Keeping the pain train rolling

In followup to yesterday, word on the street is that the ships which jumped out of system before dying appeared in space after downtime pilotless. Most sources are saying that we recovered 5, though my best information is that we recovered 3 out of 6 titans, 2 really died, 1 was taken by an enemy pilot and all 3 motherships were recovered.

Screenshot of Rolk's Drift's avatar on scan prior to recovery.
Or a fake, since at this point you can pretty much believe whatever you want.

In any case, today we formed up about 450 people and went out reinforcing a bunch of ROL towers in Pure Blind. They're coming out of reinforced around downtime on saturday, which isn't really the best time for me to attend. As I post this we we're out reinforcing towers with a somewhat smaller fleet after going home to refuel. I'll post if we get hotdropped or anything, but it's past enemy prime time.

A screenshot, just because it's been too long since I've taken one

In which we accidentally our whole supercap fleet

I wasn't there so unfortunately I can't give a first-hand account, but what I'm hearing is that we formed up a supercap > * fleet and headed out to destroy a Rebellion Alliance pos, failed to load grid and lost at least 6 titans, possibly as many as 10.

EDIT: The final count appears to be 6.

One might recall that I postulated dominion lag would be the deciding factor in max 2. I was wrong about that, but mainly because there were never big capital/super fights. What happened today was classic y-2, with titans staying in system long after their 15 minute logoffski timer would have run out. According to forums several of them actually jumped out safely, got to a safe pos in another system, took screenshots and then died. We can hope that might be enough for CCP to adjust their stance on fleet fight reimbursements, though I won't be holding my breath.

EDIT: Better battlereport.

There's actually a coalition-wide ban on posting about this, but this isn't a forum and I hope I'm not providing too many tears; lag kills are just a fact of life.

Anyway. We're off our isk-making break for what sounds like short-term combat ops, so I may have some fights to write about over the next few days.

Looking forward, looking back

With the war over I've come to the realization that I don't have anything to write about. This is funny because I actually had the idea of starting this blog before the fighting started, back around November of last year. I can't remember any of the posts I had planned to write, but I'm pretty sure there was going to be a lot of industry stuff; I was planning to mine and manufacture for fun once I had earned enough to buy a mothership.

During the last six months everything has changed: my short and long term goals, the ships I can fly, where I live and even the large-scale political situation. Gone now are the halcyon days of my youth when I thought there might be such thing as enough isk; as my earning power and knowledge of the game have increased, so have my goals and the cost of reaching them.

I've been rather dismissive of writing about myself (the 'nobody cares' tag was established for this purpose) but with my alliance on an isk-making holiday my attention has turned to PVE, and so too will the content here. Fortunately for you, dear readers, peace never lasts; there have been hints of a new campaign starting in the foreseeable future, and even if that falls through it's only a matter of time before somebody attacks us.

Blag meme: Where I've been

Because I actually find these interesting. I've lived in vale (for a month), branch (westmost 3 constellations), geminate and now tenal; everything else in NC space is combat ops. Once of the nice things about living here is that we don't have to fly halfway across the galaxy to get a fight; the flip side, of course, is that when we have a war it's almost always in our own backyard.

Video: Flying a titan in combat

Just like it says. This is from the viewpoint of an NC titan pilot during the h-w fight. Battlereport here, teamspeak recording here.

Is that awesome? Yeah, that's awesome. My new goal is to fly one.

Also, this is my last item of war media spam. Rejoice, damn you, rejoice!

Download
AVI, 1200 MB

EDIT 1/2012: This post has the content tag because I appear in the video ^^

Teamspeak recordings: Killing SC supercarriers in h-w

Shut the F*** up! Shut the F*** up! Don't talk. Just don't talk any more.

-the NC discusses target calling

This is another (the last, for now) in a series of posts with teamspeak recordings. NSFW, as always. This episode goes with this post, in which we killed 5 SC supercarriers in H-W. It starts a few minute before downtime with the subcapital fleet as we try to take down some battleships, then switches to the capital channel when the server comes back up. Editing for brevity affects this recording more than previous as trimming silences makes the downtime seem really short.

Download/listen
MP3, 45 minutes, 62 MB

Teamspeak recordings: Killing russian supercarriers

This is another in a series of posts with teamspeak recordings. These will likely not be of great interest to somebody who has been in a real fleet, but rather to people who are curious as to what goes on in them. Teamspeak recordings are always NSFW.

This recording is from this fight in which we were batphoned by PL to help kill some drone lands coalition supercarriers. See also this video from the perspective of a PL logistics pilot.

Download/listen
MP3, 33 minutes, 32 MB