Sunday 30 January 2011

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.
  • 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

Monday 24 January 2011

ECM is awesome.

I took Fibs, Sakura and Kimire out on a roam today through lowsec. I jumped into my Falcon and put on the mantel of Fleet Commander for this roam.


Isoma Constellation

 
4 jumps into lowsec and we end up at Sujaremto. D-Scan shows a hurricane nearby, I dispatch my minions to test the belts. I check out the guys in local while I wait for replies.

Sakura calls out on comms that he has visuals on the hurricane and it is engaging. The order is given to warp to Sakura at 0 and assist. The name the pilot is called out and I flag that corp as hostile, local immediately shows 2 hostile from that corp in the system. I arrive on the field at distance and see Kimire and Sakura chasing the Hurricane, fibs is dropping out of warp and engaging.

I de-cloak and shut the hurricane's Targeting abilities down, we now have an toothless Hurricane to poke. The hurricane is fast, my guys aren’t able to stop the ship properly. Spamming D-Scan now is showing new contacts warping in, I give the order to withdraw. We pass through Tama without a problem, ignoring the belts as I figure that system to be just too busy to take out time with.

In Kedama, we find another Hurricane. Same situation as above, except this guy was a lot faster than us, and he was able to easily kite the battle cruisers in my gang. He wasn’t able to do much with the perm-a-jam I got going on, so he continued to moan on local about how gay falcons are. I tell my fleet to move on, since they cant catch him.

The next several jumps where quiet, kimire noticed that we were being followed though, pointing to one of the guys in local and it did seem like we where being followed, it would explain the rapier we occasionally see on D-Scan too. I tell the fleet to burn towards the gate and fly blind for the next few jumps.

We land in Pavanakka, with no sign of being followed. There is 1 other person I local, maybe we will get lucky. I send the fleet to scout the belts, 5 minutes in our stalker appears on local, and a Rapier briefly flashes on D-Scan. We wait to see what they are going to do, and I see the rapier leaving through the other gate. “Maybe he wasn't following us” I thought.

A few minutes later the rapier pilot rejoins local in a Dominix. We are all up for this fight. Sakura finds him first and calls out, I tell everyone to get to Sakura at optimal and fire, I leave warp and immediately start cycling the ECM mods on the dominix, eyeing local like a hawk expecting 80 new locals to join. I can jam him, but not 100% of the time – he has been fitted with ECCM mods.

We are getting through the tank of the dominic gradually, but not quick enough, they have deployed heavy drones which is causing havoc to Kimire. Kimire's Thorax is lost in the fight, unable to warp out during one of the cycles I couldn’t jam him. We try without her for a few minutes longer, but we cant break his tank - I'm sure we lost near 50% of our damage with her death, Thorax cruisers are monsters.

We disengage, I need to stay on the field a bit longer to jam the Dominix until what’s left of my fleet gets out and bail myself to a safe spot. We congratulate each other over local and move on our separate ways. GJ Xenomorphea.

We called it a night with that last battle, satisfied that with a few more weeks of practice we can get decent kills.

So bringing this post in full circle, ECM is awesome, as it nullifies the enemy, and when things go pear shaped it can let fleet members get out safely.

Lin

Finding our wings

The first recent roam we had started in Hysera. Wood floats around the belts ratting while I kit up, bringing my omen. I meet up with fibs and wood only to hear I just missed a faction spawn – rage.

We fleet up and start looking for people to fight, Solo and small gangs are the targets. I plan a route, 3D maps made easy thanks to EVE Strategic Maps. We head into Essence towards Old Man Star for a look about. We reach Heydieles, we had a few close calls, nearly got a Jaguar but it was in a complex – being in a cruiser we where too big to enter, and fibs arrived too late in his frigate to get him, so we passed this one.

Instead of heading into Old Man Star we move towards Black Rise because of reports of large fleets in Old Man Star. I plan a route which will take us in a loop of Black Rise, exiting the region in Nannaras.

We are on the move again, and we meet a few gangs on route, all bigger than us, or more notorious, so we leave them be. On the jump from martoh -kehjari we send fibs to scout. He is greeted by a 20-30 man gang. I give the order for him to warp away. And me and wood clear the gate on the martoh side.

The gang jumps into Martoh and scans around, presumably looking for us. After about 10-20 minutes of them trying to find us they clear the Martoh gate. I tell fibs to warp to 0 on that gate and jump through to us. He jumps as a few ships land, but he gets to warp easily enough.

I rub that course out of my autopilot and set a course to Onnamon instead, bringing out black-rise roam to an end.

We head to Enderailen to see what was what there. We pick up a command ship on scans, and we invite Sakura to join us to try take it down. The command ship is station hugging with a can dropped beside it.

Wood tries to get the command ship to aggro him by bumping him and warping to nearby celestials hoping for a pursuit, but no success.

This time we leave empty low sec handed.

Introduction

About me
In EVE my name is Linost, and I am CEO and founder of the MRA corporation in EVE. My time on eve is coming up to 2 years now. Most of my experiences has been staring at asteroids mining them.

Recently however I been snapping out of the trance and starting to do a lot more of PVP. Im sure this is what this blog will consist of mostly - my learning curve of PVP.

Infamous EVE Online Learning Curve.

About my corp
MRA Corp was founded as an extension of a multi-gaming clan with the same name which has started playing eve.

The corp grew into quite a relatively large contender for high sec ore in the Kantanen Constellation. After our first war-dec we start training combat skills so we can fight back. We had to buy out of our first war however. The second war we fought back, but we didn’t get any kills, the war was dropped however without a ransom.

The next few wars we are victor!

With the release of Tyrannis I notice a sharp decline in mineral prices, and so we abandon mining and make money from mission whoring instead. In recent month we have started flying in lowsec for a few fights. We are becoming more active in eve again after half the corp being busy with World Of Tanks. Will hopefully have a good few candidates for roams more often now.