I Know I Said I Wanted Us to Up Our Game, but DAMN!

~or Interest Levels are on the Rise...




OK, our little Anoikis Corp, [HBHI] has joined ‘Surely You’re Joking’ [HAHA] a Wormhole Merc Alliance. They are a really great group of guys, with the usual mix of active players… some very much so and some not so much. But due to their overall membership, it means there are usually a decent number of guys on and looking for teh fun.

As we now live inna C6 (the highest class of wormhole...Yipes!) things have changed, and now when I talk about coming an going to and from our new homehole, you will hear me talk about us running the “pipe” instead of the just jumping the “hole”... This is due to the fact that C4 and up wormholes, according to all I have ever read and my personal two plus years of experience in holes, never have a ‘static’ Empire hole… their statics are lower class holes so… you have to scan and BM ‘through’ the lower class holes to find an Empire exit... This is your ‘route’ through one or more holes in a wormhole constellation and is known as the “pipe”. Once the pipe (or pipes) are scanned this gives you set of BMs including the stat (or a K162) and whatever holes need to be transited to finally pop through the last one out to Empire.

What I find interesting is that this gives you occasionally a ‘selection’ of pipes to and from Empire instead of just one hole as C3 and lower class holes have. And while one route will always be the ‘best’ pipe, say your stat to a C4 thru a C3 out to Hisec (Home>C4>C3>Hi) but if that C3 is camped hard then you may have a Lo hole (K162 or Stat) available in the C4 also… giving you’re the option of something like Home>C4>Lo>Lo>Lo>Hi… which, if not camped and basically clear, is actually a better choice than the shorter, but more risky, pipe to Hisec.

Anyhoo, I took a while getting my ass in the new hole, inner conflicts, ships all over creation n shit. But, I finally made my way up the pipe then wandered over and checked out the Med POS we have been allowed to setup… it was as I expected, meh… but I am the POS Manager for HBHI, and my boss asked, so I went ahead and reconfigured the defenses, such as they are, to as optimal as I can for the POS mods we had in the hole ATM.

I am actually placing more trust in Fleet defenses than in the POS defenses until we have a Lrg POS setup and even then, as anyone who knows POSes will tell you, ANY POS can be taken down with the right force projection, and Class 6 Wormholes have mass limits that allow Caps to jump in… Enough Dreads and Caps and any Large Well Defended POS is toast, much less a Med and I believe a Small could actually be semi-blapped if the aggressing force wanted to bring enough pain.

The issue with bringing enough pain is that holes, unlike gates, CLOSE when the mass limit is reached… and ALL wormholers learn Wormhole Massamatics early… there is a limit to what can be brought, then you have to scan down the new pipe and share the BMs from corp to Alliance so reinforcements can come in and in order to have a Tactical Rearward Advance path OUT if needed. Plus there is the Fleet Defense the aggressing force needs to take into consideration. In Anoikis, same as Null, it’s manpower, Ships n Fits n Pilots n Skillz (both book & real), that wins fights… not POS Defense mods.

This is, of course, part of the reason we are here and in SYJ [HAHA]… we are a small corp and we like it that way. We retain some self-determination and as we have our own POS we have some security for our stuffs… unless SYJ turns on us (unlikely) or we give em reason to turn on us (much moar unlikely) our assets and such should be even safer than before as we are now part of a 500+ man Alliance we can call for support from… our POS is in the Alliance home hole… if we are attacked, they are attacked.

SYJ loves a good fight and incursions into this wormhole are seen as opportunities… granted, there are those out there in the black who are larger etc. But, well… its EvE man… the age old rule still applies, “Don’t Anchor What You Can’t Afford to Lose.”

So… I start getting settled in. Made a few runs, brought in some mods, a ship or two. It’s a pain because our Empire HQ is near Dodi, but the bulk of my ships were dropped 22 hops away when we moved out of the C2. I dint get them freighted out due to needing to let Mab off the Freighter Driver Hook, he spent more than a few hours hauling the POS & ship mods, ships and other assets from the staging systems back to our HQ… Ima not ask him to do that again. So I am one-at-a-timing em and it is… difficult… depending on the pipes available and other ops going on at the time etc., etc…

I finally did get my ‘Sword in, so I have a ship that has some real advantages in pew pew. But I was lookin at what ship(s) to bring in for sites and I received a unanimous “Tengu” from all I talked to… which pleases me not a gods damned bit as I am a bit more than a month away from “Tengu” and I already has “Loki” which is a great cloaky scout but not seen as quite as good a site runner in the C6… crap. BSes are also somewhat frowned on because while they can has great DPS etc. they also DIE… to Raids and such… and come to think of it, that happened quite a lot in the C3 too.

Battleships simply cannot GTFO in any reasonable time and a dedicated Aggressor Force can almost always get tackle and take em down. We have a list of BS losses in the C3 I was not happy about for that very reason… so ok, no BSes… well that FUBARs me a bit as I have more of them than I do anything else ATM…   I may just liquidate em for ISK but I will still have to move them to Jita or Amarrgh or whatever… still a pain in the arse but it’s the game we play.

So, that leaves ol Tur back in a Duck… it definitely feels like I am going back to training wheels to hafta run sites in a C6 inna effin Drake with the kinda fleets these guys run… I’ll definitely be the least DPS on the field and slowest boat, etc. etc. crap. But, ATM I have no other ship that’s gonna be “approved” so the Drake it is… and Caldari Cruiser to L5 is ‘in the queue’… now I gotta get out and buy the Caldari Strat Cruiser and SUBS books and jam them down Tur’s brain… in the mean time I gotta hope I can make enough ISK to get Tur’s ass inna Tengu but the time he hears that sweet refrain, “Skill training complete.”

And all of that just leads to the GOOD PART…  =]

We, SYJ that is, put together a 12 or 13 ship T1 Cruiser Roam Fleet a short while back and I was able to get out to Empire, break my Blackbird outta crates, get her assembled and fitted (and ‘approved’) in time to join up a few minutes afore we struck out on a lowsec roam. This fleet was unusual in that we had 3 Logi Scythes and me and Strigon both in EWar Blackbirds which they dunt do a lot of. The rest were a mix of Moa’s, Thorax’s, Caracal’s and such… ALL T1 cruisers.

We staged out of Stacmon then jumped into Ostigele to kick the roam off. Now I am putting this together from memory, gamelogs & killmails… so some of the action I will most likely miss… we had one kill that our scout got before we could get on grid that I can’t remember the details of, so I am just gonna report what I remember that is supported by the logs & mails… anyhoo…

So from Ostigele to Agoze where we engaged “bghblue Asanari” [B-W-A](Zealot) but dint get the kill. Then we roamed the lowsec pipe of Loes, to Ouelletta, to Melmaniel, to Murethand to Indregulle looking for the GF or gank or whatever… then on the Heydieles gate in Indregulle we finally had some play… we got a Thorax kill, Caspian Novus [AIDER]. Along with 7 others, Strigon and I were both able engaged jams and DPS on him then…

“[2013.02.04 03:30:31] (notify) Caldari Navy Scourge Heavy Missile deactivates as the item it was targeted at is no longer present.” This the first ship kill Tur has been involved in since… well since a Hawk kill in Null back in February of 2012… damn near a YEAR ago… sheesh. After the kill the gate guns continued to pound on us… but, as we had the Scythes runnin Logi, those of us taking fire just tanked it until the order to jump come through… my first time experiencing that, and without Logi it wouldn’t have been that way… this DPS/EWar/Logi mixed fleet doctrine is used in the Real for some very good reasons…  =]

So, one half hour into the roam and the fleet gets a kill and this whets our appetite.  We jump into Heydieles and get a Vexor kill a few minutes later, X Gallentius [JUSTK], “[2013.02.04 03:35:13] (notify) ECM - Ion Field Projector II deactivates as Vexor begins to explode.”… HAHA!!  LOL…

Then onward to that Den of Iniquity, that Haven of Pirates, that Gankers Paradise… [2013.02.04 03:40:58] (notify) Approaching Old Man Star… The lowsec region between and around Tama and Old Man Star has long been a great roam and PvP area.

We camp the Heydieles gate in Old Man Star and have several fast ship get past us… Interference from SS Cheese's warp prevents your sensors from locking the target, a Venture comes out and back a few times… Interference from Amulius Lykos's Venture's warp prevents your sensors from locking the target, and an Atron I dint even try to target… then we jump back to Heydieles and from there into Abune. We warp to the Oinasiken gate and miss one “Interference from Diamond's warp prevents your sensors from locking the target…”

Then on to Nisuwa where we miss again “Interference from ,,,'s warp prevents your sensors from locking the target…” then we jump into Kedama. We camp the Tama gate in Kedama for a while then on to Tama. We camp the Sujarento gate in Tama and lo and behold elwood88 [XM.] Rapier lands on gate then burns away but doesn’t warp out… we get a lock and tackle on him and we all a bit amazed… [2013.02.04 04:26:00] (notify) Caldari Navy Scourge Heavy Missile deactivates as the item it was targeted at is no longer present, we get the kill.

Once again, we sit and let the Logi rep those of us as are getting DPS from the gate guns until we are ordered to jump into Sujarento.  We had been camping the Tama gate for a while and had finally decided that it dint look like we were gonna get much more action. We have been down there long enough for the word to spread, one of our guys said he was watching FacWar chat and there were warning of a large fleet camping and roaming in and around Old Man and Tama etc., etc…  IE us!

Well, ok, we had gotten a few kills so while not great, the night was not a complete loss. The FC ordered us to all self warp to Eranakko and as we are doing so a Proteus landed on the Tama gate we were warping away from… and engages our FC! He gets tackle on the Proteus and orders everyone back ASAP… advises he can hold him till we get there but he will need reps as SOON as we land! We all stream in to the Eranakko gate, bounce, realign and warp back as fast as possible!

Now… here’s where yours truly screws the pooch juuuust a little. You see the roam was over. We were in ‘going home’ mode… LOLing and talking about the few kills etc… we were all mentally in the beginnings of the cool down phase when you know the evening’s entertainment is over… understand we all knew we were still in EvE and so kept up the usual situational awareness but it was a step down from the level of mental preparedness one maintains while actively looking for pewage. And when the FC called out tackle on a Proteus and called for immediate reinforcements… well, it hit us all the way you think it might… like a welcome slap in the face!

But… I was ‘reacting’ not ‘acting’ and so I warped to “0” on the FC instead of at range, say at 30 or 50… and I landed smack in the middle of a quickly escalating fight. By the time I landed several other ships had landed and begun engaging us. We assume the Proteus pilot had called in reinforcements also. So I landed, in a very poorly tanked Blackbird (mind you that there is no such thing as a WELL tanked Blackbird!) basically right on top of our FC, who was primary for the Proteus’s reinforcements, and as NO BODY likes Ewar... well we all started targeting each other like mad…

I did turn and burn and I did get a lock on “Venus Strife” [T S N](Cynabal)… but as I had all the incoming DPS from “UndeadMaster” [SNUFD] (Zealot) and “Zanduk” [SNUFD] (Absolution) and I was well inside their optimal and at low transversal… so I dint last long enough for our Logi to even get me locked up much less repped…   =\

Well, I warped my POD out and took stock. The FC was calling for reinforcements and for anyone killed to reship… then something amazing happened... an Archon landed in the fight. Yup a lowsec Carrier joined in right after I got killed. Damn damn damn... This was when I also found out we had a pipe that ended in Eranakko… Eranakko? HOLY WTF BATMAN!  Eranakko is ONE jump from Sujarento!!!  …and I dint have the BM. Damn! Damn!! Damn!!!

So I warped back THROUGH the fight in Sujarento and out the Eranakko gate… just to sit and watch as my Allies one by one flew past from the hole through the gate and into the fight… everyone was so excited and eager to get into the brawl that little if any thought was given to one lone guy inna POD asking for a warpin to the hole and for BMs up the pipe…

And TBH, I will admit to getting a little pissed. I wanted SO EFFIN BAD to get back in the fight… and the way the fight went, I could have if someone had only paused just long enough to let me warp to them while they kicked out a few BMs… but, I have to admit, I do understand… I can’t say I would have paused to do the same for anyone if I was on my way to a Carrier kill… no one wants to be late whoring on that killmail!

Anyhoo… I finally gave up and swung by the station in Eranakko and picked up the obligatory Noob ship n Trit… and finally someone in chat said “Warp to me Tur…” which I did… and then effed the pooch again by immediately jumping through the hole, smackin meself in the 4head and jumping back through to get BMs… which he dint leave… and in the course of things polarizing my warp coils so I couldn’t jump back out even if I had the BMs… Jeez.

During all this the fleet mopped things up, looted wrecks and them, like me, as dint have the BM started askin for warpins to the hole… to which “I” The Everhelpful said, “Warp to Tur”…  =\ 

Now this hole was at end of life, I dunt remember if it was critted yet, but we knew it was close and we had not only the original T1 Cruiser fleet but a few others had joined in the fun… Rokhs, Sleipnir, Legion, Talos, etc., etc. … so the FC was all over us to watch what we were doing and not slam the hole on the ships as shouldn’t be left in losec one jump away from where we have just PWNED a small fleet and a Carrier. Anyway, we were able to get everyone who wanted to and needed to back up the pipe and back home…   =]

Man… whatta feeling. Even though I missed the bulk of the big fight, and the Carrier kill, I was not really upset… you see, this was just SYJs most recent Carrier kill, I figure if I hang around these guys long enough, get in the game and stay active… I’ll get in on one or two eventually... seems to be enough pewage to go around with SYJ…  HAHA!

[If yer wondering… nope I dint take pic #1 except for the one under the title… simply too damn busy… even when we were just mucking about camping gates… wayyy too much on my mind to even think of hittin prtscrn… will try and do better next time.]

Battle Summary for Sujarento 

Roam time: Two hours and eight minutes.

Fleet up at Stacmon - 02:52:00

Fleet warps to the Erenakko hole - 05:00:00

PS- A vid was uploaded after my post came out (well... I found out about it after...) and here it is...

Sujarento Carrier Kill

Not too shabby huh…  I wonder what’s next?    =] 

Fly Safe and see you in the Sky  =/|)=