Back to empire...

Been a busy couple of weeks, but nothing to write about. After the fights with IaC, we withdrew to Period Basis once more and started shoring up defences, concentrating on bringing ships into the region, equipped and spread out so we would have a flexible and fluid defence when BoB comes. And they will, there is no doubt, but now we are all just a single clone jump away. They probably think keeping us on tenterhooks is quite clever, but in reality, we aren't. We are prepared.

So, clone jump back to empire and wake up in my favourite clone in Frarn. Ah, Frarn, my spiritual home. A busy mission runner's system, one jump from the perma-busy Rens, and a nice place to make some spare ISK. Also a place to bump into curious characters, none of whom speak a language I know, warping their ships around at exactly the same time, to the same places, and mining all the time. Takes a discipline I don't seem to have! Rumour has it they have some kind of hive mind thing going on, but I'm no scientist. I'll leave that to the lab guys.

Anyway, I start to plan out how I'm going to move my ships up to the KIA HQ for the upcoming weekend of fighting, and realise I'll need to shuttle around a bit. Call up the market, and go to the well used market bookmark for shuttles, 9000 ISK, thankyou very much. Only... they aren't 9000 ISK any more. Their prices are fluctuating wildly, starting at 25k ISK, and going up to 250k+ ISK. OK, what the hell was going on!?

Being out in PB means we are cut off from the Empire going's on, and we have our own production and markets out there, so we don't have to be in touch with Empire markets. Seems that the owners of the Empire stations have decided that making shuttles is too much effort for too little gain, and have ceased production. We could all rely on shuttles being in every station, and they made for quick and easy transport (something about flying around in a pod seems very low rent to me), but now.... shuttles are on sale still, but all the entrepreuners have now increased shuttle sales. As I said, prices are fluctuating heavily, as the sellers are testing how much people are actually willing to pay for one. Too much, and people will buy a frigate instead. Take the Minmatar Slasher for example. Costs about 30k ISK, and is very very fast. Put an Inertia Stabiliser on it's single low slot, and you have a ship that can go to warp as fast as a shuttle, and (I think) warp faster than a shuttle, at 6au a second.

A knock on effect will be on Tritanium prices. Shuttles being 9000 ISK everywhere meant that they kept Trit prices low- you refine a shuttle, and you get something like 2300 Trit. So, if Trit rose too much, you'd just buy and refine a shuttle instead. How this will effect prices on everything that uses Trit in it's construction (and that's pretty much everything), remains to be seen.

Anyway, I digress. After the surprise, I bought a trusty Slasher and got on with my business of moving ships. I pondered briefly on buying a trusty Minmatar freighter, which I can actually fly, but... nah. Freighters are big fat targets these days, and I can't be doing with it!

So, fast forward to yesterday. I caught up with our 30+ gang in Inaro, and we headed down to Perimeter to see what we could find. I was in a Stiletto Interceptor- as I needed to catch the gang, I needed to be in something that I could rely on to gtfo of any 'situation'. Upon jumping into Perimeter, the lead elements said a BoB gang had just entered warp at our out gate, and were in warp to Urlen gate.. where I was. I was pretty confident I could catch one of them the other side, so I MWD'd back to the gate myself, just as the BoB gang arrive- about 8 or 9. I jump through, so do they. If they wanted to stay to fight, I'd be dead, but then the rest of the gang were right behind us.

They decloaked and took off, but I managed to get a point on an Astarte piloted by BarataS- by coincidence, so did another inty pilot who'd been right behind me. The Astarted locked me, and fired- he got one hit on me, then my transversal increased as I tightly orbitted him. I had activated my artillery and launcher, then the rest of the gang showed up and it was over for the Astarte.

Moving on down toward Chamemi, we jumped into Hishai from Geztic, and warped to the out gate, just to see a WT Typhoon Battleship enter warp back the way we came. I promptly flipped the ship around and back to Geztic gate. The 13.5au a second warp really made up for the headstart the 'phoon had, and I jumped through to Geztic right behind him. McKinley was waiting the other side in a Malediction- he'd obviously heard comms and waited. The 'phoon was doomed....or was he? The warp from the other gate back to Geztic was 90au, so the gang was arriving in dribs and drabs.... and unfortunately, the guys with webs were late in coming- so the 'phoon MWD'd back to the gate on half armour and jumped through to Hishai. I thought the slower guys on the other side would then had the pleasure of finishing him of.... but they never got that chance.

The 'phoon promptly warped off- the pilot had done a complete emergency shutdown. This sort of thing is frowned upon as it feeds extra warp power to the engines to get them out their current position- if they haven't aggressed anyone in that system- if they have, the power is diverted to weapons/ shield and armour systems, and thus if anyone is scrambling their warp drive, they are basically finished.

The downside is that it puts tremendous strain on the ship systems and isn't seen as an honourable thing for pod pilots to do- they black out as the ship feeds all available power to the warp core, and only minimal life support is left up.

However, his ship was now hanging in space somewhere, and we needed to find it within 15 minutes before it was disappear from scan as it completely shut down for a system reboot (which could take any amount of time, it was completely random). Regrettably, we didn't have a prober with us, and Eddz asked if anyone had probe skills.... I do, so I volunteered. I noticed we were next door to Agil, a nice trade hub in these parts, so quickly docked. I stayed in my pod while I accessed the market and quickly bought a used Cheetah Covert Ops ship- I got my pod transferred into it while buyinga Recon Probe Launcher, and probes. I was splashing my ISK around to ensure I got the engineers, mechanics and loaders full attention.

Sure enough, I was turned around and undocked in record time. Jumped into Hishai, warped to planet 9 where the rest of the gang were, and dropped a probe. The readout showed me I had to wait 42 seconds for the result. Time passed really slowly... and in that time I realised the gang were all awaiting my result... I hoped I was still competent at this, I hadn't probed anyone for a looooong time....

With a barely audbile 'ping', it announced a result. The Typhoon had been located, with 0m error, and was just over 1au away. I told the gang I was warping in, cloaked up and warped to within 10km of the hit. Sure enough, as I exited warp, I landed 10km from the silent, motionless Typhoon. I told the gang to warp to me, then moved out of the way so they didn't decloak me. It was over in seconds, the gang fell on the inert BS like a pack of hungry wolves, and it melted under the onslaught- systems were offline, no kind of tanking, no nothing. The pod popped out, as did the crew's escape capules, and warped off.... another 42 seconds later, located the pod and that went splat. He'd wake up in a clone vat somewhere wondering what happened as he wouldn't have known we were there due to everything being offline.

I stayed in the Cheetah for a while, but I wanted to join in the fighting as well as realising how valuable probing was. And so, in a lull in the action, I docked in Amarr, and purchased a Rapier. As well as being very useful in PvP, it could also scan, so I had the best of both worlds. And boy did I pay for that, as Rapiers are not cheap. Still, I could use most of the bits from the Cheetah, which I sold.

All in all, a satisfying evening's work!