

So far the highlight of the day is a capital train being cancelled because Imperian was drunk, but word from above is that we're on a rolling op for the next 24 hours.

Staying alive

I've spent a few weeks in flux after my corp left WI (most of it spent cloaked in a carrier in ROIR and neutral to the NC -- to nobody's surprise, I didn't get a lot done during this time), but have recently found a place in a Razor corp. Unfortunately, the war seems to be over. Word on the street is that Tri and CO2 are evacuating, and the last tower takedown op we were calling for supercaps > caps with no support, which would never happen if there was a possibility of organized resistance.

On the eastern front I'm hearing that Atlas is going home. I'm hopeful that we'll start a campaign to retake geminate for WI, though with only 1300 players (down from a starting point of about 3200) it's very questionably whether holding that much space is really warranted. Aggressive recruiting would be an option, and I think there are a couple smaller alliances that might be interested in folding into WI. My former corp stated that they would return if WI were fighting to retake Geminate, though I don't really believe it.

In other news, CrazyKinux, whom anybody reading this will be familiar with, has added me to the blogroll. This probably means that I should make an effort to post on a regular basis; fortunately, I have actually a backlog of posts which I just haven't gotten around to publishing.

And in other other news goons are dead, long live goons. I'm not watching the situation closely, but apparently they have reformed into two new alliances which promptly declared war on each other.