Monday, April 30, 2012

Our POSs brings all the boys to the yard! Part-2



In our next installment of my night of grand fun:
Shortly after our fight with the Anit-pirates, a good third of the fleet disbanded, went home, and logged; the rest of us hadn't yet even thought about what to do next when the corp directors got some mails about our POS in 0.0 being attacked, so we quickly sent a scout down there to assess the situation, while we all reshipped from BSs down to a shield BC gang with some scimi support so we could move quickly. I volunteered to fly a scimi because I recently got logi 5 and have been wanting to do my part and letting some of our normal logi pilots fly a dps ship for once. We get formed up about the time our scout got to the system and report 6 Tr3 BCs camping the in gate which is heavily bubbled, and 4 dreads sieging our tower. Knowing that as long as they didn’t bring in too much more support we could easily take them we headed down in a hurry. The dreads had incaped a few of the POSs modules but they had left one warp disrupter, which our scout took control of and kept a point and webs on the Revilation. The people attacking our tower had a scout 3 jumps out from the system and when we blew trough tree of the four dread warped off, leaving the rev slow-boating trying to get out of scram range. We finaly jump in system and have a quick fight on gate while trapped in the bubbles, losing and killing a couple of ships before we burned out of the bubbles and warped to our POS, where we burned out to the Rev and tackled him. A cyno was up in system and a few of our fleet warped to it to kill it but found out the enemy had a POS up in system and the cyno was a falcon on the edge of their POS, they killed the cyno falcon but we lost another ship in the process. 
We started hammering hard on the Rev and got it down to about 30% armor when they warped in a triage Nidhoggur and Chimera whom start reping him up, so we switch over to the Chimera, slowly killing him but they kept warping in 2-3 subcap ships at a time to distract us. Since we were worried about a cyno bringing in support made sure to make them primary right away, it was particularly funny when a pair of lokis warped in and died in short order, one was a proper armor fit, and the other was a lulzy shield split weapon fit. After pounding on it for a while the Chimera’s tank finally breaks and explodes, we then switch over to the Nidhoggur. The Nid was tanking us far better than the Chimera, and it took even longer to get it into low armor when we notice that the Rev had started its self-destruct; at that time it was at full health so we ignored it and keep hitting the Nid. Finally it comes out of siege and activates Self-destruct as well, but not being in siege we where able to easily take it down in seconds, we switch over to the Rev just to shoot it out of spite, before we see it explode and turn into space dust. After looting the field we pack up, shoot gf into local and bounce. A bit after we got back to Heg I logged for the night. For one of my first times being logi in our fleets I think I did fairly well, and my little pea shooter whored on a lot of mails, though not all of them.

Our POSs brings all the boys to the yard! Part-1



So to start this off, ill give a recap of the events that lead up to the fleet engagement last night. Being a pirate alliance and living in low sec, we find that some of our best fights come from antagonizing anti-pirates. We have gotten many a good fight out of them in the past and that’s what our alliance head was hoping for when he declared war on a few of the anti-pirate alliances in our area. This disappointingly lead to mostly POS bashes, and only a few fights, but we were hoping that their complaining would reach the ears of our old foes, EM, and it seams after a few weeks it finally did. Two days ago a anti-pirate fleet numbering around 70+ came through our region incaping 2 of our towers and what looks like a line of local PoCos. Our POS in Heg was going to be the first to come out of reinforced, right at the beginning of our prime time and the end of theirs so we knew their was a large chance of us getting the good fight we had been hoping for over that POS.
Fast forward to last night, a lot of us where on early getting everything squared away for the fight. Even though we haven’t been on great terms with Gunpoint we invited them to join us to give us a little more muscle and we knew they liked killing anti-pirates way more than they liked killing us. The Anti-pirate gang had been seen on two occasions flying mostly a Tr3 BC gang with lots of logi. So DeePee suggested we fit our fleet comp mainly around mid range armor BSs that could reach out to about 60k with two triage carriers for support. We were all formed up and waiting to see if the Anti-pirates would show. We had got reports of some of them moving around but it took awhile before we got a fix on their main fleet that was finally headed our way. Their fleet consisted of mostly Sniper BSs and BCs with logi, a good 1/3 of their fleet was Maelstroms. When they reached heg, they came in and dicked around for a few minuets, likely sorting out their strategy before finally warping to our POS. One of our cloaky scouts sitting off the POS moved toward them and we all undocked, warping to the alt when it was about 10k away from the enemy fleet.
When we landed on their fleet we immediately engaged one of their Maelstroms, and they returned in kind on one of our Abaddons. Our triage carriers where not set up yet so we ended up losing 2-3 BSs before we could get proper reps on, unfortunately one of those was a 2 bil Macharial. Once our reps where in full effect the fight was very fast paced and exhilarating, they where having trouble breaking our reps and their logis where doing decent but DeePee who was FCing at the time was switching targets regularly if the target was pulling shields back. The fight was going in our favor when they cynoed in a carrier and a dread, with us quickly killing the cyno broadsword while it was vulnerable. We switched primary at this point over to the Thanitos, because the enemy sup cap fleet had pulled past our 60k range for the most part and it was vulnerable without more capital rep support. The Thanitos was holding in about 10% armor for a while against us when suddenly a cyno went up and a NC. Capital fleet bridged in, primaring the Thanitos, then the Anti-pirates one dread, then unfortunately switching over to our triage carriers, killing one and bringing our second one to 8% structure before it slid into our POS shields. In light of this the anti-pirates sub cap fleet warped out and ours quickly ran into the POS shield till NC. Left. We sat there for a bit, catching our breath and thanking the gods for our lucky carrier escape, even though we where a bit miffed that NC. Had come in and ruined what looked liked our inevitable victory.
Over all it was one of the best fights in my eve life. Two closely matched fleets fighting it out, much fast paced target calling you could think of little else, and the anti-pirates had only brought 2 scorpions in for E-war so I only got jammed once in the fight. Even though the fight was cut alittle short, I doubt it would have lasted much longer after we killed the thanitos. We did hear that the anti-pirates may have had another 14 dreads on standby, but they where either testing the waters with the one dread for a hot drop or someone fucked up the plan and only one got through. Our side won the isk war and kill war by a good margin, though us loosing a carrier and a 2 bil Mach didn’t help, but I lived and we held the field and reped our POS back up.
Interestingly enough we got another epic fight just an hour after this one ended, which I will cover in Part 2 of this blog later today.

Friday, April 13, 2012

You win some, you lose some...



Last night I took a little shield fleet down to Curse to poke around, and see if we could get a kill or two. I took the fleet trough Great Wildlands, and we really didn't see a soul around all the way trough GW and half way trough Curse, so we decided to head back. Just then a fleet member coming to meet up with us in an interceptor said there was a small fleet camping our rout back home. He reported a Prophecy, a Myrmidon, 2 drakes, a Naga, and a basilisk, out fleet consisted of 2x Cains, a Harbinger, my Brutix, a wolf, and our tackle cepter. While our numbers where almost even they had 1 BC up on us and a logi, and they where camping the only way back home so we would have to fight them some how. About the time I was considering how to get our fleet to break trough their camp, a couple more corp mates logged on and I asked them if they wanted to come down and help us and get a good fight, they did and I told them to grab 2 BCs and head down and they could jump into the fight from the opposite side. I also had a corp member offer to bring a Scimi but he was far out and I had some people in fleet that didn’t have much time left so I told him to make it if he could but we would start as soon as the other 2 BCs got down to us. After a bit our back up was in position, and I asked the back up ship in the drake to jump in and be bait, and the opposing fleet immediately engaged him so I had everyone else jump in and engage, calling all newts to be put on the Basi and the Naga primary. Unfortunately as soon as our bait drake jumped in two unknown to us cyclones had warped in increasing their fleet size by the same I had called down just to make our fleet even with theirs, regardless the fight was on. The enemy was smart, as soon as they relised their solo basi was unable to rep while being newted they switched from our bait drake to the Cains. The battle was close and hot, they lost a ship, then us, them, then us, but it was looking as if we might come out ahead till the people we had killed first had gone next door, reships and had come back, giving them 3 fresh BCs and our fate was sealed. I ordered anyone who could, to escape as I was going down in a ball of fire. Of our fleet our bait drake, and both frigates escaped miraculously, and all but one of our pods made it out. Bringing the fight total to 5 BCs lost on our side, and 4 BCs killed. We lost by one, and they held the field, which is a loss for us, but damn was hat a exhilarating fight and well worth it, good fights to all the True Reign guys even if you guys have dick personality’s. Link to battle report.

Now this morning we had a few scuffles with some of the locals, getting a Cain, Ruppy and Ranis down into structure, but being the only tackle myself and having been capped out by the Cain they all got away. Soon after this though my buddy Darks alt finds a small nano gang, consisting of 2 Oracles, a Cain, a Vaga, and a Ranis, sitting 200k off 9snk gate in Bvip. I tell him to get us a warp in, and tell the rest of our gang to reship into Ahac type ships with speed and tackle. When darks alt gets in position I send the two Fleet stabbers in first to get tackle, closely followed by Me in a armor tempest for heavy newts and Una in a Sac since he cant fly Fleet stabbers. Our Tackle lands on the Oracles and Cain and call out points, I call the tackled Oracle primary and we set to work, Una was wise enough to go for tackle on the Vaga since I hadn’t given him a tackle primary, and it dropped soon after the Oracle. Unfortunately Dark went down in the fight, resulting in losing tackle on the Cain, him and the rest of their gang warping away knowing they cant stay and fight.

My gangs haven’t got many fights in the last week so we where very thankful for these two great fights in 24hours, got our pvp blood pumping again.


Thursday, April 5, 2012

Smoke Them if You Got em


Been slacking a bit on the blog posts but hay, life is busy

So one of my favorite ships to fly being a high skilled multi purpose pilot is the typhoon, as I stated in my post praising the Domis multi purposes the Poon is a very very similar boat. Having a split weapon bonus can make fitting the Poon a bit interesting at times, usually making pilots choose one weapon system over another, but that’s not always a bad thing, since the Phoon is a great ship for caldari pilots to get into and fit torps on with their high missile skills. Honestly I prefer torps on the Phoon to autcannos, because if I wanted an autocannon boat I have quite a few better ones to choose from.  There are also some advantages to flying a phoon with torps, the Phoon being a natural armor tanker (it can pull off shield but im not fan of those) it can fit a scram web and a target painter, and if you can get all 3 on a target your torps will actually do some damage unlike a Raven. So now you have a 5 torp armor raven that has adequate tackle, doesn’t sound to impressive yet so lets look at your other 3 highs. This is where the Phoons 8 highs and split weapons come in handy vs being a hindrance, you can either fit 3 autocannos to add another 150+ dps, add in some heavy newts to add sometasty long range cap warfare, or toss some large RR up there to help out other BSs in your gang. So now you have about 500 torp DPS, and some useful utility highs, but wait there’s more, it comes with a large drone capable of launching 5 heavy drones and having a few extra flights of smalls aswell. With Ogre IIs you now do 800dps, have 3 utility highs, and a very robust armor tank, its a great deal, but wait you say, why don’t you fly it all the time then Beck? The answer is, its slow and very short ranged. You have to get that scram and web on what ever your trying to kill before you can even do any real damage with heavy drones and torps, and that’s hard to do in today’s nano BC world. But besides that I have had my same first Phoon for 2 years now and have yet to lose it, because I fly it smart and in situations that usually get me a warp in on the target.

To my delight in the past week I have dusted my Phoon off and got on 2 BS kill mails, both where armor BSs and perfect targets for the Phoon.


First was a Geddon and drake what where trying to bait our corp mates into GCCing on them, once i jumped in my Phoon and joined fleet my corp was more than willing. It was a tough fight, with me in half armor at the end, but we took the Geddon out.


Second was a Hyperion flown by a person I have fought a few times before, his corp is small but they are always a good fight so we got a few peopel together and wrestled him down and killed him, but not before he killed two of our aquantances cains, gf!


I'm going to try to fly the phoon more often, but BS are usualy not my first ship of choice.