Friday 12 December 2008

Rules of Engagement


Diplomacy is not for us...

Kulmid had been leading a small battlegroup out on a low sec roam. I was busy administering the corp with the help of Proph as some much delayed business required our attention.

Kulmid's gang had barely jumped the Todifrauan gate when an opposing blue gang landed in unision. The Bastards had a few trialists with them on the op and as per such, were not blue to Mean Coalition. The FC of their fleet whose intellect stretches as far as cracking two stones together in a rythmic fashion begins to open fire upon a friendly Rapier.

It had not crossed his mind that the Rapier may be affliated, being it sat calmly upon a gate, surrouned by Battleships armed to the teeth.

"Stop firing at the Rapier, you retard!" Kulmid so eloquently placed in local.

"Why should I?" The caveman responded

"Because I said stop firing!"

"Why did you call him a Retard?" A Mean lacky responded

"Because he is, I mean look at him" yet another diplomatic response from Kulmid.

As an excuse to reset standings, this was a pretty shallow one. Nonetheless, with the cool headed dogzbody at the helm, Mean Coalition were happy to oblige by his somewhat clouded orders and opened fire upon our fleet once again. Euan8's MANBrutix an unfortunate victim. (Yes ladies and gents, not some pussy shield rigged Brutix thing that Mr. Frog likes to call a MANBrutix, a full on Mag Stab tanked damage whore and quite obviously the only way to fly the ship.)



Ard promptly took the decision to reset standings, giving us little choice but to set them red.

One Epic Day...

So there we are, 5 of us on a roam in RR Battleships into 0.0. After a quiet trip back to Intrepid Crossing, we decided to head back out through AD- to find some targets. A friendly covert hauler alt scouted for us to avoid suspicion.

"Kronos on scan, looks to be towards a POS. Going to check it out"

The scout arrived to find all of the POS mods offline and many unanchored. The Kronos sat inside the field, watching over the deconstruction. Utilising the subtle changes made to the Viator, our scout piloted close to a faction web battery, uncloaked and ninja'd off with an easy 30million ISK.

The Kronos became rather pissy with this and proceeded out of the field. We sprung a trap but alas, he managed to get back inside the field prior to any lasting damage being applied.

Several minutes went by before the Kronos began to move towards the edge of the field. Suddenly, he emerged and opened fire. Naturally, we returned the favour as local began to fill with his buddies. Our 2 Geddons and 2 Dominix had been totally underestimated and rapidly stripped the Tech 2 Battleship of armour and hull. Most certainly 1-0 to us.

The enemy fleet landed at the POS and a Sabre immediately bubbled us. Kulmid sighed knowing he would be off to Jita to buy more Slaves in the near future.

The enemy fleet was heavy with ECM. We fought through it to kill off a Thorax and an Armageddon before the Geddon's popped. Lex and z0de then pulled off some borderline ridiculous maneuvers to escape the bubble, ECM drone the scrambling ships and escape.

We lol'd heavily at their failure. Especially the loss of a 5 Billion ISK Kronos, the Geddon and the Rax. In return, two mighty Geddons fell for us.

Happy with the engagement we were, content with the outcomes we were not. Clones were updated, Euan joined in the fun as Lex departed and two more Geddons set off for Warp To Desktop space.

Take Two...

We landed on the Eurgrana gate. z0de was engaged the other side by a hefty sized gang. Naturally, Kulmid, Euan and I jumped in bringing the fleet back up to 2 Geddons and 2 Dominix

First on the list was a Zealot, attempting to lay down some thick damage but got on the wrong end of 14 Mega Pulse Laser II's spewing Amarr Navy Purple at him. Euan and z0de furiously fired off the remote reps on Kulmid who had been primaried. His armour teetering at 25%.

The WTD Falcon warped in at 40km. Kulmid and I had prepared for it this time, both fielding two active ECCM mods. We overloaded both of them and proceeded to lock up the Falcon. Once again, Amarr Navy Purple judged the unworthy.

A Rapier then decided to spar with my Geddon as I slowboated to the gate. Under fire from sentries we now were (did that sound too much like Yoda?!). The Rapier was obviously oblvious to the judgement that is Amarr Navy Purple and proceeded to follow his Falcon and Zealot buddy down shit creek.

Meanwhile, Kulmid had started to beat on an Absolution which was laying on the DPS thick and hard. Expecting a heavy buffer tank we were, but alas a juicy dual rep tank was not going to save his expensive ship from kicking the bucket.

The Zealot pilot returned in the counterpart Amarr Heavy Assault Ship. Again, the intellectual genes were not on show. He expected to be able to tank the two Geddons and two Dominix with ease. How wrong he was. With the blink of an eye, Multifreaky was loaded.

Kulmid exclaimed "He's tanking pretty well..no wait, oh, there he goes LOL"

Another one bites the dust.

A few more little ships were violenced towards the end of the engagement too. The Manticore especially funny as we relied on a perfect wrecking hit to kill him as he was out of falloff range. Naturally Eve obliged by providing Kulmid with two in a row and end its life rapidly.

By now, some of the WTD members had lost 2 to 3 different ships. A couple decided to roll out a pair of Thanatos. The fighter swarm was too much for Kulmid's Geddon. A quite hilarious engagement to look at. Grats to all involved. Other than one WTD tard who may have only just hit puberty, the conversation in local was cordial and fun afterwards.

Take Three...
The biggest RR gang the Bastards have ever formed embarked on a roam towards our new enemies, Mean Coalition.

After some initial sparring, Mean went back to Katugurmur to aid the fight with a couple of Carriers. Nonetheless, we didnt let this put us off. The RR's worked furiously to keep us alive as we ate through Astarte after Astarte....after Astarte. Cap ran low between the fleet and ironically Jed was primaried. 171k damage was tanked but alas, my poor Geddon finally gave in.

Jed went back to fetch the Vodka Shark as it seemed we could get lucky.

The guys had been racking up more kills while I was gone. Hilariously, the 'Village Idiot' general dogzbody sat 177km away in his Tempest, doing absolutely nothing but also not wishing to get his ship even remotely involved with the pissfest that was being handed out on station.
Then, the key error occured on Mean's part. Annapolis returned from his instawarp to the station so he could remain in dock range, only to be bumped by Mr. Vodka's Thanatos which was undocking. Shae immediately revved up the MWD on here gigantic Space Whale - Butt Plug thing.

Simultaneously, the cyno was dropped and the Vodka Shark entered the fray, immediately entering Siege and locking up the now off station Archon.

Shae rumbled in and bowled into the side of the Archon, sending it further off station. Annapolis went on to shout 'desync' in local once the bump occurred, something we get quite often with our enemies.

The Archon capped out at 50% armour and rapidly degenerated into hull. With the 20k volleys coming out of the Revelation and the inability for the Archon to switch on its Damge Control, it succumbed to the immense firepower and popped an embarassing distance from dock range.

Grats to all involved once again. A truly epic engagement. Mean had pretty much decided to piss ISK down the sink by bringing out command ship after command ship which certainly did not bother us.

All in all, probably one of the most epic days in Eve despite a podding and 2 Geddon losses. Hopefully there are many more days to come similar to this. I simply do not have time to write about the mid point engagement in Hagilur where we first tested the RR gang, taking no losses and removing several more ships from existence.

Alliance Time...

The Bastards. has been formed in regards to the upcoming alliance tournament in January. Nonetheless, we have the privelage of the Hellcats flying under the same flag now. This can only spell doom for our enemies. Not only do we have more guns, we have angry angry women out for blood.

Nonetheless, with the Cats now prowling around our forums. Our RL faces have nowhere to hide! >.<





Wednesday 3 December 2008

There Can Only Be One

Sale of a Legend

Well...in a sentimental and teary eyed fashion, I waved goodbye to the control of San today. Shocked many of you may be at the sale, alas it was coming.

With the lack of income, several accounts has become a squeeze. Two PvP accounts had also started to become a burden, rather than an advantage. I would lose ships on both accounts because my attention was divided between the two screens.

The tough decision was made, the quantity of ships that San could fly over the quality of Jed's extremely focused skill set. In the end, it was a no brainer to me.

Best of luck to the new owner of San however, Jed will continue the wonderful tales from Metropolis without a stutter!

More Violent Fail in Gultratren...

Jorge and Prophet hit the guys up on comm's:

'Guys, we have a Nidhoggur sitting outside a station in Gult...'

Sarvic and Myself had been on a sortie in our dreads. Without further a do we replied:

'Ok, lets give this a go.'
z0de proceeded to Gultratren in a Myrmidon fitted with a cynosural field generator, enabling our gargantuan damage whores to lock on and jump to. Snaptz was already in system with Proph and Jorge on an alt. He had been playing docking games with the Carrier pilot, ensuring he kept his attention. Shouting lines such as 'Awww, you angry I popped your Cyno alt?' and such certainly helped to keep the pilot in local.

The sub capital support waited upon the Gult gate in Arnstur. Snaptz undocked once again and the Nidhoggur pulled out it's Templar fighters and began to aggress him. In jumped the support, clouded by the hundreds of macro haulers in local. Simultaneously, z0de warped to 0 of the now aggressed Carrier and immediately dropped the field.

"Go, Go, Go!" he shouted. Seconds later, the murky dusk of space lit up with the roaring sound of the Naglfar and Revelation jumping in. Immediately we hit Siege mode, the Artillery on the Naglfar retracting to the back of the ship to compensate for the extraordinary recoil of them firing. The Revelation's Dual Giga Pulse extended from the sides on the characteristic storks as both dreads scrambled to get a lock upon the Carrier again.

Both opened up in unision upon the stricken Nidhoggur. We still thought it was a tight one to take it down in time...

The Revelation began to take holes out of the shields. We expected to soon hit a hefty armour tank which would see it through the next 40 seconds to dock. Shockingly, Sarvic and I fired together as it entered armour to see the Nidhoggur drop 50% of it in one salvo.

Ronin exclaimed 'Holy fuck, it' shield tanked, we could pull this off boys. Overload them guns'

Naturally we obliged as the Nid rapidly fell through structure and proceeded to embarassingly explode within docking range. Jed had snared the final blow and had the privelage of posting up what has to be one of the most ridiculous setups we have ever seen fielded on a Carrier. In fact, if it wasn't for the Drone Control Unit sitting in the loot can, you would swear we just killed a Raven.

Grats to all involved and another surgically precise removal of another confused pilot within the Eve world who somehow found himself in the capital graveyard that is Gultratren. I see us as exacting the Darwin Awards upon the world of Eve, slowly wittling down those who are simply not up for the intellectual challenges of Eve.

A short but informative post today. Hope not all of you will disown me now I have sold what most of you know as my main character. Nonetheless, Jed is going nowehere :)