A Tale of Three Russians

Putzing about in and Hevrice as per usual, in a Frigate this time I happen upon three battleships acting very oddly in Murethand. The three of them are doing what I can only describe as repeated formation warps to the control bunker in the system and then back to their POS.

Intrigued, I place my probing alt in the system to keep an eye on them while I take Kirith back to Hevrice to get a bigger ship. My biggest ship at the time when this occurred was a battlecruiser, thus I plump for a trusty Drake.

I ask in intel channels if anyone is interested in catching them with me, however everyone is either deaf or afk. Feeling somewhat frustrated I attempt to convo Itsmehck1, a former corpmate who always tends to be up for shooting against what would normally be considered as unwise odds. He's akf too, meh!

Checking again on my prober I notice that they've stopped formation warping and have entered a faction warfare beacon, a Gallente Major Complex. This again is weird as they are not a faction warfare corporation. I observe them clear the site and subsequently loot and salvage all of it. Maybe the tags are worth a fair bit of isk?

During this time Itsme responds and I give him the low down. He's well up for it so makes best speed to my in another Drake. Meeting up in Melmaniel just a minute too late as the battleships warp out of the beacon and towards a gate. Seconds later though our frustration turns to delight as they've warped to the gate we're on the other side of! So now the conundrum is do we engage three neutral battleships in 2 Drakes, after all battleships are nasty and they'd have the sentry guns on their side too to boot.

Gate fire. They jump into us and of course as pirates we perhaps foolishly engage. Just two battleships decloak along with . . . . a Mackinaw! We light up the Mackinaw who goes down super fast, I get my point on the Typhoon as it does so. The Phoon has heavy neuts and my capacitor is swiftly drained offlining my hardeners, MWD & point. Through careful timing I get my point restablished. The other battleships escapes through use of EC-600's and neuts against Itsme, our own drones have been wiped out by the Phoon's smartbomb.

Now taking fire from the sentries and the Phoon with offlined hardeners were both looking worse for wear. The Phoon is going down though and explodes just as his buddy in the Mega arrives back on the scene. Thoroughly expecting the Mega to jump and run he surprises us by engaging much to our delight.

We both linger on the gate laying into the Megathron, without the pressure of neuts on us we're able to activate our mods long enough to take him down.

We offer gf's in local and warp to safety. With our shields recharging we warp back and loot up what we can. One of the victims returns to his wreck in a Wreathe which smartly jumps to the next system as we arrive on the scene.

Waiting out our GCC Itsme probes down a Hurricane next door which we pop not long before a Talos jumps into us, again promptly destroyed.

I tend to find that you can always rely on Itsme when faced with silly odds.

A Tale of Two Pods

Both mine.

It was one of those times when you wonder if the world is conspiring to take you down a peg or three. I am fortunate in so much as I don't fly with expensive implants or perhaps the urge to "ragelog" would have been greater, but a couple of days ago I had an evening where everything I touched or did seemed to go horribly wrong.

The culmination of the fail-cascade was me being podded twice within an hour of each other. First I engaged a Claw in my Rifter and lost, I got the message that my Pod was warping and then watched it get destroyed. Landing in a fresh clone some 50 low-sec jumps away I renewed my clone, plugged in some cheap +1's jumped into a Thrasher and set off back to Hevrice. I had gotten to the Heimatar Faction Warfare area. I was warping out to the next gate as a Punisher snagged me just as a Faction Warfare gang landed on the same gate and made very short work of my ship and pod. Waking again in Aralgrund I decided I was going to take the "safer" short route across high-sec in my Reaper after renewing another clone and plugging in some more +1's. This trip was fortunately uneventful, though the Faction police managed to relinquish my Reaper of shields, armour & a chunk of hull before I got back to Hevrice.

Thinking back to why this happened, I conclude that I have become guilty of complacency. I seem to have become overconfident in my abilities and have paid the price. I hope now that I fully appreciate the lesson I have received. Confidence is a good thing, Over-Confidence only sets you up for a fall.

Faction Warfare

In my last post I mentioned that I would be increasing my Minmatar standing so that I could participate in some Faction Warfare while I train up my learning skills (which still have until 10th October to complete!). Well it didn't take long to get the standing up to the required 0.5 so it was with some enthusiasm that I enlisted in the Minmatar Militia. Expecting to be greeted with a busy Militia & corp chat window I noticed after 30 minutes that very little was being said in Militia chat and nothing in corp (to date I have not seen a single post in corp chat). I made numerous posts looking for a fleet but nobody seemed to notice. In frustration of this turning out to be a damp squib I logged off thinking that things would be better later.

So logging back in and most of my subsequent visits since have been a very similar experience, sometimes there is a bit more activity in Militia intel. My attempts bar one, which I will talk about below to join a fleet/gang, have been without success which I am finding highly disappointing. I had visions of easy access to gangs and lots of flying around in a fleet either large or small.

So to my single successful fleet experience. I have to say it was highly enjoyable. We were a mixed gang of approximately 7-10 pilots in mostly frigate sized craft up to battlecruiser size. As a small expendable tackler I volunteered for scout duty, even though I did not have a mic available to use voice comms. It was approximately 40 minutes to downtime when the fleet formed. We quickly got organised and a single player volunteered to lead the fleet, I was swiftly sent off to specific gates and systems with the fleet always on the other side of the gate to me. Firstly we spotted a WT in a shuttle but he was far to fast for us to lock and catch, then we stumbled upon a WT in something far bigger than we had anticipated...an Armageddon. Our fleet commander was slightly apprehensive about engaging as some of us were new to the saddle (like me), but he decided to take a chance. I soon had the big 'geddon tackled and agressed when the rest of the fleet jumped in and engaged him. I should really have bugged out to repair but held in there too long and my Rifter was swiftly shredded by his Berserker II's. Now in my pod I warped to a safe spot before heading back to pick up a new ship. On the way I received my insurance payout. While I was on my way to resupply I heard a few of the gang drop out as they lost their ships. Our Hurricane pilot, who was also quite new was fairly miffed about it's loss and my guess is that he couldn't afford to replace it. The latest update was that the gang had taken out all of the WT's drones and were into his structure and within seconds the 'geddon was down. Hurrah! Reviewing the fight we lost two frigates, one cruiser and two battlecruisers to his battleship. It was tremendous fun though and i must commend the fleet commander Damorus Merad on an excellent job.

Aside from the experience above, the rest of my time in Faction Warfare has been extremely boring and I have resorted to cruising belts to pass time. On my last sortie I had my loot ninja'd by a pilot in a Moa. Sheer audacity! Obviously this guy was looking for a fight so I thought I would test my mettle. Beginning to orbit him and tackle it became swiftly clear that this might not work as he got a few salvos offs that took big chunks out of my shields as I pecked away at his. He didn't seem to have a point on me, just a web but with my AB on I managed to get into a nice orbit and his damage output dropped to a manageable level. With my meagre skills I had unloaded two hoppers of EMP ammo at him by the time I was through his shields, it looked like he must have been passive tanked. Unfortunately by this point my Nos must have drained his cap dry as I had nothing to keep my repper going and was bordering on structure with him only at 60% armour so I decided to bug out rather than lose my Rifter without need. On reflection I was very pleased with my performance, I doubted my chances against a cruiser with my paltry combat skills which only allow me to fit my ship in a basic fashion. Given the chance I would try it again.

Until next time