Defence Op

After a few days of taking it easy, most of us were getting itchy trigger fingers. We were given 3 weeks off, and after a couple of agent missions (which I find very boring, but easy money), and some cleansing of the belt rats in TDE, I was up for a new challenge. Most of the alliance felt the same by the sounds of it.

Our Industrial wing had arranged a mining op, and were getting to it, munching ‘roids and hauling their goodness back to the station. A few more of us who weren’t mining orientated or equipped were gate camping to deny entry. It was a fairly boring job, but I recorded the highlights.

17:49- a shuttle!

A scout reports a shuttle coming in… and sure enough a shuttle jumped in. Now, rather embarassingly, none of us were able to anchor a large mobile warp disruptor bubble (there wasn’t many of us), including myself, so we had plenty of mediums spread around. Unfortunately, the shuttle appears just outside of a bubble’s sphere and warps off to the station. Local chat ensued (shuttle’s pilot was is Samuel Caldara):

[17:49:27] Samuel Caldara > woah, maybe buying something here wasn’t such a good idea =(
[17:49:29] Xyyreen > lucky b****d”
[17:49:37] Samuel Caldara > yea well, i’m f****d now
[17:50:09] Samuel Caldara > your fricking kidding me

I thought his buying something here comment was him being funny, but his ‘you’re kidding me comment’ was presumable him not being able to dock. Somewhat amused by this, I called up his record- he wasn’t a very old pilot, but surely if he’s out in 0.0 he’s either very brave (as he was in Caldari Provisions, a starter corp for Caldari pod pilots, and not aligned to any other corp/ alliance) or is up to no good on behalf of someone else out here.

[17:53:19] Samuel Caldara > don’t even bother
[17:53:21] Samuel Caldara > kill me
[17:53:27] Samuel Caldara > i’m in a frickin shuttle =D
[17:53:51] Samuel Caldara > thank god i got a warp clone

He warped back to the gate where he met his fate- seemed pretty resigned to it, understandably. I hope whatever he bought here wasn’t too expensive!

1751- Dread Guristas

To our amusement, a Dread Guristas cruiser and two of his mates show up to have a go at our gate camp. They have balls, I’ll give them that. They didn’t last very long.

1807- HICs

At last, we get joined by a couple of HICs. Now we can stop ghetto gatecamping and do it properly! Start pulling down the medium bubbles.

1902- Enemy gang! Oh wait…

We hear reports of a 4 man enemy gang coming down the pipe. We all wake up and drool in anticipation. Regrettably, they send in a Vagabond to scout, which due to it’s inertia, we can’t stop getting back to the gate (even double webbed by me) and the gang runs away. They would’ve got slaughtered had they not sent in the scout. Ah well, I guess we are there to deter or kill any threat to the mining after all. I return to looking at markets, contracts and a ’specialist’ holoreel.

[OOC] Eve-Mag review of 2d EveMaps

Eve-Mag has just written a nice review of my maps, so I thought I’d big them up in return. The Eve-Mag site is really nice on the eye, well laid out and it makes you want to stay and peruse the various article.

The articles themselves are well written, informative and cover all the main aspects of eve. Also, for the budding writers out there, Eve-Mag will host their stories where anyone can read.

All in all, a nice site, founded by Smakalicious who also runs the Eve-Places site. Clearly he knows how to make a nice looking website. Kudos!

Ship Graveyard

The dust was settling in TDE, indeed in Geminate, and we had been given leave to go earn some ISK. And I needed it after the purchase of the carrier, skill books and modules. After a couple of days of killing the hapless Guristas pilots in the TDE belts, I was getting bored. My Drake was setup specifically to deal with their type of damage.

I had left the carrier in lowsec, and clone jumped to TDE, now I clone jumped to a different system in hi-sec, which was far far away from my favourite mission agent. Although I found running missions for agents almost as tedious as killing belt pirates, it did pay well. Good job it wasn’t for long, it could drive a pilot mad.

I hopped in the rather cool Apotheosis shuttle that had mysteriously been delivered to every pod pilot a month or two ago- no-one saw who delivered them, they just ‘appeared’ in people’s hangars. Caused quite a fuss at the time, all these shipping crates turning up in hangars. No complaints of course. They were Jovian looking in design and handled really well. They were also selling for upwards of 10m ISK these days!

Anyway. A 27 jump extravaganza lay before me, so I got on with it. Empire was very busy, more than I had been used to recently. As I jumped into Algogille from Kassigainen, my overview registered a mass of wrecks and structures about 250km away. It looked like Gallente BS wrecks. Ever curious, I warped to them and took the above picture. Something big had happened here. I spent some minutes scanning the news archives… and had to go back some way. Found this:

breaking news: caldari navy task force crosses federation border, invades gallente space

2008.06.10 21:26:47

Algogille - *** This is a breaking news story *** A Caldari Navy task force has just crossed the Federation border in what is unmistakably a large-scale invasion of Gallente space. Numerous Federation Customs patrol ships have already been destroyed as Caldari ships continue to stream across using the Kassigainen stargate and at least two jump portals. This is a breaking news story that we will continue to update as information becomes available.

I spent a moment of quiet respect, then moved on.

A couple of jumps over, I was about to jump into Hek when I saw a Curse and Brutix belonging to a corp called Malum Crisis attack an Iteron V belonging to a corp called Bountyhunters. I thought I’d grab a picture just before the Iteron was destroyed. I found a couple of things odd about this. Firstly, you can see it was close enough to the gate to jump through, yet it didn’t. It got bumped 8km off the gate and killed. Secondly, the corps aren’t at war with each other, nor in any militia. Unless there was some can flagging going on, which I doubted, I didn’t understand. I mentally shrugged and continued my journey with no further incident.

Maiden Voyage of Varuna

With no small degree of excitement, I sauntered down to the hangar area of the station in lowsec Forge, and went past the usual sub- capital hangar entrance. The corridor changed, lighting was softer, the floor became carpeted, and small vases of flowers were on tables at intervals along the corridor. A smiling Caldarian dressed in a very smart butlers uniform opened the door to the hangar for me with a flourish. Awkwardly I fumbled for some loose ISK and palmed it over to him via a handshake. He appeared very grateful, not so much for the ISK but that etiquette had been followed correctly.

I walked past him and into the hangar- the place was huge, massive, bigger than any hangars I’d seen before. I walked to the edge of the walkway, and looked over… there she was. My first ever carrier, the Nidhoggur class. I had spent days with my head in books learning the basics of how to fly her, and I still wasn’t completely up on it. But I knew enough. I had named her Varuna.

I went onboard, and said hello to the Captain and the crew, just to introduce myself, and also so I know who I am flying with. You can feel quite isolated in your pod, but it’s always good to remember you aren’t on your own and you have other’s lives in your hands.

They seemed like a nice bunch anyway. I got into my pod, the fluid starting filling it up. I ran the usual startup checks, and then switched the HUD to external cam, to watch as my pod was lifted into the behemoth. It was so big, it beggared belief. Once the pod was inserted, ran the startup checks for the first time, and noticed my HUD had some extra entries. Ship maintenance bay, and corporate hangar. Carriers were supposed to be a logistical ‘port in a storm’ and the bay and hangar would provide just that. Right on cue, I watched as my Tempest battleship was towed into view, and I opened up the Ship Maintenance bay doors.. and watched the Tempest swallowed up inside the bulk of the ship. I wasn’t going to get used to the size quickly.

Rojman, a fellow carrier pilot in the corp, was also leaving at the same time, going to TDE in Geminate, so it made sense to share a Cynosural Field. He was an old salt at Capital ships, and I felt much happier that he was coming with me for the ship’s inaugural flight. I checked on comms he was ready to go, and he was. I then contacted Sam, our Cyno Generator in TDE- she wasn’t 100% sure what she was doing either, never having generated a Cyno before. Rojman talked her through it, she generated the Cyno, broadcast it’s location to our Jump Drive’s AI, and we initiated the jump. Space froze, folded, blanked… and then we re-appeared in TDE.

The re-assuring site of a KIA POS appeared, as did Sam’s Probe- dead in space, as was expected. The Cyno field took so much to generate, it drained and effectively ’stunned’ the ships systems for approximately 10 minutes. However, under the eve-watchful eye of the POS guns, she would be OK. We greeted her, then started the very slow align to the station. I was exhilarated by the whole experience, the first time I’d ever used a ship’s jump drives (Titan Bridge didn’t really count). And it was way cool- the way to travel. None of this gate nonsense, it was cynos all the way!

A curious Intercepter had turned up to have a look at the Cyno, it was Wotlankor. I greeted him, he congratulated me on the new ship, and I finally entered warp. Over comms he told me he had taken some pictures also- and very nice they were too!

Despite the ships slow speed, I felt a fly-by of the station was necessary (local channel was empty of hostiles and I could dock very quickly anyway), so I did one at Wotlankor’s request, taking a picture of course:

[OOC] Factional Warfare MapPack draft

I have just completed a map pack for Factional Warfare converts everywhere. Please follow this link for more information. It is just a first draft, and isn’t on general release yet as I’d like to get feedback from people who actually participate in FW (I don’t), as to what may need to be added or removed for ease of use.

[OOC] Apologies

Apologies for the lack of blogs recently, I’ve had almost no time to sit down and play Eve for any length of time this past week or so, just enough time to log on, reply to EveMails, check skills, then that’s it. Not much to write about. I am itching to fly my new Carrier, it’s patiently waiting for me in a lowsec station in Caldari space. Be back soon!

Friendly fire

After spending most of the day mooching around our Outpost in TDE, I decided that apart from needing more girls, it was actually a pretty cool place. A couple of decent bars, couple of entertainment hubs, not bad for a quality Minmatar Outpost.

Still only having my Rapier in the area (something I’d need to something about- a useful ship indeed, but not much damage output), I flew down to BWF with Doktor Soet, a fellow corpmate, to join a Daisho gatecamp on the Oijanen gate. The idea of the camp wasn’t just for ships n’ giggles, it was deny Smash and Roadkill easy access into and out of the area. After a fruitless 30 mins or so, we heard that a KIA op was forming back in TDE, so back we flew. 8 jumps later, 4 out from TDE, we heard that the op was to Titan Bridge down to BWF to join the Daisho. Meh. I considered turning around and flying back, as I’d still beat them down there given the amount of waiting we’d need to do before everyone was assembled. But I got a kick out of Titan jumping, and quickly had an idea- I’d pick up my Tempest from Airaken, so I’d use the Titan Jump in my pod.

Arrived in TDE, dropped the Rapier off, got my pod out and undocked. I engaged warp and warped to our Titan. As I dropped out of warp, the Ragnarok’s bulk filled the HUD, reassuringly massive. After waiting around for a while, listening to some casual chat, Eddz cajoling then cursing the attendence and sporadic reports of enemy movements, the cyno in BWF was fired and the Titan linked to it. We all jumped through, Eddz was the last one to jump, shouting at a couple of stragglers who hadn’t jumped through yet- the window of being able to jump wasn’t very long.

You gotta love instantaneous travel.

In a heartbeat, space ’shifted’, and we appeared 12 jumps away in BWF. Cooooooool. Unfortunately, as we exited the jump, we saw we were just off the Oijanen gate, and it’s large anchored bubble. Bubbles are scary to be quite honest, very menacing indeed- shimmering areas of death. Implacable. Unfortunately, also menacing was the guns of Daisho- the interference from the jump had messed with our transponders, and some of us were showing as neutrals. Not good.

As I was plodding toward the gate in my pod, this flashed up:

19:05:48 Notify Arnoud Langen [INE] DAI (Crow) has started trying to warp scramble “FR JackTheRipper”

Uh-oh. Despite frantic calls on comms that FR JackTheRipper was friendly (indeed in my corp), he had the misfortune of also travelling down in a pod like me and had no shields, armour or structure to speak of, and his pod popped like a ripe fruit. Fluid blasted into space and evaporated, leaving his corpse tumbling in space (pictured above). Shortly after, a bemused voice told us he was OK, and in a cloning facility in Nonni. Apologies all round from Daisho, but no big deal, just unfortunate he wasn’t in a ship or he’d have been OK.

Other than that, not much excitement. I got my Tempest from Airaken, flew back to BWF with no issues. Our scouts reported movements of neutrals and hostiles in and around Airaken and Akora. There appeared to be a build up of Smashkill ships, and we were joined by Goonfleet from the BWF station to bolster our numbers. In the end, after an hour or so, the hostile fleet withdrew- there wasn’t any way they could’ve jumped in and beaten us, we had all sorts on the gate, including sniping Battleships 150km+ from the gate (of which I was one). As it turned out, I didn’t get to introduce my Tremor long range ammunition to any ships… but there’s always another day.

TDE4-H falls

In the course of today, the Outpost in TDE4-H became vulnerable to incoming fire, and KIA was there to make sure it changed hands. It went without fuss, the people who work there weren’t bothered who owned the place as long as the wages got paid. All alliances always paid their wages promptly and generously as an outpost strike was the last thing you wanted…. deep in 0.0 and no access to hangars, ship fitting, repairs etc were no laughing matter. A picture of it is below- half of the station is bubbled to cause problems for any fleeing hostiles.

After a brief pause, we carried on to finish off the rest of the constellation. There were still hostiles in the area, and we couldn’t become complacent.

Gemination

The take-over of Geminate continues. On Friday, KIA and Goonswarm started a major push on the 74IL-O constellation, containing 3 outposts in O2O-2X, TDE4-H and UG-UWZ. There was little resistance from Roadkill, and the POS attacks went without hitch pretty much. I was unable to attend, but in the morning, I flew up my Rapier from Airaken. Other than a small friendly camp in the BWF entrypoint system, there was little enemy activity… until I got closer to O2O, and a small but steady flow of Roadkill ships started to pass me. I figured they were evacuating ships while our pilots rested.

The weekend was pretty much sentry duty, I was occasional scout and camper along with the others. There was a trickle of enemy ships throwing themselves onto our camp, then nothing for a long time. POSs were bashed, and put into reinforced or killed outright as they came out of reinforced. It’s hard to clearly recollect anything in particular, apart from when a Roadkill member spoke up in local saying “A suicidal Typhoon is coming your way”… then 10 minutes later, a RK Typhoon jumped into our camp from 5F, and got killed. It was a different pilot from the one who spoke up in local, so I don’t really know what the deal was there. Maybe as simple as it looked?

After a weekend of us camping and locking down the system, Roadkill mustered up a force and ripped us up a new one- we lost 10 ships to their 3. I wasn’t there, but apparently we didn’t have a scout on the other side of the gate to warn us. A mixture of boredom and complacency means these sorts of things happen, no blame is to attached. I’ll make a point of being scout whenever I’m on I think- you can never have too many scouts.

The Gemination continues.

Jita and Titan jumping

Interesting day, yesterday. After the destructive events of the day before, I thought it best to head to the nearest trade hub to replace my Interceptor. I quite fancied buying a Stealth Bomber, just for a change. I hadn’t flown one for ages, and they were quite good fun. The fact they could move quite quickly when cloaked (but sadly not warp), made them reasonable scouts too.

The cheapest Hounds in the region were, unsurprisingly, in Jita. 8 jumps away. I sighed inside as i comtemplated having to deal with the delays and in your face advertising. Still, the ability to ‘one stop shop’ was very handy, and a powerful pull to the system.

Not bothering to purchase a shuttle to fly me up there, I went in my pod. A little ‘low rent’ maybe, but I wasn’t bothered. I didn’t have much time before an op started, so didn’t stop to gawp at the huge amounts of traffic as I jumped into New Caldari, and then into Jita. I saved some time by remote buying the Hound and the components on the way, as everything was available at the main station at Jita 4 Moon 4.

Sure enough, everything was packed and waiting for me as I (finally) docked, having had to get into a queue before they granted me docking rights. I didn’t bother getting out of my pod, remotely overseeing the unpacking of the Hound and modules, and waiting as they got slotted into place. The external camera showed me salesmen, hawkers and people with clipboards making a nuisance of themselves to other pod pilots in neighbouring berths. Pod pilots being relatively wealthy made for juicy targets for … well, everyone. There was a permanent security presence down in the hangars after many incidents.

Anyway. The Hound was ready, crew was ready (I was quite impressed how crews were always ready to go at the drop of a hat. I wondered how, but didn’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth, to use an old Earth expression). I got my pod lifted in, ran the usual checks and launched. I couldn’t get out of JIta fast enough.

En route, loaded some expensive Caldari Navy cruise missiles into the launchers, and concentrated on getting back to Airaken promptly. Two jumps out, Eddz, our esteemed leader, asked if anyone could bring some Strontium Clathrates (fuel I assumed) to IOO, 2 jumps into Geminate. As I had a transport in Airaken, I said I could do it. I docked in Airaken, got the lumbering Mastodon (an improved version of the Mammoth), and looked up where the nearest seller of Stront was. Two jumps away, through lowsec. Hmm. I got scouted out, it was all clear. The lumbering Mastodon was a nightmare of slowness, even with improved inertia stabilisers fitted, and not without some relief I picked up the Stront, then jumped into BWF. This was where I had to be really concerned, but Smashkill appeared to be a spent force around here. There were a couple of hostiles in local, but a lot of friendlies a comms call away.

Made it into IOO without incident, and was told to warp to the KIA POS. As I came out of warp, I was met by the massive, sun- blocking bulk of the KIA Titan. This was the first time I’d seen it in the field, and it was awe- inspiring. I closed the distance until all I could see in front of me was the Titan. I interfaced with the Corporate Hangar, and transferred the Strontium over.

I returned to Airaken, and got my trusty Tempest. We were POS bashing again. Smashkill’s resistance had pretty much crumbled in the area, none of the POS bashing we’d done had been opposed. To be fair to Smash, it was actually Roadkill’s constellations we were taking. After some hanging around for the rest of the fleet to turn up, the Titan activated it’s bridge (for those who didn’t realise, you can jump via the Titan’s bridge to another system- like if you had a Jump Drive aboard yourself), and we jumped through to 4D9-66. It was a Roadkill station system, and we had a couple of POSs that were coming out of reinforced mode (and were thus killable).

POS bashing is dull, so I had a good look around for pictures that I could take. The Goonswarm fleet had some Dreadnoughts in attendance. As well as drastically reducing the time it takes to destroy POSs, they also look cool. To the left is a Revelation Dreadnought showing off it’s firepower.

On the right is my Tempest’s 1400mm guns letting rip.

We killed 2 POSs- on the second one, gunners were in attendence, and we had to pay attention to remote repping anyone who called for armour. They didn’t have enough firepower to overwhelm the remote repping, and slowly the guns were knocked out.

After the second POS went down, I called it a night, and powered off the ship in a remote corner of a nearby system. Much needed sleep followed!