For cloaky campers are pilots who land in a low sec or null sec system, cloak up, and just sit there. The idea is to inspire paranoia and suppress activity like ratting and mining in a system because you never really know if the cloaked pilot is AFK or is quietly stalking you or about to cyno in some friends to blap you.
While I’ve tended to think of cloaky camping as just a cost of doing business, having been cloaky camped by various parties from random passers by to the Olmeca Gold Goon-Hate campaign, a lot of people get very upset because you cannot really “do” anything about a cloaky camper. So people have been complaining to CCP about the practice since long before I knew it was a thing.
So, 18 years into the life of the game CCP is planning to introduce a new deployable call the Mobile Observatory which, once activated, will ping the system every ten minutes with a chance to decloak anybody cloaked up in the system.
The Mobile Observatory
And the attributes:
The attributes
The observatory, once it is correctly coded, is deployable in low and null sec space (not wormhole space) with a limit of ten per system. (Currently it can be deployed in WH space and next to stations and you can have as many as you want deployed in one system.)
In order to protect the legitimate cloaking pilot, cloaking up will give you 15 minutes of “cloak stabilization” to keep you from being decloaked.
Cloaking Defense
I tinkered with one a bit on the test server with a stealth bomber and was decloaked fairly reliably once the cloak stabilization wore off.
Being decloaked at the same tick every time
The effect is system-wide, so proximity to the observatory presumably has no impact. I was 15 AU away for three of those four decloaks. It did not decloak me at the 19:53:03 tick, when my stabilization had worn off, but the other three times it decloaked me on the first tick after I was no longer protected.
For the last round I was close by when it decloaked me as its lifetime was nearing its end and I wanted to see how much it would take to kill it.
Well within torp range
Five salvos of faction torps from my Purifier was sufficient.
There was no cool explosion or anything because the item doesn’t even have artwork associated with it yet.
That fact indicates to me that we’re likely not going to see this pushed into the live game quickly. As with the warp core stabilizer and interdiction nullification, I expect that CCP will take time to digest feedback and make changes for a while.
And the comment thread is getting a lot of feedback, though you have to skip down the page a bit because the first problem was that CCP announced to everybody that it was available to test… and then it wasn’t on the test server for another couple of hours.
This will clearly shake up the cloaking meta. AFK cloaky camping might even cease to be a thing. But it is the impact on other playstyles that use cloaking that might be the trick here. I’ve sat on a blops in a hostile system for 90 minutes easy waiting for a hunter in a distant system to get in position. While those waiting can stay safed up and recloak, that hunter is in a bad spot if they get decloaked.
In just a few more weeks I will be able to add the inevitable “One Year Ago in WWB” section to these weekly posts. Let’s just all hope I never need to fall back on an Olde English 800 image for the opening section. Even 800 days might be too much.
The stalemate in Delve, the so-called the “Siege of 1DQ,” appears no closer to reaching and end.
The grind of war appears to be wearing on some of the attackers. Kel Drosto, one of Brave’s FCs, sent this out to the alliance:
The other thing for us winning this war…
Our current clone deployments should be as follows:
Deathclones: T5ZI (Delve)
Jump Clones: P-ZMZV (Querious) GE-8JV (Catch)
You might think to yourselves “But Kel, Why? Im so bored of tidi slugfests”
Yes. So am I. I am bored stiffless of this war and want it to be over.
However. I have noticed a huge trend in our participation in main coalition fleets. I just led a fleet out of T5ZI… 160 in fleet. Guess who had the most? Test with 100+. Guess how many I had from Brave? 28. 28 people from Brave actually turned up to that fleet.
Now. Say we do indeed lose this war…. Who do you guys think, honestly, has the most to lose? Do you think it’s Frat? Do you think its Horde? Absolutely not. It is us.
If we, and those of you reading this, want to maintain the cushty little nullsec homes we have then it is ESSENTIAL to go on the main Delve fleets. Because, Horde, NC, Frat, they all have homes very far away from here to return to. We dont. This war, we are ALL IN.
We lose this war. Test is first, then the rest of Legacy is next. And you thought Catch was bad. Delve/Querious would be hella worse.
So. Yes, it is a slim chance that we lose this war, but it is still a chance.
You want to maintain where we live? You wanna keep having those fun standing fleet fights with kitey nano bulshit gangs? Then get into Delve. Get into this war.
You guys have all done so well so far. The resilience and perseverance demonstrated by you guys, everyone in this community is some of the best I have ever witnessed in my entire life. Thats not an exageration. This war is tiring. It’s dull. But there is an end. We just have to keep fighting it. The only people prolonging this war right now, is us, ourselves.
So, my challenge to you guys. I want to see a full fleet of Brave. 256 Brave people in a fleet in Delve. We’ve done it before and very recently. I have witness a full fleet of literally 99% Brave. Lets do that again. Lets smash goons into the ground and so we can get back to our Null Carebear Lifestyles.
Peace out
Brave, with close to 14K member currently, is the fifth largest alliance in the game, the fourth largest in PAPI, and the second largest in Legacy Coalition, so them not showing up in numbers relative to the base saps the strength of Legacy’s commitment to the war. And this isn’t the first time it has been noted that Brave has been lagging.
It is leaks like that which strengthen the resolve of the Imperium line members, because we’re pretty sure we can hold out longer than they can.
Delve Front
As I said above, the stalemate continues, so I get to re-use my map of the area of conflict in the region yet again.
O-EIMK Constellation – May 17, 2021
That nothing has changed on the map does not mean nothing has happened.
PAPI has continued to drop (and lose) Azbels now and then and attempt to reinforce structures, including POS towers, in the 3-DMQT system, which remains the focus of the siege. A particularly bloody battle broke out not too long after downtime on Friday that saw a lopsided loss for PAPI as they faced both Imperium supers and bombers from The Initiative. There is a write up here, but the battle report shows the numbers.
Battle Report Header
They reportedly did at least reinforce the POS tower. But that means they need to come back for another run at it. And even if they kill it, they then have to put their own tower down, defend it as it deploys, and keep on defending it from Imperium attack. So we will see how that goes.
Undeterred by the by the morning losses, PAPI formed up again at close to 00:00 UTC for a surprise rush at various targets in the constellation, including the ihub in 3-DMQT. They got on grid with that and put entosis ships into action, but with the ADM of the system at six, they needed to sit there and cycle for an hour to reinforce the hub. That gave the Imperium plenty of time to spin up fleets and turn off the cyno jammer again to jump in carriers to defend.
And as tidi kicks in, the timer slows down
There is an Imperium Fortizar on grid with every ihub in the constellation, so carriers tethered up and sent waves of fighters at the attackers, wearing them down and eventually stopping them.
At that point, even though PAPI was clearly going to lose the objective, they were well ahead when it came to the ISK war so could have come away with able to claim victory on that front. But then they did the same thing they tried to do earlier in the day and warped all their fleets back to the E-VKJV gate to jump everybody through all at once. Stuck on the gate, choking the server as it struggled to handle the surge, The Initiative lined up another bombing run on them in exactly the same fashion as earlier and scored a huge hit. I was logged off already, the whole thing came at an awkward time for me, but I still had the Mind1 stream up and got to see the PAPI fleets blowing up on the gate.
Watching PAPI burn on Twitch
There is a post up describing the fight. The battle report before the bombing run had PAPI comfortably ahead in the ISK, afterwards the battle report showed they had lost more than 200 billion ISK to the Imperium’s 85 billion in losses.
Second Battle Report Header
There is a nice video of the bombs landing and ships blowing up in a building crescendo of light.
PAPI is salty about this bombing loss, blaming the servers again, despite having made the same tactical error twice in one day. I have been on enough Imperium ops where we have staggered fleets and had to sit around off grid while other people jumped so as to avoid just that sort of issue. But PAPI thought trying to jump 6,000 capitals into a system with 4,000 people already present was a good idea, in a game where the all time record for a battle was 6,142, and paid for it dearly. You have to fight in the environment you have, not the environment you wish you had. Ignoring the realities of the New Eden servers is not a wise strategy.
Vily has reportedly been telling PAPI to petition CCP for reimbursement, the way he did when he tried to have PAPI jump 6000 people into M2-XFE when there were already 4,000 Imperium pilots there. CCP has already stated their policy on that sort of thing, but Vily has to blame somebody I guess.
Meanwhile The Mittani pretty much broke the smug meter on the Meta Show on Saturday, not that making the exact same mistake twice in one day didn’t deserve some mocking.
The Imperium capitol constellation holds out for another week. PAPI’s stated plan to take the final Imperium systems with subcaps alone has not paid off so far.
Otherwise the week was mostly skirmishes and the occasional destruction of a PAPI Azbel in 3-DMQT.
I think that was Azbel kill #6
So it goes.
Overall the Delve regional campaign stats showed that the week ate up 14K ships and capsules for a total of 1 trillion ISK in losses, with the ISK was tilted in favor of the Imperium.
Week 45 Campaign in Delve
That is still fewer ships than two weeks back, when the number was past 16K and 1.5 trillion ISK lost, but it is still proof that the war remains hot in Delve.
Other Fronts
My view into other fronts has been mostly based on the maps over at DOTLAN for a while now, at least since Brave abandoned Catch, because I am not in any of the groups involved in those campaigns.
This week however I ended up hearing some chatter about PAPI jump cloning or flying out to the space that Legacy Coalition had otherwise abandoned to defend the remaining Keepstars, help with sov contests, and reinforce Imperium and allied structures in those regions. This included a Fortizar I had ships in, which I ended up gating one system over to park in an NPC station just in case.
The most noticeable effort is in Esoteria, which The Bastion has been assailing since we lost Fountain months back, where PAPI has been helping out Army of Mango to push back on that incursion.
Esoteria – May 16, 2021
The Bastion and its allies are back into just northwest Esoteria and lost another four ihubs since week 44.
In Feythabolis the struggles continues, though there Army of Mango lost an ihub over the past week.
Feythabolis – May 16, 2021
Elsewhere, The Initiative continues to try and gain a foothold in their target region of Etherium Reach. While they have not been successful, they have gotten PanFam and its associates in the northeast of null sec to jump clone back home to form up against them. Being a threat to which PanFam must respond makes them a nuisance.
My Participation
I missed both of the big fights on Friday as one came very early in the morning my time and the other landed just about when we were talking about dinner and what to do on a Friday night. I did jump into the second fight in an interceptor to nose around and see some of the action. I missed the big bombing run finale, as noted above, but I did get in and tackle Pittsburgh2989 because he is so perpetually salty about the Imperium that it is hard not to take an opportunity to annoy him. (Like Vily, he has a completely made up, “Goons done me wrong” tale to tell.)
Grabbed him for a bit
He painted me and I had to warp off as I got down to about half armor, but I had fun.
I did get out on some of the skirmish fleets over the course of the week. I got to use my Drake for a short bit, and got a kill mark on my Bhaalgorn, but mostly flew in the ever forming cormorant fleets that have been clashing. This is the level of commitment both sides can afford I guess.
I ended up losing not one but two corms during these skirmishes… actually, in the same skirmish… but that is the way things go. I also lost an Ares trying to get to the new battle monument in M2-XFE. I’ll have to go scope that out later. I will just add those to my loss list for the war.
The changes are up on the test server and they have update their proposal a couple of times, adding some new ship types, removing stealth bombers, and changing the default strength value of warp core stabilizers. The forum thread is contentions, but not nearly as long as I might have expected.
The applications to run for CSM16 also closed this past week. We should get the vetted candidate list soon.
And on the peak concurrent front, week 45 saw the top count stay on par with the last few weeks:
Day 1 – 38,838
Week 1 – 37,034
Week 2 – 34,799
Week 3 – 34,692
Week 4 – 35,583
Week 5 – 35,479
Week 6 – 34,974
Week 7 – 38,299
Week 8 – 35,650
Week 9 – 35,075
Week 10 – 35,812
Week 11 – 35,165
Week 12 – 36,671
Week 13 – 35,618
Week 14 – 39,681
Week 15 – 40,359
Week 16 – 36,642
Week 17 – 37,695
Week 18 – 36,632
Week 19 – 35,816 (Saturday)
Week 20 – 37,628 (Saturday)
Week 21 – 34,888
Week 22 – 33,264
Week 23 – 33,149
Week 24 – 32,807 (Saturday)
Week 25 – 31,611
Week 26 – 39,667 (Saturday)
Week 27 – 34,989 (Saturday)
Week 28 – 34,713
Week 29 – 35,996
Week 30 – 38,323
Week 31 – 38,167
Week 32 – 37,259
Week 33 – 35,886 (Saturday)
Week 34 – 35,626
Week 35 – 35,379
Week 36 – 35,085
Week 37 – 34,394
Week 38 – 36,319
Week 39 – 35,597 (Saturday)
Week 40 – 35,384 (Saturday)
Week 41 – 33,708
Week 42 – 33,521
Week 43 – 33,731
Week 44 – 33,742 (Saturday)
Week 45 – 33,758
Then again, a conspiracy theory emerged on Reddit claiming that CCP is falsifying those numbers because a single person could figure out where nearly 34K people were hiding in the 7,805 star systems in the game because there they felt they hadn’t seen enough people when traveling from Jita to Amarr, so who can trust anything anymore?
I track my reading progress over at Good Reads and, as a reward, they occasionally tell me something I don’t know already. Just last week I got a surprise from them as they let me know that Timothy Zahn is returning to the Star Wars Universe and the main character of his creation, Grand Admiral Thrawn.
With more Thrawn to come
Back in 2011 I wrote a bit about the original Thrawn novel from Zahn, Heir to Empire. It was the 20th anniversary of the book and I was interested to see how I felt about the story two decades down the road.
As I noted, 1991 was a very dry time for Star Wars fans. We bitch now about too much Star Wars diluting the impact of the series, but back then we just had the original three movies, that Ewok TV series, and bootleg tapes of the Star Wars Holiday Special. You used to have to find some guy in a small booth in a shady corner of the dealer’s room at a con to get a copy of the latter and, as awful as it was, it was Star Wars canon you could cling to.
And on to that parched ground Zahn dropped Grand Admiral Thrawn and we were grateful to have him. He was a well written nemesis for the New Republic and no doubt the peak of the early Star Wars novels. It was the first entry in a trilogy that among other things introduced Coruscant as the capital planet of the Old Republic and Galactic Empire and introduced characters like Mara Jade, who gained fame despite never being in the movies.
And even twenty years down the road Thrawn seemed crisp and fresh, different from Vader or the Emperor, and blazing a path towards restoring the empire. If there were problems with novel it came from the flat and predicable character from the movies… Luke, Leia, Han, Lando, and Chewie… and some regrettable in hindsight plot points. But Thrawn, he was a force to be reckoned with.
Unfortunately, the two follow on novels, Dark Force Rising and The Last Command, did not hold up as well when I returned to them. Thrawn became predictable and manifested an obvious character flaw that you could see would be his downfall a few hundred pages ahead of the climax.
Still, back then Thrawn was good and Zahn ended up penning two more Thrawn prequel novels before they were all thrown out of the Star Wars canon.
However, Thrawn was too big to keep down. He forced his way back into the Star Wars canon when he showed up in seasons 3 and 4 of the Star Wars Rebels animated series, which coincided with start of a new Thrawn trilogy from Zahn. The last entry in that dropped in 2019, but demand for Thrawn remains and so a new trilogy is coming.
I have the first book in the Thrawn trilogy in my Audible.com library, but I honestly have little recollection of having read it. Was that the one where it was all recollections with himself as the outside narrator? I suspect that forgetting it does not bode well for the series. But it did well enough to spawn more Thrawn.
I just wonder if it is worth reading now. My own tastes have changed. I’d like to think they’re more sophisticated, but it is more likely I just won’t put up with the same shtick I would when I was younger due to the proliferation of entertainment choices now available.
Maybe I’ll go watch Star Wars Rebels to see if Thrawn in season three sparks any interest in me.
Some little things about EVE Online in one post because I can’t quite get a full post about any one thing going.
Anniversary Gifts Claim
If you were as diligent as I was, then today you ought to be able to claim the 16th and final gift for the game’s 16th anniversary.
Last gifts for me
The final gift was a lot of skill points.
Skill points are always the right size
Before this I had over a million unallocated skill points, now I have over two million. I keep saving them in case I need a skill quickly. Right now I can get a long skill like Fleet Command V if I need it. But do I need it.
If you missed a day or two… and somehow I fell behind on one account… you can still keep doing the daily redeem thing for two more days.
Will War Come Tomorrow?
On Monday I was writing about the coming war, now on Friday I wonder if it will come at all. There is a State of the Goonion slated for tomorrow, after which we are supposed to move to war. However, the most likely targets, Pandemic Legion and Northern Coalition, have, according to Reddit, packed up their stuff to evac to low sec. This must be that Fabian defense I have heard so much about.
Anyway, we will hear about our destination, if there is one, tomorrow. It will be amusing if it isn’t Tribute and PL/NCDot, but even if it is we’ll still go blow up all their ihubs.
CSM14 Candidate Applications Closed
The window for registering to be a candidate for CSM14 closed at the start of the week. If you are still thinking about running, it is too late.
While we won’t get the official ballot from CCP until May 25th at EVE Down Under, you can look at the current estimated list of candidates over at CSM Wire. They have identified 42 candidates so far.
Evaluating the chances of various candidates pretty much means asking who their constituency is. Aryth will be at the top of the Imperium ballot, a built-in constituency, so he is pretty much guaranteed a seat. Others like Steve Ronuken or Mike Azariah have built independent constituencies over the years, so seem likely to return.
One interesting addition to the list this year is Matterall, the owner/host of Talking in Stations. While he is a null sec bloc player, he has his own popular constituency based on his show.
A bunch of people on that list though, they have no visible constituency. We’ll see if they have some real support when the winners are announced on June 22nd at EVE North. Only 10 people get elected, and I can spot at least 10 candidates with viable followings. My gut-level guess at winners right now, in no particular order:
Ayrth
(whoever gets #2 spot on the Imperium ballot)
Dunk Dinkle
Matterall
Steve Ronuken
Manic Velocity
Mike Azariah
Vily
BlazingBunny
BigChols
That would be 7 null sec players, 6 if you count Matterall as an outsider, but I doubt people will, which would be about par for the course.
Empires of EVE II Update
On the one year anniversary of the end of the Kickstarter Campaign for Empires of EVE Vol. II, Andrew Groen put out an update. While the initial estimate for the book was this month, stretch goals and complications have pushed out the ship date to the end of 2019. However, it sounds like a lot of progress has been made and that it will be a solid follow on to the original book.
EVE Classic
With the rush of news about WoW Classic earlier this week retro enthusiast have been agitating for various other dream trips back to old versions of MMOs, and EVE Online has not been spared.
But an EVE Online Classic would be a disaster for the game. Leaving aside giant technical issues (as we saw at BlizzCon last year, that WoW Classic was possible depended a lot on luck, and CCP ain’t ever that lucky) and the civil war that would erupt over defining what era is “classic,” EVE Online is not WoW or EQ. It cannot be chopped up into a bunch of discreet servers and remain viable. WoW you could play solo or with a few friends or with a big guild, and not notice much difference, depending on what you want out of the game. A server with 100 regulars would probably be an okay experience.
EVE Online though, it depends on everybody being on the same server.
You can bring up Singularity, the Chinese server, if you want, but you’ll note that major groups from there have moved to Tranquility because, basically, a second server isn’t really viable.
EVE Online depends on its in-game economy like no other game I have played, and that requires a critical mass of players. Splitting off a bunch of players from Tranquility… and we have seen with retro servers in other games like EQ and LOTRO that a bunch of the players come straight from the live servers… and the market is at risk. And if the market goes, if players can’t go to Jita or Amarr to reship and reload, things grind to a halt pretty quickly.
Also, if you are dreaming of another server where you can leave Goons and gankers and scammers and botters and pirates and blobs behind, forget about it. When you’re done creating your character and pass through the tutorial you will find that they have all gotten there ahead of you, and will be all the more efficient at restoring things to their play style due to years of experience. The people you hate, they are always the most likely to show up to the party.
The now standard turnover of items carries on in the New Eden Store, the in-came cash shop in EVE Online. We got notice of a new set of SKINs, the Octopus Orange Flight SKINs for some Caldari hulls.
Octopus Orange SKIN on a Raven
Not a bad SKIN if you like bright colors. A pity that the meta in null sec is mostly about armor tanked ships, so I don’t fly Caldari ships that much these days. Plus I might have enough SKINs for Caldari already. Either way I won’t be rushing out to grab any of these SKINs just yet.
Actually, there is another reason I won’t be rushing to buy them. They’ll eventually be removed from the store and put on sale when that is announced, as happened to a bunch of SKINs as part of teh Octopus Orange Flight announcement.
On the news item, after the list of hulls for the new SKIN, there is a long list of SKINs that will be leaving the New Eden Store. The Valkyrie set will be going, along with the EoM sets for Amarr ships, the remaining Ruby Sungazer SKINs, the Kopis Edge SKINs for Gallente hulls, and a few others.
I’ll actually miss the Kopis Edge SKINs. On Gallente hulls it is probably the best looking set of SKINs after the Quafe set. I picked up a couple of those on sale for hulls I might fly some day, though for some reason the Oneiros isn’t on the list though the Exequror, which shares the same basic hull, is available. But I have the Oneiros version already… though now I can’t recall where I got it. Was it an EVE Vegas give away?
Kopis Edge Oneiros undocking with a fleet
Anyway, this the the natural order of things in the New Eden Store. Like most online shopping interfaces, it isn’t made better by having more pages of products to scroll through. CCP weeds out old items as it adds new ones. This also lets them play the scarcity card, encouraging players to buy things they might want before they disappear, either for their own use or for speculation.
This has turned into an issue for the Reavers. While we don’t have a required ship SKIN (though there was a push to get people into the CCP Blaze Ishtar SKIN, which you can see in the background of the screen shot above) we do have an official jacket. The idea is that when we blow something up the kill mail will have a list of participants wearing the same jacket in front of the same background and in the same pose.
Almost the same pose…
However, in a previous purge our jacket, the Interbus Marshall model, disappeared from the store. I think it was purged back in March when I had RL issues on my mind, because if I had noticed I would have bought a few to have around for new members.
So now we’re in a bit of a lurch on that front. It is a bit like real life where, any time I buy something and end up liking it I wonder if I should go buy another because by the time I need another the item will have been discontinued and have disappeared. This seems especially to be the case with shoes. Oh well.
At least things that get retired from a virtual store front can be brought back I suppose… eventually.
Asher has brought the Reavers out on a new deployment, one where we will be working out of a familiar station in Reavers history.
Having a station, rather than living out of mobile depots in safe spots as we did in Impass, means having the option to field multiple doctrines during the deployment.
I barely made it into the deployment fleet and did not have time to arrange to have somebody carry a ship for me in a capital ship. I just grabbed one of the doctrine ships I had handy and undocked to catch up with the fleet, which was already on the move. I made it, but I I was locked into the single doctrine.
Fortunately, from where we are staging, it is possible to fly a ship out without an undue amount of risk. Returning to an old stomping ground means that perches and safe spots are bookmarked already, making the journey more viable. I jump cloned back and empty clone I hold in Jita, bought and fit a Cerberus, and flew it on out to our staging system.
Bright red Cerb headed into harms way…
The route through high sec was easy enough, but I waited until the evening had turned into night and the online user count had dropped down before heading into low sec and then null sec and the end of my journey. I had arrived, safely docked up, and logged off when Asher sent out a ping for a Reavers fleet.
The doctrine called for was the first ship I flew out. That doctrine requires implants and, having just cloned jumped a few hours earlier, I could not jump back into that clone in time for the fleet. I remained logged off and started tinkering with Minecraft. I noticed after a bit that another ping had gone out and that the doctrine had been changed to the Cerberus fleet. I logged back in, got on coms, and joined the fleet.
The fleet was already undocked and in combat, following Asher around and kiting the enemy in his usual fashion. The problem for me was being able to warp in and join up. The Cerb doctrine is built to move fast, so warping carries risk. By the time one comes out of warp the fleet will have moved quite some ways. When you warp, you go to the point your target was at that moment.
So I tried warping in, found myself way off from both friend and foe, then warped off to a safe. I did this a few times when Asher cleared people to try and warp in, however on my fourth attempt I managed to land right in the midst of the enemy fleet, also flying Cerbs, and was pointed before I could warp off again. My brand new Cerberus exploded before I could even overheat my hardener. I owned it for barely three hours total.
Loss keeps the New Eden economy thriving.
I was able to warp out in my pod and dock up, but that left me out of the fight. The only other ship I had was not appropriate for what we were doing, so I was sitting in my pod in one of the stations listening to the fight continue.
There were additional losses and Asher eventually rounded everybody up and docked to asses how things stood. We posted our losses in fleet and Asher tried to sort out getting people re-shipped. I didn’t have anything else I could fly… and couldn’t get in the clone for the ship anyway, once you have clone swapping in citadels you start to miss it in stations… so he asked who had something for me. There wasn’t a spare Cerb or logi to be had, but old school Reaver Norrec Lafisques had a Sabre sitting his hangar.
I was asked if I could fly it and said that of course I could. And it was true, I had trained up the skills for all things interdictor related ages ago. So Norrec traded me the ship and I threw some money at him hoping that it was enough in case I lost it, got in the Sabre and prepared to undock.
Of course, the question nobody asked was whether or not I knew what to do with a Sabre, or any other interdictor, once I was strapped in. I had trained up the skills, but I had never actually flown one. Interdictors are ships that require some individual skill and initiative. They are tech II destroyers that can put up warp disruption bubbles, an action that can save the day when done at the right moment or get us in deep shit done at the wrong. I’ve watched some masters of the art in Reavers use them to great effect, so I felt a little bit of pressure not to screw up.
Still, hostiles were in system, we were set to undock, so I figured one more ship even ineptly handled would be better than no ship at all, so long as I didn’t screw us by bubbling. I had the ship insured and given that interdictors are generally high priority targets I wasn’t sure I would last long in any case, so when the command came I left the station with everybody else.
And then I set about trying to figure out what buttons to press.
I was in a panic for a moment as I couldn’t find the module for bubble deployment. I wasn’t even sure what it would look like, but knew it had to be there somewhere. Norrec had put it at the far end of the hot keys so it was under the fleet window, the traditional place to hide modules you don’t want to set off by accident. (e.g. cynos, bomb launchers, smart bombs)
I also had a little 125mm Gatling AutoCannon to let me whore on kills… shells down range to the target get you listed even if they do not hit… as well as what I took to be a light missile launcher loaded with EM missiles. That seemed a bit redundant until I went to use it mid-fight and found it was loaded with Defender missiles, the new hotness for destroying incoming bombs.
Meanwhile the fleet was on the move and I was going with it.
Sabre in space
There were other interdictors in the fleet, so I was pretty sure I would be the last choice when Asher was looking for somebody who knew what they were doing, but part of the job of an interdictor in the fast moving Cerb fleet is to drop bubbles regularly when told to in order to shield us from people warping in on us.
When the time came I just sort of watched to see when the other interdictors were bubbling and when there was a gap I launched by own bubble. Nobody said anything so I am going to guess I didn’t mess that up.
Flying back around one of our bubbles
The fight itself had been a running series of engagements with a Ferox fleet and a Cerberus fleet. Then the Feroxes moved off, only to have a Machariel fleet show up. We moved and shot and occasionally knocked down a foe. While the Sabre doesn’t have the range of the Cerb, a few targets fell within range so I was able to get rounds in their direction and get on the kill.
The fight had us in the next system over and we were headed back towards base when the Machs were reported on their way. We ended up with us on one side of the gate and them on the other. We jumped through and attempted to zip away, but a couple people got caught, including Norrec, who lost his Cerb of many kill marks due to being in a bad spot.
We zoomed around some more, though the Machs were fit for speed as well, so we couldn’t engage at will.
Just another picture of us zooming around
The battle report shows us coming out on the short end when it comes to ISK… Cerbs are not cheap… but the odds were generally against us at each step, so not getting trapped and slaughtered meant some measure of success.
After we docked up again I asked Norrec if he wanted the Sabre back, seeing as he was now down a ship as well. But he said I had bought it, so I suppose I threw enough money at him. Now I have a Sabre there for future use. In the mean time though I got my alt out in Jita and bought up a few more ships and some supplies to send out to our staging.
There was some talk about getting doctrine ships up on contract out where we are staging, however they have to be alliance contracts, since people will mess with you if you’re not paying attention with public contracts. And being one of the few people not in the main alliance, well, it might be better to have my own stuff to hand in case things are popping again and nobody has time to find something for me. Another one of those times where I think my life might be easier if I just joined KarmaFleet.
More than a thousand hostiles in Saranen with us… local was up to 2,600… and somehow the citadel survived and went online. No capital ships in the fight though.
Now available in Saranen
Yes, we lost the ISK war, including some other citadels set to go, but we got our new toy online. Among the benefits is the ability to swap jump clones… if you want to move between implants… without a timer.
I arrived on scene just in time to experience the 10% time dilation and watch a bit of the fighting before we docked up.
Crucifier on the scene
Now when it hits its next vulnerability window the citadel will have guns on it to help with the defense.
~~~ This was a broadcast from kcolor to all at 2016-05-17 01:33:38.817622 EVE~~~
It was actually a busy day on the front porch of the Quafe Company Warehouse at Saranen V, moon 9. But then, it has been a month of busy days despite our foes continuing to harp on the empty propaganda about us never undocking. Again, another week and the top alliance at zKillboard remains unchanged. (Charts from May 6 and April 24 previously posted, rankings explained here.)
zKillboard Top Alliances and Corporations – May 17, 2016
Pandemic Legion has picked up the pace and climbed the rankings, but Pandemic Horde, almost 9,000 strong these days, has been sliding down at the same time, to the point that it is in danger of falling off the list, ending up behind even my own alliance of 1,200 pilots.
I actually managed to undock three times yesterday and get on a few kill mails each time.
The first time was around mid-afternoon when Asher called up a fleet to chase off some NCDot Phantasms that were camping the undock. This is why a some Imperium pilots like myself are pretty upbeat on the current situation. Our foes come hang out on our doorstep until we’re ready to come out and play. No roaming for content, it gets delivered.
We undocked in Hurricanes, The Imperium flavor of the day as it turned out, and chased them off, killing a few. I happened to be doing a large file transfer in the background during the fight, which probably didn’t help my already slow reflexes, so I only ended up on a single Phantasm kill mail. I was probably shooting the secondary by mistake if I got in a hit.
It was a nice quick op that wrapped up with us flying cover for some jump freighters bringing in more materiel to keep the war going before we docked up and stood down.
Most days that is all I can ask for out of an op.
After that the day went on, we had dinner, cleaned up afterwards, and were settling in for the evening when I sat back down at my desk and saw a series of frantic pings to get logged into Saranen to kill fax machines, the unfortunate yet immediately applied nickname for the new force auxiliary capital ships that came in with the Citadel expansion.
Again, it was Hurricanes and, while I was late to the party, I still logged in, got into Pittsburgh2989’s fleet, and undocked… to find there were indeed capitals and super caps on the undock.
Undocking alone into the middle of fun…
The fleet was more than 100km away, too close to warp to but too far to burn to with caps hanging around and likely armed with the new high angle weapons for blapping subcaps like myself. I aligned out to a celestial to bounce and warp back from. Even as I was aligning out, more capital ships were jumping into the system. But I could hear Pittsburgh2989 calling targets and fax machines going down, so my timing didn’t seem too bad.
I did the bounce, landed with the fleet, and anchored up. Tidi was up and that transition out of warp so I could lock up and shoot felt like it took forever, but eventually was was on a target and shooting. During a brief flurry of activity I managed to get on five Apostle kills, the Amarrian flavor of fax machine, along with one of the Talwars from a Pandemic Horde support fleet that showed up, a Cormorant that happened to stray into range between targets, and BlueMajere’s Apocalypse that was pissing Pittsburgh off for having survived through the fight right in the middle of things.
As we were doing this, more and more capital ships were jumping into the system off the undock. The critical mass of the fight soon favored them as their fax machine logi increased as our Hurricanes were steadily popped. Our fleets aligned to warp off, then warped back to the station to dock up. That is the general plan, according to The Mittani on Sunday’s fireside chat; when our foes drop overwhelming numbers of capitals ships, we dock up and let them stare at the Quafe logo.
The battle reports floating about at that point showed us losing a lot of Hurricanes, but winning the ISK war with about half as much in losses as our foes. Op success. Participation links were generated, fleets stood down, and that seemed to be that for the evening. We would leave the enemy to stew on our doorstep with no more kills to be had.
I walked away from my desk again, sat down and watched a bit of the Warriors game on TV, then went back to my computer to look through the screen shots I got during the fight and started putting together this post.
As I was doing that, another set of pings started popping up. The enemy had started leaving Saranen, but in bits and pieces so that their numbers became assailable yet again. Hurricanes were called for once more and people logged back in and filled up the first fleet, so that I ended up in the second fleet under Cainun. Again, tidi was hitting hard to the point that we didn’t undock in a ball but in a chain of individual ships like the station was spitting us out in a stream.
We aligned and warped off, then back onto a spot to join in on the developing brawl, There was a T3 cruiser fleet and some carriers and a some Pandemic Horde Feroxes on the field and even a few more fax machines to hit. There was a rush to get points on the capitals, the high value targets, to keep them from getting away.
Our fleet was popping away at the T3s for a bit, though their logi seemed to be on the ball so our targets were catching reps. We still managed to knock off a few as we closed with the capitals. From there it was shoot and neut, as we had refit to carry energy neutralizers in order to deplete their capacitors.
While we were out a call when out for a Grinder fleet, which is Megathrons and Apocalypses, in order to blap stuff off the field. Even Fearless Leader, The Mittani, got in a ship and undocked to shoot people.
The Mittani’s Apocalypse
If you look at his kills, it is mostly Pandemic Horde Feroxes, so I am probably not zoomed in close enough to see the “Free Candy” sign on the side of his white, windowless Amarrian space van that he used to lure them in.
Then we hit the point where people were trying to hold down the last few foes as they warped off before the field around the undock was ours. Cainun got popped along the way, but we had Pittsburgh2989 along with us, so he took over and kept us going. People looted the field, there were high fives all around, more participation links were generated, and we then docked back up again.
The combined battle report I saw for both engagements combined put the ISK war well in our favor.
Saranen May 17 Battle Report Summary
We lost a lot more ships… Hurricanes were dropping like flies at some points… but our ships were cheap relative to our foes. We lost so many Hurricanes though that there was some worry about resupply. The supply in Jita was way down, so I guess your economic tip of the day is to get some Hurricane hulls on the market. With Welpcaines back as a doctrine, demand will likely remain strong.
So that was Monday in space, a good brawl where we got to blow up nineteen hostile capital ships. No supers though. Maybe next time.
