Okay, so, another update for you guys. Last anyone heard was myself, Jorus, and Larraq (when he gets a new PC) turning to piracy. Well, as we wait for the necessary skills to train up and for Larraq to finally get a computer that works and runs EVE online, I managed to be online at the right place and time to join my corporation in an ad hoc roam.
Turns out they wanted frigates who could armor tank (meaning their main HP and HP repairing is in their armor bars, not their shields or structure). At first I was kind of like "I'll just get in the way" and "I have zero experience fleeting, so I'd probably just slow you down" and "I have Tech I guns and such, not much I can really bring to the fight." Turns out that the way I'd set up my little Rifter frigate was exactly what they needed. Not too much cost, just enough ways to 'tackle' an enemy (slow down their sub-warp speed and keep them from warping at all), and I knew enough about the ship that I could do what was needed. So, with that, they pulled me in and pointed me to the fleet staging area.
At first, the most excitement on my end was... getting lost. I'd forget to set my navigation/route computer to the same settings they did. After a bit of panicking on my end while in low sec, separated from the fleet, and confused on what the hell was going on... I got it all fixed without dying. Once I caught up, we hit null sec or Zero-Zero Sec.
First off, I'd like to point out that I've been to null sec before, though that was on accident. I'd bought a module from a station in a system that I didn't know was null sec and pretty much spazzed when I got in system. Ran to the station, grabbed my poodoo, and hauled tail back to 0.5 space. This time, it was deliberate. The first system, the same one I'd been to before, wasn't really all that exciting. No one was there, nothing was going on. Just a simple, null sec system.
And then we hit the next system. What I saw was both absolutely beautiful and utterly, bowel shakingly terrifying at the same time.
We came through the gate and I saw the system itself. First off, my tabs that show nearby ships, stations, drones, etc. blew up with the sheer amount of drones close enough to pick up. Scores of them, at least. And then I noticed the interdiction bubbles in the distance. I'd seen images of fleets and skirmishes where folks used interdiction bubbles to keep people from running away, but I'd seen them as a fleeting tool, not like this. These were walls of bubbles set just perfectly in interlocking lines between the gate and major locations in the system. No one else was in the system with us, but the fact that someone had taken the time and effort to make these walls and stock them with what had to ultimately be hundreds of drones told me a lot.
We were definitely not welcome. Ever read the Odyssey or watch the movie? That part where Odysseus walks into the Cyclops' lair? It felt like that. In space. With space ships. But instead of eating my ship alive... actually, yeah, they would have eaten my ship alive.
Thankfully, the fleet commander knew a gap in the walls well enough to get clear. How he knew it, I don't know. I'm guessing trail and error, but in EVE... for all I know, his alt character put the damn walls there or maybe he bribed whoever did for a clear path. Anyways, we get through and find the next gate. Our scout goes on through and reports back. Cruiser fleet inbound. We're in fething frigates...
They catch our scout and he barely makes it out alive. We stage about 70km off the gate, hoping they come through and attack us, giving us the advantage. They don't. In fact, they eventually send a mining barge, a Skiff, through as bait. We didn't take it and eventually decided that if they weren't going to come through, and we weren't going to come through, then we'd find someone else to screw with. And so we warped to another gate.
When we jumped through, we almost managed to catch a lone cruiser, but he was gone before we could. Happened again with a pair of cruisers at the next gate and the next. At first, we figured we were just unlucky. But then we realized they may be avoiding something. We figured it was the cruiser fleet. We were partially right.
They were, in fact, avoiding the cruiser fleet we'd found earlier. However, there were other small cruiser fleets roaming around, too. At the next gate, we found one of them. Or, rather, they found us. As we staged around the gate and waited for the call to jump to the next system, we picked up a cruiser as it landed about 70km from us. Then we picked up another. An Ashimmu and a Scimitar, two nasty cruisers that felt that they had the advantage on our little frigate fleet. Granted, we had one cruiser, but everything else was frigate sized.
That was when the Fleet Commander, or FC, caught us off guard. He told us not to target lock, not to approach, but to stay by the gate we were staging on. He wanted to lay a trap, let them think we didn't think them a thread to jump through the gate and high-tail it away, that we were waiting on our scout to tell us it was safe. Personally, at this point, I thought he was nuts. A frigate fleet up against two cruisers? Yeah, sure, we had around nine ships, but with the two coming at us obviously set up to support each other I felt we had zero chance. But I kept quiet, took a deep breath, and did as I was told. I stuck on the gate, kept my target lock off of them, and hoped that we weren't all about to disappear in a blaze of fire and fail.
At the last possible second, the FC gives the order to approach and engage the two cruisers. My first thought was more or less that of someone resigned to their fate. And then the FC dropped his own interdiction bubble. To be blunt, it surprised the hell out of me. With that one factor on the field, it turned the tables. It slowed them down a lot, but for our frigate fleet, most of us were using afterburners that weren't heavily affected by the bubble. Or, at least, I wasn't.
We turned to engage the ships and the FC gave the order to tackle them. My ship has piddly guns against cruisers, but I have some good tackle modules and my speed was amazing, so I felt comfortable in doing what he specifically told me to do: Run ahead of the others, hit the ships, and smack them with my stasis webifier and my warp scrambler.
So I did. We hit the Ashimmu and the Scimitar at the same time and they were immediately tackled. The two cruisers realized how badly they'd stepped in it at this point and they started to try and get away. The Scimitar was close enough to the bubble's edge that it was able to turn around and burn out of the bubble. I guess it somehow got out of tackling range at that point because it buggered off as soon as it got out of the interdiction bubble.
That left us with the Ashimmu who was too far from the bubble's edge to escape and instead was trying to haul tail to the actual gate we'd been staging by to try and run off. We knew that Scimitar pilot would be back soon with a better ship to kill frigates and probably some friends, meaning we had to kill the Ashimmu quickly.
His ship was pretty well repair tanked, so it was a hell of a job bashing through it. I more or less spent my time orbiting around him at around 1,000m and shooting him with my peashooters and my energy vampire (module that sucks capacitor energy from the target into your capacitor). Soon enough, he blew apart and we even managed to pod him, though what little damage I did to the pod was laughable. I think the killmail said I did 0% damage, meaning I hit, but did barely a point of actual damage.
Right before the Ashimmu died, though, his buddies showed up. A pair of ships, I don't remember what kind, showed up. One hit the bubble first and we tried desperately to bring him down. The other, a Tengu I think, was still around 70km out. The one we caught after the Ashimmu was able to completely repair his armor each time we bashed it down. As the Tengu got closer, we saw our chances of killing another ship getting slimmer and slimmer. Finally, the FC gave the order to disengage and warp out, we just couldn't break the target's tank and the Tengu was maybe 30km out and starting to target lock.
Unfortunately, I didn't hear the gate we were to jump to and mistakenly thought it was the gate we'd been trying to stage at. They went one direction, I derped and went the other direction. By the time I realized my mistake, I was already locked. I tried to get out of the bubble and outrun them with far better speed, but they nailed me right before the bubble's edge. I got free of the bubble in my pod when they killed that, too.
All in all, we lost three frigates in the fight, though only one was lost in the actual fighting. The rest were destroyed as we disengaged, which was interesting to see happen in a way. You read about that sort of stuff, but it's interesting to see how it actually happens.
Thing is, though, even with all of our losses, we still got a nice kill. After looking at the kill mails on EVE Battle Clinic, which I'm not fully sure how to figure out who came out on top ISK-wise, it looks like the fleet I was in destroyed 859,601,500 ISK worth of ship, modules, ammunition, cargo, and implants. Considering my ship was only worth 2,271,620 ISK, of which half of that cost was ammunition (Yeah, I use expensive ammo), if we just take into account my ship's worth vs his ship's worth... He lost ~378 times more than I did in value.
So, all in all... A good day so far lol
The engagement reports for those interested:
Ashimmu
http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/killmail.php?id=25940906
Pod
http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/killmail.php?id=25940897
Turns out they wanted frigates who could armor tank (meaning their main HP and HP repairing is in their armor bars, not their shields or structure). At first I was kind of like "I'll just get in the way" and "I have zero experience fleeting, so I'd probably just slow you down" and "I have Tech I guns and such, not much I can really bring to the fight." Turns out that the way I'd set up my little Rifter frigate was exactly what they needed. Not too much cost, just enough ways to 'tackle' an enemy (slow down their sub-warp speed and keep them from warping at all), and I knew enough about the ship that I could do what was needed. So, with that, they pulled me in and pointed me to the fleet staging area.
At first, the most excitement on my end was... getting lost. I'd forget to set my navigation/route computer to the same settings they did. After a bit of panicking on my end while in low sec, separated from the fleet, and confused on what the hell was going on... I got it all fixed without dying. Once I caught up, we hit null sec or Zero-Zero Sec.
First off, I'd like to point out that I've been to null sec before, though that was on accident. I'd bought a module from a station in a system that I didn't know was null sec and pretty much spazzed when I got in system. Ran to the station, grabbed my poodoo, and hauled tail back to 0.5 space. This time, it was deliberate. The first system, the same one I'd been to before, wasn't really all that exciting. No one was there, nothing was going on. Just a simple, null sec system.
And then we hit the next system. What I saw was both absolutely beautiful and utterly, bowel shakingly terrifying at the same time.
We came through the gate and I saw the system itself. First off, my tabs that show nearby ships, stations, drones, etc. blew up with the sheer amount of drones close enough to pick up. Scores of them, at least. And then I noticed the interdiction bubbles in the distance. I'd seen images of fleets and skirmishes where folks used interdiction bubbles to keep people from running away, but I'd seen them as a fleeting tool, not like this. These were walls of bubbles set just perfectly in interlocking lines between the gate and major locations in the system. No one else was in the system with us, but the fact that someone had taken the time and effort to make these walls and stock them with what had to ultimately be hundreds of drones told me a lot.
We were definitely not welcome. Ever read the Odyssey or watch the movie? That part where Odysseus walks into the Cyclops' lair? It felt like that. In space. With space ships. But instead of eating my ship alive... actually, yeah, they would have eaten my ship alive.
Thankfully, the fleet commander knew a gap in the walls well enough to get clear. How he knew it, I don't know. I'm guessing trail and error, but in EVE... for all I know, his alt character put the damn walls there or maybe he bribed whoever did for a clear path. Anyways, we get through and find the next gate. Our scout goes on through and reports back. Cruiser fleet inbound. We're in fething frigates...
They catch our scout and he barely makes it out alive. We stage about 70km off the gate, hoping they come through and attack us, giving us the advantage. They don't. In fact, they eventually send a mining barge, a Skiff, through as bait. We didn't take it and eventually decided that if they weren't going to come through, and we weren't going to come through, then we'd find someone else to screw with. And so we warped to another gate.
When we jumped through, we almost managed to catch a lone cruiser, but he was gone before we could. Happened again with a pair of cruisers at the next gate and the next. At first, we figured we were just unlucky. But then we realized they may be avoiding something. We figured it was the cruiser fleet. We were partially right.
They were, in fact, avoiding the cruiser fleet we'd found earlier. However, there were other small cruiser fleets roaming around, too. At the next gate, we found one of them. Or, rather, they found us. As we staged around the gate and waited for the call to jump to the next system, we picked up a cruiser as it landed about 70km from us. Then we picked up another. An Ashimmu and a Scimitar, two nasty cruisers that felt that they had the advantage on our little frigate fleet. Granted, we had one cruiser, but everything else was frigate sized.
That was when the Fleet Commander, or FC, caught us off guard. He told us not to target lock, not to approach, but to stay by the gate we were staging on. He wanted to lay a trap, let them think we didn't think them a thread to jump through the gate and high-tail it away, that we were waiting on our scout to tell us it was safe. Personally, at this point, I thought he was nuts. A frigate fleet up against two cruisers? Yeah, sure, we had around nine ships, but with the two coming at us obviously set up to support each other I felt we had zero chance. But I kept quiet, took a deep breath, and did as I was told. I stuck on the gate, kept my target lock off of them, and hoped that we weren't all about to disappear in a blaze of fire and fail.
At the last possible second, the FC gives the order to approach and engage the two cruisers. My first thought was more or less that of someone resigned to their fate. And then the FC dropped his own interdiction bubble. To be blunt, it surprised the hell out of me. With that one factor on the field, it turned the tables. It slowed them down a lot, but for our frigate fleet, most of us were using afterburners that weren't heavily affected by the bubble. Or, at least, I wasn't.
We turned to engage the ships and the FC gave the order to tackle them. My ship has piddly guns against cruisers, but I have some good tackle modules and my speed was amazing, so I felt comfortable in doing what he specifically told me to do: Run ahead of the others, hit the ships, and smack them with my stasis webifier and my warp scrambler.
So I did. We hit the Ashimmu and the Scimitar at the same time and they were immediately tackled. The two cruisers realized how badly they'd stepped in it at this point and they started to try and get away. The Scimitar was close enough to the bubble's edge that it was able to turn around and burn out of the bubble. I guess it somehow got out of tackling range at that point because it buggered off as soon as it got out of the interdiction bubble.
That left us with the Ashimmu who was too far from the bubble's edge to escape and instead was trying to haul tail to the actual gate we'd been staging by to try and run off. We knew that Scimitar pilot would be back soon with a better ship to kill frigates and probably some friends, meaning we had to kill the Ashimmu quickly.
His ship was pretty well repair tanked, so it was a hell of a job bashing through it. I more or less spent my time orbiting around him at around 1,000m and shooting him with my peashooters and my energy vampire (module that sucks capacitor energy from the target into your capacitor). Soon enough, he blew apart and we even managed to pod him, though what little damage I did to the pod was laughable. I think the killmail said I did 0% damage, meaning I hit, but did barely a point of actual damage.
Right before the Ashimmu died, though, his buddies showed up. A pair of ships, I don't remember what kind, showed up. One hit the bubble first and we tried desperately to bring him down. The other, a Tengu I think, was still around 70km out. The one we caught after the Ashimmu was able to completely repair his armor each time we bashed it down. As the Tengu got closer, we saw our chances of killing another ship getting slimmer and slimmer. Finally, the FC gave the order to disengage and warp out, we just couldn't break the target's tank and the Tengu was maybe 30km out and starting to target lock.
Unfortunately, I didn't hear the gate we were to jump to and mistakenly thought it was the gate we'd been trying to stage at. They went one direction, I derped and went the other direction. By the time I realized my mistake, I was already locked. I tried to get out of the bubble and outrun them with far better speed, but they nailed me right before the bubble's edge. I got free of the bubble in my pod when they killed that, too.
All in all, we lost three frigates in the fight, though only one was lost in the actual fighting. The rest were destroyed as we disengaged, which was interesting to see happen in a way. You read about that sort of stuff, but it's interesting to see how it actually happens.
Thing is, though, even with all of our losses, we still got a nice kill. After looking at the kill mails on EVE Battle Clinic, which I'm not fully sure how to figure out who came out on top ISK-wise, it looks like the fleet I was in destroyed 859,601,500 ISK worth of ship, modules, ammunition, cargo, and implants. Considering my ship was only worth 2,271,620 ISK, of which half of that cost was ammunition (Yeah, I use expensive ammo), if we just take into account my ship's worth vs his ship's worth... He lost ~378 times more than I did in value.
So, all in all... A good day so far lol
The engagement reports for those interested:
Ashimmu
http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/killmail.php?id=25940906
Pod
http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/killmail.php?id=25940897
