Mine! Mine! Mine!

I was talking to a non-EVE playing friend in comms when I was poked. The Lord Arbitrator Chief Smurf was calling for pilots to get into "armour cruiser / AHAC / T3" for a probable fight just after downtime.

A quick change of channel, sorry Samantha but my bro's called, and I'm in a Loki heading towards the target system. People smarter than me have already setup bookmarks and all I have to do is enter the target, warp to a deep safe and logoff.

Done and I return to Samantha to suffer her continued commentary on Diablo 3 as she leaves a swath of destruction (she's much more entertaining than I make out and an awesome lady in general) in-game.

Shaking Hands Saying, How Do You Do

We're given more information on the target and our comms start to fill up with pilots from fellow WH organisation Haywire who have come to join us for this.

This was very good news as it meant that an old friend, Gizmo Tinker, who had recently moved to Haywire (form CFC/Goonswarm) would join us and here was a chance to catch up and have some fun together. Fun is a loose word considering the evil bastard was flying an ECMgu (ECM equipped Tengu) and I seriously had to stop myself shooting him every time I saw that ship...

Waiting

Downtime comes and goes, only cloaky ships login and start to monitor the target system and, sods law, nothing much happened. I was at the login system ready to login and there was nothing to login to.

The enemy target, a True Sansha Control Tower, came out of reinforcement around 15 minutes after downtime and so we had to be patient as a few enemy pilots logged in but really nothing happened. I was tempted to quit because it was getting late and I had work the next day but something must have made me stay.

So it was decided to provide bait and thus four T3's and two Guardians were asked to login and proceed to the tower and start to attack it. This was the spur that was needed and suddenly there was a raft of logins from the enemy forces and they assembled a fleet around three or four Dominx's with other decent dps cruisers and smaller vessels.

They warped to tactical off the tower and then into our bait fleet.

The Trap Is Sprung

They attacked our force and the order to to login, join fleet and warp to our "hero tackle" was given. Of course I was a little slow to cotton on to this and it was only as I heard tackle being made that I logged in, as always late to the party am I.

I entered warp and landed roughly in the middle of the furball, a "rage cage" of Medium and Large Warp Disruptor bubbles had been setup by the enemy to ensure the POS was suppressed but we didn't care. We had targets and they were in our sights.

Ships were pointed and the FC's issued orders, the Dominix's were easy to hold on to but we needed to get as much as possible in terms of other ship types. Those stuck in bubbles were easy but a couple were smart enough to burn clear and escape our clutches.

You didn't want that ship did you?

I pointed and webbed what I could and managed to get on a couple of kills and even, rather embarrassingly, managed to get the final blow on a ship after doing two cycles of damage. Hey a kill is a kill but I felt bad because two other pilots did nearly 95% of the damage and I sneaked in the final blow.

The Trap Has A Surprise

Whilst this was ongoing one of the fleet, who was still cloaked and near the enemy POS that had been erected, setup a Medium Warp Disruptor 300km from their tower to catch ships that were trying to escape the fight.

A Republic Fleet Firetail and the only Dominix to escape the main battle fell for this but fortune favoured a couple of other pilots who used different celestials as warp outs and they escaped to the safety of their POS.

The Firetail was able to escape initial capture and managed to warp into the POS but the Dominix did not and was roasted rather quickly.

Finishing Up

The battle was over in a couple of minutes and without a single loss and a nice 1.5b bill in lost ships to the enemy. The BR is very one sided but it was a very slick and professional engagement from my view and credit to our FC's, as well as Louis and Trinkets Friend for putting it together.

We took the opportunity to loot the field but also the decision was made to attack the POS ourselves. It looked inviting with research modules, lots of Enormous Containers and a Ship Maintenance Array ready for plunder.

A few people left system and reshipped whilst I took position on the high sec entry in case we had visitors as the fleet opened up on the POS.

Settling In For The Long Run

Our fleet was not setup for POS bashing and it took nearly 50 minutes to go from 25% shield to 0% and it was frustrating but extra ammo was bought in for those in need. Except me of course, I was told that I could not have ammo because it was 4 jumps in the other direction... 

Scouts were posted and we monitored d-scan (as you should in a WH) almost religiously but we were left alone to finish the tower. 

The enemy we had attacked returned in cloaky ships but only to watch, we had quite a nice conversation in Local with them and found they'd been preparing and working on this POS attack for THREE MONTHS and we come in and steal it from them.

It was all very cordial in the end and I hope our new Finnish friends learnt a couple of lessons from it.

They Think Its All Over

I can't remember exactly how long it took to finish off the tower but it was enough that I watched at least three videos on YouTube from The Might Jingles and his are normally 20 minutes long at minimum.

I have to mention a very unlucky enemy Nemesis whose pilot suffered a disconnection whilst watching us loot the destroyed tower from distance. We saw him appear and he was 75km from me so I MWD'd to him to get in point range, fortunately my drones were able to get there first and a friendly Oracle finished him off. The pod sat there as I pointed and webbed him and we sent him to high sec to the anguished cry of his corp mate in Local.

The end did come and whilst BUGGERY did not get the tower kill mail we did have fun killing everything else, resulting in some nice drops totally between 4b and 4.5b ISK.

Looting the remains actually seemed to take a lot longer than the fighting that happened, we made use of dropped haulers to move stuff out but a lot of trips had to be made as well as making sure that we left adequate escort in case an opportunity to pick off one of our ships was to happen.

Loot-wise there is nearly 2b ISk to be shared amongst those there for the kills and this isn't too bad at all. Ammo can be replaced and still leave a little ISK for investment or to buy something new to fly.

Energy Levels Replenished

Two good fights in one weekend, I'm quite exhausted and also I've found that my Bitter-Vet levels have dropped to very low levels thanks to this. 

You'll have to excuse me now, I have more blog posts to write as I'm on a mission from Bob...