Transmission Lost Lost

  I have been a bit absent of late in my postings. In Adhc, it is usually summed by with "RL>Eve" and that applies to my writings as well. But I was recently in two back to back fights that I thought might be of interest, especially since it seems there are speculations about one of them already.

  This was actually the second fight of the day, but in my opinion the better of the two. It all started as I was logging in to hear that we were scrapping with a small skirmish force of shiny hulls belonging to Transmission Lost.

  As I was not fully aware of the full situation, I took control of organizing a backup force that was assembling on our static connection. As our initial forces pulled back, we were waiting for our logi pilots to join the now satisfactory force. We would at least equal the opfor's numbers or have a few more. But since they seemed to be getting less interested, I called for the fleet to jump and warp to their connecting hole.

  That's when the fun began.

  As I landed, I called an out of place Rupture primary quickly and watched it turn into debris. But it was a bit futile for the heavier ships since they either jumped straight away or waited until we melted half their armor off to do so. I called for a pursuit, but our logi pilots held back due to a range discrepancy between the two of them. As grid loaded on the other side, we were met with a considerably larger force than ours that was full of T3s, faction BSes, recons, Guardians and an Archon that had just arrived. With their bubble up, I called for a retreat back through the hole and to pull range for a defensive stance.

  TL wasted no time in following and popping their bubble back up. That left a number of our pilots stuck inside it and so we dug in for a fight, whatever the result. I have to give a tip of the hat to our logi considering there were only two of them, one of which this was his first time doing it with adhc and they were getting harassed the whole time.

  Out went the call for reinforcements to get their tails online. In the meantime, a number of us went down swinging to the wall of dps. This included a couple curses and my Sleipnir.

  And to those who call our fits shit, I only have to chuckle. Is it because they aren't full of faction and deadspace or officer mods? My ASB Sleip tanked like a beast through all their dps as I watched my shields play ping pong. It allowed the logi time to try assisting in the reps, but not enough to keep me up. The only reason it went down? I ran out of charges. By the time it did, I was out of the bubble and able to get my pod safely away, at which point I had to relinquish FC temporarily.

  It's not often I'm able to fly shield fleets, but I enjoy them when we do. So I headed home, debating what I would do. I have a couple other ship choices but nothing like a Sleip.

  Cynabal it was, in the end.

  I sped back to the fight and landed on grid, right next to the bubble that was still active. As I lit my MWD and burned out of enemy range I took up target calling again and set in for a long fight. Our numbers soon were backed by another pair of logi and more dps, not to mention our ace ECM pilots. As a primarily ECM pilot, I just love how much disruption it can cause and rage that comes from its proper use. TL had brought Falcons of their own...but they sat on the hole long enough for us to blap them both.

  Anyways, we began alternating targets and nearly had a guardian down. That was when they brought in a solo Archon. Bad idea.

  Why? Well we watched a stage change on the hole's mass. We had assumed it was only to stage 2, but that was soon proved false when their hole collapsed from some unknown smaller ship transiting.

  This left their entire force stuck with us, in a bubble and we were just getting started. Immediately we set to getting a dread ready while I got a warpin out of line of the bubble's drag. I just love how fast I can move in shield fleets, have I said that before?

  With the hole collapsed, TL would be looking to run and minimize losses. We had lost ships and I wanted as much blood as possible so a spreading of points was reinforced. A number of subcaps had begun to warp off, leaving their capital brother to die.

  It was then we dropped the Revelation. The Archon was a tough nut to crack so we figured we might as well bring a hammer to help since we lost some of our neut power earlier in the fight. While he focused on some cap on cap lovin', we locked down the rest and readied our own bubble. It was a choice between saving his subcap wards or his own Archon and you can see how that ended.

  From the implants in that Archon's head, I can see why it took a little bit to wear him down. Shiny.

BR report

  A note bene on that report, notice that there are TL pilots on the adhc side. Probably due to smartbombs or some such. So while it looks like we had tons of pilots, in actuality it was simply that we had reships and they were hitting their own somehow.


 On a more personal note, a while back we brought a fight to TL, decidedly lost and got an odd local chat (the first comment was a 3rd party wondering wtf was going on lol):

  I took particular exception to the comment considering we brought the fight...we didn't pussy out. Left me confused, not raging in case that wasn't clear. So I hope this most recent run in is evidence enough that we bring it and we bring it hard.

  Thanks for the fat lootz :D gfgf

  We have fraps of the first fight of the day, but sadly none of this one. Another day, perhaps.

  Here's to future brawlfests o7
-Mem

Jolly Saint Nyx

  Well I said I'd tell ya, so here's the story of Jolly Ole' Saint Nyx. He's something of a folklore around wspace, since few see him and fewer beat him with a baseball bat, thinking he's a burglar.

  The chains of wormholes can get very long, it all depends on the day and what type you're dealing with in the first place. You could be on the C5 superhighway one minute and popping your nose into Empire space the next. So with a rat warren of holes, most of them boring, my corpmates and I start poking the local nullsec'ers. I logged in as they were scanning down mission runners in a very full and busy system, so I joined in on the fun.

  Surprisingly we kept scanning and popping them, as they just kept missioning. Guess they don't communicate much. Well, they get brave eventually and one of ours decides to sit on their station. Soon their "response fleet" undocks and...well we almost felt bad for what happened. Almost.

  That soon fizzles out so I had to log. Later in the day, someone lets me know things are heating up in a different nullsec system that we found. Cool, I'll log in and see what's up but we usually don't get anything good in nullsec. They either 200 man blob or just run. Luck has been different lately, though, so who knows.

  I get on and make my way to where we are staging, trying to get things sorted out. Comms seems a bit hectic so I see if we have an FC. We don't. Welp, nothing like the present so I step up. I'm not sure why but I seem to be doing that more often as of late. Must be a phase.

  I start to get things ordered, see who is where and what we know already. Turns out there's a couple carriers and a support fleet sitting on the other side of the wormhole, waiting for us and one of ours is already shaking his tail feathers at them. They must have thought he was stuck since they went for him something fierce. They mostly stick to the nullsec side, but a Domi does pop in at one point to say hi. No blood drawn on either side, but they are definitely interested.

  We ended up with no eyes, so I send someone in to have a looksy. He lists things off and says a bubble is up. Then the bubble gets taken down. Orly? We had our forces ready and more were being contacted via smoke signals. Yes it's space and there's smoke, deal with it.

  So we jump into null and start playing Eve.

  Bubble up, grab points with priority on those carriers. I look for the smallest tanked ships that will be easy to pop and get some dps off our backs. Hurricanes and Myrms get called first, while Drakes and battleships are next. They all start melting as the fleet does a fantastic job of going rabid. Nothing brings out the kids like blood to be had.

  When we could pop pods we did, but in nullsec that could mean they are only a jump away. They put up a fight and their initial dps burns all life out of one of our pilgrims. But our logi decided that would be the only freebie and got to work as did I. While calling primary for the dps, I also was deciding my own ECM primaries and calling those for anybody that had also decided to bring the jams.

  Lasers responded to missiles and electronic noise met energy neutralizers as we fought back a force that kept coming. They were trying to draw us off the hole as well, but I was keeping the fleet close. If they decided to cyno 200 pilots into us like I feared then I wanted me and mine out. But as the battle wore on, it was clear they weren't about to do that. It wasn't long before we drifted out and the battle raged as their support fleet only came in piece meal, nabbed by our ever-present bubble and quickly melted. FCing soon became more about the occasional small ship primary and then back to focusing on the carriers we had tackled.

  But by the time we had gotten to them, the opposition had decided to drop a Nyx into the fray. Without even having to say a thing, one of our HIC pilots calls infinipoint on the poor sod. A Mom is a problem usually since we had just had a Nyx dropped on us by Bloodbound. as well. They had remote ECMed our fleet, allowing 2 of their carriers to escape while we ate the first 2. So we waited for that to happen again. And waited. And kept shooting while we waited some more.

  It never came. We had been talking since the Bloodbound. encounter and it was time to see if we could put our talks into action. So we worked the carriers down, who didn't have triage. As complete ratter carriers, it wasn't as hard as it usually is to eat through their ships. But with random ships warping in on us it did take a little longer than it should have. Some of those random ships were bombers, but a couple of pilots were getting very good at catching them so I just let them and focused on the caps.

  Pretty soon, all we had left was the Nyx so we started in and hoped for the best. You have to remember, Moms aren't really a threat to subcap fleets since they don't have dps to handle small targets and they really aren't much tougher than a carrier. But we were more worried he would self destruct or a giant fleet was still amassing. Especially since a frigate soon showed up and cyno'ed right in the middle of us. After having a small heart attack, it was popped without anything coming through and we went back to the Nyx.

  We were biting nails as it bled structure. When you're that close to killing a supercap with only a handful of pilots, it gets tense. But oh, the pure joy when we watched that beautiful and fiery explosion light up the dark expanse of space. Comms erupted, with a bit of yelling to stop shouting...heh. First wspace corp to kill a supercap? If I'm wrong, leave a comment with a linky.

  The sad part was throughout the fight I kept asking if anyone was FRAPsing. No such luck, but we were taking plenty of screenies for the momentous occasion. But as if this all wasn't enough, Shadow of xxDeathxx showed up with 2 carriers of their own. There's was a bit of "..Really?" on comms but not before points were called and they were taken down as well.

  Still wary of this getting around and another fleet dropping I got some eyes out and got our haulers to work on picking up the mess that was our field of victory. I couldn't have found a better group of capsuleers to fly with if I tried.

  This is all the long winded way of saying we had some fun and shot some stuff. Tactically, it was a pretty straight up fight. Jump in, start shooting til all is dead, loot. There was nothing brilliant in the way I said "hey guys, shoot this guy" or how we chased enemies around. We just kinda let them come to us.

  And for all that, I have to give a big thanks to STR8NGE BREW. Mega props for not only bringing an epic fight, but not SDing when they could have. We were all high for the rest of the day on that fight and those that missed it gave us plenty of WTFs xD

The mess stretched over 200km from the hole

  It seems I also somehow acquired a couple new titles :3 yea...turns out I missed a school final xD

    Happy Holidays
-Mem

PS It's like 5 am so when i can I'll add more pretty pics and whatnot

Sleigh Bells Ringing pt. 2

  So here we were, locked in an epic struggle for pvp domination. Autocannons ripped into our thick alloy frames as well fired salvos of missiles and lasers back in defiance. Electronic countermeasures shutdown hostile logi and dps alike, but never for long enough. Both sides were escalating their own forces, bringing capitals through unstable wormholes.

  AHARM's hole went critical under the strain first. They had shoved a Chimera and Revelation through, with the Chimera providing reps that were difficult to overcome for their fleet. This meant even a small mistake on our part could cost dearly. While we were able to get their Sabre and Phantasm, we lost too many of our own. Any losses was too many in my eyes, since our fleet should have been wary of their timers and spammed the jump button if they got burned down too fast. But it is what it is. The real surprise came when their Rev decided to warp into the hole. It wasn't at range, though.

 He landed at 0 and immediately jumped through, crashing a large portion of our fleet with the hostile force. I had been polaritied after trying to hero-ECM their logi and a few dps so I got crashed into the hole with the dread. So did those of us in fleet that could handle said dread.

  As soon as he decloaked, he began to chatter in local.

Redo Jorias > want to buy a rev? :)
Admiral Tomahawk > How much
Redo Jorias > 1b?

  He deicded to initiate self destruct.

Admiral Tomahawk > Well not if yer gonna blow it up
Memoocan > really?
Blast GoDon > bad form :(
Redo Jorias > well. i'll cancel if you want it for 1b
Faeyen > we can buy
Blast GoDon > especially after that good fight
Redo Jorias > okay, cancelled
Redo Jorias > 1b for re
Redo Jorias > stop shooting tho
Faeyen > eject
Admiral Tomahawk > Lets do 750 mil
Admiral Tomahawk > and Ill buy it
Redo Jorias > 900mil i can do
Admiral Tomahawk > Im poor I havent played in awhile
Redo Jorias > 750m and bookmarks/ship out and a deal
Admiral Tomahawk > I cant speak for the corp on letting you leave
Redo Jorias > shrug, still shooting. want it or not?
Admiral Tomahawk > For 750 yes
Redo Jorias > for 750m and ship/bookmarks

  While they talked about it, the rest of us just wanted blood and were happy enough that he canceled the SD. But just in case he decided to try again, we brought heavier dps and forcefully ejected his pod from the carcass of the once mighty Revelation.  I guess he didn't see his odds as good since he warped to a moon and just sat there til we came and podded him.

  The other half of our fleet was busy scrambling to get out to a safe system, which took quite a bit longer. We scooped the Rev's loot and began scanning out the new chain now that the system's static had been killed.

  In no time at all, we ran into our buddies from The Red Circle, Inc. and found their home system. I guess they didn't want to play because they started crashing the connection into our transiting chain with some heavy metal. Our scout was on top of things and was able to hop in and grab tackle on their Fenrir, while other stuff scurried off. He had to swat a Dram that was being a pest and then we all tumbled in for the whale of a freighter. After another run in and finding another hole that went to AHARM's home system we decided it was time to call it a night and crash our way back home.

  Quite the day, I have to say. Soon, I'll be done with the semester and back home. While school and the pregnancy have kept me pretty active, I'm always happy to be able to enjoy me some Eve.

  Careful out there
-Mem

Sleigh Bells Ringing

  Well it seems my last post got Bob's, god of wormholes, attention in a pretty good way. While I lost my shiny new Proteus thanks to being barely out of jump range...that seems to be a recurring theme for me...and now I am broke, there is always fun to be had. And of course, my ECM tengu is a beast that has survived a ridiculously long amount of time.

  The first episode in relieving my blue balls of loss and no blood comes in the form of late night studying. I stayed up all night last night working on a project that decides if I graduate college or not. Oh how I am hating design. Anyways, I logged in to tinker around with a few things and hear that one of our corpies is trying to pin down an Archon. Apparently I missed a whole shindig of facemelt as usual.

  Oddly enough, this Archon was hard to catch and evaded for about 25 minutes. I didn't really expect much, so I shipped into my shield laser Myrm. I really need to get some better dps ships into wspace. I alt tabbed out of Eve and continued to work on my project, just listening. Another corpie went in to combat probe him down, hoping to get him. Now, this is where we got a bit fuzzy.

  The new combat rules of aggression are still something we are ironing out. Thankfully, as long as you keep aggressing a target they stay physically in game so you can shoot them. No more logoffski-ing caps just to get away, although they can still SD. Aaaany time now CCP. Since none of us had aggressed him in a while, he could just log off and be safe. Which he decided it was time to do just that. Our scanner got a complete hit, warped in and tackled him. It was about a 1.5au warp from where the Archon had been previously and so it is tagging him was a bit easier.

  But many of those online were not in wspace, they were off killing some boring Orca or something. So the few of us that were there piled in and started up the hurt. For only a handful of us, it went rather quickly thanks to no active reps. If he had logged back in and started them up, we would have been SOL. As it was, though, we plinked away until the monstrosity tore apart into hull fragments. The pod e-warped, but a quick probe fixed that issue as well. Cheap clone, but the carrier itself was nice since it dropped a little faction.

  Now for the main course. The real cherry on the cake. I've talked about encounters with AHARM before yes? Of course I have, they usually are fun stories. It used to be that we ran into them in lower class systems from time to time in all sub cap fleets. We'd tussle and have it out. Well now when we run into them, things are a bit larger. In this case, they scanned our chain down, meeting us at a hole we had camped. Sadly, my little Daredevil is not an interceptor and while I had initial point and had tried to apply dps, he quickly ran out of the bubble and went home.

  They knew where we were and they knew some of what we had in our fleet. From what we saw, they were gearing up and soon had their own force on the move. It wasn't long before clash of the titans began. They had rolled up in a shield fleet, complete with a mass of Sleipnirs, Tengus, and Basi support. Two Step, part of our current CSM lineup, even showed up to say hi. I don't think they have ever used ECM in our fights, so that tends to be one of our advantages when we tangle. Naturally, I filled that role and it was quite the nail biter. Their first attack saw our forces trading blows rather equally, until I decided to call their Phantasm primary. I don't normally FC a fight, but I had stepped up and started the list.

  Then things got hairy. They kept bringing in more ships and their dps was getting insane. Since we were fighting at knife range, I couldn't begin kiting as usual and those of us that our logi couldn't save right away had to jump out. That's when a situation gets complicated in wspace. You have to be aware of when you jumped and how many times, if you're polarized and how that polarity will affect your own assistance in the fight. As ECM, my primary focus is jamming and surviving. I will not jump in knowing I will be polaritied unless I am confident reps can keep me up long enough.

  --I just noticed how long this is already. Post will continue in part 2--

The Warrior's Path

  There are times in every Eve player's career when they just have one of those times they think "wow...that was just epic-ly full of epic epicness." And one of those times has come yet again for me.

  I'll have a TL;DR at the end if this doesn't get put into two different posts. Basically, you want to look at our killboard and specifically at Oct. 1st. We can't even fit it all onto the front page it's so long..

  So I woke up yesterday, late since it's the weekend and I am trying to avoid my work, and decided to pop on to update my PI and skills if they were running out. Bringing up comms gave me a bit of interesting chatter, the type that usually involves shooting someone. So I made a comment about how I was probably going to miss it since I just got on and needed to get bookmarks and all that jazz.

  To which I got "No, you definitely won't miss it."

  "Oh, I guess I'll get bookmarks and head out."

  Listening to the chatter intently now, it seemed that we had been playing around with Narwhals Ate My Duck in our chain a bunch, popping some of their frig sized hulls and ended up running into White Noise in a nullsec link. We had tackled a Proteus that then got reinforced by an Archon.

  So I hopped into my trusty Drakghar, a Legion with an interesting fit that has served me quite well.  As I got out there, we were jamming the Archon and having to kill the Prot in between jams. It wasn't long before his tank gave way and melted under our fire. I think we also podded him. Nearly 2 billion worth of destruction in one small cruiser hull....astounding. All that was left was to work this Archon down before he decided to log or self destruct.  Until the Chimera landed.

  Our force was too small to burn the Archon and now the Chimera was going to make things even harder. But thanks to our two ECM pilots, of whom I have to give major props, they kept the Chimera jammed the whole time. The Archon kept cycling in and out of triage to get cap from the Chimera and keep his own reps up, despite our neuting power. It was like fighting uphill through molasses and every time you think you're at the top, a fresh wave of molasses hits you and drags you back. I just kept popping his drones and fighters, then back to neuting and dpsing the carrier itself. It was especially annoying when the Chimera started to smartbomb and nearly killed my entire flight of Hammerheads.

  "Chimera disappeared! Chimera has logged!"

  What?! With all our notifications, nobody has noticed him go and the Archon most likely wasn't far behind. But here's a couple stupid points I want to bring up. Amusing that it's, yet again, Russians doing it too.

• Log off timer for a cap is 15 minutes. Wtf is that about CCP? We don't roll in dreads or supercaps so downing caps in that time is stupid.
• Some modules shut off when you log, some don't. Cloaks decloak, but reppers keep running? CCP, fix it to be one way or the other for all modules.

  So now it was a race against time and the carrier's offline reps. After a few heart pounding minutes, we finally had it capped out so that the reps stopped running. But now we needed to eat through 3/4ths of its armor and the structure before it disappeared. At this point, I began to cycle my overheating on and off to make my guns last as long as possible, but still get some good dps out of them. 

  It was getting so close and comms were getting quiet as it got closer. Pixel by pixel the armor chipped away and we all were urging it down further.

  "It'll melt like butter when we get it to structure."

  It felt like an eternity trying to wear it down, finally getting some excitement with structure bleed. We had no clue when he had logged and didn't know how long til we lost yet another cap kill to Russian flee tactics, but it was intense.

  Structure. Everyone overheat! Burn that sucker down!

  Then came the blessed explosion.

  Wait...that Proteus was twice as expensive as the carrier? Yup...apparently so.

  And wow what a way to start your day. But it seems this chain was to be the chain blessed by Bob, god of wormholes, and the chain that would keep on giving.

  As we were fighting the Archon, a Narwhals manti had decloaked and then recloaked near us. We had also had some more of their cloakies following us around the chain, so it wasn't long til most of our fleet was nearly home and our scouts ran into a Harby, while its buddies staged in their home system.

  Two of ours that had stayed at the nullsec engaged the Harby and, by a comedy of errors both jumped out when they thought he jumped. So he got back to the hole that went towards his home, only to run into another one of ours. Ohai der Mr. Harby. Uh....you seem to be missing a couple slots there bud. With the Ducks out killing Russians, I guess only alts are left to guard home.

  That was when we moved the entire fleet to engage what force they had waiting. By the time we got there though, only a cane, guardian, brutix and something else that warped out was there. The cane got out thanks to someone getting jammed or something. It was ok though, for some reason both the Guardian and Brutix were pointed but didn't jump through the wormhole to run. Soon they both met their manufacturer.

  This gave us a good bit to talk about as we headed home. But yet again, we would not make it there. Instead, a Duck ran around in his Loki and engaged one of our Tengus. So we all waited for it to jump into our fleet on the other side of the wormhole, while 2 of ours tried to break him. This wormhole was in the direction of the Duck home system.

  Of course, this all got confusing when one of our pilots got engaged by the residents of the next hole over toward our home. Two conflicts at once made things frantic. Finally the Loki jumped in half armor and we polished off his Loki and pod.  It seems it was the season for a Duck hunt. We then rushed to our corpmate's aid, who had been reinforced by one of our cloakies and both had been pushed through the wormhole before they got popped.

---

  Keep an eye here, the second half of this whole story comes in the next post.
-Mem