Ambushed While Rolling the Static.

So I logged in the other evening and scanned down the home system, there was a C6 and the usual lowsec static. A quick reconnoiter of the C6 finds 7 active towers and about a dozen active pilots, so this is not a WH that I want to keep open. Looking at itit looks like it will take about 1bn in mass to close, so one pass with 3 battleships with the AB on and then a pass in the devoter has this hole closed and I have a sigh of relief.

Now since it was a K162 inbound I need to roll the static low to close myself back off to anyone from that system. The low 2 jumps away from New Eden so its in the middle of nowhere and there are no stations or people in the system.

First pass through the WH everything goes fine, waiting out the timer at the tower a rapier comes through the hole from lowsec, thinking he may have been from the C5 I land the fleet on the hole and he jumps back out and the second pass through the hole goes normally.  As I am sitting back in the safety of the tower a covert tengu decloaks on the static, again for some reason I think this must be someone from the C6 I just closed, even though I have combat scanners out I miss the new anomaly that is showing up on the scanners and I warp the 2 Geddons and the Abbadon to the WH. I get Geddon out, Geddon In Geddon Out Geddon In, Abaddon Out and 11 guys land on the two geddons on the inside of the WH… Shit Shit I try to warp off no dice and both geddons are polarized, I start locking targets and deploying sentry drones, Ill go down fighting, oh damn they have a Falcon…

http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/engagement.php?id=17126370#overview

They offer to ransom the pods, and ask me to make them an offer, I give them a GF and honestly at this point I’m not going to pay more than 50m for my pod of 2 +4s so I wake up in Jita. Such is life in a WH I think the most dangerous space in EVE.

I spend the evening getting everyone back to the WH, and log off for the night. The next 2 evenings there are 5 open WH’s into me so I get nothing accomplished except to head Zan over to join the Amarr FW. I might as well get some loyalty points to get some Navy Geddons and some Slicers.

The alts all now can fly Tengu’s so they can manage the day to day in the WH, I simply have to adjust my PI production and import a few more goods to keep that going.

So we are currently chilling in Amarr FW, using the WH as supplemental income. I have been joined by my son on a new toon, the plan is to earn enough isk at the cash out to get him a decent character through the character bazaar, so far we are working that plan, but that is another blog post to come later this week.

Fly it like you stole it

Zandramus

Battles with Pandemic Legion… Nem3 gives PL a bloody nose

So as I stated in the previous posting, Sniggwaffe, Pandemic Region, and several other PL training corps have moved themselves into Delve. Friday evening when I logged in there was a tier 3 sniper gang camping the undock on the MO-GZ5 station. They had managed to somehow bug the grid so that when undocking you didn’t see them at first and they managed to one shot a couple of small ships undocking. I was sitting cloaked about 100k off the station when they warped in to 250k above, before I could get position on them they warped into the bugged grid which made them disappear off of my overview, but they were 60k above the undock.

Unable to do anything aginst this group in the rapier I was in, I docked up and got in the Archon to see what type of DPS this crew had with them. In a matter of minutes they were breaking my armor tank on the Archon so I docked up and repaired. They started to rape-cage the station with a cloaky hauler, at this we massive undocked several carriers and armor battleships, I was sitting on the undock when everyone undocked and I already had 5 of the tier 3 battlecruisers locked. They had a significant amount of scimitars with  them and had a pretty good rep, but I don’t think they were expecting me to unleash the 10 tech 2 sentry drones on them. I started calling primaries and the ships were going pop, pop, pop in a matter of seconds I had myself 5 nice killmails with the sentry drones and pulled them in and deployed fighters which chased them all over the system as they ran.   

Battle Report http://www.nem3sis.co.uk/killboard/index.php/kill_related/10077/

Saturday were getting ready for a CTA that was supposed to be a ROL invasion, which didn’t happen so we used that opportunity to reinforce the Snigwaffe POS in D-W7F0 after reinforcing this the timer was set to come out right after downtime Sunday morning, so I set my alarm clock and when I woke up I heard that we had kill a PL carrier that was repping the mods on the pos and it was pretty fail fit, also notice that shortly after this kill the pilot is no longer in PL https://www.pandemic-legion.com/killboard/view_kill.php?id=487661 So we come in right after down time in a Armor fleet and kill the POS, I actually was in a Hictor watching the gate as I don’t like shooting structures, and managed to get some good kills in the next system over.

http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_related&kll_id=12563165

After this I take a break and come back just as a nano roam is going out and I get this juicy kill in ROL space.. http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=12564910 … This was a long roam and I needed a break so I watched a movie for the day and came back just as a major CTA was forming up.

Apparently PL had placed another POS in D-W and things were about to get fun. A shield BC fleet was formed up and we waited for a long time in T5Z on the D-W gate waiting to jump into about a 47 man sniper tier 3 gang. I was in my Artie-Cane we jumped into the fleet and began aligning and took 5-6 losses right of the bat, I killed a rifter tackle and we warped to the safe pos. The sniper gang arrived at the safe pos and was shooting it when we all formed up and MWD on we get into position on the gang and kill about 5 of them and they warp off. We warped onto their pos as it was not gunned yet and began putting dps onto it, they came out and got range on us so we warped off, we warped back in on them and they POS’d up, A cyno went up in the system as we were shooting the tower when In warps a Nomad that apparently entered the wrong password for the POS and he stops short, and is quickly tackled and melted with yours truly getting the final blow…a game first Jump-freighter kill for me.  The comments on the PL boards just make it all too sweet… https://www.pandemic-legion.com/killboard/view_kill.php?id=487897

After this engagement, the next time we warp into the POS I am primaried and manage to get my Cain away with 47 pct structure, but I am out of the fight in the safe pos and on fire for about 45 min, while I get my alt in a pilgrim with armor maint drones through the jump-bridge and come in the back way right into a 60 man RVB assult frig blob on the gate coming into D-W. Shit, Shit this is going to take some skills. As I am AB Cyno Fit I pulse the AB and cloak zoom out and see a hole in their camp and slowly, slowly make my way out of the 6 tech2 large bubbles, RVB failure lol. I repair the armor on my Cane at a SS and get back in the fight.

At this point  RVB gets a warp into us shooting the pos and manage to get me scrammed, and webbed I kill 3 frigs before I go down and manage to get my pod out, but PL emerge from the POS and kill quite a bit of the shield BC fleet. We manage to break out of the system in short order and return to MO-GZ5 to re-ship, and take a 15-30 min break.

After the break shit starts to get real as 5 PL carriers are Cyno’d into the system, I reship into a Revelation and myself and the rest of the capitals jump into the system with the 5 PL carriers sitting in their POS, we siege green and quickly reinforce their POS as PL Jump out of system promising a fight on the timer, just after downtime.

Well some of us work for a living so I don’t know if anything happened this morning

Here is the battlereport of the battle with ship-types and kills / losses as I can gather them.

 http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_related&adjacent&kll_id=12568991

Good fights to all…

Zandramus

Unending Pew… and cautiousness with Caps

It has been a very busy month in Delve, the routine has been that I arrive home and there is a roam out which I catch up on and there seems to be no end of good pew to be had. So far this month I am at 104 kills and 1 loss, though it was a very expensive rapier…and I also missed a batch of 24 kills the other night as I got home too late to make it into the subcap fleet, so I flew the carrier to help remove a couple of Snigwaffe SBU’s that had been placed in D-W. So rather than participating in the goodfight that was happening on the gates I got to shoot at structures which frankly was like watching paint dry.

Zandramus Kills and Losses

Earlier this month SniggWaffe has moved into the area, they have set a pos in D-W which is in a strategic position to allow them to Blops the entirety of Delve. We have had several battles I would have to say one-sided battles with their bomber fleet, but one must always be cautious when dealing with Pandemic Leagion… and while Snigwaffe is mostly filled with PL wannabe’s, as someone who was in one of the founder corps of PL, I can see a strategy here where PL sends out Snigwaffe to irritate small alliances into using capital ships and then PL can pounce in with their Supers and GG us once they have killed off the capital fleet.

So for me I am being very cautious with my capitals, I am also enjoying the subcap fights that Sniggwaffe has been providing. After all EVE can be very much like a chessgame, if you play too greedily you can end up getting checkmated early.

Zandramus

   

Lack of kills due to lack effort…

While many of my alliance mates were able to get several capital kills this past week, on each of the ops I passed on traveling the 30+ jumps to go investigate neutral ratting systems as I was in a rather expensive clone and really didn’t feel like putting in the effort required. So this last week the pew was rather dismal, I spent a bit of time trying to make some isk, running a couple of havens, and salvaging. Bottom-line is I have about 700m in the wallet towards my Aeon fund, and a long way to go. I cannot seem to run more than a couple of havens before I get bored as hell or before some cloaky person pays a visit to my system only to sit there cloaked for ages, which forces me to go camp the outgate in the hope of getting some pew, only to see said person log or exit right after I take down the bubbles and go to bed for the night.

We have had some more sov grinding, which I am very happy to have the Revelation for now. My brother managed to get himself a Moros over the weekend and he popped its cherry on a CTA to shoot down a TCU. With our neighbors to the south deployed at the moment we have seen an uptick in roaming 3-5 man gangs, and I managed to get on the kill of a rupture yesterday afternoon, in some ways a great fight in eve is as elusive as that great golf shot, or the chance at a 300 game in bowling. It comes around every so often, just enough to keep you from quitting and keeps you yearning for the next great fight / chip in / 274. I must report that it has been a while since I holed out from 150+ yards, the 300 game is still elusive, but fun every time I string 6+ strikes in a row, and while I recently had a great fight, I can say I can wait for the next one, until then it’s back to the grind and building up the Aeon fund.

Zandramus

Pew of The Week (POTW) with TEST Alliance

I haven’t had much to report lately, we have been grinding SOV and frankly that is like watching paint dry, but it is a necessary evil that has to be done for any fledgling alliance. We have had the typical roam here and there but have had astonishingly few kills in my timezone, we form up for a incoming fleet and then get blue balled by said fleet even when we have even numbers.  

That was until last night just before the big game was about to kick off, we were given short notice to be in shield bc’s and to form up on the titan. We managed a 30 man fleet with 3 scimi’s and we bridged to lowsec about 11 jumps from the target system of Huna. We were going to agress some TEST Alliance pilots that numbered in the 60’s with capital support. We were going to be assisting some neutrals that were outnumbered in the system, even with our numbers we were still going to be outnumbered by the TEST fleet.

Fleet jumped into Huna and we got a warp into the field right at my optimal of 50k in my Artie-Cane. First wave of the battle, primaries were being called fast and the ships were popping just as fast as I could lock them and get one volley into them. After about 15-20 ships on their side were down they retreated into their pos shields while we went to work on the ECM batteries on the POS, the POS had no guns on it, lol fail. After we incapped 3 ECM batteries the TEST fleet warped to a ping about 300k off the pos and warped back to us in the 20-30k range. We quickly burned back out to our optimals and the target calling proceeded for the next 5 minutes or so. I was Jammed for much of this part of the battle, I think I managed to get in on only 3-4 kills in this wave as the pos gunners had singled me out for jamming. We lost 2 ships initially in this engagement until we got back out to our optimals, both ships were Drakes. Battle report straight from our killboard is here  http://nem3.com/killboard/index.php/kill_related/4091/ This shows we killed 30 whilst they managed to get 2 of us. If you take a look at their killboard for this battle, their losses are even more as they lost 49 ships Total and managed to kill 3 others totaling 5 for the engagement.

https://kb.pleaseignore.com/?a=kill_related&kll_id=360343

The fight was one of the best I have been in since I flew with SAS, this was about all I was going to talk about on this blog but while I was researching the battle, I see we engaged them again this morning, and I am amazed at how once sided these 2 battles are, take a look at the killboard for this battle in C3N-3S

http://nem3.com/killboard/index.php/kill_related/4155/

It shows that while being outnumbered by nearly 2-1 odds that we managed to kill 63 more ships with only 24 losses. I can imagine that TEST leadership is probably not too pleased with their current efficiency in battle, though I am upset I wasn’t able to participate in this second battle, I hope that there are more like this to come.

Zandramus

Nullsec Life, NEM3SIS, Delve, and Karma

I have been moved in now for about a week and I must report that I am having a fantastic time in Delve. I am getting plenty of Pew, however I find myself in some supporting roles that I normally would not have tried I have been in manyt fights as a Devoter Pilot where I wasn’t getting on the killmail, I tried out Logi pilot but didn’t enhjoy that at all I had trained logi 5 so that I could put my carrier into triage mode. I have typically been the DPS’er having trained Fighters 5, Fighter Bombers 5, I am a natural Carrier and Super Carrier Pilot. We have been doing some structure bashing to claim space and all that has been going well, but where I am clearly enjoying myself is that we seem to have regular visitors to our space and we seem to be able to quickly field a gang of people.

Last night was pretty typical we had visitors that had made their way into our pocket and we had begun forming up when we heard that they had killed 2 noctis’s of people who weren’t watching the Intel Channel, then word went out that they had one of our carriers tackled off the station. Immediately I started moving a cyno alt into the system and as I was already in my carrier a few systems away we got a cyno lit in the home system for people to get there and start forming up. The FC had several other carriers undock in that system and begin repping the carrier that was tackled. Once that was happening I managed to get a cyno Lit in that system and several of our PVP carrier pilots jumped to it and warped to the station at 0 and began deploying fighters on the invaders. Karma is a wonderful thing, as these were the Happy Endings corporation that had hot dropped my corp down in Stain in the 000-FS solar system when they blew up my brick Devoter on the station, I was now in the position to return the favor. They had 14 in system and we were now the defending force with the superior numbers and ships.

I immediately went to work on the most expensive ship on the field as it was called primary. I only managed to get on a couple of the killmails as fighters move so darned slow, but was happy to help remove a Loki, and Harbinger from the field.

Loki

http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/killmail.php?id=15035827

Harbinger

http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/killmail.php?id=15035826

So I am looking forward to many more fights, I have been in about 20 fleets now and have gotten some good kills, but these stood out to me this week as payback.

Zandramus

New Friends

Well this weekend was a whirlwind of moving assets, the bulk of the corp. still hasn’t finished moving, but we are showing up more and more in local of our new home. The corp. had a meeting about one week after we made the half assed deployment to Stain region, we had been offered a place in an alliance several times and this time it was decided that we would be joining the NEM3SIS alliance and moving to Querious.

So Thursday night I was packing all of my stuff and I spent the next 2 days moving from the ass end of Stain to Querious, which was fortunately only 2 jumps in the Anshar each way. Though it took three trips through a fairly busy hub where the cyno pilot kept getting shot so it was touch and go, I hate risking a 5b isk ship to move my stuff but really I would not have been able to move without it, maybe I need less stuff. It also took 2 trips with 2 carriers to move all of the ships. All told I used about 150k Oxytopes cost me a fortune, and 80k Helium Isotopes (Which are so much cheaper).

Just as I had moved in I was grinding some sec and lost a zealot to a cloaky goon trap
http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/killmail.php?id=14963235  lol but I am still ahead of the isk wars with them.  I made all this back later in the day when we found a class 3 nearby that we invaded for the day and liberated the loot from shooting all of their sites. It was kinda nice running sleeper sites again as I felt very comfortable back in a WH.

I participated in a couple of roams, it appears our fellow lonetrek dwellers and common targets Team Liquid has moved to the NPC stations around us and we were shooting at them on one of the roams, though their Kiting tactics can be quite frustrating, I will be looking forward to shooting at them some more.

That’s all for now TL:DR Moved stuff will have fun shooting peeps soon.

Zandramus

Blob Blob Blob…Life in Stain

Well we came down to Stain region to make some isk and hopefully get some GF but all we have seen so far is blob after blob. The first evening we were here we knew that the Happy Ending folks had about equal numbers online in W-Q233 so when they had a person in our station in OOO-FS I was camping them in with  heavy interdictor. The Happy Endings folks came over to OOO-FS and it looked like we were going to get a good fight, their person undocks and a fight ensues, then a Cyno is lit and a capitol fleet drops on us. Before I could get the bubble down and de-aggress my brick Devoter go boom. http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/killmail.php?id=14927911

My corp. starts undocking carriers in response while I am warping off to a celestial and getting back to the station so my pod didn’t go splat.. meanwhile one of the carriers gets bumped off the station and is taking heavy damage, calls go out to rep the wayward carrier and bump it back to the station. I dock up and undock in the Archon with the intent to only rep the carrier and I begin repping on the undock. The wayward carrier manages to get back in docking range as my archon just finishes up repairing its armor we are outnumbered about 14 – 7 so we dock up.

Later in the evening the corp. loses some expensive battleships coming back from running a 10/10 complex, and shortly after that the corp. loses an expensive solo ratting battleship. The chum is in the water.

Last night the happy endings folks pay our system a visit, there is a single Vagabond that engages a Stealth bomber on the gate and pop’s him, when we arrive at the gate Zandramus is in a Arazu fitted with faction scram and long point to deal with the Vagabond, and Vulnerability is in a Protius. The Vagabond is 300k off the gate and there is a Falcoln that just entered system and decloaks on the gate Vulnerability engages the falcoln forcing him to jump to l-A9FS. Ref’tal is in a stealth bomber on the other side of the gate watching the approach to our system, and the stealth bomber pilot switches to a Curse. Local in L-A9FS fills up with 7 Happy endings folks to come deal with 3 of us. We warp off the gate before they arrive.

15 min later they send an obvious bait Cyclone to the system, somehow Ref’Tal gets disoriented and is watching the wrong gate allowing them to blob us again 7-3 and we lose the Curse. At this point Zandramus switches up to a stealth bomber as it appears we are never going to get a fair fight with these guys and he begins to camp the gate waiting on the Falcoln spy they leave in the system, when he appears on the gate Zandramus engages him forcing him back into L-A9FS, Ref’Tal has not realized yet he is on the wrong gate and is waiting for the Falcoln to de-cloak again to bomb him of course he never does and the Falcoln again enters OOO-FS and Zandramus engages him again, this time though the blob jumps in and everyone engages Zandramus’s Stealth Bomber. 7V1… Zandramus pulls some slick piloting and gets back out of warp disrupter range and warps off with 20 pct armor.

Happy endings leave and go home and don’t return for the rest of the evening and I end up going to bed frustrated.

Zandramus   

Exploring a WH in home system..First Capital kill of 2012

So I logged in last night with some exploring in mind and I find two wormholes in the home system. Wormhole 1a leads to class 1 w-space and it is reaching the end of its life. Wormhole 3a leads to class 3 w-space and this is an outbound wormhole X702 so there is chance to surprise someone here. I do a quick d-scan and see there is a tower here with a forcefield and parked inside the forcefield is an unpiloted Orca, and Velator. I don’t see anything else on d-scan from this location so I warp to the sun and d-scan and I see Hurricane, Maelstrom, Tengu, Armageddon, Noctis, Drake, medium sleeper wreck, medium sleeper wreck, medium sleeper wreck…. Someone is running sites!!! I scan the system without probes so to pick up all of the anomalies and once I have those I sit at the sun and change d-scan to a 15 degree beam and line the sun up with each site on the map and quickly locate them in an anomaly.

Well they are located, now what… no one is on yet in my corp. fail fail. I watch them for the next hour and a half run all of the sites in the system they always hang around for the noctis to finish salvaging before they go on to the next site. Several times the hurricane lingers in the site after everyone else has left, but I am in a cov ops ship and no one else is on to help me so I am left as some pathetic onlooker unable to do anything with this group.

After they have finished the sites they warp back to their own wormhole as they were not the locals, and I drop scan probes and locate their hole and the lowsec static in Aridia region. One of our blue corps has informed us that they are going to kill some capital ships that are shooting their customs offices tonight and invites us along for the fun. We all make use of the wh connection to Aridia as then we are only 14 jumps from our low-sec base in lonetrek. I arrive in lonetrek just in time to half arse fit up a Armageddon before cyno’s go up and everyone drops on the 2 seiged dreds 3 jumps away. I race to the Saranemi solar system in time to help kill the first dread, and as we get the second one into structure it self destructs before we can kill it.

http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/killmail.php?id=14933405

We make it back home in Stain about a half hour later and its time to go to bed

Zandramus

Grinding Sec Again... and nice solo pew

Well Vulnerability and I have decided to grind our way to good empire graces again and this new-years weekend we set off for the outer ring, as we have jump clones and ships located there for just this purpose.

Upon arriving in our clone stations though we come to realize that we do not have very many torpedo’s for our stealth bombers so we find the nearest supplies on the market and buy them and set our destination to D5IW-F. Upon jumping into the system we find the system camped, I manage to escape the interdictor bubble with Zandramus and Ref’Tal, however Vulnerability seems to have issues with hitting mwd and cloak as I instructed him and my dear brother informs me that he is getting shot by the gate campers. Ref’Tal is already docked up but all Zandramus can do is watch as Vulnerability becomes shipless, though he manages to get away in his pod and docks and purchases another ship.

http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/killmail.php?id=14913869

And thus the locals are no longer content at killing my brother, now they are smack talking in local and asking for ransom to let him leave the station, I watch intently as they warp back and forth from the station to the gate setting up bubbles and camping, but wait a second, there is a lone Oracle sniper that appears to warp to the same spot on the gate camp and is lazily sitting there all by himself. “Zandramus smells chum in the water”, I maneuver to within 40 of the oracle and wait, just as all of his buddies warp back to the station I click approach and bomb the target, click orbit and microwarpdrive, as I get to 19k he is starting to move and I disrupt his warp engines as the first volley of torpedoes slams into his hull. He is going down fast but not fast enough for me as I suspect he is crying for his gang support right about now. Just as his help arrives my torpedoes reduce his shiny sniper boat to scrap-metal and I cloak up grinning.

http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/killmail.php?id=14913755

Local was something like this…

>2skulls - you are no longer blue

>Zandramus - You were not blue the instant you shot my corpie.

>2skulls – you guys are dead

>Zandramus – Moar Tearz Please

I can’t remember the rest of the conversation but I was enjoying it, we played SWTOR for about 5 hours while they camped us in the station then I undocked everyone and insta-warped them to a safespot and logged out. oh so much time wasted for them. Apparently their corp and my corp were supposed to be blue, but checking the killmails he was on Vulnerabilities killmail so I don’t feel bad for killing him and I got 80 points on battleclinic for the solo kill with my stealth bomber. We did get to grind some Sec I am down to -5.0 and we get the word the corp is moving to Stain so we pack up and are headed back to Tamo to start packing for Stain.

Zandramus

A costly weekend… and someone needs to fix neutral jamming.

So this weekend started out with a nice roam that I lost an Armageddon on that part of the weekend was all good, however it set me up for a costly loss as it was my last standard Armageddon in my hangar at the home system. I logged in the next morning and saw that several of our guys have been being harassed on the station by a Megathron, a Hurricane, and a Myrmadon. I ask everyone what we have available, we have a Tempest and a carrier for reps if needed, and in my hanger the only DPS tanky ship that is available to me is my Navy Armageddon.

So we play some station games we undock they aggress, we re-dock we are just probing what they have to bring to a fight here, after several checks I feel confident that this is what they are going to bring to the fight I undock and wait for them to aggress again and I engage the myrm, putting all damage on the myrm I am taking all damage from them as I hit 75pct armor, I call for the carrier to undock and start repping me. The carrier undocs and before he can lock me they warp in a neutral falcoln and jam the carrier. We continue to apply dps to the myrm but he isn’t going down, I suspect he is getting reps from the other 2 guys in his gang, as I get to about 25 pct armor I switch my damage to the falcoln to get him off of the field, He hits structure and warps away after 2 volleys but I am bleeding into structure at this point, the carrier gets a lock on me and another falcoln warps in and jams him.

The Navy Armageddon pops, I warp my pod out they pop our tempest, the carrier docks. Well, gg on them they really didn’t have anything to worry about with 2 neutral falcolns in system out of dscan range.

Well, I think its time to get my sec status back up, and grind up some more isk. I had just spent quite a bit of isk this weekend and that loss really hurt my wallet.

Btw did I mention how I hate neutral falcolns right now.

Zandramus

Evening of Gate Camping, finds a Hilariously fit Phoon.

I log into the wormhole tonight and resolve the signatures present which total 3, there are no new signatures so I do some maintenance and un anchor the 17 small towers that were placeholders on the moons to deny any staging POS’s from being deployed. I bookmark each of them as I do this and return after they are un anchored and collect them in the hauler and deposit them in the corporate hangar. I am done with wormhole maintenance and I log in Zandramus, and Ref’Tal and plot their course back to Lonetrek for an evening gate interdiction.

I am joined by my brother Vulnerability when I arrive in Lonetrek and I decide that tonight I will provide heavy tackle in my Devoter. Vulnerability is also flying a Heavy Innterdictor an Onyx. So both of these ships have a giant tank on them and have no issues whatsoever tanking the gate guns and we have the scan resolution on both of them bonused to about 1200, so not a lot of stuff will get away from us.

I am interested in getting some expensive pod kills with this ship but basically we are killing anything unfortunate enough to jump into our low security system. We have other corporation members in system that are providing gang boosting, and dps. I am very comfortable with the fleet setup and would happily engage another small fleet of equal size with this one.

The evening progresses and we are getting nothing but noob ships and shuttles jumping in to us, I have missed several  destroyers tonight my computer has been a bit laggy and these ships are warping just as I get a positive lock which is strange as the targeted interdiction script is always pre-activated when I go to lock a target.

A phoon and a wolf warp to the gate on the other side of the gate and there is a tengu on scan, I feel things are about to get interesting, when the phoon and wolf jump into us. We ignore the wolf and concentrate on the phoon, knocking down his shields and just before he goes pop the pilot ejects, I miss the pod and the rest of the fleet is unable to stop dps fast enough to get us a free phoon. A look at the killmail and I am just baffled.  http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/killmail.php?id=14809353 Has there been a disturbance in the space time continuum, this phoon was fitted with miner II’s expanded cargoholds, had 2 drones in the drone bay, and heavy missile launchers in the launcher hardpoints. This fitting would have been normal minmatar fare for circa 2003-2004 before there was such things as mining barges which mine so much more efficiently.

A quick look at the pilot reveals he is brand new, first seen on battleclinic on 11/27/2011… with 1 kill and 2 losses including the phoon. What the hell is such a new player flying a typhoon fitted this way and jumping into lowsec with a ship he clearly he cannot fly proficiently.  This game never ceases to amaze me. I assume I just blew up some 10 year old just starting into the game and getting his first taste of EVE.  But he had the conscience of mind to eject to save the pod…. Something here isn’t right …

Anyway the eveing digresses into a few more pod kills and I go to bed feeling unsatisfied with the quality of my kills for the day.

Zandramus

Finally An Exit… and some Pew

Well I log in to find 4 new signatures in the wormhole, there are scanner probes on dscan so this looks promising, there wouldn’t be someone in here scanning if there were no wormholes in the system. I set to scanning down the system and resolve a wormhole right off the bat, I warp to it at range cloaked and it is an exit to class 4 W-Space that is no help so I sit at range off the this wormhole while I continue to scan. There is a new Gravometric site, that I activate, then a new Ladar site that I activate, then at last another wormhole, I cross my fingers and warp to it at range…. It is alas a low security exit.

I log in Zandramus and Ref’Tal and begin moving them toward the low security system in Amarr space that the wormhole is in, this space actually looks familiar and it is as it is 1 jump away from the last low security exit some 3 weeks ago. There were some pirates around then so I must be careful. Arriving in the system, I set Zandramus up on the inside of the wormhole watching the exit in a stealth bomber. I set the scanning alt up on the outside of the wormhole in a covert ops ship, and Ref’Tal leaves his Pilgrim in the sole station is the system and enters the wormhole and boards the Iteron V and begins making trips out of the wormhole.

Everything is going well, there is seldom anyone in the low security system beside the scanning alt, so Ref’Tal makes 15 trips with the Iteron V emptying the corporate hanger and depositing it all into a new corporate office he has rented in the system. He continues to move ships out of the wormhole, leaving only ships he cannot fly left in the corporate hangar array. Vulnerability was origionally on his way to help out but while this was progressing WiDot decided to hit the corporate pos in the home system so he was moving all his characters there to help man the pos gunnery and then help repair pos modules. So this was going to be a Solo adventure for me tonight.

About this time there were scanner probes out in the low security system and as I was done at this point with the Iteron V I was concentrating on self destructing some of the tech 1 cruisers in the system that were used for gas mining, and Zandramus hears the wormhole flare. Zandramus waits for the person to uncloak and when he does he uncloaks, aligns to the wormhole and launches a concussion bomb. I was hoping it was just a covert ops frigate, but that turns out to be a cloaky Tengu. Well being in an anathema lets see if I can bluff him with the knowledge of the hole behind me and him not knowing the system. Zandramus gains a positive lock on the Tengu so he aint gonna be cloaking or warping off and launches a volley of torpedoes, activates his microwarp drive and begins a 17k orbit of the target. The first volley of the Tengu puts Zandramus into half armor, but now he is at full speed in a speed bonused system traveling about 5k meters a second in orbit and he has the Tengu positively locked and warp disrupted in a system that missiles only travel 60 percent of their distance and Zandramus has a 60 percent speed buff. I am hoping to outrun the Tengu’s missiles and force him to make a decision as my EM torps rip apart his shields. My bluff appears to work as the Tengu disengages and exits the WH. I don’t know if it was that Zandramus was Flashy Red, or that there were other ships on scan at the pos that the Tengu could see and thought the boldness of Zandramus ment that he had back up… but mission accomplished there will not be a cloaky Tengu in the system messing up my logistical plans for the evening.

So everything is out of the wormhole except for the hangar array, the ship maintenance array, a couple of battleships, and a heavy interdictor. All of the pos guns are still in place, I still have all of the fuel for at least a month. I need to begin removing all of the small towers that are anchored at all of the moons in the system so that when the next wormhole opens up I can finally move out of the wormhole for good.

Its late and its been a busy evening, I missed a corporation operation because I was tied up with logistics but hopefully tomorrow is another day.

Zandramus

Another frustrating day ends in bonus pew

Well I log in today into the wormhole to find only 3 signatures, finally all of those rock and gas sites have expired except for 1, then I get a new gas site which I activate and the static wormhole which opens to Providence. This is no help I feel dejected and log out and log in Zandramus, he is in Aunenen and it looks like TunDragon is still active here so I log in Ref’Tal  and purchase some stuff on the market and consolidate all of my shit in Nonni into one station.

I am looking forward to getting out of the hole and getting some industry started in Lowsec  Lonetrek, I purchase up some planetary command centers and another Iteron v for Ref’Tal as I left the other one I had here in the wormhole on Sunday. With nothing left to do, I log into Zandramus and take his stealth bomber onward to Tamo where we are shooting a WiDot Customs Office, as we enjoy their company every couple of days, while there are three of them in local they do not ride to the occasion of me shooting the customs office and three of us are not making much progress against it in stealth bombers.

Wishing they had kept the Naga as a Torp spewing BC. Anyways I log in later to move my stuff through aunenen and just as I am scouting the other side of the gate a Tornado warps to 200k off the gate and alpha’s a hauler right in front of me… Interesting, I make a mental note of his warp in point and start closing the distance. Once I think I am close I warp Ref’Tal to the gate and the Tornado warps down 60k from me, so still not close enough I warp Ref’Tal back to the station in Nonni. I move closer and when I think I am about in position I warp Ref’Tal to the gate with all my goods in the hauler but a cloaky installed in the top slot and jump him into Aunenen. The tornado warps down 25k from me.  Hehe..

I align with Ref’Tal and hit the cloak and uncloak in the stealth bomber hit the Mwd orbiut at 16 disrupt his warp engines and proceed to violence his boat. A corpmate warps in in a command BC but I think I could have done this myself as I was top damage dealer on the kill, don’t think he even shot back at either of us. Those Tornado’s are paper thin.

I always gf in local and I get back there was no fight, I find that a curious response from someone who was just alpha ganking haulers but to each his own I guess.

Was a fun kill, I feel like I may be stalking some more of these if they are going to fly solo like this.

Zandramus

Still no Empire exit in sight, this calls for drastic measures…

After calculating that it will take me 40 Iteron 5 loads to get all of my stuff out of W space, and not having an empire connection for the last week I am a bit discouraged this Saturday morning. So I decide to do some chain collapsing until I get a favorable nullsec exit as close to empire space as possible, or in an NPC station system.

I collapse the current static, and scan down the new entrance, low and behold I am 2 jumps from Akora in the Forge, I go and scan that approach and see that EOA is heavily camped, I look at the map on DotLan and see that I am also 2 jumps from Eurgrana (sp?) and I look at that route and see no one camping any of those systems and there are no bubbles.

I make some tactical bookmarks 200k off all of the gates and set about getting ships and haulers into the wormhole. Zandramus arrives and removes all of the ships that he is the only one capable of flying, this makes me feel a little better as there is no longer a 2b isk Legion floating in the tower as an attraction for someone to come into the WH and shootie my tower.

Ref’Tal arrives with his iteron mk5 and he proceeds to make several runs out of the system while Zandramus and friend keep an eye on the gates while he is running equipment out of the hole. There is a tense moment when a Tengu and an interceptor warp to the other side of an outbound gate just as Ref’Tal warps to the gate. But they both jump at the same time and Ref’Tal jumps through without them ever knowing they almost snagged a billion in high end fittings being transported in an Iteron 5. That was a very close call.

Ref’Tal makes a few more trips and manages to move 5 loads out to Eurgrana until several people have now started to take notice that an Iteron 5 is jumping in and out of Nullsec from Lowsec and start a serious gatecamp.

I leave the Iteron floating in the shields of the POS and everyone warps back to the home system so that we can get in some pew pew that evening. The next day we purchase a Gallente Jump Freighter and jump it to Eurgrana and move our loot back to our home.

Sunday there is still no exit, though there is a new Class 4 WH which leads nowhere though there are several people running my sites.  Since I am too tired to bring Zandramus and Ref’Tal back the 30+ jumps through HS or 54 Jumps through LS to get to the hole, the people in local scurry back to their WH while I am scanning. I get a nice convo from their CEO who happens to be friends with my CEO. I set them blue after the convo. He was laughing that he told his guys they were lucky they didn’t get blown up as he knows exactly the type of corp that I am currently in… and when they told him they saw our corp ticker on the ships in the POS he told them to get out of the hole until he could contact me. I thank him and let him know that they are welcome to run the sites as they see fit and he thanks me.

The night ends with me trying a new setup on my heavy interdictor for a lowsec camp  which generates several podkills for me and I also catch several blockaid runner haulers with this setup. I am happy for this new fit and will be looking forward to flying it again soon.

Training wise, I am still training for the triage carrier, 17 more days to go.

Zandramus

Not working as intended… Logofski confirmed…

Last night we were preparing to drop a force recon black ops group onto a Russian gate camp in Aunenen, however we took too much time forming up and they left Aunenen before we could rally and get the cyno lit. So with the good fight gone the cyno alt gets some aggression out of a single target some ten minutes later and we dropped on him and dispatched him in short order. We all cloaked back up waiting for the cyno to reset so we could leave Aunenen, when we get word an Obalisk just warped to the Aunenen gate at 0 in Nonni.

After I proclaimed on comms that no one in their right mind would jump an Obalisk into Aunenen un-scouted I was reminded of a saying of one of the other Eve Bloggers though I don’t remember his name but it went kind of like this.. “Always bet on dumb…”

Because that is exactly what he did. We see the Obalisk de-cloak and he is quickly pointed and we begin removing his shield and armor and just as we start into structure he disappears.

WTF… this isn’t supposed to happen you aren’t supposed to be able to log out and disappear in the middle of battle, a heated discussion on the tactic erupts on coms and as everyone is distracted about the discussion a stealth bomber is lost to gate gun fire. 

Everyone cloaks up but the argument is this,

1.    Did he log off right after he jumped into Aunenen before he appeared and does that mean that since he logged before aggressed he gets a free pass?

2.    Did he log off in warp to the Aunenen gate after he selected jump from distance in the other system? IE was the hurricane his scout and initiated warp and jump from a distant point? What would be the mechanics here if he logged in Nonni but jumped because he selected warp and jump button?

I think that if the issue is 1. Then he should not have been able to disappear, however the issue gets a bit murky if he logged in Nonni before the ship jumped to Aunenen. Several of us petitioned this as whatever he was carrying we would have loved to loot, but didn’t get to due what I feel was a glitch in game mechanics.

Zandramus

No Exit to Empir3

I log in tonight to see if there is an escape route to find 8 new signatures in the system, even though I activated the other 8 gas and rock sites previously they are still here so quite a bit of signatures to sort through. I set my probes up to .25 AU resolution in a 7 probe configuration and resolve the current 10 bookmarks one of which is the static that is reaching the end of its natural lifetime.

As I begin to resolve the remaining 8 signatures that are new, I am hopeful that one of these is an exit to low-sec or hi-sec space, but to my chagrin I have 5 new gas and rock sites 1 new radar sight and a K163 to W4 space. I warp to 30k off the W4 wormhole and spy a helios covert ops leaving my system. I wait for about 10 min and jump into the void to see what I can see. A quick d-scan of the system locates the tower which contains an Orca, and a CN Raven, and some haulers and a helios. The Orca is piloted which makes me think they are getting ready to collapse the connection betwixt our systems so I must act fast if I am to find anything useful without getting trapped. I warp to a nearby planet and launch probes.

The system has 12 signatures, and nothing that looks familiar as I am not familiar with the densities in a class 4 to be able to pick out probable WH’s so I feel like I don’t have time to investigate further, I collect probes and beat feet back to my WH and log off in the tower.

I log into Zandramus who was left 4 jumps from home after the last black ops mission. He didn’t have any contacts on that mission so I didn’t feel it necessary to write home about. I undock in my Arazu and head for the home system in Lonetrek. No contacts in local until I jump into the home system and Low and behold, It is full of reds. Tonight we are being hosted by UI. Dot they have come to rescue their customs offices that we put into reinforced the night before last. They have 25 people in local, we have 5… sigh my corpmates are west coasters so I begin to reconnoiter the UI Dot fleet and see what they have.

Their fleet consist of 2 separate elements. 1 BC fleet of what must be shield Harbingers and Hurricanes as they are accompanied by 5 scythes. The other element of their fleet consist of 10 carriers, 5 Thanatos, 5 chimara so I expect it will not take them long to rep the shields on the customs offices. I watch them intently wishing I had a fleet of supers to drop on them but this is not the case so I have ships to buy for a fleet op later tonight so I dock at the station so I can log on my market alt on the same account.

I log into my market alt in Jita 4-4 and proceed to buy some armor ships which Zandramus excels in. I buy a Devoter, a Pilgrim to replace the one I lost foolishly jumping into Nonni when I had GCC and was doing the drinking and flying thing. I buy a Zealot, and I but another Guardian. I purchase all of the fits for these ships and contract them over to the corp jump freighter toon to get them back to our home system for me.

Logging back into our home system I find that our guests have left and I put all of my ships together and get ready for the evening operation.

A few hours later when everyone is online we are about to head out for the evening operation but before we do, we want to thank UI Dot for visiting us we enjoyed their smack-talk so much in local that we put their 2 customs offices back into reinforced mode and change ships for the nights main operation.  

We head out to 0.0 in the armor gang and travel quite a bit looking for a fight. We don’t find any in the initial systems, A Tempest gets away from us in the first engagement as he neuted out our tackle before we could land on grid and warped away. We head back the way we came and engage a Talos 80k off the gate who we manage to get tackled and he dies quickly.

Talos

Back through lowsec we go and into 0.0 again. We miss a Eagle 120k off the gate as he kills our scout we had on him and warps off, we jump into EC-P8R and engage a Hurricane and a Drake camping the Torrinos gate but they jump back through into Torrinos. We kill some of their bubbles off of the gate and warp back towards home, Our other scout has reshipped into a crow interceptor and tells us he has the Eagle tackled on the other side of the gate 100k off. We jump through and start burning towards the Eagle we are making ground slowly , or at least I am in my Zealot, when one of our faction cruisers calls point and web, I close the distance by overheating now and get a few shots in before he goes boom. But the kill of the night is to come, point called on pod just as I lock it and get the final blow the squishy pod melts to my overheated lasers and the following killmail is delivered to me.

 Halo Set go Squish

He had in a Halo set minus the Halo Omega, 500m isk lost to that pilot that has to hurt financially.

I feel very good as we reach home and I get logged off, I knew sooner or later I would get a good podkill with expensive implants and tonight was a very good night.

Zandramus

WH's The most dangerous space in eve.

So last evening we were finishing up 2 days of clearing out our anomalies in the wormhole, we started with 27 and were down to 5-6 when we were ambushed by a group coming in from a class 5, who waited just long enough for us to have the noctis in the anomaly cleaning it up so they could pop and pod everyone out of the hole. The battle report can be found here …

Ganked

So about this fight, 1 thing that can be certain, anytime a PVP fitted group of ships engage PVE fitted ships, generally the PVE ships die. SO without a point on any of these ships unless the attacking force was completely inept the results are pretty much inevitable. You simply cannot PVP without a point fitted, and our aggressors had no intention of letting us go get our PVP ships from the POS, or even letting our PODz get away so that we could reship.

At the beginning of the fight I called the Arazu primary as they tend to be a bit squishy and I thought what the hell maybe we will get lucky and pop him before he can warp off. One of the unique things about a black hole system is though they say you have a plus to agility, it is incorrect you actually have a minus to agility and aligning and warping out takes forever. Fortunately for the Arazu pilot he was outside of the Heavy Interdictor bubbles they had us trapped in, and he warped away in half structure.

It was then I made the first mistake of the fight and called the Typhoon primary and the Scorpion secondary because up to this point we weren’t getting jammed we were getting neuted, and we frankly had monster tanks with high resists and high shield regens.I wanted to get their dps off the field, I wasn’t concerned with their interdictors I would target them last as they have high tank and low dps.  As the typhoon went into armor we started to get perma-jammed from the scorpion pilot, maybe he just woke up or something I called the Scorp primary but we lost our first drake at this point and our dps started to waver with only 3 ships left on the field and 2 of them jammed we could only watch the ships go down in flames whilst trying to lock any of the enemy vessels, once the next drake went down the fight was over as the remaining 2 were perma jammed until they popped.

So all told we lost 4 drakes at about 60m isk each and a noctis. Remember in the past that we were running these in a Legion, Kronos, and Astarte if we had still been doing that we would have lost over 4bil in ships, fittings and implants. As it was we lost roughly 300m last evening which I would call just a minor setback as we have an extra set of drakes and noctis’s in the hole already and all we have to do is travel back and continue harvesting the sleeper loot at our leisure. However they did us a favor and shortened our travel time to our home system so that we can PVP this weekend and get back to the industry stuff some other time. All in all I was able to GF them in local before I was podded out on Ref’Tal, I couldn’t tell if they replied or not as I was waking up with a bad headache in Minmatari space.

Zandramus

Breaking the Cardinal Patch Day Rule

Well Last night in the WH I was dealing with some people in a class 4 system that k162 inbounded to me, scanning their system there was no anomalies present, so I certainly didn’t want them running mine. Though I was having issues closing the hole between the systems. Once they were aware of my presence, they logged in a nidhogger into the POS and also some players in various stealth bombers and some DPS battleships. Now like me some of the players were flashy red. I shot at one of their cov ops pilots jumping into my system so we had ourselves an old fashioned standoff… I couldn’t go into their system to close the hole, and they couldn’t come into mine to run my anomalies.

Not that I could run mine either as there were 2 additional k162’s last evening, so this went on for several hours, me watching their pos and everyone they had logged in and I am sure they were doing the same. About 9PM ET I see them start logging off, I get my brother to log in his toons and I log all mine in and we send 7 geddons and a devoter at the WH and cut its mass in half in the first pass. We warp back to the pos, wait out the session change and warp back to the hole and one at a time go through till it shrinks again, then it was just 2 passes with the devoter and the connection was closed. Time to go to bed and get ready for the patch tomorrow.

Though in logging out I broke the cardinal rule of patch day, 3 of my toons have less than 4 hours of skill training left in their queue. I have gotten in the habit of topping up the queue’s in the morning before work and was not able to to that today due to patch deployment. DOH

Zandramus

Its a TARP!!! Oh Noes 111...

It’s a TARP!!! Oh Noes….

Well sadly the Redeemer met its end last night to a well executed trap set by Team Liquid on the Torrinos gate in EC-P8R. Apparently we were getting a bit too well known for Blop Dropping in the area and Team Liquid set a nice Juicy trap with a Tengue and a drake sitting on the Torrinos gate. We jump drive from our home system and land on the gate at range and they both burn out of range of the battleships, and then 10 rifters land on the gate and tackle everyone, and then 5 drakesand a Cain  land on the gate and start taking the battleships apart. Result is 3 Black Ops Battleships Down  (Summary) , 0 losses for the enemy fleet. I say GF well done and I am waking up in the station in Old Man Star…. Which reminds me I need to move my clone….

So on the way back to the home base, I pick up a Purifier in Aununen and am a few jumps away when I hear on coms they have a Thantos aggressed on the home station, I am to far away to get to the fight before the Thantos de-agros and docks up. I arrive in the home station and am sorting out some ships when word goes out that the Thantos has undocked and has aggressed. People in local are calling for reps and cap so I undock the Archon and start supplying cap and reps, I also make use of my 16m sp in drone skills and unleash my fighters on the carrier. Thantos is now into armor, we light a Cyno and drop a Nyx and a Wyvern into the mix.  Thanto's Down in 3 vollies, So now the night has not been a total loss.

While I am in the process of sorting out ships, there are some ships in Aununen that I need to pick up, I log my Cyno Alt in to Aununen and see there are 54 people in local. Hmm… the Toon who’s carrier we just sploded, undocks in another Thantos and agresses our corps BS’s sitting on the home station. I do a D-scan in Aununen and see that there are 2 Titans in local along with a slew of High end BS’s and Carriers. I smell another Tarp about to happen. We smack it up in local in the home system and making sure not to agress the new Thantos, thoroughly upsetting the carrier pilot and I am sure frustrating the fleet that thought they were going to bridge into us.  

It is getting late for me so I head to bed stopping to talk to my son and a friend of his who are on the phone talking to someone in NC.Dot who just lost a carrier and were trying to bait a hot drop with another one. I lols and tell them to ask her how did that turn out…..

Zandramus