The Chaos Era has been a bit of a bust for me. I don’t rat or mine, so I am not on that declining indicator, but with a lot of people turtling up there are not as many defense fleets to go save people. I am also not a solo PvPer, so I haven’t been out hunting. I generally depend on SIG or squad deployments for my content and, aside from the short one up to Placid… which was low sec, so no Chaos Era benefits there… I haven’t had much to get me to log in.
There has been talk of a Reavers deployment, but things kept getting in the way, like a hurricane Dorian headed straight for Asher’s home. That eventually passed and last week Asher got us grouped up. It was going to be a very traditional Reavers deployment, with Ishtars and support and no station to dock up in. I had a couple of Guardians left over from past operations already correctly fit, so I put one on my main, one on my alt, and waited for the ping announcing our departure.
I didn’t plan to dual box Guardians. Keeping up with reps and the cap chain on two screens during a fight is too much for me. Instead my alt was basically hauling out a reship. If my main got his ship popped, he could just grab the extra from my alt, while if he got blown up and podded, he could just fly out in an interceptor and swap ships with my alt, who could then fly home.
Soon enough the ping came and we loaded up our ships with the intent to live out of them in hostile space and headed out.
A small fleet warps off
As is tradition, our destination was not announced in advance. We just went to a series of waypoints along the route to our area of operation. But Asher couldn’t hide which direction we were going. We were headed east and were soon into Legacy Coalition space, where the jump gates seemed to be set to less us pass through.
Using the middle management dino gate
I was wondering whether this was a default setting, if Legacy was letting us use their gate network to let Imperium forces pass through their space in order to join in on fights in the east or if we were getting some special treatment. The war between Legacy and Winter coalitions, which has been running off and on for ages now, continues to bubble down in the southeast of New Eden, with third parties like Pandemic Legion showing up to grab some content. Certainly the Imperium had sent fleets east before during the war.
However, not all gates were green… or blue I guess… to us. At an XIX gate we had to stop and hold, hanging in space while Asher found somebody to flip the switch for us.
Waiting for the gate to let us through
That he had to get on a channel somewhere to get us a pass seems to indicate that at least an “Imperium flies free” policy isn’t Legacy wide. So we sat and waited, no doubt scaring a few of the locals who jumped through to find a fleet of not blue Ishtars and support hanging about.
We had our own fat targets, but no shots were taken
Asher found the right person and we were able to jump through and continue on our way, heading past Legacy space and into Winter Coalition’s domain. No jump gate travel for us there. But it was also well past prime time for the locals, and we were able to pass through their space using gates without much notice.
My Guardian aligning out from another gate
The blackout was in effect, so they would have needed to lay eyes on us or catch us on a dscan to know we were there. Finally a bit of the Chaos Era working in my favor.
Another gate to pass through
Eventually we found a spot to safe up in Insmother, made our safe spots, got out our mobile depots, and fit cloaks in order to be able to cloak up and stay safe.
Living out of a mobile depot
Once there we had to find something to do.
Initially we found a couple of unfueled Fraternity towers, which we proceeded to shoot. That is all part of the Reavers plan. We set up in space the start shooting things until somebody shows up to chase us off. If the hostiles for big, we just cloak up and disappear. If they form a fleet about our size, then we take the fight if we can. So we blew up the towers.
An old Minmatar tower blows up
All that yielded was a “But why?” from somebody in local… and I am not even sure they meant us.
The next time I was on we went looking to stir things up with one of the Winter Coalition members more in our time zone, the Lord of Worlds Alliance (LORDE). Their alliance logo is an angry unicorn on a pink shield, which I guess gives them some synergy with GoonWaffe (GEWNS), whose logo is a unicorn in front of an outline of a heart.
The comparison
This similarity came up on coms and, while the GoonWaffe logo was no doubt chosen for irony, who actually chose it and why has been lost to the mists of time.
Anyway, we went out to entosis a couple of their infrastructure hubs to see if they would come out to play.
The ihub awaits
The word was that they were on during our time frame and would form up and fight if the numbers worked out. After tinkering around a bit to get and entosis link on the right ship… it started on a Tengu and there was some awkward work with people swapping ships and using mobile depots in order to get it fitted on an Ishtar… we commenced to fly in circles around the ihub and run the magic entosis wand over it. Exciting game play.
Entosis coming from the Ishtar in the middle
There was a bit of trouble with the Ishtar running out of capacitor, but one of the Guardians in the cap chain just diverted one of their cap transfer modules onto it and we were set. And then around and around we went.
The locals did come out to play, but apparently couldn’t get enough people together for a stand up fight. Instead they came out in bombers and interceptors to try and and interrupt the entosis ship. That was mildly annoying, but not enough to get us to break orbit, and we ended up getting a couple of kills. Ishtars racing in a circle with props on move pretty quickly so you have to anticipate where they’ll be before you bomb. The locals were not quite that good.
Things were quiet enough that I put EVE Online on my second monitor and played WoW Classic for part of the op. That is EVE Online some days, a game that lets you watch movies or play other games.
That ended up with a couple of ihubs reinforced, after which we went back to where we were living, where we safed up, put on our cloaks, and logged out again. I didn’t do much with EVE Online over the weekend. I missed any ops we might have run. But today things changed. As CCP announced on Saturday, the blackout is over. We’re no longer invisible in space. People can now see us in the local channel when we log in. Our extra cloak is gone. But we have always had to deal with that in the past. And us being logged in and cloaked up can be a deterrent on its own. And so it goes, living out in hostile space on another Reavers op.
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