Battle in 49-U

Sitting in the Concord station's concourse bar, the other KIA pilots and myself were all abuzz with what tonight's operation could be about. We had been told to bring our battleships, and every single pilot was ordered to attend. Long range guns were required, long range ammo. It was about damage, not tank.

I spent an hour recalibrating my weapons and working out a new fitting schema. After running up to Rens (they all know me by name now, I've had to buy so many ships from there recently), I got the techs to remove the 1200mm Artillery I had fitted and fitted the 1400mm monsters, along with the other new modules. I tested, calibrated, and it was good.

Tempest outside station
(click for large image)

We formed up a large fleet outside the station, then as we set off for 49-U, Eddz let us know that we'd be forming part of a Tortugan fleet (eg. MC, Daisho, Odyssey also) to bash IAC. Most of us breathed a sigh of relief as we'd privately suspected POS bashing, given the ship fitting orders.

Uneventful 25 jumps or so up, we were relayed information that the battle was in full swing, with large fleets engaging in toe to toe fighting. IRON alliance had reinforced IAC, so Tortuga had withdrawn, but re-engaged when they knew our 40+ BS were almost there.

In flight
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We were given the order to jump into 49-U. As ship after ship jumped through, the gate operators decided to be jobsworths, and call a traffic advisory. After an agonising 2 and a half minute wait, we were allowed to jump in. Well, something must've gone wrong with the gate or the ship, because for 10 minutes we were stuck in nullspace. I confirmed with the crew that everything appeared to be in the green, but we just were "nowhere". A cold feeling started to spread outwards from my stomach... I'd heard awful stories about pod pilots who'd just disappeared. No appearing at a clone station, no nothing... perma-death.

Fortunately, 49-U swam into existence, but the sensors were massively overloaded with information, and although I could see my ship being targetted by an Incursus, I couldn't lock him, activate modules or launch any drones. Sitting there impotently while a ship worth a 100th of what yours costs buzzes merrily around you is quite frustrating. Scotty, my engineer, managed to get the drones into space, and I finally got a lock on the Incursus. I futilely engaged my guns, but there's no way they would track. Finally my sensors updated, and the Incursus was running- seems my drone AI had saved the situation, and they had correctly responded to me being aggressed. I recalled them, then as nothing else seemed to be working properly, took the decision that most pod pilots hate to do. Full reset.

I informed the crew, then instructed the computer to full reset.

Life support was the only system not reset, and I could feel the ship's systems dying. The warp drives, thank Jove, correctly responded to a reset, and warped us off into a random vector. After 10 minutes, ship systems were back online, checks were run, and we warped back to the gate. This time, we appeared about 70km from the gate. The sight, now we were a little back from it was amazing.

The battle
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Finally, the ships targetting systems were working, and I could start targetting things, although with degraded perfomance. I think the other KIA pilots were having issues also, as the FC was calling targets that weren't even on the field any more, although at the time I thought it was my overview glitching still.

The rest of the battle was over quickly, the Tortugans held the field, but KIA had taken heavy losses- we'd jumped in at a bad time, and in the wrong place, and bore the brunt of it. Overall, I think the Tortugans won, MC and the others had inflicted heavy damages including a couple of capital ship kills.

After looting what we good, and destroying the rest (and god there was a lot if it), what was left of the KIA fleet withdrew- all 5 of us- myself, Eddz, EV1, Mr Kunta, and Niroku (maybe a couple more). As we were in BSs, we were sitting targets, and the inevitable happened about 6 jumps from home. Even with the best scouting in the world, we were too big a target to miss, and we got hit in F4R2- me and EV1 went down, and I couldn't get my pod out as it was in a disruption field. Goodbye F4, hello Sendaya! The clonebay tech was different this time, a bit more chatty, and pretended to be sympathetic to my tale of woe.

So, time for another trip to Rens. They will be pleased.

The paint wasn't even dry!

Well, last night was a doozy.

After a fitful rest, only interrupted by housekeeping wanting to clean my berth, I was energised and ready to go for another evening's combat.

Sure enough, our gang was up already, camping the Doril gate. We'd been there so much recently, we were getting to know the first names of the stargate personnel. Apparently, they love watching ship combat, so getting a job on the outbound gate of a 0.0 border system is quite a sought after post.

I jumped into Doril, and joined my comrades orbitting the gate, when we got a call from our Alliance mates on Utopia gate in Doril- a large (but not larger than us, according to intel) force of ships was on the other side. We hurried back to Sendaya, and most of us changed to Battleships, apart from those of us in Huginns, Rapiers and Hic/Dictors.

Back into Doril. The non-BSs warped over to Utopia gate on instruction from the FC, just in time to see a AAA Flycatcher cloak off the gate. The faster ships engaged MWDs and sped toward the last point we saw him at- he wouldn't be able to fit anything more than a Prototype cloak as the electronics of non-covert ships were really quite incompatible with cloaks. As it was with a Proto cloak, so much of the ships energy went to cloaking the ship, it took most of your engine power.

As a result, he was decloaked easily, and we promptly despatched him. I had double webs on him, and we also had another Huginn and Rapier with us, so he wasn't going to make it to the gate any time soon.

We jumped through into Utopia, while the BSs came to the Utopia gate in Doril. As we jumped in, we saw 3 interceptors on the gate- 2 were 100+km off, and one, a AAA Stiletto was on the gate.. but curiously didn't jump and got killed. Almost immediately, an Eris Interdictor exited warp on top of the gate, ejected a warp bubble and jumped through. We all knew what this meant, so we mentally prepared ourselves for battle.

FC told the BSs in Doril to jump through to us, and told support to hold fire until we saw how big their force was. I was a choice target, as they were mainly in nano'd smaller ships, and they all hate being webbed. I was starting to take damage, so jumped back through to Doril as the BSs appeared in Utopia and their big guns opened up.

In Doril, I was convinced I was going to get destroyed- there was a bubble on the gate and a 20 man AAA gang who'd come in behind us. I was impressed with their organisation, but more concerned with getting out- while holding my post-jump cloak, I saw I was just outside of their bubble. Luck appeared to be on my side as I was aligned to a clump of planets, so I decloaked and warped...phew.

I could scan the gate from the point I exited warp and saw the gang had jumped through. Human nature being what it is, everyone wants to be in on the kill, but if I was in charge, I'd have told them to stay there- they could have picked off any ships coming back through. However, as it turns out, our BSs were doing a lot of damage on the other side.

I warped back to the gate, and landed on the edge of Hictor Bubble. A Broadsword was there on the gate- I ignored him and burned to the gate, he ignored me. I was needed the other side. Jumped through into a chaotic swirl of drones, plasma, projectiles and missiles. I quickly identified the Deimos HAC that was the primary- it was well within web range. Decloaked, locked and webbed, and let rip with my 650mm guns and assault missiles. He was destroyed quite quickly, but my threat indicator was squawking in my ear- I was under sustained attack from a Sacrilege HAC. I switched all my ordinance to the Sac, my drones popping out of their bay and made my way back to the gate. I was out of shields, he was entering armour... not good. I was about to resign myself to losing the Huginn when he was called primary! In very short order, he was transformed into a wreck.

And this is where I made my mistake. I was on the gate, and started to shoot another target. We had intel that a TCF gang of 65 had entered Doril- they weren't blue to us, and it was likely we' get caught in a nasty sandwich.

The FC called for us to withdraw, so I switched all my guns off. I kept trying to jump, and the stargate kept denying me- my combat electronics were still in operation. With one eye on the overview (no-one locked me yet), I double checked my guns and missiles- all off. About 60 seconds had passed, I should be able to jump! "Stargate denies you access" WTF!! With the rest of KIA jumping through, there were less and less targets for AAA, and inevitably, they decided I was too slow and a good target to shoot at. Frantically punching the jump button, and wondering why I couldn't jump, my shields vapourised, as did my armour. Surely now I would jump through, saving my pod and clone.

And then I blacked out, the image of the gate burned on my retina. Like I was stuck in glue. Couldn't move. Then nothing. Huginn down. It occured to me later that my bloody drones had been busily fighting, blissfully unaware that I was trying to jump out. Still, my own damn fault, very noobish.

I woke up to the concerned face of a Sendayan Concord technician looking down at me. I drew in a deep breath and filled my new lungs for the first time. The Tech smiled and withdrew, indicating with his hand a towel and shower in one corner. Chatty bunch, these cops.

So, I had been podkilled then. I mourned briefly for my other clone with it's lovely implants and cool shades, then pulled myself together. I had to get another ship from Rens, as Derelik, the region that I was in, was quite frankly crap for shopping. To cut a long story shorter, I shuttled up to Rens, bought another Huginn, an even cooler pair of shades, then hurried back to Sendaya after getting my ship fitted with guns, launchers, drones and ammo.

The gang were patiently waiting for me, bless them. We had decided to give Doril a rest, word was clearly out that KIA were in town, and everyone loves to fight us! We headed out to G-5EN2, the border system for Providence. Had a couple of kills here and there, but when we got to 7MD-S1, a large CVA gang came up behind us, and engaged those of us left in ERVK-P. The rest of the gang jumped into ERVK, but I got primaried quite early, and my brand new Huginn got destroyed. I wasn't about to wake up in a clone bay again, so when I knew I was going down, I MWDd out of the bubble, which saved my pod when it popped out of the fiery wreckage. I warped away.

CVA weren't quite quick enough to stop the rest of us exiting the system and, frankly GTFO the area. Back to Assah in my pod with the gang. I docked up in Assah, rented a room for the night, showered off, and went to bed grumpy!

However, the battle reports made interesting reading. In the first fight vs. AAA, we actually came out on top, considering they had 20 more ships than us. In the second fight vs. CVA, they outnumbered us 2 to 1, and we, to be honest, got stuffed.

Still, them's the breaks!

Doril and roaming

I had just finished an excellent bottle of the local wine from Sendaya, and was relaxing in my berth in between patrols, when a call was received for all pilots to help out a KIA gang in Doril.

Pulling on some overalls as I sprinted down to the station's docking bay, people were deftly moving out of my way, well used to pod pilots sprinting to their ships- especially in Sendaya.

Sendaya is a border system, the last link of Empire security before you jump into Doril and the lawlessness beyond. Concord decided to build a station here, the only one in the system, to keep an eye on things spilling over into Sendaya. Although they have no jurisdiction in Sendayan lowsec, they keep a quiet eye on things.

The station was a dull, utilitarian affair, but what did you expect from cops. Even the station's bars were a little boring- well lit and clean. And mostly empty. Hence drinking wine in my own berth.

Anyway. I called ahead as I ran, and my Huginn Recon ship was prepped as I arrived in my hangar. It was hung in mid-air, moving gently as the anti-grav units worked to keep it still. Clambered into my pod, and it started to fill as the lid closed. I felt it rock as it was lifted and a thump as it was placed in the Huginn.

Quickly ran-pre flight checks, then undocked into the blackness. Quickly orientating myself, I pushed the ship into warp toward Doril gate. I was tuned into the Alliance comms, and there seemed to be a huge fight going on, opponents unknown- no-one had time to give me details. I assumed it was clear to jump in, and upon arriving at the gate, did so.

The scene that greeted me as I arrived in Doril was quite amazing, and initially I struggled to take it in. The overview filled right up immediately, and I filtered out the friendlies. It flickered, and filled up with enemies. I adjusted the view screen, and gawped. Stretching for about 120km off the gate was a series of small battles- pilots caught in life or death struggles with an Alliance called AAA. The distance off the gate negated the ability to call primaries, we were too spread out. Our fleet commander was calling primaries, but at best they were 90km away from me, and up to 120km out. I looked at the overview, and gawped again. An Ares was travelling at 20km/s... I didn't think this could be correct, maybe the overview was wrong? I found the Ares, and his movement seemed to indicate the overview was, of course, correct. In fact, most of their ships were travelling at ridiculously fast speeds in bursts, so a stretched out battle like this suited them down to the ground. They must be "nanoships".

I kicked in my MWD, and headed out to the nearest fight. It didn't look good for KIA, some of pilots were in pods, and the others seems to be struggling. We couldn't bring enough firepower to bear fast enough, and I cursed my Huginn's lack of speed. The FC quite correctly told us to withdraw and jump back through to Sendaya. Disappointed I couldn't help more than I did, I turned my ship around, and jumped back through. I waited on the other side, along with 2 other neutral ships who were either scouts or just naturally cautious, and saw most of our fleet back in.

So, we took a bit of a battering, but some days you kick, other days you get kicked. Such is the nature of this life!

It's ALIVE!!

Yes, the time has arrived, the time that me and probably quite a lot of other pilots has been waiting for- mobilisation for battle.

Apparently IAC's leader, Tyrrax Thorrk had been rather nasty about KIA, so the word had gone out that IAC was going to be KIA's first target.

For a few days, we had been moving ships and equipment to a system in Derelik, a few jumps from the 0.0 entrypoint, Doril, that IAC frequent.

At 2000, we undocked- quite a sight, and it gave me a thrill of pleasure and satisfaction to see what sort of force we could muster- approx 65 ships, all BC and less in size, all T2, ready to kick arse. We aligned to the out-gate and within a few jumps, were ready to jump into Doril. Our scout told us that there was nothing on the other side, so we jumped through.

Eddz, the boss, had been caught up in the hellhole of Jita, and was thus running late, so we set up an impromptu gate camp in Doril, to see what we could catch.

First kill of the evening was an unfortunate (and unscouted) Crow pilot:

[ 2008.03.23 20:22:49 ] (notify) Jay Deah [KIA]<KIA>(Flycatcher) has started trying to warp scramble "BA Akira [CAPZ]<QSA>(Crow)"
[ 2008.03.23 20:22:49 ] (notify) DerSchakal [LNSSE]<KIA>(Malediction) has started trying to warp scramble "BA Akira [CAPZ]<QSA>(Crow)"
[ 2008.03.23 20:22:49 ] (notify) Your attempt to target Crow failed.
[ 2008.03.23 20:22:49 ] (notify) Target is invulnerable.
[ 2008.03.23 20:22:49 ] (notify) Target is invulnerable.
[ 2008.03.23 20:23:00 ] (notify) xxxxxxx has started trying to warp scramble "TempSniper [KIA]<KIA>(Vagabond)"

Just for the lols, I included the line in red- the xxxs are a KIA pilot- we were all very rusty! Throughout the first 30-60 mins, we had a lot of people with guns hot locking up the stargates and webbing/ scramming/ shooting them. Amusing yet annoying at the same time!

I was in a sensor boosted (res script) Huginn and didn't even get a lock on. Humph.

Fortunately, we got back into the swing of things quite quickly, and when it counted, no-one messed up. We hung around the gate waiting for Eddz, and killed: an Ushra'Khan Anathema (don't quite know how he managed that), a Broadsword, Jaguar, then as we moved to Utopia, an Ushra'Khan Vagabond. He was fast, but not fast enough.

We made speed then up the pipe toward FAT, killing a Damnation, Falcon and Imicus along the way, all different corps/ alliances.

We were in CNC-4V, one jump from FAT-6P, and our scout told us there were many IAC ships in local, and they were warping to CNC gate. We hurriedly warped to FAT gate and jumped through- we wanted to engage them on the FAT side. Sure enough, a large gang arrived at the gate. We were told there wouldn't be any primary calling, as there were too many to sift through to pick primaries. As we all knew what our ships were capable of, we just got on with the job. The battle was epic. I was initially picking off Frigs and Inties, as this is what the Huginn is made for, then moved onto cruisers. Blue flashes were going off all over the place, drones and missiles filling the skies. Voice comms was very quiet, a good sign as everyone was concentrating hard. I didn't take any damage, which was down to luck more than anything else.

Eventually, the battle subsided, we held the field, and so it would seem, had taken relatively few losses. Once all the KMs were up, seems we fought 47 ships versus our 67. IaC knew what we had, so major props to them for engaging outnumbered.

However, it wasn't over yet. After clearing the field of loot, a few of us jumped through to CNC to chase a ship, but then IaC re-engaged on the FAT side with another sizeable force. We rushed back to the gate and jumped through, but IaC withdrew quite quickly.

It was getting late, and we decided to head back to Doril. We made good speed, didn't really come across much, but we got ambushed in F4R2, a few jumps from Doril. I am not clear exactly what happened, but they must've Jump Bridged ahead of us, and had about 100 ships, although only 50 show on the battle report as it was just those who managed to engage. We scattered. Fortunately, we could go around 1P, so I warped to VA6-DR gate... and landed smack dab on top of a huge IaC force, with a bubble up. I must've warped before they bubbled, as I landed on the gate. Sweating, and on my own, I jumped through, thinking they are bound to follow. Only one Stiletto did, but I had the advantage and managed to get out... phew.

Warped to K0CN-3, then back into 1P.. thinking I may be able to get away with this.... and thank the Jove, I did. Close shave. Picked up some straggler remnants of our fleet, and we regathered on Sendaya gate in Doril. We had taken some extra losses it seemed, but we were still in the lead in terms of kills/ losses.

The night wasn't quite over yet however. 6 Blackguard Coalition jumped into our camp and got killed. I called it a night then, time was getting on.

An excellent first op after so long to raise the morale, plenty of skirmishes and fun.

Trinity Patch 1.1

Yes, it's been some time. No, not a whole lot going on in terms of systems being won/ lost. The Coalition's impetus has been blunted somewhat by BoB's solid defence of NOL, indeed using 4 Titans online 23/7 (so I gather, not sure how realistic this is) under the cover of a cyno jammer. This means of course, that you have to use sub-capital ships to kill the titans. Which is of course possible, but not with the lag large fleets of ships causes. Also, no BSs can withstand 4 DDs, so losses would be very heavy.

Indeed, Goonswarm, who have a reputation of not taking the game too seriously have started moaning on the forums about Titans being overpowered. I was very surprised to see this, as I have not seen GS whine about anything in the game before. They may be joking, but I don't think so. BoB is of course making forum capital out of this, excuse the pun.

In other news, the North has just blown up into a massive war. I don't pretend to know what is going on up there, but apparently enough that Morsus Mihi have pulled out of Delve and gone back to help an ally.

And if that wasn't enough, there is a second war there too, ably summed up by MC's Yalson:

"War number two is taking place in Perrigen Falls, where Atlas and Chaos Incarnate (CI), supported by Smash/Roadkill, have been fighting Intrepid Crossing, XIX and Ka-Tet. That went rather well until RA got involved, breaking the no-pos warfare pact and moved to attack CI's POS in 9IZ, a station system. Some CI POS got removed by about 25 RA capitals, but so far the tower count is still in CI's favor.

As expected, Smashkill reset standings to RA and it is now a free for all. Tons of politics involved, leading to this rather messy situation"

RA is a big beast, and I assume they can fight on two fronts, but I have a feeling that pilots who want pewpew would rather go fight in the North than against a dug in BoB.

War number three involves Triumvirate vs. Atlas Alliance. Tri actually dec'd Atlas, and seem to be having at them in Empire. More than that, no idea.

So, apart from that, the 5th Alliance Tourney is over, and props to Ev0ke for winning. We did well, got to the quarter finals and lost to Tri in what was arguably the best match of the tournie, swinging one way, then the other. Props to TJ and team, and indeed to the Tri team. Oh and Tri decided to comedy wardec KIA due to comments Eddz made on EveTV. As we are all in PB still, this didn't really affect anyone, but it was more for effect than practical purposes I'm sure.

And now, everyone is holding their breath over the next few days as to what the future holds... couple of alliance ops last night and tonight, and then we'll see what direction we're going in...

Finally, Trinity Patch 1.1 is being deployed as I write this. There are a whole raft of fixes, a few changes (nothing for Minnies to get excited about sadly) such as undocking now pushing you out at a random angle at full speed, and corpses now having boobs. Yes, female corpses. LOL.