Fighters and Faxes and Capital Plans

I have had a carrier for a while now.  I picked up the hull back in September 2013 and managed to jump it home successfully on the first try.

First successful jump was to 0P-F3K

That was back in the then CFC when the big push to get everybody into carriers… specifically the Archon… was a thing.  That was also when an Archon pilot with Jump Drive Calibration V could hop 14 ly at a go and didn’t have to worry about jump fatigue.

I don’t think I ever got the Archon fully fit and I was still short a couple of skills so I couldn’t apply to CapSwarm until that was complete.  But I could get into CrapSwarm, the group for people who own capitals so they can get in on move ops but aren’t there yet for actual combat ops.

CrapSwarm!

Back then I “only” had 110 million skill points and there were still subcap skills I needed, so I put carrier skills on the back burner for a bit while I worked on those.  I had been in the coalition for nearly two years and there wasn’t really a war going on for us at the time, the Fountain War having wrapped up.  The Halloween war was brewing, but I had put my all into the last war and skated through that, though I managed to show up at B-R5RB.  Not in a carrier, just a neuting Dominix.

Then there was Reavers, which meant focusing on subcaps ever more so and then the Casino War, where the Archon helped me stay ahead of our crumbling northern empire as I jumped out of Tribute then Pure Blind just ahead of trouble.  That all culminated in the retreat to Delve, most of which I covered on my own, and the Archon carried a lot of my stuff with it.

Exotic stations under strange stars

Once in the south, there was the conquest of Delve and settling in to our new region before capitals and, more importantly, capital production became a priority again.  Then the call was for force auxiliaries, the capital log ships.  Only two of the four fax machines were recommended, the Minokawa and the Apostle, but since I had trained up for the Archon already, I was well on my way to the Apostle as well.  I put in an order for one after The Mittani pushed us to have a couple on hand, they being the apparent key to any supercap battle, and started back on the capital ship training plan.

About a month after I ordered it, I had an Apostle.  However, I wanted to wrap up training to be able to fit a tech II triage module to it, so it took a bit longer until I was ready to apply to CapSwarm.

Medical White Apostle, with a Minokawa in the background

Eventually I was trained up, had a fully fitted Apostle (I stole a lot of the modules from the Archon and its list of “required to have” items) that I really had no idea how to use.  I mean, I guess it is just a big logi ship, so that part is simple enough; put reps on big things that ask.  But capitals are also serious business, and I’ve seen a few “if you don’t know what you’re doing, don’t go on capital ops” notes over the years.  I was also set back a bit by the “read this first” guides for CapSwarm, which seemed out of date and assumed you were in GSF.  Meanwhile, asking questions on Jabber got me “just jump in with the fleet and die quietly” level responses.  I don’t even mind losing the ship, I just don’t want to do so because I am clueless and I really don’t want to do something that screws up an op.  I’ve already had, “Oh my God” level responses for asking simple questions while on the move op to Rakapas.  So I opted to stick with supcaps ops, leaving my Apostle back in staging, hoping for a an updated guide or training op or something.

Now, however, there is a new call to train for capitals.  This time we’re back to carriers, which have been deemed especially effective against sub caps.  Somewhere along the line I had trained up fighters, because having a carrier and not being able to use its primary weapon system just seemed wrong.  I might have just ignored this new call to caps, but there was a statement about training… like the coalition is going to provide some so people actually feel good about using their capitals.

For just the suggestion that there might be training I got my Archon out and jumped it back to our staging system.

Archon, also in Purity White, hanging off a Fortizar

And then I checked it fitting and backup modules and found that I was well out of date on the basic fit and that I had, in fact, pulled a lot of the modules for the Apostle.  Also, while I have the skills to use fighters, I haven’t actually bought any fighters.  So I now have more than a billion ISK in modules and fighters being shipped out.

But that is fine.  I’ll be up to date again.  And I am willing to spend that on the off chance I will actually get to use my carrier in combat, or at least feel confident enough to answer the call and get into fleet should the situation arise.  Maybe I will even figure out the Apostle as well.