It Was a Good Day to… Live… =]

A little background might be in order…

Our Alliance has experienced a sudden and quite large surge in overall membership, abilities, assets, etc. with the addition of not only our corp, but 8 other corps in the last 2 months. We are, obviously, going through some real changes, all good for the Alliance… Oh of course we also get the politics etc., that come with the increased number of members and member corps, but the good far outweighs any cons to this growth.

So, here we are with all kinds of new people, with a wide range of skills from pure noobs to very experienced null-sec PvPers. We now have a WH training coordinator, we are planning and scheduling PvP Tournaments, Alliance low and null-sec fleet ops, the whole she-bang.

The Alliance has access to 2 wormholes, the Alliance executor’s corp has a C1 with a hi-sec static entry and we also have a C2 WH that belongs to a member corp w/ a static low-sec entry.

The C1 is used for Alliance training. We train up Alliance members on WH scanning, security, PvP, defensive practices. They are introduced to the POS and how it works, defensive and offensive capabilities. Running Sleeper, Ladar and Radar sites, mining Gas and Roids sites, PI (Planetary Interaction), overall Standards of Practice when in wspace and all things WH in general.

The C2 is the ‘home’ of a member corp and therefore, it is available for Alliance membership use but, of course, under the owning corp’s rules as the sites, etc. are the bread & butter of that corp and have to be managed as such.

Now on to the story of the evening…

We had 6 sleeper sites and a Ladar site pop in the Alliance C1 WH, and Tif requested/assigned Kow and I run to them. So we fleet up, Tif has them all BM’ed and will be handling all Loot & Salvage ops with his Noctis. We go in and take down the first few sites, calling in Tif for L&S, now at this point Kow decided he needs to go AFK for a bit of RL time w/ his TV so I decide to continue solo.

My Drake is well fit for Sleepers, the only issue was that it will obviously take a bit longer solo than it would w/ more DPS. Well, I work through another site no issues, call in Tif, he starts nom nom’ing the wrecks with the Noctis and sends me off to the next site whereupon what do I do but immediately pop the ‘trigger’ NPC that brings on the 2^nd spawn... Oh Great Crap! Anyhoo… nuthin to it but to do it right?

Now, for the very 1^st time since I first solo’ed a Line site, I… (a) lose all 5 Warrior drones to a very sudden aggro switch from most all of the NPC’s which basically instapops ALL my drones and then they immediately switch ALL aggro back to me and (2) I find my tank going below 50% (also for the 1^st time since I first solo’ed a Line site)…  Damn, damn, damn… So I warp back to the Relay point then into the POS, head over to the Ship Maint Bay, drop 5 drones in my drone bay, move 1000 Scourge Heavy missiles from a can in the hold to the hold proper, and ensure that all 6 launchers are fully loaded, all of which gives my shields time to tank back up to full… well, 95% but close enough and, so… Hi Ho, Hi Ho, its back to work I go…

Now all the while I am of course logged onto our TS3 server on audio w/ them as what are on and my ally Sov who has been listening and commenting, to my chagrin, to the play by play of my ‘Desparate Fight Against the Nefarious Naptime Forces Ranged Against Me’… he decides to join me and help out as does my corpie SL… shiney. Sov shows up, Tif fleets and warps him to me… and now we start making quick work of the sleepy RED guys.

Then suddenly, as is always the case…

“[01:37:21 ] Tif > a hostile drake jumped into the hole”,

“[01:38:08 ] Sov > hostiles in WH - drake, rapier”,

“[01:39:16 ] Tif > slamming on tura”,

“[01:39:19 ] Tra > call to arms”,

“[01:39:31 ] Kiy > fleet me plz”…

Now for them as don’t know, the above are edited chat logs…

Tif calls out that an unknown, non-alliance, non-corp IE UNFRIENDLY Drake has appeared on his dscan inside the WH;

Sov, verifies this report and adds the Rapier he sees on dscan;

Tif reports I am under attack;

Tra send out the call to arms for an armed response to an attack on an Alliance member;

Kiy makes request to join the fleet we are in for the site running, in order to respond and bring in more pilots…

As you can see, this takes exactly 00:02:10 from 1^st warning to 1^st response from the membership to begin ships moving to my rescue. There is NO better feeling in this ‘verse than can be expressed by what those few lines of chat represent.

Now as to what was “happening” in those scant 2 minutes and 10 seconds and the minutes that followed…

My Drake was targeted and scrammed, both ships opened fire and engaged their drones against me;
SL, a corpie of mine, had just warped into the hole with Tif and immediately warped in his Carical to assist me;

I targeted and engaged the Drake w/ missiles but no drones as I was out;

When SL arrived on the field he immediately engaged the Rapier and the Drake engaged him - SL's Carical was lost during this short engagement, SL warped to safety in his pod;
Sov coordinated the response by a total of 6 pilots from 3 Alliance corps;
The Drake re-engaged me;

I kept up a running action report… I was in a drone swarm and taking fire from both ships but I was tanking the total incoming DPS just fine, not going under 75% shields;

The Drake I was engaged with was actually down to 50% shields, as I had not targeted the Rapier I did not known his status ATM;

As soon as my Allies were together they fleet warped to me and engaged both ships;

As soon as the raiders saw my allies enter the field and the balance of the fight swing away from them… The Rapier warped out and exited the field;

The Drake, now scrammed and unable to warp out, was quickly and efficiently terminated;

The Drake’s pod escaped.

The Carical was lost at 01:41:00 and the Drake was killed at  01:43:00, the total engagement took 5 and 1/2 minutes.

I don’t, of course, have chat logs for the fights as we use TS3 voice comms during all PvP and most PvE actions. But I am extremely pleased to say the professionalism and coordination exhibited by my Alliance members was first rate. That my ship, and I, were ‘saved’ during the course of the action, is of course, of high ‘emotional’ value to me personally, but evaluated tactically, the loss of a Drake and the successful defense of the Alliance WH set against the loss of a Carical is the true “win” here.

WH Raiders:

Pilot       Ship       Corp      Notes                                   

Zoe        Drake    CtI         Killed/not podded

?            Rapier   ?             Escaped

Alliance Response Team:

Pilot       Ship       Corp      Notes                                   

Tur          Drake     HB       primaried in attack

Kiy         Tengu      UC       Credited w/ the Drake Kill

Dar         Tengu     UC

SL          Carical    HB        secondaried in attack / killed

Sov         Cane      HP

Kow       Mrym     DS        arrived just after action

At [01:52:31] Kiy posted the killmail for the Drake…

We posted a pilot on combat patrol at the hole, L&S the Drake and Caracal, swept the system for pods or other ships, the system came up clean, with the understanding that a cloaky ‘something’ could always be in there… We stayed on Condition Yellow for a while but in the final analysis it was agreed that it was by far most likely a WH ‘Raid’, fast and dirty, looking for some PvP kills… only with our newly strengthened Alliance this raid met fast,  coordinated and determined resistance and was, overall, a loss for the raiding corp. We dropped back to std security procedures and resumed normal WH operations.

To say we felt good is a major understatement, especially when the Alliance VP came online and, once updated on the action, he was very, very pleased. I, having been in a situation where, without corp and Alliance support, I was (probably) a dead man… was thrilled. Just hearing that help was on OTW without a seconds hesitation… man what a good feeling.  =]

Fly safe, and See You in the Sky…  =/|)=