Bloodied

Over the past few months my weekly fleets have been quite successful, earning a variety of good kills including the occasional battle cruiser, battleship, and even a Chimera carrier once (to be fair, he was looking for a fight). In exchange I've been posting very few losses so I've been very happy. Its easy to forget how often the pendulum swung from green to red back in the day when Calmil was serious about roaming and contesting space.

So of course, karma decided I was due for a beating.

I decided to run a kitchen sink fleet comp last night so I could play with one of my favourites, an old Oracle battle cruiser fitted with mega pulse lasers. Hits like a brick to the face. The fleet started out OK getting a Thorax and Enyo in two skirmishes earning me a killmark on the golden hull. That should have been a clue I was in for trouble.

In Pynekastoh we got a report of an Orthrus hanging out on the outside of a PLEX. I moved in to bait him to tackle me and he did, but it turns out he was bait tackle for a cloaked Hel carrier 250 km off that quickly dispatched drones and reduced my Oracle to space dust. Worst part is, that same pilot has been doing that trap for months and I knew about it but just forgot. Even worse, in one of our intel channels another pilot 30 minutes earlier talked about the exact same trap... and I read his account!

I reshipped and rejoined fleet in a Hawk assault frigate.

In Akidagi where Templis CALSF alliance lives we got reports from our scout of a Dominix on scan, then landing on the Nennamailia gate. Since this is exactly the same gate we caught and killed a Hyperion last week, I ordered the fleet to dive in and attack. I should have been suspicious when the cal mil pilot opted to fight instead of try to crash gate, but blood was in the water and I wanted to make up for the Oracle loss. He was active tanked with neuts and drones and reinforcements started to drift in. Our fleet was not large and without serious logi and I waited too long and allowed myself to get caught and killed. And on my way back to Fliet I was too slow on the draw reporting another Cal Mil fleet of a couple Confessors and Thrashers and I lost my pod with mid grade snakes! So stupid!

I ordered the fleet to abandon the Dominix fight as we were losing pilots and more reinforcements were inbound. Podded back to Fliet and wanting to rejoin the fleet quickly I jumped in an Incursus and moved towards the fleet... only to get insta-locked and trashed by yet another small cal mil gate camp fleet of Thrashers and a Svipul in Abune! I rushed back to Fliet, got in an Algos, and went to help bust the gate camp but was too eager and lost the Algos as well before a fleet member in a battleship forced them off for good.

Four ship losses and an implant pod loss later, I was feeling quite beat up. We formed up the fleet and went looking for more fights, killed a couple destroyers before I had to call it quits due to tiredness. Definitely ended up in the red this time!

Nothing But Faction And Caps

Sunday night's fleet has to rank up with one of the most successful nights of PvP I've enjoyed in EVE Online in 9+ years.

We were roaming in my Hellraiser fleet (aka Kitchen Sink Battlecruisers) and started really well, catching a travel fit (or something?) Machariel in one system and an Osprey Navy Issue in another. We were setting up for a fight against a frigate/dessie gate camp in Tama when the cry went out over Gal Mil Intel channels about a carrier pointed in Heydieles and DPS was needed.

"On our way!"

We burned to the system and rolled into the other GalMil fleet (which was a Tempest Fleet Issue and Guardian fleet) and comms and found ourselves in a slugfest with two Soul Taker Archons, a Moros, Vindicators, Bhallgorns, Vigilants, and miscellaneous stuff. The fight was pitched and we were making very poor headway against their reps (a single Vigilant) when we got word a Caldari Militia fleet headed by Templis was incoming and they were friendly with Soul Takers (a long time pirate entity operating out of Old Man Star).

We left the field as the Caldari landed in their Tempest Fleet Issue fleet but got reports that the Caldari were shooting Soul Takers so some back channel agreements later, we were back on the field and shooting the Archons and Vindicators. I scored on the killmails of two Vindicators (one and two) and two Archons, including top damage on one.

After that amazing fight, Aideron reformed its fleet and we roamed around again, killing the Navy Osprey pilot again before calling it a night.

Easily the best set of killmails I've had the pleasure of being on in one night. And, two killmarks for my Oracle! Score!

Tripping Up In The Algos

Last night the wife said "I'm calling my mom" which is code for "going to chat for half and hour or more so entertain yourself".

"Excellent," says I, "time to fool around in Eve."

I logged in and decided to give that new Algos a trial run. I undocked from Heydieles and headed towards Tama. Felt nice to be in space in a new ship again. Dear CCP, time for those new Battleships to fill out the lines.

Anyways, I jumped in Hasmijaala and found a neutral in a Daredevil there with me. I started to head back to the gate wondering if this neutral would engage a little old criminal anarchist like me. Sure enough he came right at me. I tried to give a good fight but the drones and blasters were not enough damage in time before my armour melted under the Daredevil's big damage.

I went back to Heydieles vowing to come back for revenge. I reshipped to a Worm and went looking for that Taek'il. It took a few minutes of searching but finally found him in Eranakko. This time I had the drones out and rockets blasting but I forgot to start the shield booster early and forgot to overheat it and ultimately it did me in as I exploded with the Daredevil in structure.

We exchanged more "gf"s in local and pleasant conversation about how close it was, then I docked in system and logged as my wife was off the phone and we had some Survivor to watch.

* * * * *

Just before bedtime I figured I would move my pod back to Heydieles so I would be ready for the next impromptu roam. As I pulled into my home station I saw local spike with a wave of orange. The Caldari had arrived. I counted at least 17 hostiles. I debated going out in something to see if I could run into some stragglers. Then local spiked again but this time it was friendly purple. A fight was brewing... or in progress. Colour me interested...

I jumped onto Teamspeak and saw the fleet in a channel. I also noticed Marcel Devereaux was FCing the fleet. I joined up and got the low down that tht fight was happening at the sun over a strechted out battlefield. I needed something with range and defences. My Oracle. Perfect.

I warped to the sun and joined the fight. It was hectic fun and we held the field at the end. I was primaried once but the enemy lacked tackle and my armour held up and I was able to warp out. I came back and got on a few more killmails. It was great and made up for the earlier losses.

Once again Marcel is my hero.

Alternate Panic

Last night I logged in to find the militias in a bit of a panic due to CCP Fozzie's dev blog pointing out that the faction warfare zone control and loyalty point rewards overhaul is coming a bit early:

TL:DR Is that we’re accelerating some of our Factional Warfare feature changes that had been planned for Retribution and releasing those features that are ready for prime time starting with a patch on October 23.

Note that the dev blog was posted just after downtime on October 22nd.

For me, this is no big deal. For plex farmers, this is a huge deal because it means everyone who has a stockpile of LPs only had one day to drive their warzone control up to 4 or 5 (or even 3) to cash out before the changes came in and altered everything.

Needless to say, when I logged in last night there were fleets up. For the Gallente militia, there was no drive to get the warzone control up mainly due to lack of numbers I think, but we definitely wanted to frustrate the Caldari fleet nearby that was flipping systems in preparation for the new mechanics coming in.

The fleet being organized that I joined was different from any other militia fleet I've been in. For one thing it was larger, reaching 45 pilots at its peak. For a second thing, the FC was a lot more concerned with fleet composition. The request was for nano battlecruisers (preferably Drakes) and Tier 3 battlecruisers with ~50 km effective range.

Now I don't currently have a Drake in my hanger (still haven't replaced the one I lost back in April) but I do have a Tier 3 battlecruiser; in fact I have four, one of each empire. The Talos and Naga were fit with blasters and the Tornado with 650mm Repeating Artillery autocannons so they could work at the very end of their range, but why compromise when I have a pulse fit Oracle waiting to shine?

The enemy fleet flipped a system and moved off to Notoras to flip that system, a dead end which suited our needs perfectly. We moved in and engaged.

I'm not going to describe the blow by blow of every move the fleets made. Suffice to say the Caldari fleet had no interest in going against a larger and PvP fit Gallente fleet in their kitchen sink hub-shooting fleet and I don't blame them. We chased them and they led us around, both sides looking for kills where they could. I helped kill a Drake early on, and then later got one salvo off on a Sleipnir that got careless. The fleet also nailed a Caracal, Cormorant, and Hurricane that I was too slow to lock, and our fleet took some losses too including a Lachesis if I'm not mistaken.

All in all it was a good fleet if a bit frustrating as I was hoping for a big clash with the enemy, but I'll take my kills where I can get them.

Now, all that remains is to see how the warzone changes with today's patch.