O Titan, My Titan

I've previously covered the killing of a Titan in Mai, located in low sec Domain, and how there is a group of pilots here who ply their trade in this system with the sole purpose of killing any and all capital ships that attempt to use it.

George Takei approves again (possibly)

Acting Suspicious

With eyes watching the system and anyone who entered, it was the arrival of a character called Zynen approximately 90 minutes beforehand that piqued their interest. The pilot, instead of flying directly to station, docking up and remaining there started warping around the system, obviously checking for pilots in each station and then warped back to the only gate in system and left.

This behaviour raised a red flag in the minds of the pilots watching, something was going to happen.

Target Finder

Zynen returned to Mai shortly after leaving but a 5 degree d-scan of the Zaimeth gate did not show the pilot there, a 15 degree did but not the smaller angle, an angle that would show they were on the gate. A couple of further d-scans at different locations (to triangulate) showed Zynen at a point between station 4 and the Zaimeth gate.

Research was performed on the pilot to see previous losses and who they might be associated with but this wasn't overly useful as kills were found back two years but not much recently. As a result they believed they may be seeing a super capital cyno rather than the titan which arrived.

Smash and Grab

At 0721 EVE time a cyno went up in Mai, a cloaky bump ship immediately warped in at range and as soon as the Avatar class titan of Suki Antollare appeared on grid the microwarp drive was lit and the Avatar was bumped, so as to prevent any immediate warp away that the titan pilot was expected to be doing.

Avatar Class Titan

The bump ship was not alone, whilst he was in warp the firepower that appears on the killmail was bought online and immediately entered warp to the cyno. Bumps continued on the titan as the dps and tackle arrived on grid and then the titan was caught.

Open Fire, All Weapons

The dreadnoughts sieged as soon as they exited warp and, with eyes still on the Zynen who had moved into neighbouring Zaimeth, a cyno inhibitor was deployed in order to try to make it harder for rescue to come. It must have worked as after the titans mobile depot was destroyed Zynen exited Zaimeth and was not seen again and no rescue force was seen to assemble or come towards Mai.

Update: Jean Learner started this thread on Reddit regarding this kill and mentioned that when the titan was at 51% armour they had a rescue ready but the deployment of the cyno inhibitor and the lack of cyno fitted to the titan meant nothing happened.

Big Badda Boom

11 minutes, or just under two dreadnaught seige cycles, was all it took from first shot to the gigantic explosion that swallowed the Avatar of Suki Antollare. The grid was now clear and salvagers could be bought in.

Good fights were posted in local but the titan pilot remained silent and very quickly logged out after losing the titan.

Back Slapping

Loot was taken, the wreck salvaged (eventually, a titan has a lot of salvage) and what was taken was split between the pilots involved.

The banter on teamspeak was laid back but I did detect some smugness and rightly so. Mai has seen another titan die to the same killers as last time.

Thanks to Bil Tuesday, FreeSoul5150 and Emmgel for their assistance in writing this report. I haven't attempted to contact Suki Antollare because I'm almost certain they will not speak to me.

Bonus Comment: The killmail shows that the Nyx used fighters and not fighter bombers, those of us that know Bix Bro are not at all surprised at this and so was Bix Bro who didn't know they had fighters on grid and honestly probably also had no idea what ship they were flying. It's a New Zealand thing.

Purple Moros Down

[So they wanted to kill a purple carrier, but then they turned on you.]
I knew they would.
             - Apex Bex.

What follows is the After Action Report by Apex Bex, longtime friend and EVE compatriot, who has returned to living in a WH and also working with some people of "dubious honour". I post it here as its a great story about how people create content and how friends can turn on friends for fun.

Now, it’s important to identify what a ‘MATE’ roam is. Basically, its a group of Aussie corps/pilots who get together now and again for PvP roams and other shenanigans. There are affiliations within the group, but largely it’s a not purple, shoot it kind of arrangement and little love lost between many of the participants. 

The Story

It was getting late on Friday night and having made some ISK in my C2 Wormhole, I was jumping through high sec to Jita to unload some products. It’s at about this point that my CEO mentions one of the guys on his ‘MATE’ roam is busting out a Chimera, to what end I had no idea. 

Caldari carrier, makes a nice big explosion when killed

So Trinket gets it in his head that it’d be pretty funny to drop a Moros on the Chimera. There was apparently someone else of similar thinking bringing another Moros and he would be the secondary target. Since going back to W-Space I’ve barely even looked sideways at my cap fleet and the Blap Moros was definitely my favourite of the bunch. 

[Blap Moros]

3x Limited Mega Ion Siege Blaster I

1x Siege Module II

2x Heavy Capacitor Booster II

1x Sensor Booster II

2x Tracking Computer II

1x Damage Control II

1x Capital Inefficient Armor Repair Unit

3x Magnetic Field Stabilizer II

2x Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II

2x Capital Trimark Armor Pump I

1x Capital Hybrid Collision Accelerator II

I almost never use it, so I volunteered to be 'the guy', I could insta jump to my clone in Aurohunen anyway and did.

I should’ve checked the clone before I jumped to it, as I found out later it had a full LG crystal set in it. Less than ideal for an armour Moros, but what the hell. This was in LowSec anyway, only galactic stupidity would see me lose my clone too. 

As the moment to jump drew nearer the destination system was linked in private chat from Trinkets. Tama. Fucking Tama. OK, this was almost certain death then. I thought ‘fuck it – it’s just pixels’, spent half a billion on insurance and undocked the Moros in Aurohunen, waiting for the cyno to go up.

Jump, Jump, Jump

Moments later the cyno is lit and I clasp my balls firmly in my left hand and jumped into Tama, appearing at the sun no less. Sure enough, there was a swarm of purple that comprised the ‘MATE’ fleet and the Chimera was among them. I immediately sieged and let fly with Guristas Anti-Matter from about 15km’s. 

The poor Chimmy never had a chance. TeamSpeak was alive with hoots & wtf's as purple opened up on purple and the carrier exploded less than a minute into my siege cycle.

Kill: Bam Stroker (Chimera)

Suddenly, Oh Bugger, Surprise!

It was at this point that I learned just how loyal the ‘MATE’ fleet was =]. I was kicked from fleet and the 30 odd sub caps opened up on me. It was about now I was really pleased with myself for taking the insurance. My 3 Billion ISK Dread was fully covered now and I was just going to try to take as many with me as I could. 

I started locking up everything big enough to hit and not moving enough. Primary was of course going to be the Armageddon that was neuting my capacitor hard. It went down rapidly and I moved onto the Megathron. It too succumbed at point blank range in just two volleys. 

Kill: Ceadeus (Armageddon)

Kill: Kech Eistiras (Megathron)

Even a Drake that was silly enough to sit still for a minute went down. 

Kill: Kato's Pete (Drake)

I’m still behind on the ISK war but was having too much fun to give too much of a fuck at this point, so now with only cruisers on the field and no tackle to hold them still enough I dropped a depot and quickly refit for cap regen as I was almost out of boosters. 

Need to refit in space? The mobile depot is the "must have" deployable

Amazingly they let my depot deploy and I dropped the tracking computers for cap rechargers but that was as far as I got when the depot started taking fire. I scooped it up but the opportunity wouldn't present itself again to drop it on the field.

I still had at least 6 siege cycles worth of stront left so no trouble tanking this sub cap fleet now, but I was also made aware that there was a Snuff Box fleet en route. They wouldn't be 'kitchen sinking it' and their arrival would be the end of me, unless I could get the cap to jump out.

The Final Countdown

Under the sustained DPS and cap warfare I could never quite get enough cap to jump, the closest I got I was still about 5% short and moments later the Snuff Box fleet landed, comprised mostly of Command Ships with a Heavy Interdictor and a Neut Armageddon. 

The Armageddon maintained just enough transversal to be unhittable to my guns, especially without my tracking computers fitted, and he would soon have me neuted out and unable to operate either defensive or offensive modules let alone jump out.

If I was going to die I would do so trying to take as many of them as possible with me and I did notice that one of their Command Ships was sitting dead still about 3,000m off my starboard side, so I took the shot Hilariously, he popped on the second volley and now the ISK war had a half a billion ISK Command Ship on my side.

Kill: Tau AD (Absolution)

Then, eight minutes later, I finally succumbed to the incoming fire and exploded:

Kill: Apex Bex (Moros)

and notice the lack of pod killmail, yup he was a jammy bastard and managed to save his LG Crystal Clone equipped pod in the melee that developed.

R.I.P. Wrong Again, Bob

Second View

Trinkets Friend has posted a shorter write up of the "MATE" roam on his blog. Go have a read of it (and favourite it as he's got one of the better written blogs in EVE) and then laugh at Apex Bex just as I have been as I've been writing this.

Does this look like a trustworthy character?

Oh and save your ISK, I know full well Apex Bex is a Space Rich bastard and does not need any ISK donations.

Character Selection Screen

I logged into EVE last night to do my tower management tasks and found that I didn't have to. My corp mate had done the emptying of the output towers in one system and the other system had another 24 hours before I needed to do anything.

This left me with a conundrum... what to do.

I saw a few friends were hunting targets so I logged into TeamSpeak and listened in as they did their stuff, whilst this was going on I did a bit of null sec ratting in a Tornado and made a few million ISK for shooting those red crosses that invade the local asteroids.

Not exactly rocket science but whilst I was doing this I heard my friends bump and point a Revelation so I logged in my alt in the same system and undocked, joined fleet and warped into the fray.

I landed about 40km off the revelation that was already in 25% armour as I approved, at 20km I locked him and switched to Hail and then opened fire. What I wasn't expecting was the revelation to lock me and fire back, that was a little surprising seeing the mass of white laser energy leap out at me and seemingly connect with my ship.

He missed... at least I took no damage and after re-seating myself I made to orbit at 5000m where I started to add some nice dps to the mix.

A couple of minutes later and he explodes. Loot Fairy was not nice at all but still a kill is a kill.

I docked up when my timers ran out and logged out, then back in to the character screen where I spent the next hour and a half whilst my friends tried to find a new victim. I managed to buy and fit a Tempest whilst I was waiting, it should arrive in system in a couple of hours ready for use.

Unfortunately a little miscommunication let one chance go past and another was missed because the character lighting the cyno actually used a good spot over the station so all the capitals entered system within docking range rather than just outside. So no further kills last night.

So another evening spent watching the character screen, at least it beats watching reality TV... :)

The Raven (Navy Issue)

One of my alt's keeps a clone in Mai in Domain because I have friends nearby who sometimes get a nice capital kill and I do enjoy whoring on mails under the banner of "helping".

 

This kill has already been covered, reasonably accurately, by The Mittani Dot Com but I wanted it share a little more information on this as, to date, it is one of the top 10 things that's happened to me in EVE.
 

Background

Mai is a two station system that is the domain of Cracker101 and Apex Bex. Cracker has a reputation of getting some excellent capital kills in system and his methods, which I won't detail, are extremely efficient.  Bex is an experienced pilot who himself has hunted pilots mercilessly in EVE since just after getting his first combat ship.
 

The Kill

On this day they were both in Mai idling when a Raven Navy Issue entered system and warped to a location near the only gate. Bex undocked in a prober and, from an off-grid location, probed the RNI down. It didn't take long, experience does count for something, and Cracker and Bex warped to the RNI location which turned out to be a L5 mission site.

 

Whilst this is happening I have logged in my combat alt and jump cloned to Mai. When I appeared in local I was told by Cracker and Bex to fleet up and warp to them. I hopped in the Proteus and undocked, joining the fleet as I did, warping to Bex I received basic information on target and the situation. I activated the gate and after landing I see Cracker has pointed the RNI about 30km off me.

 

I move in, lock the RNI and receive a return lock at which point I scram and point the RNI in case Cracker has to leave as he's starting to receive mission rat fire. He didn't in the end as the RNI melted very quickly under the fire of a Vigilant and Proteus backed up by whatever the mission rats had done.
 

Loot

It was not a hard kill nor was it particularly satisfying until the wreck was looted. We each scored a Pith A-Type Adaptive Invulnerability field (each worth in Jita 1.7billion) and the rest of the loot was taken to Jita for sale and the proceeds divided.
 

Aftermath

It was a very satisfying kill and did cause Bex to be very smug for the next week but then again, all of us were. That's a once in Decade kill, normally Cracker and Bex get poorly fit mission runners but today was different.

 

Credit for the kill should definitely go to Cracker and Bex, I was a supporting player and was very grateful to have shared the kill and loot.