My rage in Great Wildlands

So, catching up form the last entry:

We hang around the Great Wildlands area for a few months still.

One of the highlights was meeting dawuu, I say highlights, but it actually involved a lot of rage.

Battle Summary for Q2FL-T, 2011-04-01 23:28 - 23:28

We were camping gates in Q2FL and Dawuu was running the pipe in a tempest looking for some action whilst having a Scimitar as backup.

He passed us once already, and we took note that he came back. The next time he passed up we planned a trap. We went 1 jump further into Great Wildlands and planted a bubble on the gate to drag him to us 80km of the gate, for when he eventually comes back.

So, we were waiting for him now, all cloaked up in stealth bombers and DPS ships, 5 minutes pass and our scout reports that Dawuu is approaching.

We out number him, we out damage him, and we have out thought him, victory will be ours.

He enters system, we hold cloak. We frantically spam D-SCAN to spot him coming in warp. He appear on D-SCAN and we hold our cloak, praying he has warped to 0 on the gate for our bubble to work.

He lands within the bubble, and the order is given to engage. 4 bombers and a sabre decloak and start laying waste to the tempest. Things are looking good, his shield are dropping quite nicely, and we are sure he is shield tanked because of the scimitar support.

He doesn’t take long for the scimitar to land and start repping the tempest. Primary is switched to that scimitar. We burn after the scimitar, and when in range we get a scam and web on it, whilst lobbing it with torpedoes. I am shocked to see how fast the scimitar is still moving towards the gate, we arnt going to be able to kill it fast enough I thought, his shield are going down, but not in quick enough/.

The scimitar deaggresses and jumps through, we quickly turn out attention back to the tempest which , a few seconds later, warps out because we were too concerned with that logistics ship.

Rage is building up at this point, but I keep it bottled up at this stage to try and get that tempest. He is still in system.

I run D-SCAN to see where he is going. I got him towards the outbound gate. I warp there and tell my fleet to wait in case he doubles back.

As soon as I enter warp, I notice that the next gate is 40+AUs away. Well outside D-SCAN range. The error I just made made me face palm. I tell my guys to run D-SCAN and find him at a moon, or customs office, maybe a belt or on the planet. I turn and warp back to my fleet and get stuck in the bubble... more face palms were involved.

Burning to 0 on the gate I am running D-SCAN and find him at the customs office. I enter warp and tell my fleet to hold until I get point.

I arrive at the customs office, he is here! This disaster of an ambush can still be saved! I full burn towards him with my micro warp drive to get point while my fleet aligns.

I am just reaching full speed, and he warps, towards the gate. I am getting a little frantic on coms at the stage and advise my fleet that he is inbound, jump in when he does and get point. I pursue course.

I land at 0 on the gate, he is here, and so is my fleet, we are holding fire. For readers that are unaware of aggression and gates, if we engaged him at this gate, we would not be allowed to jump through for about a minute because of recent aggression. And if he did not engage us, he was free to warp through at his leisure which will make him home free.

I jump through to catch him on the other side. His scimitar is at 0 ready to jump through to him. I start annoying the logistics ship, pointing it and shooting it. Eventually the tempest jumps through, “Jump, and get point” is repeated over and over by me on coms, he appears and we start the procedure over again, lock it up, and kill it.

This instance of the fight went a little differently. A few of my guys get a little too close, and within a minute we are -1 stealth bomber and -1 sabre.

At that stage I call it quits. Everyone is advised to break off and warp out.

I congratulate Dawuu on local for a good fight and wish him well.

This all happened months ago, and it still annoys me that he got away. We had a trap, more man power, and more damage, yet with bad calls on my part and with luck or skill, Dawuu managed to get away with 2 kills.

Battle Report

And so ends this story.

Linost

Tipping Our Toes in Null Sec

Wow I lost interested in blogging for longer than i thought.
Picking up from where I left off, we started trying our hand in nullsec. Initially dawood and I were looking into this as an alternative to money making for when we were at war since missioning wasn’t really an option.

We arrived in Great Wildlands and tired ratting in UNK-GX in drakes fitted with cloaks. Not many people passing through local so we managed to get a good bit of ratting done. I don’t think we got anything amazing, about 4 million from 30-40 minutes work.

Eventually a group from Unforeseen Consequences join local and stay for a while. We are in safe-spots locked up and we see stealth bombers running around the system. Wood starts talking in local with them. Asking who we should look to get blue status with to rat in GW safely.

We eventually learn that the main power in GW is RE-AL alliance, and that we should get standings with them. We also learn that they are taking down a hostile POS which is out of fuel, and invite us to help them take it down.

A few things pass through my head at this point:

• There is not POS are just baiting us out of hiding to kill us
• The POS isn’t offline, and is gonna kill us when we land.
• The POS is offline, and when we are done helping them they are gonna kill us.

Eve can really help breed paranoia...

We decide to help them out and take the chance. We arrive at the POS to see it offline and a few bombers torpedoing the fuck out of it. Seems legit so far. The POS is owned by RE-AL alliance.

We wondering “Should we be killing this pos if we are wanting blue standings with this alliance?”

Fuck It.

We help with attacking the POS. while this is going on we laugh at how we were looking for blue status with RE-AL and now we are killing their POS.

A few RE-AL guys enter system now and then. We simply safe up and cloak cause we don’t know what ships they are bringing. This goes on for a bit and I eventually need to log off work work.

When I return I hear stories of epicness and stuff with mother ships brought in and stuff. Damned shame I missed it.

Woods be giving a good impression the these guys though and managed to get us blue standings with them in GW. A thought occurred to him later that we just lived the butterfly effect trailer for eve. I immediately OMFG!!! and agreed. Was a good day.

Thats all for this catch up.

lin

War retracted?

This is more an update on the war we had with nasty Russians Team. Its been a while now and I dont want to have to catch up on it all in one giant post, so here is what happened! :D

Nasty Russians has retracted the war on us. Not much fighting happened between us since the majority of their members jumped ship (again).

We lost 2 missioning battleships. Nasty Russians used neutral prober’s to scan down 2 of my corpies ships and log-on-ski'ed into system. They dropped in on the mission fast and got points. I'm sure you can guess what happened next. *pop*. The day after this they retracted the war. I’ve given up trying to understated these guys... Makes no sense; Don’t Even Sound Same!

No further fights where had between us since.

Short and sweet!

Anyway, now that that is followed up, my next blog will be about my adventures into null-sec, and how me and dawood lived something similar to the butterfly effect trailer for EVE Online. Link of video.

Lin.

Empire-War Strikes Back

Following up from my previous post, the members of Cygnus Project corp has jumped ship to Nasty Russians Team, who then declared war on us. We are left wondering who we pissed off, regardless we are currently are blaming Obsidian Iniquity. Again we are keeping track of the war with a campaign section on our killboard.
Link.

Day 1 of war with Nasty Russians team - I miss the first hour of the war due to work obligations, I arrive home and expect to hear cries of how whatever fleet we managed to put together imploded and we are currently camped in a station. I log on teamspeak and and greeted by Dawood. Hes needing help with 3 of the hostiles online. They are coming at him in a Tempest, Blackbird and Myrmidon. For the moment he is safe so a plan is drafted to deal with them, we fleet up.

Dawood calls out on the comms to come now. I jump into my interceptor, undock and jump through the gate. On the other side I warp to 40km from wood and micro warp to the blackbird. Binger also comes along to harass the blackbird. He jams me quite a lot, but his attention is split between 3 instead of a single target. His shields drop, and his armour and structure soon follow, leaving us with a nice explosion where the blackbird once was.

We turn round to help Dawood by pointing Reeeeeker and Amber. I wont have a lot of punch against any of them so while I keep them pointed, I take out their drones. Wood is engaging the Myrmidon at this stage with ECM drones on the tempest. Oddly the Tempest runs away after he gets scrammed by woods ECM drones. The Myrmidon is dealt with after much effort on woods part, and we take a look at the tank that thing had, what a monster. We half expected the tempest to warp back, but we never saw it again.

We move back to base and see if they are going to follow us. One of them follows us and plays silly buggers with us at the station in a vexor. After a while of us shooting him, and him docking up, we notice Reeeeeker pop back into system, we move to 200km bookmarks of the station or dock, and watch, the fleeting Tempest has returned. They stay at the station and Amber arrives as well in a harbinger. We dock up for a while for dinner and a break.

When we return wood undocks to spring their trap. Takes a few times for them to redbox dawood, eventually they do, queuing amber and the rest of russian squad to undock and fight. Seeing that all their cards are on play, we put ours down as well.

First to drop was te tempest. Binger was taken out by the Jaguar and Obsidean was taken of the field as well. Dawood, Tenna Lady and me made short work of the harbinger and pointed the Jaguar. The Jaguarquickly went pop too.

This ended day 1 for us.

The next day I join eve and fleet up with a few of my corpies to PvP. We hear that there is a gathering of hostiles on the Sankkasen gate in Halaima. The fight at the gate was the longest I've been in to date, also being one of the most expensive battles to date as well. We killed 4 ships, (Hurricane, Hurricane, Typhoon and Drake), however we lost 4 battleships, 3 battle cruisers and a frigate.

Losing so many of our ships was not part of the plan. With our main supply area in Sankkasen we where assuming we would be able to replenish any losses easily in the fight, the one thing we did not anticipate was the hostiles doing the same thing. They where able to reinforce their fleet just as quickly as us, and giving the fact we where constantly outnumbered in the engagement, the order was given to stop throwing ships into their meat grinder. The fight ended with us refusing to put more ships on the line against their fleet of 2 Typhoons, and several battle cruisers and a Heavy Interdictor.unfortunately this fight dropped our efficiency of the war by 20-30% :(

Later that night I take a small gang of cruisers out to see if we can pick a few of them off solo. By the time we found our target, we found all the them; they where fleeted up taking on an alliance they war decced. We watched from distance, keeping safe, but showing ourselves.

After a while they jump on Kimire, she goes crazy and engages. I warp in to warp in and immediately think “wait a minute... what am I realisticlly able to achieve fighting 5 battle cruisers in a cruiser...”. Leave warp, I land just in time to see Kimire's Vexor go poof. I start fighting, since I don’t got enough time to get out.

Unsurprisingly I die in a cloud of smoke. We slowly head back to sank, JayB keeps an eye to make sure binger gets out safely, being the slowest member in the fleet. A few times he is pointed, but Jayb Jams him to let binger get away.

The next few days are quiet, most of us are unable to log on due to work obligations, any time we are able to fight we are up againt fleet sizes which quite frequently exceed twice the size we can muster. We keep an eye no the kill board though, and are glad to see that the alliance that Nasty Russians War decced is giving them quite a few bloody noses.

Thursday night we notice its just DJ online, so I run a locator. The agent puts him in Laah; the system where Wood and Binger where chasing him in a few days before. 3 of us make a small gang and head after him in cruisers. I jump in to laah and its clear. So I tell the other guys to pop in. I run another locator and find out that he is next door in Mostu. Was raging a spent that money for a 1 jump location.

I jump in and check out the stations. I find him in the caldari navy station. He is running his gob off in local at some other guy. Its all in Russian, and even with google translator its hard to make sense off. Something like the other guy is saying his killboard is shit, and talking about bowls...

Time passes and I get sick of waiting so I undock and head into Laah. Just as we are about to warp away from the Motsu gate DJ jumps into system. I got my Disrputor primed and ready to point. He drops gate cloak and I get lock, but I couldnt stop him warping, we guess he is all stabbed up. We pursue course to try find him. D Scan shows him moving away from us, I head back t the gate while the rest try to follow that direction.

Im at the gate at 0, and DJ arrives and jumps through. I follow and tell ym fleet to come to Motsu. Againt I target him, but I was unable to stop him warping. I head to the Caldari navy station and wait at the undock point for him to leave station. He comes out in a probe and waits for the undock timers to expire. I lock and start firing, but he docks up again

We decide not to waste any more time and head back, he can play these games with someone else.

Friday morning we have a similar scenario with DJ again, but this time he came to us. He si reluctant to fight us still however. And he warps around systems and the like. This goes on for a while and I tell the other guys to break off, he doesn’t want to play our game at the moment. I sit 250km from Sankkasen 7-10 while my guys take a break and stuff. I just watch DJ warp in, fly around, warp off, leave system, warp back, etc. I just stay stationary, hes not going to fight me, and I have no intentions to chase him.

About an hour passes and I am still 250km from the station. DJ is still docking, undocking and warping around the system like a headless chicken. He eventaully changes ship into a Vexor and warps to the Tintoh gate. I sit up expecting him to warp to one of his book marks; I am not disappointed, and he lands 90km from my, and warps away again towards the sun.

I am now expecting him to warp to tintoh, and warp to 90km of a new bookmark he made at 90km from me, putting him right on top of me. Again I was not disappointed and he arrive at 12km on my right. I play AFK just a little bit longer until he is in scram range, then its too alte for him to run.

I get point, and call for binger to undock, and anyone who is back on ts to log abck on and warp to me to get a killmail before I pop this guy. Jay logs on and fleets up.

The fight is going well, I'm in his armour and hes just finishing off my shields, he's now got a 1600mm plate to eat through. As expected hes danage slows down on my armour. Blade arrives on scene, and I tell him point him cause my capacitor is near empty from using my neuts on him, and him neuting me. Luckily Binger gets point before I lose all cap.

My cap is empty, but my guns are still pounding him, gotta love projectiles. DJ is trying to run away, he's not neuting blade. I get a little cap back and scram DJ, just in case Binger caps out. The Vexor goes pop, giving us a small token kill. Hopefully we will build on that momentum over the next few days.

Saturday has arrived and Manokin is in Sannkasen with a few of us. He undocks from the station, and so do I. When I undock, Manokin is 250km off the station in a Wolf, I warp to a saved bookmark and arrive 70km from him. With my microwarp drive active I persue. He is burning away from me, I reach 40km and he warps off.

I warp back to the station, and discover I forgot drones, lucky he didn’t fight me. I warp off to a station to get them. Manokin pursued me to this station, well within docking range so I ignore him and dock up and collect my drones. I undock and warp back to 7-10.

JayB is now active, and Manokin has warped to the station at 0. I wait to see if he's going to fight. He's doing a DJ; docking, undocking, and warping. I just wait again, he will fight when he's ready, or has backup; with 7 other Nasty Russian Team online I assume a fleet is being assembled..

20minutes pass, and he is still doing that DJ madness thing. Eventually he undocks and warps to a 200km bookmark, putting him 50km from me, he is stationary, seemingly trying to bait me to fighting him again. My spidey sense is tingling and ask a friend in Halaima to tell me if any from the Nasty Russians Team is in local. Gut instinct has served me well, he reports back that there is 4 in local. “Great... ” I thought, a fleet of 5 for 1 cruiser. Eyes on the fleet say a Typhoon and 2 frigates, and faction ship, and I face palm. I consider if I can kill the wolf before that other fleet arrives to kill me

Manokin must have got impatient and starts burning towards me. I warp off, and warp back at 100km. JayB heads to Halaima to check them out. Again Manokin burns towards me. I warp off, and warp to 0 on the station. He peruses me, I let him burn through my shields and dock when he reaches armour. JayB said they spotted him, but 5 ships vs a curse just inst enough apparently, and the whole fleet jumped into Sankkasen, not sure what to think when they bring that many people, and those types of ships for 1 cruiser.

When its clear to them that they ain’t caught me, a few jump back into Halaima to try and get JayB, now that they got like 7 vs 1 curse. They are desperate for a kill, they bring out interceptors and all to try and find him. By now they have reinforced the the other members online, and he is up against 7-8 hostiles. Its bit pointless for him to try and fight that so he safes up and logs.

Quite a few hours left of the day so its not over yet. figured it was time for an update here while it was quiet.

Lin

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

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.