Lost Without Local

[VIDEO]Our first capital kill as a new Alliance!

2013-02-27T00:47:00.000-08:00

I will try to get a full battle report done in the next day or so. Enjoy the video!

Cipreh for CSM8! UPDATED

2013-01-20T15:35:00.001-08:00

I am announcing my candidacy for CSM 8. There are a lot of wormhole candidates running this year, and I hope to stand out above the crowd. I feel that it's necessary for our community to be represented by someone who has the varied experience I can bring to the table.

Background:
I am the CEO of a medium sized wormhole corporation called Clann Fian, and the was the lead diplomat for my former alliance, Transmission Lost. I have been living and playing in wormhole space for about four years, have spent time in all classes of wormholes. My corporation is based out of a Class 2, with a static high sec, and a static Class 4, and we accommodate a wide variety of play styles within the organization, everything from pure industrialists, to players who constantly hunt for PVP targets, even taking on the occasional mercenary contract.

I have been lucky enough to have a wide variety of experiences in this game, I was the alliance leader of Narwhals ate my Duck mercenary alliance and learned a lot from that experience. I have done extensive diplomatic work with many organizations, most recently as the lead diplomat for our former alliance Transmission Lost.

Experience:
I have lived and worked in every area of space throughout the game, from just about every class of wormholes, low sec, high sec, even out in null sec as a renter for a while with my corp. I’ve lived in Class 6 and Class 5 wormholes with Narwhals, as well as fought and explored through all of the other classes.

Within these boundaries, I have been lucky enough to have had the opportunity to experience everything from renting space in null sec, working as a mercenary in wormholes, high sec, and low sec, as well as leading a major alliance. I have limited experience with industry. However I am lucky enough to have a very knowledgeable industrial group within my corporation, and throughout my contacts in-game that I can ask for input and advice. Most recently I have created an alt to get into Factional Warfare a bit more, and I am currently flying with the Minmatar militia in the White Lotus alliance.

My Goals:
My I plan on running to bring CCP's attention to the need for a new or improved conflict driver in w-space. As it stands right now, w-space is running the risk of stagnation due to the lack of risk to many organizations, we have reached a point for many organizations where there’s no counter to the strategic cruiser fleets other then a larger fleet, or capitals. I would like to see the blob discouraged in wormhole space, though I cannot honestly say how to do this. My former alliance is even guilty of this.

There have been many ideas passed around these forums for how our lives could be improved, ranging from adding another class of wormholes, changing the mechanics of certain classes, or even changing the "wandering" wormhole spawn methods. There are always going to be different views on what our community as a whole needs to expand and flourish, and many of them are good ideas. I feel that the dynamics of wormhole space are in need of iteration, or we will see it become a new null sec, ruled by massive organizations, and the blob.

We, as a community need to band together, and push these issues to the forefront, so that we no longer take a back seat to null sec politics, and the endless leveraging of numbers by massive alliances and power blocs.

In addition, I feel that CCP cannot abandon the proposed POS redesign; it has the ability to fix so many problems in many different aspects of the game. Even if we do not receive the entire modular POS system that has been proposed so many times in the past, a rebalancing pass over the current POS modules and structures could easily alleviate a lot of our current issues with access and ease of use. This is one of the biggest stumbling blocks for new organizations in wormhole space, and I feel would be a huge boon to the common goal of broadening our community and getting new blood into wormholes.

As a bonus, if done well, it could potentially improve game play across all areas of EVE. I feel that if CCP went through and touched up the anchorable modules for towers, such as the intensive refining array, it could act as a boon to low sec and null sec industry, which is a goal that they have spoken of many times in the past.

We need a CSM who willing to stand up, and fight the good fight, to push CCP and the CSM towards something that is better for everyone, in all aspects of the game.

Whether you're a C6 PvPer, or a C1 industrialist, or anywhere in between, this is the time when we as a community can make our voices heard.

I have talked quite a bit on various podcasts and other outlets to expand on my ideas.

You can hear me on the Podside podcast episode #75 about more CSM stuff:

http://s8.multiplexgaming.com/downloads/PodsideEp75s8radio.mp3

Special thanks to Bronya of Down the Pipe and the guys from Podside for having me on their show!

My Crossing Zebra's Podcast interview can be heard here:

http://c-z.me/csm8cipreh

Thanks to Xander Phoenix for having me on his podcast!

You can come listen to the various WH candidates chat and discuss their ideas at the Down the Pipe "WH Debate" podcast.

http://downthepipe-wh.com/media/CSM8WHDebate.mp3

Thanks to all the other candidates for taking the time to be there to share their views!

No more Narwhals!

2012-04-29T07:41:00.002-07:00

Unfortunately, I have withdrawn my corp from Narwhals ate my Duck alliance, and I am no longer their official point of contact and diplomat. Clann Fian is now an independent corporation, and currently recruiting active wormhole dwelling pilots.

Sunday Slaughter

2012-02-22T11:41:00.000-08:00

Last Sunday was a busy day for Narwhals. From the time I logged in, we killed 5.5B and scooped 1.1B in loot. I'll be brief in my descriptions, so my apologies if names of scouts are left out.

When I log in, I hear reports of active pilots in a class 4 through the c5s.

Talocan United has a few navy battleships manned at their tower. We were not sure if they are going to run anomalies but find out that they are about to close our connecting wormhole. FC called for the fleet to jump and kill the first BS through. I join fleet just in time to catch the fleet warp. Fleet warps to a typhoon and quickly turn it to dust.

http://narwhalskilled.me/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=10484

Good scouting and being aware got us this kill.

The very next WH starts out quiet. A c5 with static 6, no one around.

We drop probes until locals start to log in. Quickly, our scouts recalled their probes. They warped to the tower just in time to see the locals log in three Rattlesnakes and a Golem. The fleet goes crazy when we get the report that they have warped to 175km above the POS to apparently RR their drones. Our scout gets a warp in on two of them and provides a couple of our recon t3's a chance to scramble the targets. Unfortunately we only manage to catch one Rattlesnake...

Our fleet warps in and proceeds to kill this tanking beast. Probably the toughest sub-cap tank I have seen in EVE.

http://narwhalskilled.me/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=10485

Time to cycle the static again, our next hole has miners. Our scanners had their work cut out in this small system by not having a place to drop combat probes off directional scan. However our scanners are awesome and less than 30 seconds pass from the time of probes being deployed to them being raised.

Fleet jumps and is warped to go "mining".

http://narwhalskilled.me/?a=kill_related&kll_id=10488

A few holes later, we find a solo Harbringer shooting an offline POS.

http://narwhalskilled.me/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=10491

Then for the icing on the cake...

Our scouts find a wormhole with 4 Navy Scorpions. Suddenly, a Chimera appears at the POS. After some discussion, it's decided that we are going to hold this wormhole and wait until they move...

We wait about an hour, before the scout reports that their entire fleet is aligning. Our scout reported them warping and finds them at a sleeper site that we had bookmarked earlier. It is nearly 2:00am and the fleet has lost a few members while we were waiting.

The fleet is anxious to attack, but understand that because we only had 2 Guardians, the targets have to clear the escalation before we can attack. In the minutes before we struck, we went over tackle assignments and reminded logis and falcons to warp at range.

The carebears didn't have any structures or wrecks near them so a cloaked Falcon is sent to burn closer to provide a warp-in when the last two sleeper Guardian BS's are left.

It works.

Our fleet lands 15km away and the HIC bubble goes up. This battle is long and difficult, the kind of fight we all love but rarely get. We only have a single Bhaalgorn, and he is doing the best to keep the Chimera capped dry.

Logistics calls are flying back and forth in the broadcast window, and several members are taking heavy damage. For a good 5-10 minutes, we battle to get the Chimera capacitor empty, while rapidly swapping targets to get ahead of their remote rep.

...But they are not breaking.

The scorpions all have ECCM and the Chimera can not be jammed while he's in triage. So the Falcons are sent home, along with most of our scouts to reship for more DPS. After they rejoin the battle, we spread our damage out evenly, putting two DPS ships on each target.
This works like a charm, and we create a weak link in their repair chain. The first Scorp quickly falls under our guns, followed shortly by the rest.

Now we are left with the lone Chimera. However, since he is not remote repping, his cap is easily able to recharge beyond the single Bhaalgorn neuting ability, and keep his own tank alive.

Given enough time, we were going to kill him, or he was going to self-destruct.

Then, in local, he asks for ransom.

The fleet decides to ask him to eject from carrier and he accepts.

We scoop the carrier, plus all their sleeper loot and head home.

http://narwhalskilled.me/?a=kill_related&kll_id=10499

Many thanks go out to all the Narwhals that made this happen! This was an awesome day of wormhole PVP.

A Tale of Two Caps!

2012-02-20T13:09:00.004-08:00

A regular Tuesday evening and getting ready to start the evenings chain collapsing for targets, normally it's fairly uneventful, but this time, we struck gold.

The first wormhole of the evening was cycled after I returned from dinner. Our scout jumped in with a covert ops to take a look at the d-scan. Jackpot! There was a moros, orca and scorpion on dscan.

A quick sweep of the system, confirmed they weren't near a planet or control tower, combat probes were thrown out in the general direction of the spotted ships while the call for ships went through the alliance like wildfire and the fleet quickly jumped in numbers.

The three ships disappeared of dscan, as the fleet continued to form up, but we thought they might be trying to collapse a wormhole, so the scout scanned down the c5's static. Upon arrival though, the wormhole seemed in perfect condition. Clearly, there was no way the ships we spotted had been trying to collapse it yet.

Dejected, the fleet started to stand down, thinking we lost the targets. Two more scouts jumped in to continue scanning the chain, when moments later an archon and moros turned up on grid at the wormhole. The first scout assumed they would land at zero and collapse the way back home, so he immediately started heading back to the hole.

Until the call came that they landed nearly 10km off the wormhole. The slaughter was on.

The fleet was ordered to jump in, despite not being at full strength yet. More calls were put out through teamspeak and our intel and alliance chats, for logistics and dps. Luckily, we had enough Loki's to keep the moros and archon away from the wormhole. Several Guardians and four Bhaalgorns quickly followed the rest of the fleet through into the fight. The two scanners that jumped through, had to establish initial points on both the Archon and Moros, immediately reported them going into siege and triage. Perfect.

The Moros was immediately called primary, and the fleet was told to ignore the triage carrier.

Several HiC's had caught up with the fleet by this point, and with both capitals well within the bubble they knew weren't going anywhere. At this point the Archon and Moros pilot started begging to be let go for ransom.

2011.12.06 20:09:46 ] Sheldon Conquerer > stop a pay
2011.12.06 20:11:02 ] MaxVodka > ей (do it?)
2011.12.06 20:11:11 ] MaxVodka > я заплачу остановитесь (I shall begin to cry stop)
2011.12.06 20:11:53 ] Efraya > <youtube narwhal song - cut out for weird forum>
2011.12.06 20:12:55 ] Guall > stop pls
2011.12.06 20:13:07 ] djswitch47 > lataz
2011.12.06 20:13:23 ] Sheldon Conquerer > i pay money
2011.12.06 20:13:32 ] Sheldon Conquerer > don not kiil
2011.12.06 20:14:12 ] djswitch47 > we are rich
2011.12.06 20:14:21 ] Sheldon Conquerer > pleas)
2011.12.06 20:14:39 ] Sheldon Conquerer > dont nuch car) very hard by

This was ignored and only answered by posting the narwhals video.

When suddenly!

...a Loki warped in?

The act of bravery was astounding, or possibly stupidity, the world may never know.

Some points and webs were switched to the Loki, and we promptly ignored it.

The fleet was focused on punching the Moros down, the four Bhaalgorns sucking its cap dry. The Bhaals gave a single neut cycle to the Loki and then put everything on the Archon while keeping a single neut each on the Moros to make sure he wouldn't recharge any cap.

The moros died and the loki was called primary next.

http://narwhalskilled.me/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=7711

The Archon was sitting there in triage with just under 25% cap left, from the tender attention of the Bhaalgorns. As far as I could see, he wasn't even trying to rep the Loki, as it went down under our guns in a flash.

http://narwhalskilled.me/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=7557

The Moros pilot had been given the pod express to empire, with the Loki pilot quickly following.

http://narwhalskilled.me/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=7558
http://narwhalskilled.me/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=7555

The entire fleet now gave its undivided attention to the Archon, with its cap entirely gone, it folded very quickly.

http://narwhalskilled.me/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=7710

For everyones pleasure we kept the pod alive a little longer so everyone could whore onto that mail.

http://narwhalskilled.me/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=7556

Several haulers were brought in to loot all the stuff, including some officer capacitor mods and a bunch of meta 2 cap mods. Then a Revelation was called on d-scan, but he turned out to be at a POS the initial scout had missed.

The fleet was ordered to leave the wormhole and when everyone and the loot was saved (and everything salvaged) the c5s was collapsed.

Overview of the fight:
http://narwhalskilled.me/?a=kill_related&kll_id=7556

PvP Pays!

2012-02-20T12:20:00.003-08:00

Not our cleanest CTA but possibly our most lucrative invasion yet, this is how it went down:

The Prelude – 15:30-18:30 Amarr –

I had started my trip out of home towards Amarr when I began receiving reports that our formup system ‘Amarr’ was suffering with serious lag issues, alternative rally points were drafted but as quick as the lag had occured it stopped. Everyone knew that it would result in a server crash and sure enough CCP failed and an unscheduled DT notification threw a spanner in the works. CCP estimated 10mins of DT (which in Icelandic means ‘24hrs give or take’) but to our delight the server was back online 15mins later.

17:00 came around very quickly and we had formed a very respectable fleet comprised of T3s, CS, logi and some POS bash BC/BS, all we were missing now was an FC with all the intel. It was at this time I realised I was probably going to have to take the Lead FC. I started to build a picture of our primary t-sys (TLC’s J105705) from the intel our scouts had gathered and it was looking very grim: Multiple poses (2 Large heavily defended, rest med/small limited mods), multiple enemy caps (not piloted), no friendly cap support (the locals had been very organised in closing down K162’s from lowsec as soon as they appeared, so we had been unable to get what we needed in), no free moon for staging pos (every one of these towers was fuelled and shielded).

I thought to myself ‘How am I going to get a fleet to agree to that??’.

An alternative invasion was positioned, but this one also had its drawbacks: the fleet would need to logoffski for 24hrs

We had 50 bloodthirsty ducks sat in HighSec doing nothing, a decision was needed. At around 18:20 The fleet was ordered to make best speed to a system 1 jump out from TLC’s chain.

The Engagement – 18:30-21:20 –

As we arrived on the gate leading into Olettiers (our entry into the chain) our scouts reported TLC forming up a small hole camp, a small squad of cloaky lokis was chosen to move in ahead of the main fleet to try and catch them, the lokis set off and moments later the fleet followed, staying just ½ jump behind to ensure we would not be spotted. Of course the hostiles panicked as a few of our T3s jumped into their system and tried to escape via the C2, not expecting to see an even larger group on that side of the wormhole.

http://narwhalskilled.me/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=9087 Absolution
http://narwhalskilled.me/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=9088 Absolution POD
http://narwhalskilled.me/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=9086 Curse

So, with some nice killmails under our belt we all jumped through into t-sys and began to camp the wormhole. Once we had a bubble up the fleet was split into 2 groups, I remained with a small group of close range T3 on the wormhole whilst Tuna led the assault on the small towers. We were making good time on the first small pos when the scouts informed us that a tengu was inbound to the wormhole, probably with a BS following shortly. I gave the order to open up on the tengu as it landed as it clearly wasn’t cloaky/interdiction nullified to make quick work of it as I was anticipating more inbound ships, when it reached low shield the fleet on the hole was asked to hold fire as it was clear no support was coming (btw, if anyone ever asks me ‘why?’ in comms again when I am FCing you will be primary) but unfortunately it was a wreck before I could recall the fleet to whore on the mail.

http://narwhalskilled.me/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=9089 Tengu

Soon after the tengu was dust a convo invite appeared from the CEO of the TLC corp:

[ 2012.01.18 18:55:54 ] scotayne hawkins > o/
[ 2012.01.18 18:56:05 ] scotayne hawkins > i assume this is a paid op for you guys
[ 2012.01.18 18:57:11 ] Wasted 2008 > you know someone who would put one on your head?
[ 2012.01.18 18:57:33 ] scotayne hawkins > not enough to hire someone to do something this scale or least we dont think so
[ 2012.01.18 18:57:45 ] scotayne hawkins > is there a ransom option?

As Tuna was continuing the assault on the small towers and the fleet was managing the wormhole control nicely I decided to see where this could go. I talked to the other ceos to see what they would be happy with and the figures of 25-30b were put forward, considering what our scouts had told me about TLC’s recent activity and what we believed they had in this system asset wise I decided to go a little lower than that, but with the intention of not negotiating:

[ 2012.01.18 18:59:45 ] scotayne hawkins > i need a figure to put towards our members
[ 2012.01.18 18:59:53 ] scotayne hawkins > what figure are you thinking of
[ 2012.01.18 19:02:38 ] Wasted 2008 > from what my scouts tell me you have a substantial amount of assets in here
[ 2012.01.18 19:03:00 ] scotayne hawkins > we have a few caps nothing major though
[ 2012.01.18 19:03:14 ] scotayne hawkins > brb wife calling
[ 2012.01.18 19:03:34 ] Wasted 2008 > well the price i'm going to put on the table is 20b
[ 2012.01.18 19:05:09 ] Wasted 2008 > seems a steep amount when you look at it plainly but considering your assets and the fact that I assume you wish to keep this hole, it looks more realistic

We spent the next 2 hours slowly reinforcing the remaining small/medium towers, scanning to make sure no new K162’s popped up and keeping the C2s at MC to prevent a counter attack from hired guns, all the time myself and Cipreh were keeping scotayne talking. The idiot we popped earlier returned in a scan ship:

http://narwhalskilled.me/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=9090 Buzzard

We were aware that he was probably looking for AHARM to help or trying to hire starbridge and just stalling for time but it didn’t matter, we held all the cards:

[ 2012.01.18 21:00:50 ] Wasted 2008 > just as a heads up, this fleet is becoming restless
[ 2012.01.18 21:01:52 ] Wasted 2008 > if you dont want to have to repair another pos from RF I'd get paid up asap

Until finally...

[ 2012.01.18 21:19:14 ] Wasted 2008 > the offer will be withdrawn unless i get something to show them you are cooperating
[ 2012.01.18 21:19:44 ] scotayne hawkins > 10bill sent
[ 2012.01.18 21:20:37 ] Wasted 2008 > confirmed
[ 2012.01.18 21:22:36 ] scotayne hawkins > another 10bill sent
[ 2012.01.18 21:22:45 ] scotayne hawkins > 20bill paid in total
[ 2012.01.18 21:23:04 ] Wasted 2008 > confirmed
[ 2012.01.18 21:23:12 ] Wasted 2008 > our fleet will be withdrawing asap
[ 2012.01.18 21:23:36 ] scotayne hawkins > guess its time to go make some more isk now
[ 2012.01.18 21:23:47 ] Wasted 2008 > you have tons of plexes

See boys and girls, that’s how you play at being a merc

Less than 4 hours actual work, 20b better off. And people say pvp doesn’t pay?

When Lead Farmers attack!

2011-11-13T09:19:00.001-08:00

I logged in last Monday, and got on TS. As soon as I joined the channel, an alliance PvE Carrier fleet announced hostiles in their wormhole. They tried to disengage, but the sleepers kept some of the fleet pointed, so the call was made for them to stay on grid in the site.

Moments later, a Lead Farmers fleet landed in the site with them and began the attack.

We had about 6-7 Tengu in the site with the carrier, as well as a Maelstrom and Nightmare, but they were dealing with incoming sleeper damage from an escalated site as well, so time was of the essence. The carrier was tanking them, but the had brought a Bhaalgorn onto the field so the carrier pilot knew his capacitor run time was very limited.

The Lead Farmers fleet was comprised of a Bhaalgorn, two Loki, a Legion, a Proteus, an armor Tengu (lolwut?), an Absolution, two Deimos, and three Guardians. A response fleet was formed up on the wormhole, comprised of whatever shield ships we had laying around, including several PvE fit Tengu, BC, HAC, Recons and a lone armor Bhaalgorn.

We had no logistics, but were hoping the Chimera would be able to keep us up against their fleet. We were given the order to jump in and warp to the carrier, and landed on the grid. Our falcon and a curse warped with the fleet and were destroyed almost immediately.

http://narwhals.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=11462777

The Chimera was already in triage, and the Tengu were working on reducing the incoming sleeper dps. The FC begins calling primaries, but the opposing guardians were on top of their reps. The hostile fleet targeted our Bhaalgorn as soon as it landed on grid, and though the carrier pilot tried to save him, he exploded.

http://narwhals.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=11462726

Lesson of the day: Don't bring armor tanked ships to a shield fleet.

Our FC started rotating the primary around, to try to get their guardians to slip up, but they were doing a great job keeping the hostile fleet in the fight. The FC saw the Bhaalgorn was taking damage from the sleepers in the site,so the order was given to overheat our weapons to beat their reps, and he quickly melted under the combined fire.

http://narwhals.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=11462775

We continued to trade fire, moving our primary around, to keep the pressure up on their guardians, manage to burn down their Absolution before the Guardians could get reps on him.

http://narwhals.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=11462809

The Carrier was about to come out of triage, all but the last of the sleepers were dead, so the rest of the Tengu fleet could focus on the fight. Our Bhaalgorn pilot reshipped to a Phantasm, and rejoined the fray, only to explode once again.

http://narwhals.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=11462839

He was just not having a good day.

We are slugging it out with them, when our carrier pilot calls out that he is exiting triage. The FC calls for us to spread our points around as the hostile fleet tried to disengage. We managed to catch a Deimos, and their Loki.

http://narwhals.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=11462798

http://narwhals.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=11462772

They fled the field, we looted all the wrecks and some "GF"s were exchanged in local, and moved the PvE fleet to safety, collapsing the wormhole behind us.

Eve-Kill BR:

http://narwhals.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_related&kll_id=11462772

Sorry for the delay!

2011-11-13T09:14:00.001-08:00

As I am sure some of you noticed, I have been slacking on my blog lately. This is due mostly to my taking over leadership of our alliance Narwhals ate my Duck.

The other CEO's and I have been very busy getting the alliance running smoothly.

It has taken up a lot of my time. We have had quite a few things going on recently, so expect several blog posts in the next few days. I have a lot to talk about.

Video Day!

2011-10-23T19:25:00.000-07:00

This video is of a fight on a high sec wormhole against a Brotherhood of Starbridge, remote repair Tengu fleet. This was the first actual fight of the "World War W".

The second video is of our overnight squad bumping dreads out of the Brotherhood of Starbridge POS. You can read about it in depth here.

Eve's a small world after all...

2011-10-20T01:15:00.000-07:00

I am sure that everyone here has chat channels they hang out in, places they frequent where they have people they either fly with occasionally, or maybe were in a corp with from a while ago. You probably chat back and forth talking about fights and other things you've done. It's a friendly relationship on perhaps a personal level, or a corporate level, but not necessarily throughout your alliance.

What if you're in a gank fleet, sitting in a wormhole, waiting for scouts in low sec, who come across your friends faction warfare fleet on its way to gank some carriers?

The chances of this in the whole wide universe of Eve, are pretty slim. Yet, it happened to me today.

I wasn't the FC for this op, and I joined in as they were getting ready to pounce. Apparently, there had been a gate camp in one of the low sec systems that our wormhole chain opened into. Some folks put together a fleet, and decided to go bust the camp. They moved through the chain and set up on the low sec wormhole, and sent some scouts out, only to find the camp had dispersed. So, they decided to try to find some kills.

From what I am told, there wasn't much traffic, just a few ships passing through, though at one point a large pirate gang jumped through the system. It's pretty hard to catch someone warping gate to gate if you're not on the gate waiting for them, so not much going on. I am chatting it up with my friend, talking about the out of fuel Russian POS we had just pillaged on a smash and grab op. Scouts report a battleship fleet incoming, and FC calls jump, we all jump out into the low sec, and fleet warp to the gate.

[ 2011.10.19 18:39:26 ] Cipreh > about to countergank some pirates in lowsec at an undisclosed location
[ 2011.10.19 18:40:00 ] xxxx > lol
[ 2011.10.19 18:40:09 ] xxxx > Better not be my fleet :)
[ 2011.10.19 18:41:17 ] xxxx > BS fleet is us
[ 2011.10.19 18:41:40 ] Cipreh > we are hiding in a wormhole,
[ 2011.10.19 18:42:09 ] Cipreh > these pirates are skittish though
[ 2011.10.19 18:45:08 ] Cipreh > I think we are about to engage your fleet
[ 2011.10.19 18:45:19 ] Cipreh > bunch of phoons, fleet phoons, and domis?
[ 2011.10.19 18:45:58 ] xxxx > Ohhhhhh
[ 2011.10.19 18:46:05 ] xxxx > Some of them.
[ 2011.10.19 18:47:13 ] xxxx > We don't want a fight with you.
[ 2011.10.19 18:47:26 ] xxxx > Please do not engage us.
[ 2011.10.19 18:47:38 ] Cipreh > I am not FC
[ 2011.10.19 18:47:45 ] xxxx > Well I see you in local.
[ 2011.10.19 18:47:50 ] Cipreh > run
[ 2011.10.19 18:47:58 ] xxxx > I really don't want to kill you.
[ 2011.10.19 18:48:02 ] Cipreh > you won't
[ 2011.10.19 18:49:03 ] Cipreh > sorry
[ 2011.10.19 18:49:24 ] xxxx > Sorry bro....... I really am.
[ 2011.10.19 18:49:40 ] Cipreh > lol good luck, have fun
[ 2011.10.19 18:51:11 ] Cipreh > ^^ everybody gets some pew

We land on the gate as the bulk of the battleship fleet warps off, and someone calls point on a lone Armageddon who was a bit slow on the warp. He melts rather quickly.

http://narwhals.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=10847000

At this point the FW battleship fleet lands on us at the gate, and both sides engage, our FC called a Typhoon primary, but he was able to jump before he popped, we switched target to the next battleship, when someone calls "Cyno up!" over voice comms, and in jump two hostile Archons. FC calls for everyone to warp out, but a few people were unable to escape. We lost a Deimos, Guardian, and Legion.

http://narwhals.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=10847010
http://narwhals.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=10848144
http://narwhals.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=10847014

Well that was the end of the low sec roam. I felt a bit conflicted, because I didn't want to fire on my friends who had come to the defense of our corps wormhole in the past, but my personal feelings cannot get in the way when someone else is in command, and I made sure I didn't give up vital intel to the targets. I could have tried to tell the FC not to engage, but it's very rude to question someone like that in front of the fleet, so I just went along with it.

I apologized to my friend afterwards, and other then being a bit annoyed, he was pretty cool about the whole thing. Turns out his fleet was on its way to gank some carriers, and was in a hurry, otherwise they wouldn't have hot dropped us. It was a pretty fun day all around.

Have any of you ever had something like this happen? How do you handle having to fight against your friends that might not always be on the same side as you?

Smash and Grab

2011-10-19T13:44:00.000-07:00

We had a pretty interesting day today, started out with one of our scouts finding an out of fuel Russian POS in a connected wormhole. This one had obviously just run out of fuel, because all the hangars and arrays were still up on it. They quickly gathered a fleet, and headed over there for a smash and grab op. The fleet made short work of the Ship Maintenance Arrays, the first of which was empty. The second however contained a Maelstrom, and an Iteron III.

http://narwhals.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=10847045
http://narwhals.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=10846721

Then they destroyed the Corporate Hangar Array,

http://narwhals.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=10846720

which dropped a jumble of blueprints, datacores, POS mods, and fittings worth quite a bit. As we were getting the spoils hauled out, in warps an Iteron III, which was promptly popped.

http://narwhals.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=10846719

To our delight, it was their fuel delivery! He was just a little too late. They scooped the rest of the loot, and took off.

The difference between good fights, and Great Fights!

2011-10-14T17:22:00.000-07:00

There are good fights, where it's a somewhat even fight, both sides engage, maybe you both lose some ships but there is a clear victor, kill or loss mails to be posted, and everyone is pretty satisfied. Then, there are the truly great fights, where everything goes right, you fly at the very peak of your ability, and nobody dies.

Those stories are often overlooked in the thirst for juicy kill mails, but in my experience, those are some of the most heart pounding, edge of your seat, enjoyable fights, and not very common at all. Their rarity is part of what makes them so special.

I had one of those great fights, a couple months ago. I had just won a Cynabal from Somer BLINK, and I had been itching to try it out in an actual fight. It wasn't long before I got my chance.

I had just logged in, and no one else was around. I grabbed the bookmarks, and decided to go try to flip a few cans with my Cynabal. So, I warped to the high sec wormhole, and landed in the middle of three Hurricanes, on our side, immediately jumped out. While waiting out the session change timer, I began to formulate a plan.

There wasn't anyone else online at the time, and these guys were camping our wormhole, I was on the high sec side with my Cynabal. I knew I could outrun them, unless one of them had a warp scrambler fit. After my timer expired, I jumped back in, and overheated my MWD towards a celestial, they locked me up and pointed me, but, no scram!

I warped to the celestial and bounced back at 100km of the wormhole, and suprisingly they are still sitting there, so I dropped a bookmark, and bounced off a different celestial to the bookmark at 100km again, so I was over 200km away from the wormhole, and they were still sitting there oblivious. After bookmarking my second spot, I burned in towards them, hoping to pull them off the wormhole, once I hit about 50km out, I start taking potshots at the closest Hurricane with Barrage ammo, he was shield fit, and gets into armor rather quickly, at which point he jumps out.

I was trying to be very careful to stay out of overheated point range of these guys, because if I screwed up, I would have died, and my new ship would be gone in a puff of smoke. I have a faction point fit so I can hold them down out quite a bit further then they can reach me, and with the falloff bonuses on the ship, I was actually landing hits from this extreme range. The remaining two of them started burning towards me at once, so I immediately spun my ship around, and burn out of range. This time, one of the Hurricanes warped off towards the center of the system, the other continued approaching me.

Interesting tactics these guys have...

I continued peppering the approaching Hurricane with my guns, he was apparently nano fit, and approaching pretty quickly. So I begun kiting him away from the wormhole, and bust through his shields, at which point his buddy who warped off landed about 30km away from me. He must have warped back to the wormhole at range and tried to estimate where I was, and in his defense, he did a pretty good job of it, but my ship was just too fast and agile, and I burned away from them both to give myself a little breathing room.

At this point we were about 100km away from the wormhole, basically fighting in open space. The two hostiles are burning towards me, and I was kiting them out towards warp range of the wormhole. As we passed 150km away, I initiated a warp to the wormhole at 30km.

A lot of people don't realize it, but you can actually warp a distance shorter then the minimum 150km, if you make a bookmark just outside minimum warp range to an object, and warp to the object at a range between 10 and 100, you can actually warp a varying distance, between 50 and 140km around the grid. It is a great strategy, if you have time to drop the bookmarks needed.

This entire time, I have just been poking away at them from extreme range, so I was not really doing too much damage, but I have yet to take anything but a stray shot or two from the hostiles, and now I am between them and the exit. I was expecting their friend to be back from repairing at any moment, so I immediately burnt in the opposite direction away from the wormhole, as one of them land on it at zero.

I engaged the closest Hurricane, this time melting through his shields far more quickly. His partner warped to zero on us, and pointed me, I started burning away as the first hostile's shields broke, he jumped out with about half armor. Then, it was just me and the final Hurricane, I burned out of his point range, and started trading fire with him. I was at about half shields when he started taking armor damage, and fled back to high sec.

I couldn't believe it! I had actually won! I engaged three versus one and managed to force them all off! I was buzzing for a couple of days from that fight, with no kill mails to show for it, but I didn't care. My Cynabal had proven it was a force to be reckoned with in PvP, and I didn't die for once! It was a great fight.

Some of the best stories in EVE happen like this, and that's why I still play this game. Yeah, it would have been cool to kill one or all of them, but the real fun from this game isn't the kill mails, loot drops, or fancy ships, it's the thrill of a fight like none other, where for just a few seconds, it's really like your life is on the line.

Situational Awareness

2011-10-03T12:24:00.000-07:00

One of the things we preach constantly to people who are new to w-space, is situational awareness. It's very easy to be lulled into a false sense of security out here. No one talking in local, nothing on d-scan for hours on end, it's so quiet at times that it is eerie.

It's during these calm periods, that even those who have been in wormholes a while, are at their most vulnerable, as they begin to relax their guard. They aren't refreshing their d-scan quite as often, or have decided to get up and stretch their legs, or grab a drink.

That is when the smart hunters strike.

Patience is an absolute necessity in wormhole space, whether it's waiting for enough folks to get together to run a sleeper op, or waiting for a hostile fleet to relax their guard enough for you to strike. It's what will make or break an engagement, and is often the difference between life and death out here.

No matter how quiet it has been, or how long you have been spamming your d-scan button, you can never allow yourself to think you're safe, unless you are inside your POS, or logged off. I cannot tell you how many times, I have been scanning in an "empty" system, and when I warp back to the wormhole itself, and run into a hostile covert ops, decloaking us both. Most of the time, we stare at each other for a brief moment, cloak, and go our separate ways.

It's a stark reminder that no matter how empty or quiet it seems, you're never alone in w-space.

Fighting the ISK war...

2011-09-29T02:46:00.000-07:00

There are many different ways to decide the outcome of an engagement in Eve, whether it's by forcing your enemies to retreat, utterly annihilating them, undermining their morale, or countless other iterations in this sandbox.

One of the major objectives of any sort of group PVP in Eve, is the "ISK war." It's what, to the average pilot, determines who has won or lost a fleet battle, even the outcome of a war. Kill mails perpetuate this, due to the listing of prices of modules and ships on the various kill boards, and so it has become the standard measurement for whether or not you're "winning" at PVP.

Sometimes, you can "win" the fight, even if you have lost more ships then your opponent, by choosing your targets wisely. One such occasion happened about two months ago.

It started out with a report coming in from a scout in our system, of a Loki sitting on a wormhole, uncloaked, with scan probes deployed. So I of course, warp to the wormhole at range to investigate. I landed about 30km off the wormhole, and as soon as I was out of warp, the Loki cloaks up.

Well that's good news, means that he is probably going to engage me. So I start slow boating over to the wormhole with my Hurricane, while a fleet gathers at the POS. I am trying to get him to uncloak and engage me off the wormhole, so he cannot jump back out, and escape.

I made it to about 20km off the wormhole, and he appears right on top of me, points and webs me, and we start chewing away at each other. He is shield fit, and I am hitting half armor as he reaches peak recharge on his shields, when I hear the wormhole activate three times in rapid succession. I call for our fleet to warp in, at 0 on the wormhole, and call the Loki primary. By the time my fleet lands on grid, I am starting to bleed into structure, and shortly after, my hurricane pops.

http://clann.eve-kill.net/?a=pilot_detail&plt_id=528540

I tell the fleet to stay on the Loki, as he had less then 20% shields remaining. I warp my pod out, and reship into a Myrmidon at my POS, and land just in time to see him explode.

http://clann.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=10222603

At this point his buddies have uncloaked on the wormhole, and engaged our fleet. The hostile force consisted of a Tengu, a second Loki, a Myrmidon, and a Hurricane. Our fleet was two Hurricanes, a Prophecy, my Myrmidon, and a Falcon. I called for the Falcon to jam the Tengu and second Loki, and called the hostile Myrmidon as the primary target, since he was farthest from the wormhole. We then lost two more hurricanes in rapid succession to their withering DPS.

http://clann.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=10222640

http://clann.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=10222605

At least they managed to get their pods out. They head back to their POS and reship, and rejoin the fight.

Our Falcon pilot calls that he has both the hostile T3's jammed and we are starting to chew through the Myrmidons armor. He seems to have a lot of armor, but finally, he explodes.

http://clann.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=10222600

Followed shortly by his pod.

http://clann.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=10223538

At this point the remaining hostile fleet jumps out the wormhole, and disappears. We loot the field, and post eyes on the wormhole, while we assess our losses. We are feeling a little dejected about losing three ships to take down two, until we see the battle report for the enagement.

http://clann.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_related&kll_id=10222603

Heck, I will make that trade any day.

Later on that night, the Loki pilot tried to sneak back into our system with a scanner, which one of our scouts promptly popped,

http://clann.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=10225784

and podded.

http://clann.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=10225785

I don't think we will be seeing them around anytime soon.

This is just one of many cases, where even though we lost more ships then our enemies, we still came out on top in the "ISK war". We considered it a win, not only because we destroyed more isk then we lost, but also because we kept control of the wormhole, and forced the hostile fleet from the battlefield.

I would love to hear some of your stories where you fought and lost, but still came out ahead on the kill boards. Please post them in the comments section below.

Wormhole World War!

2011-09-26T15:31:00.000-07:00

Well, things have finally calmed down a bit for us, so I have some time to do this post. I have a lot of ground to cover, so this is going to be a long one. As I said before, this has been a very busy week for us. On top of the war dec we have active from Cosa Nostra., we've had continued action verus Brotherhood of Starbridge, a Russian wormhole alliance.

To understand the whole story behind what's going on, I have to give you a bit of history about Starbridge and the Narwhals.

Our alliance and theirs have fought in the past, most recently, we declared war on them after they had reinforced a POS in one of our alliance members system.   During the war, Cosa Nostra. declared war on us as well, and there were several engagements. During the course of the fighting, we completely destroyed two Starbridge controlled wormholes, and attacked a third, causing them to self destruct several billion isk worth of ships. (That's another story for when it's slow.) They managed to reinforce a single POS, belonging to an alliance member corp, before we routed them from the system.

Fast forward to two weeks later, we get the call that Starbridge and their allies have invaded one of our allies, Aquila Inc. They have several dreads, and a 150+ gang of RR Drakes, Tengus, Logi, ECM, Command ships, and assorted others, in the system and they have started seiging a POS. Now, the guys from Aquila are not people you want to mess with on their own, but they just didn't have the numbers to repel an invasion of this size.

So, we rallied the troops, and put the call out to all of our allies, and friends, as well as some former enemies, and gathered a 150 person fleet of our own, consisting of Apeture Harmonics, Talocan United, Narwhals Ate my Duck, Transmission Lost, and various other wormhole corps and alliances.   We formed up and waited in high sec for an entrance into the wormhole.

The folks from Aquila who were there fighting for their home did an amazing job, fighting outnumbered better then 4 to 1, and managed to take control of their static several times throughout the day, but were unable to keep control of it long enough for us to move the fleet in.

Below are the related kills from the Aquila forces who fought throughout the day to keep their home.

http://kb.eveaquila.com/?a=kill_related&kll_id=13276

Damn, I am glad they are on our side.

The Aquila home system is a class 5 wormhole, so they had to scan a route out through several other systems, and Starbridge was collapsing, or mass reducing the wormhole, every time they took control of it. Which meant the Aquila scanners were in constant danger of getting trapped out, every time they tried to find us a way in.

While the battle is ongoing, our shrinking fleet is sitting docked up in a central high sec location, not really doing much, and starting to lose members to AFK, boredom, and time.  Knowing we need to keep the momentum up, or risk losing most of our fleet, I started asking around, trying to find if anyone had an alt logged off in a Starbridge controlled wormhole. One of the guys in fleet chimes in, that he has an alt in a Starbridge class 2, with a barely defended POS.

Jackpot!

I ask him to scan us a way into the system, and luckily it's very close. I order the fleet to make best speed over there,  and we form up in system, and head into their system.

Well, lightly defended is one way of describing this POS, it had a total of three batteries on it, which our 120+ person fleet made quick work of. While we waited for news on an entrance to the Aquila system, we reinforced their POS, which to our suprise, only had 15 hours of Strontium in it.

After the fleet finished beating down their POS, there was some discussion on whether the fleet should head to another Starbridge system, and continue our offensive, or go back to our staging area, and wait for word from Aquila.   It was decided that we would go back to the rally point, and wait, for an entrance, as it was getting very late over in Russia, and reports were coming in that hostile fleet numbers were dwindling.

Aquila strikes a massive blow to Starbridge when they catch their Orca, with THREE large Amarr towers in it! Now they will have a harder time reinforcing, as well as popping wormholes. Personally, I think this was the turning point in the battle for control of the system.

http://kb.eveaquila.com/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=13276

Back to the waiting game...

About forty minutes later, I finally get the report that Aquila has taken control of their static wormhole, and has found a null sec connection. I plug it into my autopilot, and it's nearly 40 jumps away, deep in null. Shit, too far away. Aquila begins collapsing the null wormhole, trying to get closer, when Starbridge manages to take back the static, and collapses it.

After another thirty minutes or so of back and forth, the fleet is starting to get antsy, when Aquila announces they have regained control, and connected to Firebird Squadron's home wormhole.   I am on good terms with the folks from FBS, so I quickly convo'd one of them, and asked them if they could find us a route in.

More waiting...

Finally, we get a report that we have a lowsec entrance to the chain that will get us into the Aquila system, and it's only 14 jumps away! I order the fleet to make best speed to that system, and dock in top station, while we get bookmarks copied.    Once the majority of the fleet is there, we move through the chain quickly and jumped into the Aquila system. It looked like someone had kicked a wasps nest and an angry swarm of 100+ T3's came boiling out.

We quickly got bookmarks to the various POS in the system, and setup a camp on the wormhole, while the majority of the fleet began the assault on the Starbridge tower. After reinforcing and rape caging the tower, we waited for them to log in, and hopefully put up a fight.

Throughout the night, we have people watching the hostile tower constantly, killing off anyone who tried to escape, and keeping track of the folks who were stuck in the POS or AFK.    At some point, one of the people in our fleet figured out the password for the enemy shields, and I have heard conflicting stories about how this was done, but the results were the same either way.

We proceeded to bump the afk members of their fleet out of the POS and destroy them.

http://narwhals.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_related&kll_id=10694946

They are gonna be pissed when they wake up.

Some more time passes, and the fleet continues to kill stragglers that log in, until our numbers wane just before downtime.  At which point the invaders log in en masse, and beeline through our skeleton crew guarding the wormhole, and make it out with about half their fleet.

After downtime, the EU timezone takes over guarding the system, gets a few more kills, and finishes off the pos.

http://kb.eveaquila.com/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=13354

Though they are still getting kills today as Starbridge and friends are logging back into the Aquila system, and I doubt this is the last we will hear from Brotherhood of Starbridge.

Overall battle report below.

http://kb.eveaquila.com/?a=cc_detail&ctr_id=1&view=kills

I would call that a definate win for us!

EDIT: The Aquila guys did a write up from their side of the fight over at FHC.

http://failheap-challenge.com/showthread.php?144-Wormhole-Space&p=222641&viewfull=1#post222641

Busy week! Part 1

2011-09-24T03:59:00.000-07:00

It has been a busy couple of days in-game, lots going on out in w-space! Let me start out by saying that we had war declared on us by Cosa Nostra. alliance, who we had fought against during our recent campaign versus Brotherhood of Starbridge. They are a high sec war dec alliance, because we live and work in w-space, they are effectively no threat to our day to day operations.

So the other night, I am spinning around my POS, and I decide to try and get a fleet to go hunt down some of these war targets, and ask people to start forming up near Amarr. On my way over there, I jump into Kamio where there's a war target Stiletto, on the gate.

Well crap, there's no way I can warp off before he points me, so I decide to burn back to the gate, try to overheat my MWD, only to realize I am scrammed.

Shit...

By this time, a hostile Huginn, Cerberus, and Tengu, had landed on the gate, I was really in trouble in my Hurricane. I start shooting at the Stiletto, hoping to pop him to regain use of my MWD and escape, got a lucky shot off with my 425mm Autocannon's and boom.

http://clann.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=10687069

I activated my overheated MWD, aligned to a celestial, and proceeded to die in a fiery explosion.

http://clann.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_8detail&kll_id=1068706

Oh well, I got my pod out, and headed over to Amarr. I had to refit for this WT hunt, and now I knew where they were! So I fit up another Hurricane, and waited for the fleet to assemble. There were probably 10-12 of us in fleet, just waiting for people to get there, when someone says on comms, "We have a Nidhoggur tackled on a HS wormhole!"

Well now... I have never gotten a carrier kill before.

The fleet decides to head over there, and we form up on the wormhole and jump in, and the Nidhoggur is still there! We get more points on him, and start draining his cap. We are calling for more DPS, and backup, when we notice a Chimera on D-Scan, that wasn't there a few minutes ago. About a minute later, he lands on grid with us and starts energy transferring to the Nidhoggur.

We decide the Chimera is the bigger threat so we switch our DPS and neuts over to him. We have more and more people arriving by the minute, as word is spread that we have two carriers tackled on a high sec wormhole. Both carriers occasionally launch fighters, but they were called primary, and popped quickly, forcing the carriers to recall them. The Chimera is melting pretty fast under our DPS, and when he hits about 15% structure, he self destructs.

Boooooooo!!!!!!!!!! Though someone did manage to catch the pod.

http://clann.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=10687530

Well, at least we still have the Nidhoggur! We move over to him and start shooting at him, he goes down pretty quickly and without a fight, having logged off at about half armor. He exploded, and there was much rejoicing.

http://clann.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=10687522

Then we scanned down his pod.

http://clann.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=10687531

After we looted the field, we headed back out to look for some war targets, but they had all either docked up or logged. So we called it a night and I went back to the wormhole, killed some sleepers, and logged for the night.

Tales of Yarr!

2011-09-22T01:01:00.000-07:00

So I have been known to go pirating occasionally, and sometimes I get good fights, others I get blown up in new and sometimes hilarious ways.

This is not one of those stories.

This one goes back a little ways, I had just finished training Heavy Assault Cruisers IV, and finally gotten into a Vagabond, and I had been anxious to give it a try in a real fight. Unfortunately, no such opportunity presented itself.

So, I decided to go can flipping with my brand new Vagabond. I swapped out the Energy Neutralizer, for a Tech II Cloaking Device, and headed out to high sec.

I jump out, and check my D-Scan, see a couple of Hulk's, and decide to look around. Warp to the first belt, and there's a guy mining in a Hulk here, but no jet can. So I hopped around the belts a bit, but none of the people out there seemed to be mining into a can.

Well then... Onward to the next system!

I jumped into Freatlidur, and warped to a central planet to D-Scan. I saw quite a few Hulks out there, but only a couple of jet cans.

Alright, looks promising so far...

I land in a belt, with a Hulk mining into a jet can about 60km off. I burn over towards him with my MWD. Jeez the Vagabond is fast, covered the 60km in several seconds as I approached the can. I quickly dropped my own can and scooped his minerals over to it. The Hulk immediately warped off.

So I started burning away from the can, and hit my cloak when I got to about 20km off. Aligned my ship to the can, and waited patiently. After about five minutes, I started to get bored of sitting there, and wanted to go find some other less invisible target, but I stayed put. Man, I am glad I did. So fast forward to about 15 minutes later, I know it was at least 15 minutes, my aggression timer had expired. I am just getting ready to take off, and in warps... An Orca!

He has my full attention now, as he lazily slow boats over to the jet can, and as he gets in transfer range, I decloak. He grabs the can and starts to align, and I overheat my MWD and slam my brand new Vagabond right into the side of his Orca, I was spamming the target lock, waiting for the sensor recalbration timer to expire.

Those six seconds seemed to take forever, but finally I got him locked and pointed.

I hit my guns, and start orbiting him at 17km. I am slowly burning my way through his shields, and he launches Hammerhead II's and sends them after me. I manage to keep them off me for a while by pulsing my MWD, but I am starting to run dangerously low on cap, and his drones soon began making headway through my shields.

By this point he is at about three quarters armor, and I am just hitting my peak recharge on my shields. I start wondering if I am going to be able to pull this off, and decide to try to ransom him and save myself the risk of losing the kill. So I try to convo him, and I get the popup that he is "offline or unavailable". This fool tried to logoffski. No ransom for him! I bring my concentration back to the task at hand, overheat my guns, and try to get through this guys armor. My shields are at about 10%, and they won't last much longer. He is just hitting 1/3 armor.

At this point, it could no longer be a solo kill, so I started calling for help in corp chat, and two of my buddies jumped out and headed over. I was starting to take armor damage, so I told them to hurry up! The Orca is almost in structure and I am about half armor when they finally land on grid with us, and we finish him off in short order.

http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/killmail.php?id=12467932

Awesome first kill for my brand new Vagabond. After we post the mail, we notice that it was a double kill! He had a Muninn in his ship bay of the Orca. Ouch.

Fun in Null Sec

2011-09-20T21:35:00.000-07:00

We primarily operate out of wormhole space, but we have been known to venture into high, low, and null security space. When we get a low or null sec connection to our home system, we usually stick our heads out, take a look around, sometimes it's the middle of nowhere, sometimes it's a station system in a null sec Sansha mission hub.

Most recently, we had a null sec connection, which did in fact connect to a station system in HM-UVD, in the Stain region. I had just logged on, grabbed the bookmarks, and decided that I should go take a look around outside. So, I jump out in my Cheetah and hit my d-scan...

Whoa...

Tengu, Tengu, Machariel, Drake, Tengu, Tengu, CNR, and assorted other ships, I quickly check my overview settings, and see that there's no force fields on d-scan.

I immediately start trying to gather people in corp chat, but it was a slow day for us, I managed to get one of my corp mates in his Legion to come and sit inside the wormhole, while I scanned down our target. First hit was a Tengu, I scan him down, and warp to him cloaked at 50km, unfortunately, there was no one there but a bunch of rats.

Oh well, I start scanning down another ship, this time, a Drake fighting some battleship rats in a complex. I warp to him at 50km, and start slow boating over to point range, calling for my buddy to warp in on me. I decloak and get a point and web on him, he starts targeting me and opens fire I am about half armor when my corp mate lands, and I have to warp out, he gets point on the Drake, and kills him.

http://clann.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=10660893

In the meantime, I have bounced from a celestial back to the scene of the fight, and manage to get there just in time to see his pod get squished.

http://clann.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=10660920

Feeling pretty confident after killing the Drake, we decided to try for another kill. In hindsight, it was probably not the best idea. So I take off and start scanning down another ship, I scan down a Cerberus, and warp to him at 30km. He is sitting off the station in system, about 50km from the undock.

Not really thinking about it, I call for the warp in, though the smell of bait is painfully obvious in retrospect. I decloak and scramble him, and my corp mate lands on grid, starts shooting at this Cerberus, and it's taking a strangely small amount of damage from his Legion. Then in warps a Rifter and a Harbinger, I call for the Legion to warp out, and I start burning out of point range of the Cerberus. I overheated my MWD and still couldn't get away fast enough to escape, I got popped and lost my Cheetah, though I managed to get my pod out.

http://clann.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=10661012

We headed back to the wormhole, and exchanged GF's in local, called it a night after that.

Fast Forward to Today!

2011-09-20T15:07:00.000-07:00

So we had a pretty fun engagement today in our wormhole, it was a well prepared fleet. They consisted of a Sacrilege, Scimitar, Vagabond, Vagabond, Drake, Rokh, and a Rapier. Basically, our scout on the wormhole called an activation, and that there was a Rokh sitting on the inside of the wormhole.

So we formed up the fleet and got on teamspeak, started getting everything organized. We noticed that the Rokh pilot had several corp and alliance mates in system. We formed up with a Prophecy, Proteus, Loki, Drake, Hurricane. After forming up at the pos, we warped in, and engaged the Rokh, got through his shields rather quickly, at which point, he jumped out. Our scout on the other side, reported he warped off, and we continued forming up at the wormhole in case he returned.

At this point, we swapped out some of our fleet for high dps battleships, we dropped the Proteus, Loki, and Prophecy, for a Tempest, Typhoon, and Apocalypse. We were hoping to be able to kill him before his session change timer expired if he came back in. This is where stuff started to go wrong. We had the Tempest and Typhoon, sitting at zero on the wormhole, and the Apocalypse sitting about 40km off the wormhole.

The Rokh jumped back in, followed by a Rapier, who immediately cloaked up, we engaged the Rokh, and he was going down fast. He managed to make it back out the wormhole with less then half structure remaining, as he jumped out, our scout on the other side, called the other members of his fleet landing on the wormhole. I called for the Apocalypse to try to make it to the wormhole to jump out, but at that moment, their fleet jumped in and the Rapier decloaked and webbed and pointed him, they called the Apocalypse primary, and he went down just out of jump range of the wormhole.

http://clann.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=10677114

We started engaging the hostile fleet, I called the Scimitar primary, but our battleship sized weapons weren't able to hit him effectively. The hostile fleet called our Tempest primary next, and he jumped out with low armor, and they then switched to my Typhoon. I jumped out with about half my armor remaining, and we regrouped on the other side of the wormhole. At this point, we are asking for people in alliance who are nearby to form up, but unfortunately, there was no one close.

So I decided to try to trap them in the wormhole, since we had yet to see a scanner on their side. It would slow them down, and keep them there long enough, to hopefully rally a fleet and catch them. The Tempest and I both went and repaired at a station, and then simultaneously jumped in with our 100mn MWD's active.

SUCCESS! (Sort of.) The wormhole went critically disrupted on our jump in. We held our session change cloak, and when our timer was up, we both jumped back out and slammed the door in their faces. Ideally we would have been on the other side of the wormhole when it closed, though being outnumbered as we were, it's probably for the best that we ended up where we did.

At this point, we had our scout in the wormhole scanning for the new connection, which he found quickly, but it was 22 jumps away. I call for the fleet that got trapped outside to make best speed to the new entrance and form up at a planet. Unknown to me, this is where we lost the chance to avenge our BS loss.

As we are making our way over to the new entrance, our scout is scanning down their fleet and getting their safe spots, keeping an eye on dscan for hostile scanner probes. The entire time, we were expecting one of them to scan down the new entrance and lead their fleet to safety, it turned out, none of them had probe launchers fitted. While we are heading towards the wormhole, I am trying to rally people in our alliance, and in corp, and we get a decent sized fleet going, probably about ten or eleven ships, all heading for the rally system. More people are logging in, in corp, and we are getting optimistic, "These guys don't have probes, we are going to kill them all!"

Pfft... yeah right.

So we make it to the rally system, and head into the wormhole, we have about six people sitting on the wormhole waiting for a warp disruptor bubble to online, and in jumps a neutral Helios. We lock him up and are about to vaporize him, when the entire enemy fleet lands right on top of us, and jumps out to safety. Turns out the helios was a neutral alt, who had followed one of the folks in our fleet from the old location to the new entrance, and scanned down the wormhole from the outside, jumped in, and gave the hostile fleet a warp in, to get out of the system. GF's were exchanged, and some smack was talked, but it was a pretty fun engagement either way.

Next time though I am going to make sure we take the scenic route, to prevent us from being followed.

A little backstory...

2011-09-20T02:20:00.000-07:00

Well, I figure that I should give you an idea of what I am about. I enjoy shooting at stuff, mainly people, and their expensive or shiny internet spaceships.

You could say that I got the PvP bug as a relatively new character. My first ever kill was while I was running a mission. I had just bought my first hurricane, fitted and rigged it, all t1 of course, but I was excited to be able to fly such a badass looking ship. (It was a large part of the reason I picked Minmatar as my starting race.)

So anyhow, I am clearing the mission, and I get to the last room, and head towards the can with the mission objective in it, and in warps an Enyo assault frigate. Now, me being a noob, just kept on killing those rats. Meanwhile, he burned over, snagged the misson objective, and turns red to me. After checking with the folks in Republic Military School, the Minmatar NPC corp, they assured me I could shoot at him if he was red to me. So I locked him up and fired, and the rest, as they say, is history.

http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/killmail.php?id=8775586

I honestly think he was pretty suprised. Sadly, my mission objective was destroyed in the wreck, and I ended up failing that mission anyhow.

About Clann Fian

2011-09-19T18:55:00.000-07:00

Public Channel: CLANN Fian Public

We follow a NBSI (not blue shoot it) ROE (Rules of Engagement) Eve Wide. If we decide to talk things out whatever deals we offer will be followed, but make sure you are talking to someone in corp who has the power to negotiate. If you are offered a deal or safe passage we will honor it. If you are blue to our corp or alliance we will not shoot, but do not come into our wspace systems uninvited or you are hostile blue or no.

In wspace: if you are in a system where we have a POS and you have not announced yourself, you are a hostile. If you are in a system without a POS you are a hostile. If we are in your system an early convo might save you some grief, and might not.

In early Ireland, fianna (singular fian) were small, semi-independent warrior bands who lived apart from society in the forests as mercenaries, bandits and hunters, but could be called upon by kings in times of war.

Membership was subject to rigorous tests. In one such test the applicant would stand in a waist-deep hole armed with a shield while nine warriors threw spears at him; if he was wounded, he failed. In another his hair would be braided, and he would be pursued through the forest; he would fail if he was caught, if a branch cracked under his feet, or if the braids in his hair were disturbed. He would have to be able to leap over a branch the height of his forehead, pass under one as low as his knee, and pull a thorn from his foot without slowing down. He also needed to be a skilled poet.

We have three mottoes:
* Glaine ár gcroí (Purity of our hearts)
* Neart ár ngéag (Strength of our limbs)
* Beart de réir ár mbriathar (Action to match our speech)

The tradition of the Fiana lives on in Clann Fian. If you believe you are equal to the task perhaps you can pursue the path of the Fian.

We are currently living and working in wspace while recruiting pilots - we have profitable work available for those interested in wspace - for all diplomatic or recruitment questions please contact McKupsyde, N Sohl, Cipreh, or Kathr

Our website: http://clann.guildlaunch.com/

Our killboard: http://clann.eve-kill.net/

New Blog!

2011-09-19T18:51:00.000-07:00

Well, I am new to this whole blogging thing, and more then a few people have told me I should make one.

Where to start...

I am a three year veteran of Eve Online, and the CEO of a wormhole corporation.    I started playing, did the tutorials, and the Sisters of Eve epic arc, and promptly became terribly bored of running missions.   After some shopping around, I found a wormhole corp, who was willing to take me in and show me the ropes.   That corp was Clann Fian. http://clann.guildlaunch.com/

I joined them with under 2 million skillpoints, and got my start as a security guard for our mining crews and salvaging for our combat crews. Almost three years, and forty something hurricanes later, I am now the proud CEO of Clann. (That's an Eve success story if I have ever heard one.)

It didn't happen overnight, it took a long time, and a lot of work. This blog will talk about our adventures as a corp, and some of my solo escapades.   I wouldn't be where I am in the game today without the people in my corp, and I am grateful that they gave me the chances they did.