Raitaru Fight in Frarie

We had another timer waiting for us last night in Frarie.  Snuffed Out had previously reinforced a Raitaru we had dropped not too far from our Fortizar and the final event was at hand.

Counting Down

We formed up in Abaddons again, wondering if Snuff would show up for the timer or not.

Word was that they too were forming, and eyes on their home in Rakapas said they were putting together a mix of Machariels and Apocalypse Navy Issues with fax support.  A few minutes after the repair cycle had started they bridged in.  At that point we undocked and warped straight onto them with out pulse beam fit Abaddons, with our own fax in tow, and a brawl ensued.

The Abaddons off the Raitaru

At that point I got very busy as I was once again out in the dirty Guardian doing my logi thing.  Cainun was targeting Machariels to make them pay in ISK while they were going after logi to make killing the rest of the fleet that much easier.

Our logi was holding and a few Machariels had died when Snuff upped the ante and started dropping in dreadnoughts.  Our logi chain was broken and our fax wasn’t able to keep up. Guardians were alpha’d off the field by their battleships while the HAW dreads starting hitting Abaddons.  The dirty Guardian was no more.

We had the option to escalate as well.  We have some anti-cap dreads of our own that could have come into the fight.  However, the word was that they had their titan and super pilots logged in and sitting in Rakapas waiting to jump in as well if we did so.

Cainun’s last act was to warp us all back to our Fortizar before his own ship exploded.  Our fax went down as well, as did the Raitaru.  The battle report shows the ISK war against us as well.

Battle Report Header

This fight, and our previous encounters with Snuff, does make me question the value of this deployment.  Liberty Squad leadership wanted to go somewhere where we could get “good fights” on something like a regular basis.  But we chose to base ourselves under the capital umbrella of Snuffed Out without bringing anything like enough to counter that.  That leaves them the option to escalate, something they have done in every fight.  We have had them drop titans on us more than once already.

Titans loll about a previous fight

And yet Snuff clearly wants us there.  They have more than enough capitals on hand to take out our Fortizar if they wanted to.  As with any such arrangement, the price to keep them from doing that is to fight them… entertain them… and lose.  If we stop, you can bet the Fortizar will be their next target.

This is, as always, the problem with low sec for me.  There is nothing here to win.  Nothing changes, we just form back up again another night to repeat the same event.

It makes me want to jump my clone over to the Black Ops deployment where they cyno in to gank somebody and about half the time it doesn’t go as planned and the locals jump us instead and we have to scramble to get out.  At least there is some question as to how the fight will end and a chance to get away with something before the supers start landing on you. (Fortunately I have an alt there already.)

Oh well, that is the nature of EVE Online without a war going on.