Escalating Engagements and the Lost Carrier

How I am treating you today! Two posts you say...

Revelations...

The time had come. The ships channel had an interesting offer within it. A character was attempting to create some liquid ISK by selling off his assets. I inquired further to the location of some of them. 

The one I was interested in was in a perfect location. Within jumping distance of home and I managed to whittle him down to a very reasonable price. Not an hour later, The 'Vodka Shark' was in the hands of Jedziah and getting fit up at HQ.

She had in all set me back a decent chunk of ISK but it was worth it for such a wonderful ship and fulfilling one of my ambitions in Eve. Not 20 minutes later, she was able to get her maiden combat sortie.

A local group called the DrunK GanG rolled up to our station. We had no intentions of playing fair as they tend to bring along 1-4 Falcons for every engagement we tend to have. Kulmid and I undocked the big guns once they had engaged. Ronin and Jorge webbed down a Megathron and painted it up. As the Falcon's uncloaked, I dropped the Shark into siege mode. The Dual Giga Pulse extending from the side of the ship.

As I began to re-lock the Megathron, Kulmid's evil Ogre II's from the Moros were tearing it up. The Mega was hitting around 1/5th Armour when I regained a firing solution.  The Dual Giga Pulse lasers fired in unison, smashing the Megathron for over 9000 damage and securing the final blow.

The remainder of their gang decided now would be a provident time to 'get the fuck out' and proceeded to do so. The fight lasted just long enough for the Revelation to drop Siege and retract its gargantuan firepower.

Escalating Engagements...

Spectre got on the blower:

'Guys I'm in Aset being engaged by an Astarte. My Ishkur is doing pretty well, what size drone bay does this thing have?'

Kulmid replied from the seat of his Pilgrim: 

'Same as a Brutix, you kill those Hammers and he's all out'

By now I had turned my Vengeance Assault Ship round and made best speed for Aset, only 3 jumps away from my current position.

Kulmid and I landed simultaneously. Burning the 30km+ off gate to the battle. Spectre was doing well, the Astarte unable to track his sleek Ishkur. Kulmid engaged his cap redistrubtion subroutines and drained the command ship dry. The Dual Armour Repairer fit was suddenly unable to function. The nanobots died in space, as did the Command ship.

Desperate to seek vengeance, Two Drakes and a Thorax warp in while we loot the wrecks. Mr. Frog had now arrived on the scene in his trusty Arbitrator. We immediately got to work on the light drones spewing out of the Drakes that could swing the fight in their favour.

The Thorax then warped out after burning out of range. We started to pound upon the Drakes with the anti-frigate drones now dispatched. The primary Drake began to buckle under the sustained fire and entered armour. Without a trusty Damage Control, the Armour and Structure disappeared rapidly.

Viginiti and Bandy soon arrived in their Frigate support. The Second Drake began to melt under the fire and with Kulmid switching the shield hardeners off, the EM hole was a wet dream for myself and Vig who tore the ship apart.

As the Drake dropped into structure, a Megathron and Falcon dropped in on the battle. The Falcon a sultry 60km away. I looked at the crew in my new assault ship, they already knew what to do. 

With the afterburner overloaded, The Vengeance cut the distance down in just a few seconds. Viginti and Spectre instinctively did the same, knowing full well we were the quickest ships and the best equpped to deal with the Falcon.

To our surprise, the Falcon began to armour rep as we piled on the damage. Mr. Frog, Kulmid, Ronin and Bandy did a sterling job of keeping the Megathron pointed and killing off it's wave of Ogre drones.

After some intricate bumping to prevent the Falcon's escape when he jammed us, we finally reduced it to structure, removing its raspberry jam from the equation. Definitely what we would call a pioneering and expensive fitting.

The Falcon removal squad returned to the fight in time to aid in the destruction of the Megathron, now stranded 60km from the gate out. With the combined firepower, it dropped into structure rapidly and died in the face.

The pod was locked up and the fun continued. We held him there for over 10 minutes. Kulmid knocked up a hilarious thread upon Eve-O, attempting to sell the momentous occasion to someone out there. The pod had a monstrous 1mil ISK bounty. Someone obliged and popped the pod in their Manticore, grats to them.

Overall, this engagement lasted nearly 20 minutes. We had for the most part, taken all of them down in frigates and a force recon. The fight and lols were epic and once again we could pull out the much coveted Running Man and Axe Swing Dances.

The Lost Carrier

Not an hour after one of the funniest things I have ever seen happen in Eve did this occur. But let me explain the funnies.

Our elite squad had pinned down a Megathron in its mission. As per standard etiquette, we began a ransom. The pilot had posted a message in local regarding how much he would need to pay to be released.

For the 30 second period we gave the pilot to transfer funds, he remained silent in our ransom channel. For this reason, we repainted his ship in order to learn him.

Once he was podded and sent back home on the clone bus, a red in local shouted a LOL. We naturally asked what he was so happy about.

It turns out that he had started a private convo with the chap and presented the ransom demands of 300million ISK for his ship. Despite this person being the opposite of affiliated with us, the guy without question handed 300mil ISK over to the chap and then was bemused when we re-opened fire and made him explodificate. We had even got an Iteron V to pod the missioner, making the whole thing just too funny.

An absolute genius play by the pilot, but alas, Karma would come back round to bite him in the arse.

Snaptz was on the Todi-Evati gate. Pinned on it by a red Jaguar. He proceeded to jump through to the other side where a Maelstrom had been waiting for him. We scrambled at best pace to help out. With the combined firepower of Ronin, Khaled and Jorge the Maelstrom's tank began to buckle.

It then dropped a Cynosural Field...

'Cyno, Cyno! shouted Bandy as he jumped into system'

In came a Thanatos Class Carrier. Immediately repping the Maelstrom, preventing us from killing it. We disengaged and pulled off. The Carrier warping away to a station. 

As soon as it moved away, we jumped back in to finish the lampooned Maelstrom. Luckily doing so before the Thanatos could help. To our disbelief, it then returned to the gate and was immediately pointed by our crew. Each in turn took turns to point the carrier, then warp off when the fighters began to tear our ships apart. 

Shae had rumbled in with the big guns hot in her gigantic Hyperion Battleship. I had been furiously attempting to gather fuel to jump in the Vodka Shark and aid the battle but alas, Helium Isotopes were hard to find.

San ended up coming back in a Sentinel. The Jaguar was still running around and preventing people from warping. I arrived just in time to chase the Jag off and allow Jorge to warp out his Harbinger on 5% structure. While I continued the dogfight 80km away. M34N had been informed and dropped in some more Battleship support. 

By now, the Thanatos was running out of Cap. The combined efforts of the Dominix that were draining cap through their Heavy Energy Neutralisers had made the entire situation overwhelming for the Carrier pilot.

After chasing the Jaguar away, I returned in to the battle to help suck a little cap and finally tip the Thanatos into structure. Seconds later, the mighty warship exploded upon the gate. Filfthy Scum will no doubt be asking serious questions of the tactics employed by their pilots but nonethless a bold move which we certainly did not see coming. The lack of smartbombs, point and scram on the Thanatos which these days are essential led to it's demise but hell, we certainly didn't care.

A good week overall. The Bastards are now just 2bil away from breaking 100billion ISK damage done as a corporation. We are hoping to surpass it as a Christmas objective.

That's all for now anyway. We did a crap frigate op too and I killed a Stabber in a Bantam. But you know, it just didnt seem to compare in story telling procedures.

Blog Banter #2: The Tempting Mistress

Two years ago, pretty much to the day, I was working in the offices of the company responsible for RuneScape; Jagex Ltd.

My good friend Tony, (jungleburger in Eve) was spouting out his generally hard to understand scouse phrases. For about a month, he had been going on about Eve Online and it just so happened that our unit leader, Jez (Invictor in game) also had been a long time Eve enthuistiast.

We had just come off of a strenuous 4 month night shift. During this time, the only salvation, though little it may be was WoW. Another friend had got me to play it and the foul bastard game suddenly became a second job after getting home from work at 10am.

Tony had a new wallpaper up on his work computer. It depicted a Phoenix Dreadnought with numerous Caldari ships flying through space. As an avid Sci-Fi fan, (you can find me watching Star Wars, Firefly etc etc on many occasions) my immediate thoughts were 'wow! those ships are cool'.

Tony then brought up the Eve Online ships scale picture. To which I was astonished. The best use of scale in a space game I had seen was in FreeSpace 2 back in the day. It did not even get close to this. The Phoenix dread was hundreds of times the size of its escort. At this point, Jez walked over, pointed at the screen and said 'my alliance has just built me one of those.'

I knew by now I had to give the game a go.

That night I downloaded the trial. I made a Minmatar, high charisma, special ops, mining character...

The character was called Jedziah (Most of you know I have since replaced her with one that's a it better). Jedziah lasted a week or two before I realised how much of a mistake I had made with the starting stats. Soon after, Artem was made with a decent stat setup to boot and immediately started on the path to a mining barge.

My initial thoughts were to sustain myself with ISK in order to build one of thos gargantuan Dreadnoughts for myself. Now Eve was so different back then. Jungleburger appeared in the belt I was ratting in in his 70 Million ISK Jaguar Assault Ship. With fittings it had cost well over 100. Crazy in comparison to the inflated market we see today.

2 Months down the line San was born. It was out of a lust to get involved with the PvP and piracy going on in New Justice. With the guidance of JB, she went on a learning plan to help her train skills a bit faster. Initially, San flew around in a Kestrel and a Comorant not soon after. I'd occasionally drop into Metropolis low sec and wonder what on earth the ship scramming and webbing me was doing.

By the time San had become PvP aware, JB had set up a splinter corp for which I spent over a year with. We had a lot of fun times, experienced 0.0 for the first, second and third times and unfortunately then broke apart due to some extremely spongeant members sapping the life from the directors.

It was during this time with TRPLA, that we first met The Bastards and formed a coalition. Our pirating ventures were similar to the ones we had today. Our main enemies at the time being Black-Flag and M34N Corp. In fact, FlashFresh and Jubes are on too many of my loss mails to count.

It was after TRPLA collapsed that Eve started to move from my life. I had tested a number of corps over a short period and could not find the connection we all had in TRPLA. After a number of tries, I had lost the love for the game and took an extended break from Eve. I honestly didn;t know if it was temporary or a permanent one. 

RnProphet, who had followed us from The Bastards to enjoy a bit of fun in Syndicate had rejoined them. I had been playing a number of other games with him, namely the likes of Supreme Commander and such. He had gone to rejoin The Bastards. 

I had remembered how much fun I had during my time there. In fact, no other time in the game had produced as much fun on a regular basis as the time I had spent flying with them. I decided to give Eve one last go and rejoin with them. 

By now, San had flourished into a 30 million skill point character with the ability to fly a myriad of different ships. My other alt Jed, had been focused solely on battleships and had pretty much maxed out any skill she could to make them awesome. Soon, I realised that I was back in the place I should have come back to a long time ago.

The moral of this story is quite simple. Eve becomes that alluring mistress due to the ties we make with others. It is the company that you fly with that makes this game so different to the other MMO's out there. The 'Pub Like' atmosphere on the Bastards Vent is something that other corps have found hard to replicate. Everyone is a friend of everyone and there are no outsiders in the corp, despite its astronomical growth in recent months.

It is the one corp I have found where everyone is pulling for the same thing and making sure we have nothing short of epic fun whilst we do.

The temptations of Eve are strong on so many levels. Hours can be lost literally doing nothing on the game but sitting in the station and using the chat as an expensive MSN. Nontheless, CCP have to be given credit for providing us with such an excellent game, free expansions and generally exciting us all with what is to come.

Mynxee Said She'd Touch Me

...If I blogged it up

Without further explanation needed, the blogging begins again.

I've been having an interesting time of late in Eve, hence the bottleneck of blog posting. I've lost more ships of recent than I think I can ever recall. Sadly there has been at least 2 ECM ships on every one of my losses which further angers me.

It is an aspect of the game that I have come to greatly dislike. First and foremost, San used to primarily fly Falcons and Rooks so I understand both the mechanics of them and to be perfectly honest, how much of a c-c-c-c-c-c-c-combo breaker they are.

Now I can understand if your gang of 2-5 small ships wishes to mix it up with the bigger boys and girls. I have however been the victim of 10+ ship blobs versus just myself and they yet feel obliged to jam with umpteen ECM ships. 

For all those Caldari pilots shouting 'but we have nothing else to fly', quite simply shut up. You now have a myriad of some of the best ships in the game. Get out of the ECM ships and have some fun. ECM is quite simply as boring as mining too. All of these fights that I have had would have been even a little bit fun without the retarded amounts of ECM, especially as much of it did not make the killmail in many cases.

Enough of my pointless rants anyway. On to the violence.

Violence

Our good competitors from the German alliance Sternhagel had followed us back from Egmar to our home system. They had a fleet consisting of 2 Muninns, 1 Cerberus, 1 Deimos and a Sleipnir. We had lured them back with Vagabond and Curse and they happily obliged to roll to the planet of which Tibberg parked his Tech 2 assortment of toilet roll tubes and duct tape at.

Many an AU off of scan sat both of my alts, San in an Eagle and Jed in the trusty and most deadly Apocalypse. Cloaked next to Tibberg happened to be our two Piranhas, Viginiti and Kulmid waiting in their Pilgrim Recon Ships, renowned for sucking more capacitance away from a ship than a hooker could suck a golf ball through a hosepipe.

As they all began to land, Vig uncloaked burning to gain point upon a target. Tibberg burned for an artillery fit Muninn, taking fire as he did. As he gained point upon the Minmatar sniper, Jedziah and San had levelled their oversized weaponry from afar. 8 Tachyon Beam Laser II's erupted Amarr Navy Red into the hull of the Muninn. The Railguns of the Eagle began to furiously pop away beside it, chewing away at the armour. Tibberg had to bug out of point range allowing the Muninn to escape on less than 15% structure. Not even forcing the Tachyons to overload could get enough out of them to fire again before the heavy assault cruiser warped away. 

Fearing the same fate, the other Muninn promptly turned away, made like a tree and fucked off, in fear of Tachyon love about to come his way. 

Sternhagel began a full retreat, however Viginti was chasing down the Sleipnir to keep it from warping. The Sleipnir was quick; renowned for it's speed, it began to chuckle as it burned away from the Recon Ship. Alas, it was not his day, the path of his ship took him straight into the uncloaking Kulmid who promptly switched off his Microwarpdrive with a Scrambler and redistributed his capacitor.

The Sleip was now dead in the water. Jed once again gained a firing solution upon the Command Ship. The Tachyons levelled, began their notorious charging sound and sent a searing scream across local space. The Aurora crystals were volleying quarter chunks of his shield per shot. The combined fire reduced the ship to minus hull points.

San ordered the Elite Eagle crew to load up the scan resolution scripts into the boosters. As the Sleipnir went out of control and the escape pod ejected, it was locked instantly and railed from 170km away.

Once again, the Germans delivering epic fights and always bringing one. I salute all of you.

More Violence

Once again, Ronin had plans afoot for yet another winning operation. This time it would involve T2 fit, tech 1 frigates.

With San's good friend a few jumps away in the trade hub, I got on the blower to bring in some ships. After much deliberation, I chose the one and only Kestrel. How it has served me well over the years when I was a little whippersnapper.

After the over confident Mr. Frog said how his little Incursus could have sex with my ship without it's permission, I proceeded to show him why the Kestrel is win and had him to structure before his drone managed to fire at my ship once. Comy 2, in seeing the wonders of it rushed off to join the revolution.

With some new recruits in our gang such as Sanjaya in a trusty Griffin, we had formed a mixed fleet with some of the biggest names in the pirate community in the ranks.

2 time Rifter MVP and system clearing specialist Kane Rizzel dropped out of warp in his quintessential Rifter.

Local scan picked up the infamous 'Stinger' ship name penned to the IFF of a Rifter. It was none other than the insatiable Mynxee.

Undocking from the home station was the globally adored FlashFresh, ready once again to deny any links to him being an Nvidia employee seen on a recent Fanfest video.

The elite fleet of win moved off from Evati. After several quiet jumps, Antonio Banderas on one of his last flights with The Bastards for a while called a point upon a ratting Harbinger. The ship itself worth more than our entire fleet several times over.

Bandy made an uncharacteristic Croatian schoolboy error and dropped his transversal velocity to the victim. The focused medium beams upon the Harbinger tore the Rifter in half. Fortunately, Euan had dropped warp and had engaged his warp disruptor. Not far behind came the gang. The Thundercats swooped in laying on the damage thick and fast. In fact, the uncharacteristically unplated Amarr Battlecruiser was rapidly re-distributed to the bloodthirsty pirate gods. 

While Global Criminal wore off, we split up around the belts. A Hurricane pilot not too interested in looking at the lop-sided local count proceeded to clean up the Angel rats in system. The gang gladly obliged to protect the endangered Angel Impaler and made best speed to his belt. With Kane Rizzel now in system, there was quite simply no other who would be getting the final blow. His Rifter capable of punching a Hurricane through a star.

On a nice little party piece, we all held the stricken pod in position while FlashFresh used his small smartbomb to slowly break the Kinder Egg apart. Sadly there was no toy inside.

After global countdowns dropped. We rolled on up to Oddelulf . After laying into a criminal Abaddon pilot. The locals began docking games which we were not interested in.

Once again we split up. The locals tried to gain some easy kills, warping several Destroyers and an Assault Ship to the Ice field.

Jorge who had caught us up decided to end the Catalyst in record timing. I had personally landed near the Jaguar and proceeded to spin up the Kestrel's rapid fire rocket launchers. Soon, the Navy Thorn rockets had torn the Assault ship into bits of toilet roll and scaffolding.

The Thrasher pilot had the unfortunate demise of becoming Kane Rizzel's primary. A rather expensive and rigged Thraser at that. A Cormorant had also fell under the fire but we have yet to locate who got the final blow.

So we had a number of epic lols in our little monsters. Tibberg had turned up in a perma smartbombing Rifter. It scared all of us so Frog killed it. Then we killed Frog for good measures.

We did the Ewok, Axe Swing and Running Man dances in unision for a bit before heading back home to Evati.

Loth was unfortunately busy last night so the fearless Cow in a Can did not make a warranted appearence to debrief us on our operations, give us all key pointers and allow us all to further our PvP exploits.  If it wasn't for the terrible back problems the Cow suffers, he would surely join us in his combat ships rather than having to do with making sandwiches and pouring Quafe Ultra from the sidelines.

Nonetheless, we all respect the experience and knowledge he so happily shares with us.

On a final note. Donate ISKs to me for the capitals I require. It's not an option. I don't have sugar daddy's giving me Rattlesnakes for free like Spectre.

That's all for this post. Hopefully it was long enough to get a sneaky touch of Mynxee's sideboob. Who knows...

Let's be AF'n You

End of an Era

So the era of the nanoship comes to an end. A topsy turvy time it has been for us all both in them and victims of them. My Ishtar took it's final voyage on Saturday, heading up to the edge of Syndicate space. After some nice kills, Huzzah decided to 'Vindicate' my ship in the correct manner. A battleship that was going faster than my poor little HAC was a sight to see. Alas, grats to Huzzah for picking up a nice MWD from my wreck.

Quantum Rise

The Assault Frig for the past year has been nothing more than a stepping stone for most. In many cases it becomes the 'Mercy Kill' for a stricken victim.

Damage Control - 'Sir! we simply cannot take this level of beating, the ship can hold out for maybe 30 seconds more!'

Captain - 'Jenkins! find me a suitable target that cannot defend itself'

Jenkins - 'Captain, there is a Wolf class Assault Ship in close proximity to our hull. Targeting the ship, web and torpedoes are ready'

Captain - 'Fire Jenkins! Make sure this scamp won't be getting any insurance back!'

It was an occasion that happened far too frequently to warrant the 10-15mil outlay for the ship hull.

Now...how things have changed.

Our little AF's are nurtured little DPS spewing muderbeasts that have a signature radius equal to that of a crouton in your soup.

'What does that mean Jones!' I hear you all ask. Well it's pretty simple. Cruiser weapon systems and up, which in part are designed to be fired at similar sized vessels are now almost obsolete when fired against something with a small signature radius.

 A mixture of their afterburner speed and their miniscule sig radius now means that they can operate in kissing distance of the enemy without fear of LOLWTFBBQ11111ELEVEN.

Not 30 minutes after the patch had gone live, our Assault Frigates were whirring up and looking for targets. A cock sure Harbinger warps in on euan8, a new recruit from Python. Euan's ab Thorax kept the chap interested as we poured in several AF's consisting of two sub 300dps Harpy's, a drone spewing Ishkur, a well rounded Jaguar and Viginiti in his quintessential Sentinel.

The Harbinger locked up Kulmid who had landed right on top of him. Levelling the Focused Medium Pulse lasers in line with the Harpy. Despite being webbed, the Harpy still managed over 300m/s allowing it to stay well ahead of the tracking of the turrets in such a tight orbit. The Harbinger opened up with its Amarr Navy Crystals yet could only catch the vacuum of space.

Kulmid then decided to return the favour, opening up his Neutron blasters onto the thick armour plating of the Battlecruiser. The blasters able to fire like machine guns with the increased magnetic field stabilisation.

Soon, the others in the wolfpack were opening up. The oversized DPS from the Assault Frigs was simply too much for the stricken Battelcruiser to handle. The gang had focused their fire on the rupturing armour plates and quickly tore into the bulkheads, reducing the Harbinger to floaty bits of rolled tungsten.

Unbalanced I hear you cry!

Never...

We have been losing a lot of these AF's trying to get the setups right. As we are using afterburners, it gives us a lot more grid to play with.

One particular fight we got into in a local 0.0 entry point ended up pretty bad. With our quintessential Hellcat support of the 'Maneater' Mynxee and the 'Scrumptuous' Shae Tiann, we had engaged a Rokh which uncloaked and was promptly tackled by my trusty DrillHawk. As we closed range, licking our lips at what was to come, the Rokh engaged 8 Smartbombs, reducing ships and pods alike to space blubber in mere seconds. We all laughed, cried, did the Ewok dance and listened to the Cow in a can give out tremendous life changing philosophical quotes.

As you are all confused, soon there will be many lols as the Cow in a can FC's one of our ops. The Cow is a big part of our lives in The Bastards, his wise words drive us all forward in the hope that one day, we could aspire to his greatness.

A shorter one for this broadcast. To be honest we are all to busy trying to get the best kill we can in an Assault Frig. I hope to be able to bring you a carrier kill or something in the coming weeks!

Much <3

San

Space Quidditch

It's been a busy time on the recruitment front in The Bastards. With an exremely sizeable chunk of Python heading to the darker side, we had effectively gained pilots ranging in the double figures in the space of one to two weeks.

The Bastards are a corp based upon our brotherly (and sisterly) loves. We all fly as a rowdy bunch of mates who cannot hope to be controlled in an orderly manner. Gaining such a large bunch of new guys was going to require something a bit different to help them integrate into the elite ranks us fools.

RnProphet and myself decided to scheme one afternoon about a way to have a lot of fun and get the new guys involved. What we came up with was an evil hybrid between Capture the Flag and Quidditch. Prophet penned the 'Space Quidditch' name but I thought it was bit homosexual, even for his open closet tastes and just stuck with Eve CTF for now.

We lead 14 individuals in their pods to a designated system. Each of them completely unaware of what lay ahead. The first point on the agenda was picking teams. Ronin and Lord Sara were penned in as captains and proceeded to choose their team-mates. We ensured that the Pythons got a good mixture on to both teams by picking them first and the Bastards last.

Now the fun began.

Prophet and I had arranged ships into numbered Station Containers that came equipped with some vanilla T1 mods for which to fit them with. Teammates could swap mods to realise their dreams.

Players took it in turns to pick a number and receive a can. Ronin and Sara then had to pick from two more cans which had a support ship (Destroyer) and their team flagship (Cruiser) within them.

While these picks were happening, San had made a quick safespot for which she sat in a Maller class cruiser. Any team capable of probing it out and finding it would be able to use it in their fleet.

The teams in a Scrapheap Challenge/Junkyard Wars style began to optimise their fleets for capture the flag. Their were no warp disruptors involved in this game intially. Teams were however allowed to rat to find new mods.

During the setup phase. Teams were allowed to undock, probe and find the bases. Red team took full advantage of this and managed to probe out the Maller. San promptly ejected from the ship. After a short conversation, red team realised that none of them could fly the cruiser and hence decided that it was better if they blew the ship up rather than allow the enemies to secure a clear advantage.

In an even more devious scheme, red team then proceeded to their anchored can for which their own flag was sitting and jettisoned several cans, naming them all 'red base'.

The rules to win were simple:-

First to 500 points

- Succesful Flag Capture - 100 Points

- Kill a Frigate/Noobship - 25 Points

- Kill a Destroyer - 50 Points

- Kill a Flagship - 200 Points

All of the players were now ready and the game got underway. Both teams essentially swapped places to one another's base. Red team scooped the blue flag and proceeded to return. 

Blue team were in a state of confusion. They landed to find 10+ cans on their overview and began to lose control of their profanity filters. Red team waltzed back to their base, capturing the flag without a shot being fired.

Blue team realised their mistake and reconfigured their overviews so the same mistake would not happen again.

Red led by 100 as the flags were reset.

The battle began again. Blue team had this time left their Augoror flagship at their own flag with an ample frigate escort.

The mighty Augoror is generally known as a pretty rubbish ship. Atheist Peace had turned this little beast into real flagship. Its dual medium rep tank and extended armour points made it a fearsome command ship. 

The red team scout, Khaled landed near the blue flag. The Flagship and its escort proceeded to bear guns down upon the reaper noobship. Before it could turn about, the purple sheers of the flagship had reduced the scout to a molten heap.

Faster ships began to arrive at the blue base. This time a successful swoop managed to snatch the flag from the container. Meanwhile, at the red base, Fenneck's deadly Thrasher and the red command ship, an Osprey were acting as sentry gunners to fend off Ronin's attempts to snatch the flag. Each time Ronin managed to slip away with mere structure points left in his Rifter.

The Osprey is again not noted for it's PvP prowess. This flagship however was fielding a serious tank in the capable hands of Comy. It's extended shields and multiple invulns made it a serious tough nut to crack. It also had some serious anti speed tank weaponry in its myriad of heavy missile launchers.

Once again, the red team dwindled back to their base to capture the flag for another 100 points. In resetting the flag however, they decided to shoot the iteron games master and proceeded to gain a rapid 50 point deduction.

The flags were reset again and the passwords were changed. San was now in a Buzzard for which the password would be the name of the ship. She remained cloaked while battles unfolded.

Skirmishes had broken out at both bases. A blue Kestrel succumbed to the firepower of the flagship and destroyer combo. This time, the Blue Team managed to score  closing the score to 100 blue 175 Red.

The fun continued for several more rounds. Both red and blue scoring and taking some losses upon the way. The score was close at 350 Red 375 Blue. We decided to settle this the correct way as it was getting late.

Planet V was designated the showdown area. It was a team deathmatch, last man standing scenario. Whoever was left, would win.

The initial bulk of the blue fleet landed upon the planet, remaining in tight orbit to their Augoror flagship. Red team began to drop warp 50km away with their irreplaceable Osprey command ship at the centre of the fray.

After a little dance between the two teams, the fighting got under way. Loth went for a characteristic Leeroy upon Ronin's Rifter. In an attempt to web the Rifter down, Loth rapidly lost his ship under the combined firepower of the Augoror and Cormorant.

The remainder of red team swooped in. Engaging away at the enemy frigates. The Osprey command ship began tearing into an enemy Imicus, attempting to speed tank the command ship. The heavy missiles quickly getting the better of it. Atheist beared the guns down upon his Augoror and opened fire on another Kestrel. With Ronin and Shaders help, the Kestrel ruptured and promptly caught fire.

Ard called Ronin primary for the red team. Fenneck's Thrasher levelled the artlillery and made some sizeable holes in the Rifter. It was soon over for Ronin. Fenneck's Thrasher finally succumbed to the remaning firepower but not before aiding in the demise of the Cormorant.

Red now had a sizeable advantage over blue. The Blue flagship Augoror plundered into range. Red began to open fire. The Augoror began to soak up the damage from the combined red attack. Its dual rep armour tank was able to see through all of the damage that was lashing the armour plates. Alas the Augoror was not friendly on it's capacitor. After a sustained several minute period of which it held out against the onslaught, the batteries ran dry and the nanobots died.

With the Osprey now bearing its missiles on the Augoror too, the mighty ship had its days numbered. Atheist proudly saluted his flagship as it finally entered hull and proceeded to decorate local space with bits or chared armour plating.

A mighty battle which finally swayed to red team. Congratulations to all that were involved both winners and losers. It was great to get the new guys involved in some harmless mudering of corp mates.

I felt that this brought up a point about Eve which we pretty much take for granted. The Augoror and Osprey in the context of this engagement may as well have been an Aeon and a Wyvern. They had superior tanks that could near enough soak up all of the damage coming from the enemy fleet. The firepower they brought was superior and it generally led to them becoming feared opponents upon this particular battlefield.

It was almost a replica of a capital fight in subcapital ships without watching the entire battle in Microsoft Powerpoint mode. In a real Lord of the Flies scenario. We had converted two of the worst cruisers in the game into these godlike supercapital ships. 

This was a whole barrell of fun for all of us involved. Even Prophet and myself who GM'd the whole event. We got to phantom on Ventrilo so we could listen to both fleets at once which was extremely entertaining how the FC's differed their tactics and primary calling.

We will most certainly have to do this again, refining the rules a little more and expanding the size of the teams involved. I hope all of our new members enjoyed it as much as our current one's did and we can't wait to have you guys on board, full time.