TIL; Interceptors Are a Thing
So I lost my Tengu alt's Tengu last week in what ended up being a rather fun duel.
Being Christmas, most of space (and certainly WH space) was pretty dead so I decided to log in my Tengu alt and pay a visit to BNI in their lowsec home, figuring they'd have plenty of things around to shoot.
I got through the half dozen odd LS jumps without incident and started poking around their home station which most of them were parked on. They were busy chasing around an ex corp mate who was buzzing around belts in his Caracal and I managed to catch one or two frigs in by playing tag along.
After an hour or so I was getting bored and noticed that the Caracal was at a belt that I had covops eyes on along with a Crow that seemed unrelated to either party so I decided to go see if I could have better luck with the Caracal than BNI were having (to be fair, I think he was on his 3rd Caracal so BNI did have some luck).
On my landing the Caracal bailed immediately but the Crow came to play. I wasn’t worried about that since I knew the DPS on a Crow is effectively zero against a shield T3 and that its tank is also basically zero against pretty much everything so even though I almost certainly couldn't catch it, I should be able to drive it off easily.
Turns out that I might have been slightly wrong on a few counts...
The Crow settled into a 23km orbit and was moving at 5.9k/s. This should have been my first sign for concern but having admittedly little experience in frigs (I'm not allowed to fly them) it didn't even occur to me until afterwards that this meant he had a full high grade snake implant set in his head in addition to 3+ speed mods fit which more than likely meant he knew what he was doing quite well.
Anyway, there's very little that a 3k/s (overloaded) Tengu with the agility of a freight train can do to get out from under a point of a 6k/s Crow with the agility of a mosquito so I hit F1, missiles away.
My second alarm bell started ringing when I found out that my faction Scourge ammo could not break the passive recharge on said Crow. At this point I had one more chance so I reloaded and started overloading when his shields stabilized at ~40%. This had the desired effect and his shield slowly dropped to 20%, well below peak recharge.
Unfortunately, this was around the same time my heat damage hit ~85% and I had to stop.
Looks like I'm in trouble here...
At this point I decided to try break point after all.
All this time I had been burning away from the belt we started at in order to put distance between me and any reinforcements that might come to the belt since he was calling out that there was a tackled Tengu to be had in local.
With me moving at 2.1k and him orbiting at 23km at 5.9k, the closest he was getting to me was 20km. Now, my Tengu has a faction web on it that overloads to 18.2km so I figured a direction change with a burst of heat on the AB might just do it.
Turns out even at my best efforts, I could get him to 19km but was always ending up about 500m short :(
If I had a MWD, slingshotting out of point range or into web range would have been simple but the slow acceleration of the 100mn made it impossible.
That said, I DID somehow manage to break his point range once and warp off. However, because I am so very bad at this game, I chose another belt to warp to instead of a station and since the Crow pilot was, unlike me, good at the game, he followed, landed well before me due to the new warp speed mechanics and caught me again easily. The dance continues.
At this point I know I'm in a heap of trouble since even though no backup had yet materialized, some BNI had seen us at the belt and it had gotten mentioned on their comms a couple times which I was listening to. I decide to log in my main in his 100mn Tengu and see if I can make it in to assist since 2 Tengus can definitely kill the Crow.
I jump out of our WH and set destination. 16 jumps.
Ok, we'll see. I hit the edge of LS space just as the first wave of reinforcements descend on my Tengu alt.
The reinforcements are kitchen sink junkers from BNI including a few frigs, 2-3 cruisers and, importantly, a Rapier decloaking 10km from me...
I figure I'm very dead since a DPS supported Rapier is sad face for a 100mn Tengu. I hit overload on everything, point the Rapier and start shooting since that's my only chance.
I do a quick check and my top speed with heat is ~1200m/s. I am dual webbed and now considerably slower than the cruisers gaining on me.
By some miracle, the Rapier is weakly shield tanked and I manage to melt it fast. By now all the other ships have caught up and I am still webbed but I am accelerating so only single webbed and by an Atron at that.
I kill off the Atron in a couple volleys and start pulling range at an acceptable rate, webbing a Stabber off me.
I somehow live and get out to range at 20% shield where I stop overloading and decide to send the Crow a one word mail: "Ransom?"
I'm not a fan of ransoms as such. I never offer them and have never paid one to date. That said, the Crow definitely deserves a pay out here so I figure I'd ask.
I also decide the second Tengu plan is still a good one and start pushing through lowsec with my main. Sadly, he runs into a camp 2 jumps out and while it was a camp I'd gladly engage normally, I AM dual boxing hard and decide to evade and dock instead. My alt is on his own.
At this point my mail gets answered: "How much?". I start off with 250mil, figuring he'll counter offer but it looks like he's not that interested and he never responds.
Round 2 of reinforcements include a very annoying Navy Vexor with sentries which REALLY hurt as well as the better part of the entire BNI fleet which had just returned from a roam.
I pick off a few more frigs but we're done here. I GF in local as the webs start landing and switch my focus over to getting my, not cheap, pod out which I do manage.
Farewell Tengu:
http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=21091317
All in all I don't have any regrets and thoroughly enjoyed the engagement :)
Props to the crow pilot, next time I will have precision ammo in cargo ;)
JM
Sunday, 29 December 2013
Monday, 9 December 2013
Weekend Shenanigans
Weekend Shenanigans
Due to various factors, mainly getting back into Magic the Gathering pretty heavily and deciding to reinstall and play through Skyrim, I have not been particularly active in EVE for the past few months.
That said, I did get to play properly this weekend and had some fun fights while I was at it so I figured I'd post a recounting of the highlights.
Saturday
The first occurrence was on Saturday evening (AU time) a few hours before downtime. As most people know, this time of day is fairly quiet so I was not too surprised when I logged on and there was only one other person, K'mtar, online in corp.
Regardless, I decided to have a bit of a poke around. I started by checking our chain which looked pretty normal, few C2s, HS exit, C5 connected to us.
One thing I noticed was that the C5 bookmark in our home system was not named with our usual convention but rather was labelled "C5(TEEMING WITH HOSTILES)". Needless to say, I was intrigued and asked K'mtar if he knew anything about it. Turned out the BM was a few hours old, apparently we had fought a few guys from there with a kill and a couple losses.
Before I even got a chance to go check it out K'mtar calls out a Brutix moving from our static into the C5. When it was gone we put his eyes in the C5 and mine on our static to see what's up. Before too long a Prowler moves out through our static followed shortly by 3-4 pods, presumably to pick up ships.
At this point I decide I want to pick a fight and park my Loki pilot on our static in her dual web PVP Loki advising K'mtar, who is in his cloaky Proteus, that I am doing so. Given there ARE only 2 of us online and we DO each only have access to a single combat ship (My main was offline in highsec at the time, nowhere near our entry) I decide to hedge my bets a bit a log in my Archon pilot, leaving him at my POS for the time being. While my Loki pilot is highly skilled and I'm sure K'mtar's Proteus abilities are good, 2 T3s, one of which is cloaky fit, are probably a poor match for whatever ships those pods come back in, not to mention the 2 other pilots we've seen, so a little security can't hurt.
While my Loki is still in warp, K'mtar calls out that a hostile Proteus is coming from the C5. I land on the static and the Proteus doesn’t show so it's a cloaky. I chill out for a bit and then get an activation: Onyx. The HIC bubble goes up immediately which is a pretty solid indicator that the pilot is expecting backup and not to lose his ship so I hit warp on the Archon and light up on the Onyx with the Loki.
The Proteus decloaks shortly and K'mtar calls Tengu and Abaddon in route from the C5 while he is on his way to assist. Fight is on squire!
There are a few more activations and as the Tengu and Abaddon reinforcements arrive a Hurricane and a Vagabond join the fray from the static.
Let's pause here for a brief interlude and talk about EVE's most broken mechanic.
During this time my archon has landed, hitting the edge of the HIC bubble, and I throw a rep on each friendly ship and attempt to pay little attention to the carrier since even out of triage there's no chance of the hostiles breaking its reps.
Needless to say I was perplexed when I glace over a few seconds later and what do I notice? That my Archon is no longer locking anything! How odd...
A few more moments of investigation reveal that my Archon had in fact been jammed. Now, the astute reader may notice that I have not listed any ECM ships among our enemies which would be correct since they had none.
Yup, my 86.4 sensor strength Archon had been jammed out by a single flight of EC-300 jamming drones from the hostile Proteus which each pack a mighty jamming strength of 1. Thanks CCP...
Not only that but they scored a second jam on me once the first was up so I went 'fuck it' and hit triage, leaving K'mtar to kill the jamming drones with his warriors.
Back to the combat.
Given that our enemy has no logistics here, I'm expecting 1 of 2 possible outcomes here.
1. They bail given that they can't hope to beat the Archon.
Or,
2. They bring in logistics to stabilize and muster a fleet from highsec to violence my Archon.
Option 1 here is generally more likely when dealing with an unknown group but I do know more than a few groups that would be very happy to come kill a tackled Archon so I put another pilot on login screen, my Moros pilot. The idea behind being to log it in at the first sign of logistics to attempt to end the fight which, given we have a 3 webs between our 2 ships, it should be able to do.
The fight is our Loki and Proteus vs. Tengu, Proteus, Onyx, Abaddon, Hurricane and Vagabond.
At this stage the opposing force is sticking close to the wormhole with the exception of the Tengu which has decided to kite away so I call it primary. Tengus are reasonably good kiters but it's very hard to do against a dual web Loki so I'm able to pin it down about 30 off the WH and go to work. It goes down in good time, even with K'mtar scrammed and webbed 20km off it, and in the meantime his friends have pulled off the WH to come assist which works great for us.
The Hurricane goes down next, followed by the Vagabond. The shield ships melt under the Wolf Rayet effects.
At this stage the HIC bubble is still up and the remaining 3 ships do not seem to be interested in leaving and that option 2 is starting to nag at me so I make the call to end this and warp in the Moros.
It has the intended effect. Bubble goes down immediately and the Onyx and Abaddon make their exit, leaving the Proteus stranded under Loki webs and Proteus scram.
Killing a Proteus in a C5 Wolf Rayet is never short work but the Moros lets us take it down before it inches its way into jump range of the static. I have no doubt it would have gotten away without the Moros DPS.
With the dust settled, I wait out the timers on my capitals and warp them off to my POS.
While K'mtar and I are looting the field there is an activation on the wormhole and the Prowler pokes its head through. He must have spawned close to the WH as I am able to lock him and shoot him to structure before he jumps back out.
Here are the day's results:
https://zkillboard.com/related/31001904/201312070000/
(I'm using zKill here, even though it sucks, as EVEKill won't post the Proteus KM for some reason...)
All in all it was a fun fight, even though the Archon made it quite one sided.
Thanks to K'mtar for being a solid wingman and props to Balls to the Walls for living up to their name and sticking it out against the odds.
Regarding the call to bring my capitals out, I guess there will be people calling me out for over escalating but I stand by it for the most part.
The Archon call for me was a no brainer. Had I not brought it out we would either have not fought or I would have whelped my Loki and, more importantly, a corpmate's Proteus which is poor form when it can be avoided. Also, had the hostiles brought a single logistics boat and not a split tank fleet, we would likely have gotten no kills, even with the Archon, with our very limited resources.
I will admit that bringing the Moros was a bit of a dick move but I'm not used to hostiles sticking around after taking 50% losses without some sort of agenda so the call was made.
(As a side note, bringing a battleship always makes me want to bring a dread...)
Sunday
I logged in much earlier on Sunday so there were a good number of corp mates around, which for us is 6-8.
As always, someone is out scouting and they call actives in a C2 where we had apparently ganked some POS bashers earlier.
(http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_related&kll_id=20815309)
Turns out there are 2 parties with POSs in said C2 and one is apparently trying to evict the other.
With activity called we move a small gang down the chain and the scout calls a Drake and a Gnosis on the C2 WH from our static.
The 2 ships jump back and POS up before we get there so we wait to see if they'll do it again. There isn’t any reason for them to make the trip again but then again, there wasn’t a reason the first time either. *shrug*
I'm still working with my Loki pilot and decide this is as good a time as any to move my main back into our wormhole since the entry highsec is 5 from Jita so I log him in and hit auto pilot in his 100mn Tengu so I wouldn’t need to pay attention.
Meanwhile, we get bored of waiting and people want to use the highsec so we disengage stealth mode and start putting obvious traffic through the entry hole.
Turns out one of the pilots we ganked earlier is now sitting on the highsec side of the entry hole in a Tengu so we keep an eye out and one of our guys puts a drag bubble off the HS hole in line with the POS with the active Drake and Gnosis which also should pull from the second, currently empty, POS for added bonus.
At this point a pilot from the second POS logs in and ships to a Falcon which warps away from his POS.
I decide to try my luck and warp my Loki to the planet his POS is at and them to the HS hole at 70km. Turns out the drag bubble does pull from his planet and I hit it in the Loki.
A few seconds later I hit the Falcon and decloak it, pew pew ensues:
http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=20819173
http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=20819172
As a pro tip, whenever you warp to a WH at a set distance from a celestial in a cloaked ship, move out of the line of warp when you land. Especially if you land in a drag bubble!
Anyway, I pod the Falcon pilot and warp back to the WH back towards home, landing just as the Gnosis lands 50km off it!
I try to go for it but it gets out so I retire the Loki home and bring in my main in his Tengu to take over as he has reached the entry system by now.
I decide to park my Tengu 70km off the WH the Gnosis had warped to in line with his POS in case he got cute and did it again.
Let's take a moment to think about the actions of the Gnosis pilot in this situation.
You see 3 guys that were attacking your POS killed.
You then see numerous ships passing through your WH to and from HS.
There are flashing comments in your local chat about a Falcon kill.
And you have just warped at 50km to a hostile WH in a Gnosis where you narrowly got away from a mean looking Loki.
So at this point, what's your next move?
Well, warp to the WH at zero in the same Gnosis and jump through to check it out obviously!
Yeah, guy lands at zero just as I land at 70km, which I am NOT happy about because I assume it means I'm going to miss him again when he warps off.
I call it out and one of our guys makes haste to get back on the hole on the other side. Instead of warping off, the Gnosis jumps through where our man is now waiting and holds cloak long enough before jumping back for me to get into point range on my side to catch him when he comes back through.
The kill from there is academic as the Gnosis fit is a thing of glory:
http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=20819378
While the Gnosis hunt was going on, the previously podded Falcon pilot returns to the WH in a Venture and is now sitting at his POS in a Scorpion
We take a guess that he is keen on getting his corpmate (or alt I guess) into the WH in his Tengu, which is still sitting patiently in HS, using the ECM boat for cover so we hang around the HS hole to see if anything goes down.
While we are hanging about, a wild Heron lands slightly off the WH (remote BMs are awesome) so we blow the Gnosis pilot up again while we wait:
http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=20819617
Turns out the Scorpion pilot was trying to do exactly what we thought and before too long the Scorpion lands 100km off the WH, which is about 130km off me since I'm orbiting the hole.
Short on other options, I take a direct line towards the Scorpion, hitting the heat button on my afterburner as I go. I don't have any speed implants on my main as he is not the pilot I generally use for 100mn Tengu work so my speed tops out at 2.8k/s when heated. Will have to do and it does, I hit point range just as the hostile Tengu jumps in and warps off, tackling the Scorpion.
Now, tacking an ECM ship by yourself is always sketchy at best since it almost always ends with you getting immediately jammed and the ship warping off and given that yesterday my Archon was getting jammed repeatedly by stupid EC drones, my hopes of holding the Scorpion were not great.
My corp mates in slower ships are busy bouncing off celestials to warp back in on me to get more points but apparently the picked the furthest possible warps so they never get there.
Luckily for me, BoB's favour was with me and I didn't get jammed at all, much to the Scorpion pilot's dismay:
http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=20819786
He was cool about it and said hi in local afterwards, advising us that losing 3 ships in a day was enough for him and that he was logging for the day.
Thanks for playing, was fun interacting with you :).
To round out the weekend a few of us decided to venture into the wasteland that is highsec to extract some BoB's justice from a non-believer.
I'm not too familiar with the backstory myself but Lotor advised be that there was some guy who has been making disparaging comments regarding SUS on the Podside podcast and saying mean things about us while boasting his own superior talents while he is in fact a highsec miner.
Naturally, we can't let that stand so we kitted out some Catalysts and performed the glorious work of BoB:
http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_related&kll_id=20822797
This was actually my first time ganking in a Catalyst. I'm a big Tornado fan myself so I was sceptical when advised to use a puny destroyer but I must say I am a fan.
Can definitely see myself using them again for future violence.
All in all had a fun weekend and I'm hoping to get to play more in the new year.
Till then, fly fun.
Due to various factors, mainly getting back into Magic the Gathering pretty heavily and deciding to reinstall and play through Skyrim, I have not been particularly active in EVE for the past few months.
That said, I did get to play properly this weekend and had some fun fights while I was at it so I figured I'd post a recounting of the highlights.
Saturday
The first occurrence was on Saturday evening (AU time) a few hours before downtime. As most people know, this time of day is fairly quiet so I was not too surprised when I logged on and there was only one other person, K'mtar, online in corp.
Regardless, I decided to have a bit of a poke around. I started by checking our chain which looked pretty normal, few C2s, HS exit, C5 connected to us.
One thing I noticed was that the C5 bookmark in our home system was not named with our usual convention but rather was labelled "C5(TEEMING WITH HOSTILES)". Needless to say, I was intrigued and asked K'mtar if he knew anything about it. Turned out the BM was a few hours old, apparently we had fought a few guys from there with a kill and a couple losses.
Before I even got a chance to go check it out K'mtar calls out a Brutix moving from our static into the C5. When it was gone we put his eyes in the C5 and mine on our static to see what's up. Before too long a Prowler moves out through our static followed shortly by 3-4 pods, presumably to pick up ships.
At this point I decide I want to pick a fight and park my Loki pilot on our static in her dual web PVP Loki advising K'mtar, who is in his cloaky Proteus, that I am doing so. Given there ARE only 2 of us online and we DO each only have access to a single combat ship (My main was offline in highsec at the time, nowhere near our entry) I decide to hedge my bets a bit a log in my Archon pilot, leaving him at my POS for the time being. While my Loki pilot is highly skilled and I'm sure K'mtar's Proteus abilities are good, 2 T3s, one of which is cloaky fit, are probably a poor match for whatever ships those pods come back in, not to mention the 2 other pilots we've seen, so a little security can't hurt.
While my Loki is still in warp, K'mtar calls out that a hostile Proteus is coming from the C5. I land on the static and the Proteus doesn’t show so it's a cloaky. I chill out for a bit and then get an activation: Onyx. The HIC bubble goes up immediately which is a pretty solid indicator that the pilot is expecting backup and not to lose his ship so I hit warp on the Archon and light up on the Onyx with the Loki.
The Proteus decloaks shortly and K'mtar calls Tengu and Abaddon in route from the C5 while he is on his way to assist. Fight is on squire!
There are a few more activations and as the Tengu and Abaddon reinforcements arrive a Hurricane and a Vagabond join the fray from the static.
Let's pause here for a brief interlude and talk about EVE's most broken mechanic.
During this time my archon has landed, hitting the edge of the HIC bubble, and I throw a rep on each friendly ship and attempt to pay little attention to the carrier since even out of triage there's no chance of the hostiles breaking its reps.
Needless to say I was perplexed when I glace over a few seconds later and what do I notice? That my Archon is no longer locking anything! How odd...
A few more moments of investigation reveal that my Archon had in fact been jammed. Now, the astute reader may notice that I have not listed any ECM ships among our enemies which would be correct since they had none.
Yup, my 86.4 sensor strength Archon had been jammed out by a single flight of EC-300 jamming drones from the hostile Proteus which each pack a mighty jamming strength of 1. Thanks CCP...
Not only that but they scored a second jam on me once the first was up so I went 'fuck it' and hit triage, leaving K'mtar to kill the jamming drones with his warriors.
Back to the combat.
Given that our enemy has no logistics here, I'm expecting 1 of 2 possible outcomes here.
1. They bail given that they can't hope to beat the Archon.
Or,
2. They bring in logistics to stabilize and muster a fleet from highsec to violence my Archon.
Option 1 here is generally more likely when dealing with an unknown group but I do know more than a few groups that would be very happy to come kill a tackled Archon so I put another pilot on login screen, my Moros pilot. The idea behind being to log it in at the first sign of logistics to attempt to end the fight which, given we have a 3 webs between our 2 ships, it should be able to do.
The fight is our Loki and Proteus vs. Tengu, Proteus, Onyx, Abaddon, Hurricane and Vagabond.
At this stage the opposing force is sticking close to the wormhole with the exception of the Tengu which has decided to kite away so I call it primary. Tengus are reasonably good kiters but it's very hard to do against a dual web Loki so I'm able to pin it down about 30 off the WH and go to work. It goes down in good time, even with K'mtar scrammed and webbed 20km off it, and in the meantime his friends have pulled off the WH to come assist which works great for us.
The Hurricane goes down next, followed by the Vagabond. The shield ships melt under the Wolf Rayet effects.
At this stage the HIC bubble is still up and the remaining 3 ships do not seem to be interested in leaving and that option 2 is starting to nag at me so I make the call to end this and warp in the Moros.
It has the intended effect. Bubble goes down immediately and the Onyx and Abaddon make their exit, leaving the Proteus stranded under Loki webs and Proteus scram.
Killing a Proteus in a C5 Wolf Rayet is never short work but the Moros lets us take it down before it inches its way into jump range of the static. I have no doubt it would have gotten away without the Moros DPS.
With the dust settled, I wait out the timers on my capitals and warp them off to my POS.
While K'mtar and I are looting the field there is an activation on the wormhole and the Prowler pokes its head through. He must have spawned close to the WH as I am able to lock him and shoot him to structure before he jumps back out.
Here are the day's results:
https://zkillboard.com/related/31001904/201312070000/
(I'm using zKill here, even though it sucks, as EVEKill won't post the Proteus KM for some reason...)
All in all it was a fun fight, even though the Archon made it quite one sided.
Thanks to K'mtar for being a solid wingman and props to Balls to the Walls for living up to their name and sticking it out against the odds.
Regarding the call to bring my capitals out, I guess there will be people calling me out for over escalating but I stand by it for the most part.
The Archon call for me was a no brainer. Had I not brought it out we would either have not fought or I would have whelped my Loki and, more importantly, a corpmate's Proteus which is poor form when it can be avoided. Also, had the hostiles brought a single logistics boat and not a split tank fleet, we would likely have gotten no kills, even with the Archon, with our very limited resources.
I will admit that bringing the Moros was a bit of a dick move but I'm not used to hostiles sticking around after taking 50% losses without some sort of agenda so the call was made.
(As a side note, bringing a battleship always makes me want to bring a dread...)
Sunday
I logged in much earlier on Sunday so there were a good number of corp mates around, which for us is 6-8.
As always, someone is out scouting and they call actives in a C2 where we had apparently ganked some POS bashers earlier.
(http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_related&kll_id=20815309)
Turns out there are 2 parties with POSs in said C2 and one is apparently trying to evict the other.
With activity called we move a small gang down the chain and the scout calls a Drake and a Gnosis on the C2 WH from our static.
The 2 ships jump back and POS up before we get there so we wait to see if they'll do it again. There isn’t any reason for them to make the trip again but then again, there wasn’t a reason the first time either. *shrug*
I'm still working with my Loki pilot and decide this is as good a time as any to move my main back into our wormhole since the entry highsec is 5 from Jita so I log him in and hit auto pilot in his 100mn Tengu so I wouldn’t need to pay attention.
Meanwhile, we get bored of waiting and people want to use the highsec so we disengage stealth mode and start putting obvious traffic through the entry hole.
Turns out one of the pilots we ganked earlier is now sitting on the highsec side of the entry hole in a Tengu so we keep an eye out and one of our guys puts a drag bubble off the HS hole in line with the POS with the active Drake and Gnosis which also should pull from the second, currently empty, POS for added bonus.
At this point a pilot from the second POS logs in and ships to a Falcon which warps away from his POS.
I decide to try my luck and warp my Loki to the planet his POS is at and them to the HS hole at 70km. Turns out the drag bubble does pull from his planet and I hit it in the Loki.
A few seconds later I hit the Falcon and decloak it, pew pew ensues:
http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=20819173
http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=20819172
As a pro tip, whenever you warp to a WH at a set distance from a celestial in a cloaked ship, move out of the line of warp when you land. Especially if you land in a drag bubble!
Anyway, I pod the Falcon pilot and warp back to the WH back towards home, landing just as the Gnosis lands 50km off it!
I try to go for it but it gets out so I retire the Loki home and bring in my main in his Tengu to take over as he has reached the entry system by now.
I decide to park my Tengu 70km off the WH the Gnosis had warped to in line with his POS in case he got cute and did it again.
Let's take a moment to think about the actions of the Gnosis pilot in this situation.
You see 3 guys that were attacking your POS killed.
You then see numerous ships passing through your WH to and from HS.
There are flashing comments in your local chat about a Falcon kill.
And you have just warped at 50km to a hostile WH in a Gnosis where you narrowly got away from a mean looking Loki.
So at this point, what's your next move?
Well, warp to the WH at zero in the same Gnosis and jump through to check it out obviously!
Yeah, guy lands at zero just as I land at 70km, which I am NOT happy about because I assume it means I'm going to miss him again when he warps off.
I call it out and one of our guys makes haste to get back on the hole on the other side. Instead of warping off, the Gnosis jumps through where our man is now waiting and holds cloak long enough before jumping back for me to get into point range on my side to catch him when he comes back through.
The kill from there is academic as the Gnosis fit is a thing of glory:
http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=20819378
While the Gnosis hunt was going on, the previously podded Falcon pilot returns to the WH in a Venture and is now sitting at his POS in a Scorpion
We take a guess that he is keen on getting his corpmate (or alt I guess) into the WH in his Tengu, which is still sitting patiently in HS, using the ECM boat for cover so we hang around the HS hole to see if anything goes down.
While we are hanging about, a wild Heron lands slightly off the WH (remote BMs are awesome) so we blow the Gnosis pilot up again while we wait:
http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=20819617
Turns out the Scorpion pilot was trying to do exactly what we thought and before too long the Scorpion lands 100km off the WH, which is about 130km off me since I'm orbiting the hole.
Short on other options, I take a direct line towards the Scorpion, hitting the heat button on my afterburner as I go. I don't have any speed implants on my main as he is not the pilot I generally use for 100mn Tengu work so my speed tops out at 2.8k/s when heated. Will have to do and it does, I hit point range just as the hostile Tengu jumps in and warps off, tackling the Scorpion.
Now, tacking an ECM ship by yourself is always sketchy at best since it almost always ends with you getting immediately jammed and the ship warping off and given that yesterday my Archon was getting jammed repeatedly by stupid EC drones, my hopes of holding the Scorpion were not great.
My corp mates in slower ships are busy bouncing off celestials to warp back in on me to get more points but apparently the picked the furthest possible warps so they never get there.
Luckily for me, BoB's favour was with me and I didn't get jammed at all, much to the Scorpion pilot's dismay:
http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=20819786
He was cool about it and said hi in local afterwards, advising us that losing 3 ships in a day was enough for him and that he was logging for the day.
Thanks for playing, was fun interacting with you :).
To round out the weekend a few of us decided to venture into the wasteland that is highsec to extract some BoB's justice from a non-believer.
I'm not too familiar with the backstory myself but Lotor advised be that there was some guy who has been making disparaging comments regarding SUS on the Podside podcast and saying mean things about us while boasting his own superior talents while he is in fact a highsec miner.
Naturally, we can't let that stand so we kitted out some Catalysts and performed the glorious work of BoB:
http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_related&kll_id=20822797
This was actually my first time ganking in a Catalyst. I'm a big Tornado fan myself so I was sceptical when advised to use a puny destroyer but I must say I am a fan.
Can definitely see myself using them again for future violence.
All in all had a fun weekend and I'm hoping to get to play more in the new year.
Till then, fly fun.
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