Tales of a Empire War

MRA Corp is at war at the moment. I’m tracking the war with a campaign in our Kill-board.

- Link.

The aggressors is a corp. called Cygnus Project, a few of us recognise them as ninja salvagers from the Sankkasen area when they are doing missions there. In the first engagement we had 6 corp mates in the fleet, nothing like a war to make a corp. active again. I let one of the other more experienced Fleet Commanders run this to see if I could learn a few things.

Was a pleasant few hours.

• Lightbiner had to play tackle in the first encounter. He held down a drake long enough for one of the larger ships to take point. Binger's punisher was destroyed for his efforts.
  
  The fleet landed on the drake and began melting its shields. The target couldn’t hold up to the fire-power and died.
  Kill-mail
  
  
• While we where killing the drake a Artillery Hurricane warped on to the scene and was taking shots at us. We turned to face it when the drake was down, but it gets away. JayB switched ship to a Dramiel.
  
  It didn’t take long for the Dramiel to get a point on the ship, with that we land on JayB and a destroy the Hurricane. No losses this time.
  Kill-mail
  
  
• Our next kill was a thrasher. I jump into a punisher and give tackling a go. Me and Lightbinger got visuals on the thrasher and burn towards it to get a tackle
  
  I get point and give the all clear to get in and kill him. At close range againt a destroyer in a frigate I didn’t expect to last long, but I got well into his armour before I popped. Luckily lightbinger was there to hold him until the fleet left warp. The destroyer popped, but lightbigner lost his ship before that happened. 1 destroyer kill for 2 frigate kills.
  Kill-mail
  
• Wood manages to one-shot a Rifter Undocking from a station
  Kill mail

The next day Rusty and I where the only corp. members logged on, We saw Manokin in local and we undock to engage. He is piloting a Hurricane and docks up when he sees 2 battlecruisers coming for him. He makes a comment on local asking for a 1v1 and rusty politely points out that his corp war decced a corp over twice its size, and cant complain about odds.

• He man-ups and undocks to engage us in his hurricane, he puts up a good fight, ECM drones play havok with rusty but he was unable to jam us both so eventually died.
  Kill mail.
  
  
• A few minutes later and he undocked in his Drake. The drakes mighty tank made this fight longer. I overload my lasers to get through his shields quicker. Mid armour I realise I made the mistake of keeping my guns overloaded, and blew my guns up – I R N00B.
  
  I kept drones on him while rusty finished him off.
  Kill Mail.

We camp our aggressor into Sankkasen 7 -10 Spacelane patrol station for a little while and he eventually undocks in a Typhoon. I am 250km off the station, rusty at is at the undock point. I point out to him that there is a typhoon, and he informed me he has already docked – he said he panicked. I cant fault him for docking, that ship can be a nightmare, and the last thing we need is careless losses.

With 2 battle-cruisers taking on a typhoon I didn't see much success, so I dock up to think how to beat it. I come up with a plan to jam him, while rusty takes his sweet time taking him out, but for this to work Manokin must want to fight us 100km, from the station, because if I have him shut down then he isn't aggressed, so if he is at 0km of the station he could easily dock up whenever he was in trouble.

It takes a while but he eventually goes to engage rusty, he gives the word that hes got point and I undock in my Falcon and warp to rusty at optimal and begun jamming him. Its nearly a 100% jam, any I miss I just throw on one of the other racials which seem to work. So we now have a toothless typhoon to have our wicked way with.

Rusty eventually gets him down to 50% structure and the ship explodes, None of us noticed the self destruct timer start. I was raging - To save his killboards from more embarrassment he denies us the kill-mail from this fight which we clearly out played him at.

I log off for work, and return several hours later to find out I just missed a big fight – we lost. Their CEO has logged in and seems to have organised them. We are down 2 battle cruisers and a frigate, but we took down a battle cruiser and a frigate so saying they won the engagement would not be quite true.

I jump into my falcon to give ECM support to the fleet, and meet up with them, everyone has been resupplied with ships and equipment and we are ready to roll again. We set off to amarr, taking the fight to them.

Half way down the pipe we run into manokin, we assume he is acting as an advance scout. The fleet holds on the gate for a moment to make sure everyone is ready, then we jump.

I wait a few seconds before jumping so I am not immediately primary target - let them worry about the battle-cruisers kicking their ass. When I arrive on the field I was within 20km of everyone when I start, so I micro-warp drive away from the gate to get distance. I immediately begin targeting the battle-cruisers to jam them, I shut down 2/3 battle-cruisers with the first cycle, and the following cycles have perm-a-jammed them all. Our fleet pick a target and engage it freely. 

I didn’t notice a blackbird coming on to the scene, so it got first jam on me which shut my jams down on the hostile fleet – they are now able to shoot my fleet mates. The blackbird also shut down a few of my fleet mates so we are technically down a few ships, as they are nothing more than a floating tank with drones now. I wait out the cycles a bit. He may not get the next cycle...

I am constantly jammed, and a drake is closing for point. My shields break and I try to warp out, but he has point on me. I call out on the fleet for help, but they aren’t able to react quick enough and I go pop.

I have learned a few things piloting ECM in this fight, so I feel I can pilot the ship better now. The main thing that screwed me over in that fight was the range. In hindsight I should have warped away when I jumped through the gate and warped back at my optimal, instead of trying to MWD away from the gate. Also I got careless in the middle of the fight, assuming the enemies where neutralised, opening myself to ECM attack.

With me down the fight was still a victory, as we held the ground when it was over. The blackbird was destroyed promptly, and so was the Myrmidon and Hurricane. The remaining ships fled the scene, we where not able to get point on the drake.

We quickly celebrated and pat ourselves on the back, then regroup so we could press this advantage and chased them into amarr - I headed back to get my Harbinger so we can pursue them, on route Alexander Spa was going the same way in his pod to get a ship it seemed. I arrive at Sankkasen and warp to station, I drop out of warp and see Alex at the station in a Dominix. I inform my fleet they are stepping up to battleships, so we do the same.

We set destination for amarr in in Battleship/Battle-Cruiser/Frigate gang. The journey is uneventful, and we arrive in amarr. All active hostiles are docked up in the trade hub station. We camp them for an hour or two, and Dj3AKuNbC9l undocks in a shiny new blackbird. We make quick work of it, and lightbinger catches the pod. The pod also went pop.

We camped the station a bit longer and call it a night.

The next day I log on and find Dawood and Lightbiner making a annoyance of themselves towards Dj3AKuNbC9l. They eventually manage to catch him in his Caracal, Dawood finishes him off quickly before he kills Lightbinger. I was holding in the next system at this stage, and spotted enemy corpy number 8 of 8 in system, so we now can account for all of their members.

He never appears at the gate into the system with wood and Binger to help Dj3AKuNbC9l, so we assume he spotted me in local and didnt fancy taking on 3 ships at once.

Most of this day is spent in Amarr, camping 3 of them in station. The hours pass quickly thanks to the banter on Teamspeak. One of them try undocking,.Reeeeeker I think, in a tempest. He re approached the station and docked. We had him webbed and pointed, so he wasn’t going anywhere, all he could do was redock or fight us. His shields didn’t last long at all, but he docked before we got into his armour.

That was the end of the excitement for that day. At present all our aggressors have left their corp and joined another. We arnt sure if they are simply getting money to keep fighting or if this is them surrendering, but with a few days left of the war before it needs renewal,  we will soon see.

Lin