New ship: Nyx

Earlier I mentioned that I had a nyx on order and talked about the fittings. This post is the fun part.

Today my nyx finished building so I jumped to my clone with slave set and other supercap implants, which I had prepared and moved to a convenient 0.0 station along with my nyx fittings.

The transfer was pretty simple. Trusting the people involved is key: The corp I ordered it from is a long-time core NC corporation, and the CEO vouched for the person delivering the ship. At that point I felt comfortable to go ahead with the transaction, though they would have accepted a third party service.

The ship was in a POS with a password set, known only to myself and the person delivering the ship. I warped in, sent the isk to the corporation, the pilot ejected and I boarded. Carefully moving to an alliance POS in there system where my fittings were located, I then bludgeoned a corpmate into letting me use his SC to refit as my holding alt is still several days from being able to fly a carrier.

This is a noteworthy event for me for a variety of reasons. It's baby's first supercapital of course, it's the best looking ship in the game and it's something I've always wanted to fly, but more importantly I have crossed the line of what I thought I could ever achieve. When I first started playing I thought flying a battleship would be a major achievement. I thought that maybe someday, if I kept playing, maybe I would end up flying a carrier, though probably never a dread. I was certain that I would never fly a supercap.

Transfer


Fitting


This is an internet spaceship

It's not perfect: I need to get the remote ECM burst trained, the drones need some serious work and carrier 5 would be nice.

But you know what? That looks pretty good to me.

NC vs Dronelanders: Battle for R10-GN

As reported previously, while we spent the weekend in tribute saving our CSAA, DRF forces reinforced the three stations we had taken in drone lands. The first station apparently was repped without incident yesterday, and today the R10 and LXQ stations came out of reinforced within a few hours of each other. They were timed for EU time zone instead of US in hopes of getting a fight, and the hostiles didn't disappoint.

EDIT: There's a rumor that one station, M3, is actually in its' second reinforced cycle. I guess we'll see if something interesting happens.

MOAR EDIT: Apparently R10 had been repped, and is in the first reinforced cycle a second time.

Numbers were unclear, being split between multiple fleets, but I would expect that we had a significant numerical advantage. Local peaked at 900, and lag was moderate but people loaded well. The battle consisted of an extended subcapital slugfest on the station which was notable for a beautiful bomber trap at the beginning and killing a few capitals the hostiles had brought in at the end. We held the field, and I anticipate a positive isk ratio when the killboards finish loading. Goodfites, overall.

Battlefield


Killing capitals

Killboard (will take time to sync)

NC vs Dronelanders: Now with more IT and PL

I don't know why I bother with situation updates, since everybody should be using evenews24 by now.

Last week we took two stations, one with a fight and one without. For the latter Dronelanders (referred to as DRF from now on) elected to defend a CSAA instead of the station, but we killed that as well. Word is a titan was building, and this hasn't been denied.

People reporting PL's demise done and got trolled. They're in venal and have taken a contract against the NC, taking a couple dozen technetium moons and reinforcing 3 CSAA. Tech moons aren't a big deal - there are hundreds of the damn things and retaking them is practically the official coalition pastime - but CSAA take clear precedence over the drone lands campaign and we took the weekend off to save them.

While we were doing this, DFR reinforced all the stations we had taken in drone regions. Then IT dropped SBU in cloud ring.

Assuming IT isn't just dicking around, shit just got real. This is the three front war which was predicted a few months ago and the hostiles include every entity with a meaningful supercapital fleet.

Depending on how much trouble PL and IT make, it could turn into a defensive war pretty easily. I'm optimistic about our chances, but the timing is interesting; I've been in razor for 9 months now, and to date every corporation and alliance I have joined has failed, lost its' space or gone back to empire in under a year. If rzr goes under, I'll have to start joining alliances I don't like.

NC vs Dronelanders: M3 station captured

"Guys I haven't said to jump back yet, and... I see fucking tractor beams here, what the fuck?"

-NC being pro

Where don't you want to go today?

The M3 station is the second station to be contested during our drone lands campaign and one of only three in the Kalevala Expanse region. One of the other stations is in armor reinforced at the time of writing, and the last is in shield reinforced. M3 came out of its' final reinforcement cycle today and the hostiles showed up to defend. It was a standard subcapital fight, 800 in system, light to moderate lag, with a few carriers on the field from both sides. Lag was manageable and jumping in worked fine even when the lag was at its' worst.

The main fight on the gate

I died about halfway through and reshipped to a guardian. By the time I got back in system the reds had conceded the fight and were just doing bombing runs. Fortunately we had a decent FC and took minimal losses, though I've never seen so many battleships in structure.

Killboard

EDIT 2010-11-11: Updated and revised.

Battleships are expensive

In the aftermath of the fight in CYB yesterday it has turned out that I received two lossmails for the same ship, due to desync, and two platinum insurance payouts, totaling 122 million. Back in the day ship replacment usually consisted of a free or cheap hull and the insurance money would cover modules and rigs, give or take a couple million, so in a decent alliance members could replace battleships essentially for free.

After receiving a tempest hull from ship replacement for 20 million I went to fit it out, and discovered that this costs a lot more than it used to. Sixty to eighty million just for the rigs. Seven for 2 1600mm plates. It used to be that the fittings were about half the total price of a fleet battleship, but today a tempest hull costs 72 million while the total price for hull, rigs, modules, drones and insurance comes out to 215 million. Even with double insurance and a cheap hull, replacing the ship put me out about a hundred million.

The medium range tempest fit that we're using is pretty okay, but maybe I'll go back to flying logistics. They're a lot cheaper, even if they are :effort:

NC vs Dronelanders: MM titan down in CYB-BZ

EDIT 2010-12-23: Sala has a new rag ^_^

As a general situation update, the war is basically proceeding apace. We continue to take systems, kill structures and get fights. The only real development is that PL have taken a contract against the NC and are now shooting technetium moons in venal.

Today we were out shooting structures when we got word of a blue titan tackled. We started burning to assist and word came down of 7 red titans on the field and ours was already dead.

The titan was owned by sala cameron. Apparently what happened is that he was fixing to gank an enemy carrier at a pos and it turned out to be a trap. Incidentally Sala is my favorite titan pilot, notable for being active, recording the h-w capital fight video and being willing to take risks. I particularly recall the time during h-w that he warped his titan to zero on an enemy capital fleet to get us a warpin.

Sala took this just before dying

Titan loss

Anyhow, we decided to engage the hostiles. Dronelanders brought out their supercapitals and we engaged with a full subcapital fleet, managing to do a number on their support and kill a few carriers. We got tackle on several supercapitals during the course of the fight but weren't able to hold them down as our dictors were picked off. Toward the end we bumped an aeon for about an hour to keep it from warping, but it eventually escaped in half armor.

I eventually died to massive desync, but it was definitely goodfights despite the lag. Somebody in fleet mentioned that these things never seem to happen on reinforced nodes, and my theory is that unplanned fights tend to be more interesting.

Killboard

Some of the red supers

EDIT: Sala's battle report from this engagement was posted here.

Screenshot Saturday: Suddenly, zealots

And some other things I guess.