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