Rebuffed Again in X-7OMU

We had another op out of Cloud Ring run last night.  The ping popped up as I was sitting down, so I logged right in and got in the fleet.  We were once again headed out in Sacrileges, so I went with the logi wing in my Guardian.  As we were getting ready I stepped away for a minute, got distracted, and when I got back I heard the FC, Kocicek, telling us to align for the Ansiblex.  I quickly hit the undock button and got out just in time to pick up the warp and follow the fleet, jumping through not too far behind.  By the next gate I was caught up.

Sac fleet outbound

We took the same route we took the other day after the move op, heading up to 6RCQ and into Pure Blind.  It was gate, Ansiblex, gate, and so on until we hit our first waypoint, KLY-C0.  There an armor timer was coming out on a Pandemic Horde Raitaru, which we formed up and shot, sending it to the final timer.

Just a blob of us flying around

That done, we warped off to a Fortizar of our own and met up with a titan who quickly bridged us off to our next destination, X-7OMU.

Off we go

There again.  That was where we had a tough time after the move op, and PanFam and the locals were formed up and waiting for us again, with Abaddons and Muninns and capital support, again.  This was another armor timer, thus not the final fight for the structure, so I suppose there was some question as to whether they would show up.  Question answered.

We got on grid with the Astrahus, as we did back on Saturday, and started putting damage on it as the time came out.

Circling the Astrahus

Unlike the last fight, where we left the citadel grid to take the fight elsewhere, this time we stuck it out.  It did not go well.  The gunner on the Astrahus was throwing a mix of damage and void bombs at us, the latter which can disrupt even cap chaining Guardians.  The void bomb hits and your capacitor is suddenly empty to the point that your cap transfer modules turn off and if you’re not paying attention you can find yourself drained and falling behind.

Meanwhile the damage bombs were keeping everybody broadcasting while the web on the Astrahus was on our anchor to slow us down, though we kept swapping anchors in order to mitigate that.  And then the hostile fleets came out to get us.  Things seemed to fall apart about then, though I was very busy following broadcasts for damage.

At one point Kocicek warped us and I caught the warp just as an interdictor bubbled the fleet, so I was alone until I could turn around and warp back to the fleet with a couple other ships that happened to be as quick to align as I.  That broke the cap chain where I was until I got back in range, by which time one of my cap buddies was down, as were two of the alternate anchors.

Kocicek told us to starburst as a bubble went up and warp to a safe.  I was getting yellow boxed as that happened, but had quickly scooted out of the bubble that was on us and was warping off as damage began to hit.  I was going to get away.

Almost on my way out… just pixels left on that align bar…

And then another bubble went up and I was just inside of it, cancelling my warp.  I scooted out of that, overheated my hardeners, and set myself to warp once more.  Damage was landing and I had to move to align and things looked pretty dicey for a bit there.  And the warp drive kicked in and I was off.

The hull is still half full, right?

I had warped to a planet, but wanted to get away from there, so warped to another in order to make at least a mid-point bookmark.  But X-7OMU is one of those huge systems and I fell out of warp before I made it to my destination, my capacitor drained.

So there I was, wandering at a mid-point in the system, halfway into my structure, heat damage on my lowers (and no nanite repair paste, I seemed to have forgotten it), and not really in any shape to do anything but hide.  However, Kocicek spoke up and told us to warp to him when he said to… so I got that up and ready to click… and he said “Warp to me…” and I was off.  And then he counted down from three, so I landed way off from him, but still on grid and close enough to get the fleet warp that pulled us all off to the J-CIJV gate, where we jumped out of the system.

An unguarded way out

We went from there to G95-VZ where we tethered up on yet another Fortizar we have hanging around the region and the repair function slowly took care of my hull, armor, shields, and heat damage.

Repairing on the Fort

From there the way home was pretty straightforward.  Once everybody was ready we made our way back to the end of the Ansiblex network and headed back to Cloud Ring from whence we had started.

Back in the Cloud Ring nebula

The fight, such that it was, did not go well for us.  The battle report, which looks incomplete to me… though if you don’t get on a kill you don’t appear on the list and we got precious few kills… shows us taking a pasting for very little gain.  We lost the objective and over 100 ships for only 9 real kills.

Battle Report Header – Click to Enlarge

But we cannot win them all.  Mistakes were made, ships were lost, and hopefully some lessons were learned, as I am sure we will be back again.

During the fight I did see Riverini get called as a target, one of the few I I recall coming up.  The experience of the fight was invigorating enough that he actually wrote about in on EN24, his first post in quite a while.  There was also a short AAR on Reddit, again highlighting that this was not a shining moment for the Imperium.

A Final Fight then Home From Venal

The fall of Darkness, the alliance at the core of the Dead Coalition… once the Guardians of the Galaxy coalition… a couple of weeks back was a sign that the fighting in and around the Venal region was likely going to fall off.  Not immediately, of course.  Wars have their own momentum, and being deployed up in Venal with the Goon Expeditionary Force and ready to fight meant there were still some sizable clashes after the news.

The final fight for me was a dust up between a GEF Typhoon fleet and a Pandemic Horde Ferox fleet in Q-7SUI, just a jump from where we were staged.

Typhoons undocking

There was a call for more firepower so I bought a Typhoon, figuring I would regret it when it came time to move home, that being one more ship to get back to Delve, but whatever.  So got ourselves in range of PH and their Feroxes and the shooting began.

A Ferox exploding in the pack

My worry about hauling home a Typhoon was unfounded as I managed to get it blown up during the fight.  That left me hanging out and watching things transpire.

Just a capsule in the bubbles

A couple of PH pilots locked me up at various points to try and pop by pod, but their Ferox fleet was moving fast and they we not often in range.  I took a few hits but was able to motor to the gate and jump through to dock up.  This was fortunate as I realized at that point that I had deployed in my Reaver’s speed implant clone and, while it wouldn’t have been a tragic loss, it would have cost me a couple hundred million ISK to replace it.

As I was gating out HAW dreads were dropping in to join the fight.

Cyno off to the right

I got back to the station and re-shipped in a logi hull, but the fight was over by then.  While we had killed more more ships, the battle report showed the ISK went well in favor of PH and company.

Battle Report Header

That pretty much wrapped up the deployment for me.  There were some further fights… a couple of good ones from all accounts… but I missed out.  But when the first call came to fly home… I kind of missed out on that too.  I think I was playing Pokemon Sword.  And it is unlike me to miss the first move op.  It has long been my practice to be on the first one because there have been times when there has not been a second such op.  I was on the first move op to the deployment.

Fortunately, there was a second op… or whatever op it was I got in on earlier this week.  I joined the mixed bag of subcaps who wanted to go home.  Given that ranged from frigates to battleships, it was going to be a slow move.  I grabbed the largest ship I had out on the deployment, a Jackdaw, and undocked with everybody else.

The flight home wasn’t too bad.  It ran about an hour.  However, it would have been a lot quicker if we had been closer to the Eye of Terror, the Ansiblex Jump Gate network that runs from Querious around into Pure Blind.  Being out in Venal meant we had about twenty gates to take to get to the terminus to the network.

Move op landing at another gate

Mixed bag we were, but it was a big mixed bag, with about 150 in fleet.  So while we didn’t make up a coherent doctrine, we had the mass to pass and the locals left us alone.  Once we got to the travel network about three quarters of the time in fleet had passed.

Welcome to the Eye of Terror

After that it is about eight connecting gates and five jump gates and you’re back at the Keepstar in 1DQ1-A.  While it was slow going for a bit, with align and warp and align again, it was safe.

That done, there was still a bit of time left in the evening, so I clone jumped back up to Venal, where I still had two more ships to bring home.  I grabbed the Purifier stealth bomber and ran the route again solo.  This is not always advisable.  A move op often signals to everybody that people are trying to get home and highlights the route to camp if you want to pick off stragglers.  However I managed to slip through without any issue and was soon making the warp from the final Ansiblex on my route.

I cloak up for every warp. You never know who will be there when you land.

And so ends the deployment for me.  There were a few good fights for me, and enough structure shooting to keep me satisfied.  Now we’ll stand down for a bit until somebody figures out what we ought to get up to next.  Isn’t it about time for a Burn Jita or something?

Structure Shoots in Venal

I kind of enjoy shooting structures in EVE Online.  That probably has some roots in the early Reavers operations where, deep in hostile space, we would fly around and shoot towers to see if we could get the locals to respond.  Structures are conflict points, places that you can force your foes to come and defend… unless they didn’t want that structure anyway.

And given that we are out in Venal, which is NPC null sec, structures are all the more important as both sides are a ways from home.

A Pandemic Horde Astrahus – A likely target

There has also been a variety of fleets to roll out with.  I flew down in a Jackdaw, which is a staple doctrine for the coalition, and I had a chance to use that from pretty much the moment we arrived.

It is always good when the FC calls for sniper mode

There are also the torp bomber operations, a staple of the coalition since the Fountain War back in 2013.  With a black ops in support they can be bridged out to a target without all that messy mucking around taking gates everywhere.

Bridge up, time to jump!

Once out at the target even a modest fleet of bombers has enough firepower to hit the damage cap smaller Upwell structures, so they can be used for any timer stages.  With only three launchers, a couple thousand torpedoes in the cargo hold will last for a few shoots.

Torpedoes flying

While stealth bombers are easy enough to kill, if hostiles show up they can just cloak up and fade away if the opposing force is too big to handle.  And if they don’t show up, we set the timer or get the kill.

Previously pictured PH Astrahus

In addition to those old standbys, and the Sacrilege doctrine I mentioned last week, we have a new fleet doctrine just for this deployment based around the Typhoon battleship hull.  We have been north with Typhoons before, as during the Hakonen deployment.  Being cheap and easy to fit for line members, they are back again and represent the ships of the line for fighting PanFam and their battlecruiser doctrine.

A Deacon logi ship in with the Typhoons

When we heard that the hostiles are forming up to fight us over a timer it is time for the Typhoons to assemble.  If we get numbers things tend to go fairly well for us.

For Typhoons I decided to fly with the logi wing, which means a Thalia or a Deacon.  The Deacon is preferred, being cap stable, and only looks a bit like the sorting hat trying to consume a horn of plenty.

Of course, I stuck a combat drone in its drone bay so I can tag targets when things are quiet, though things are generally only quiet when we’re shooting structures and the hostiles don’t show up.

Another structure down

And so it goes.  The deployment so far has been pretty good.  Most evenings when I have some time and a desire to log in there has been a fleet running that I can get into.  And things have been pretty active overall.  My momentary jump to the top of the KarmaFleet kill board has since been thoroughly eclipsed, showing that there have been fights happening.

Given the situation out in Venal, things could stay active for quite a while.  Both sides seem to want fights and there are a lot of structures out there as yet untouched.

That Athanor needs to be hit before the moon chunk is ready

Structures keep things going.

Raitaru Fight in FDZ

Don’t care, had fun

-Cainun

I saw the ping for Cainun’s fleet about five minutes after it popped.  There was a sense of urgency in it that made me decide to give it a pass.  If they were in a hurry about something I was probably too late to make it.  But a couple minutes later a follow up ping came up; Cainun  needed more people in fleet.  So I logged in.

Once in I had to dig around to see if I had the right ship.  I mentioned that the Imperium was moving Keepstars for staging in 1DQ and at this point about half my stuff is still in the old Keep.  It was an Eagle fleet, and I did not have a Basilisk in my hangar.  I moved a bunch of stuff in my Fax and Dread… going against all warnings and warping them between Keeps… but didn’t pack much logi because they always have refits in the cargo.  No space priest role for me.  I did, however, have an Eagle in my hangar.  I wasn’t sure if it was the right fit, but it was probably close enough.  I got in fleet ready to just shoot things for once.

I am always optimistic about how quickly a fleet is going to get moving.  It always takes more time than I think it will, though this time we had the opposite of the usual problems, with too many boosters and too much support and too much tackle, so Cainun was trying to get people into Eagles and Basilisks.

Still, we got ourselves undock and going, warping first to another citadel to take a titan bridge, then off for a destination in Fountain.

Eagle up and away

The pace was quick, we were clearly headed off to a timer of some sort.  We entered Fountain and found an incursion waiting for us.  However there were no NPCs on the gates and we jumped into another system to find a wormhole waiting for us.

An incursion tinged wormhole

We were through that and off to another destination system.  That too had a wormhole waiting for us.

Another wormhole for us

Through the second wormhole… both were direct normal space connections… we found ourselves up in the northeast of New Eden null sec.  And when Cainun set our destination to FDZ4-A I knew what we were up to.

FDZ is the one system in Geminate with an NPC station.  I have a jump clone and some ships there because it is the place you base if you want to hit Pandemic Horde, which owns Geminate and neighboring TKE.  Space Violence and Black Ops both keep a presence there and I had seen updates just the day before about a Raitaru that had been planted up there being hit by PH.

I figured we were headed to the final timer for that, which Cainun confirmed as we got closer to the system.  He also told us that PH had dreads and carriers on the field, so that we were not going to be able to save the Raitaru.  We were there just to get a fight and see what we could kill and have some fun doing it.

Eagle fleets depend on speed.  We got into FDZ, took our drugs… if we remembered to bring them.  I actually had more drugs than required, but took all the performance enhancing items I had in my cargo as it seemed likely we might suffer significant losses.

Cainun warped us on grid with the structure and we anchored up and followed him into the danger zone.

Eagles curving around the battle

Around the Raitaru was the PH fleet.  They brought out more than they needed for the kill or even any likely opposition, but it is good to get the bigger toys out to play with, especially if you live within cyno range.

Pandemic Horde on the structure

We were there for the battleship fleet they brought, which formed around Apocalypses and Megathrons.  Moving fast and at the edge of our range with spike loaded, we took shots at targets as they were called.  Early ones got reps quickly enough, but others we were able to burn down before they could get logi support.

Apocalypse is primary

The carriers began sending fighters our way, so we pulled some range and set about kiting and killing those instead.  From then on it was back and forth between battleships and fighters, with the occasional other target hoving into range.

And we were getting kills.  However, we were also taking losses.  The Eagles remained mostly intact, allowing us to keep delivering enough damage to kill things.  But PH had been focused on our logi, so Basilisks and Ospreys had been getting blown up regularly, whittling away our ability to stay alive in the long term.  When we were down more than a dozen logi, it was time to head out.

Cainun turned us for the exit and we left, taking a dozen or so gates to the third wormhole of the night, which dropped us back in Delve.  From there it was just a few gates home.

Back in Delve

Overall, the operation could not be measured as a success.  We lost the objective as the Raitaru was destroyed.  The battle report shows us losing the ISK war.  We drew some blood, but easily lost two ISK for every one we killed.

Battle Report Header

But it was a fast and exciting op in a time of relative quiet and stagnation in null sec.  You take your fights when you can find them and Cainun’s current philosophy, as quoted at the top, is that some fun is worth the ISK expended.

First Day of Null Sec Blackout Roam

Everybody seemed to have a plan for the first day of the null sec local blackout.

Well, not everybody.

One question I heard fairly often was about whether chat was broken again because nobody was in local.  No matter how far and wide you think the word has been spread nor how much build up any change to the game has, there will always be a significant percentage of the population that won’t get the memo.

But at least various groups had plans.  And the plans seemed to mostly involve roaming into other null sec areas looking for targets.  I saw a ping for a DBRB interceptor fleet seeking to roam far across null sec and, about an hour later, a ping for an armor assault frigate fleet under Silvana Cadelanne.  Those two fleets were connected, but I didn’t know that when I joined the second.

Armor assault frigates, usually a Retribution/Wolf/Enyo mix in the main line, means getting out one of my lesser flown logi ships, the Thalia.

Thalia sitting on tether ready to go

I don’t get to undock this guppy-shaped tech II Navitas variant because we tend to fly Harpy fleet more often.  But this time I was able to clean up this ship, long languishing in a dark corner of my hangar in 1DQ1-2.  I could have bought a Deacon, the Amarr logi frigate, but it is seriously one of the most awkward looking ships in the game.  There are some lines I cannot cross.

Silvana Cadelanne got us undocked and headed via Ansiblex jump gates towards TEST space.  We gated out was into their space through the strange quietness of silent local, doubly weird in any location where Dreddit might be recruiting.

Assault frigates over a gas giant

But we were not there for TEST or Brave or anybody else in the south.  We were there for a wormhole that sent us into the Metropolis region.  There we headed towards Geminate.  However, arriving there, the FC informed us that our plan… which was to link up with DBRB’s fleet in order to assist in taking down a titan or a super or something… had been thwarted by DBRB lighting off after some distant target with his interceptors.

We were in Geminate already, so the FC decided we ought to do something, with “a blaze of glory” being mentioned as a possible plan.  He did seem a bit nonplussed at the lack of Pandemic Horde activity in Geminate, though he had been drinking and had likely forgotten that PH had moved to The Kalevala Expanse.  With that straightened out, we headed towards TKE looking for trouble.

Bubbles on the gate into TKE

We slipped into the region and went straight for their staging in R1O-GN.  Uncloaking there, in full sight of their Keepstar, and taking a few pot shots at people close by, it became a question as to what we should get up to while the locals figured out what to do about us.  Then somebody spotted an abyssal signature… the in-space indicator that marks somebody running an abyssal pocket will exit… and we decided to hang out on that.  Maybe we would get a Gila kill.

On the abyssal marker

As we anchored up and flew around the marker, the locals began to stir.  An Abaddon first landed near us, which gave us our first target.  From that point forward the fight was on.  Hostiles began warping in on us and we were suddenly very busy

Fight on! Enemy Keepstar just visible at the bottom of the screen shot

What came about was an odd bit of asymmetrical warfare.

The locals began piling on us with everything to hand, from frigates to carriers and dreadnoughts, looking to stomp us with sheer weight of numbers.

Some of the closer hostiles on my overview

However, this kitchen sink fleet composition was coming at us in dribs and drabs and was not coordinating their effort.  That meant that our fleet, unified in doctrine and taking targets from the FC, was able to inflict quite a bit of damage relative to our numbers on the field.  For several minutes our assault frigates were able to skate around the battlefield taking down targets while our logi was saving people and each other.  Being in the logi wing then was a very busy time.

That advantage was fleeting however and, as more and more hostiles landed on us, they began to get their act together and focus on the logi.  They seemed more eager to pop the Deacons than my Thalia, and soon I was the last logi left.  I had all reps on the FC, who was now primary for many of the locals, when he warped us out.  That came just in time for me.

Entering warp in structure is always fun

The FC’s ship blew up even as we were warping.  Our moment of glory had passed.  It was time to get out if we could.

The FC directed us to warp to the “QG” gate.  However, R1O-GN is one of those systems that has exit gates to two systems with very similar names. (There is one system where two adjacent systems that start with the same three letters, which always causes confusion.)  We were close to the “GQ” gate when he said that, so people asked if he was sure and, since he had been drinking, he had to check.  Eventually he confirmed what he said and, as we warped, he gave us a destination.

Take the gate? Don’t take the gate?

Jumping through the gate we found that the route to the destination led us back into R1O-GN.  He checked again and gave us another destination.  By that point we were getting spread out, some of us having gone back into R1O while others waited for a new desto.  I was a bit ahead of the pack, free burning for the way out.  However, as I noted last weekend in the post about dropping on PH’s move ops, there is only one way back to where we came from, and you have to pass through 1S-SU1.  The locals were well aware of this and were waiting on the LEM gate in that system.  I was one of the first through so was too late to heed the warning about the camp.  I decided to just press on, since my only other choice was to crash the gate, and given the state of my ship it wouldn’t take much to blow me up.

And they got me.  I was pretty quickly blown up, then podded, then back in my hangar in 1DQ1-2.  End of the fleet op for me.  Some people did get out.  For whatever reason the hostiles didn’t bubble the 1S-SU1 side of the gate, which let some people slip through.  Others turned around and went out via Vale of the Silent.

But, not matter what, we got our money’s worth out of that fleet.  A blaze of glory was achieved.

I would like to summarize the outcome, but with ZKillboard down, you cannot create battle reports or even see kills for which you did not get the final blow.  For me, ZKill being blacked out is one of the downsides to this event.  I want to see the battle report.  I want to see how many or few hostiles we managed to zap before we ran off.  I want to see how the brawl played out, with nice columns of time stamped kills dammit.  I want the data.

I know some people are cheering it being down, and even asking that it be kept offline, but I am not in that camp.  The main argument against ZKill seems to be a nebulous argument that kill boards ruin the game, which strikes me a being akin to suggesting scores in kids sports are bad.

But beyond that, bragging about your kill board is so looked down upon in the EVE Online community that before you can talk about your kill board you must first write a paragraph declaration about how you much you do not care about your kill board, before going on to prove that you probably really do.  Basically, we already have a system of social control around kill boards, so just let us have the information about what happened and get on with it.

Anyway, that was my big blackout inaugural roam.  And it was pretty good.

I did go on another op later in the evening which had its own bit of comedy.  We were in an Eagle fleet, flying through Delve to cover a timer, and while watching the local intel channel, it became clear that people were using their directional scanners, but perhaps not paying as close attention to the results as they should.  Several times we saw something like this:

The Eagles! Get them!

Given that dscan reports the name of your ship as well as the type, and that the most common ship name in our fleet seemed to be “GSF Standard,” which is what you end up with on a lot of pre-fit contracts, it seems like a bit of thought should have to occur before people panic.

Then again, if I were a hostile FC I might just have my whole fleet rename their ships “GSF Standard” if only to sow confusion.