OOC: Headaches, Hard-disks and Holidays

As the title suggests that’s mainly what’s been going on lately. My hard drive died taking everything on it with it to the big computer graveyard in the sky (thanks Western Digital) so rather than crying over spilt milk – time to get a new one.

I decide on a nice shiny SSD figuring if it’s good enough for CCP then it’s good enough for me. It should also help the grid load a lot faster on warp in (that should have been a clue my disk was dying).

I order it and hope it arrives before my scheduled 3 day break in Barcelona. Does it? Does it hell! When I return home I find I do indeed have a package waiting. Yay! Time to unwrap, install and get on EVE again. Opening the package I find not what I expect (a hard drive) but instead a hardware raid card (wtf!?!). Back it goes, and finally, today I get what I’m looking for

That covers the holiday and hard-disk. The headache you ask? Well partly from the hard disk saga, and partly from drinking too much on holiday :p

See you real soon.

A pirate, for pirates, by pirates

This will be a brief post as my time is currently short, but I feel compelled to post it.

At present most of the CSM delegate is made up of hi sec empire dwellers, traders, mission runners and so on – with a few exceptions.  There is virtually NO REPRESENTATION for low sec, or pirates – at all!

There have been various threads flying around with some potentional candidates, although none of them particularlly strong.  That is until yesterday, when Larkonis Tassler entered the fray!  He’s the CEO of Neo Spartans (if you didn’t know), he’s a pirate (if you didn’t know) and I believe he would be a great representative for the pirate community, and C&P in general.

I’m sure he’ll have the support of many pirate corps (and also some anti-pies who recognise there is a need for us) and the C&P community in general.

You can see his official thread and manifesto blogs using the links below.

Happy voting (when the time comes)

http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1027388

http://larkonisforcsm.com/blog/

OOC: Slightly quiet…

Yes it’s been 7 days since my last post  I think it’s also been about 6 or 7 days since I was last online (Why do I feel like I should be in a confession booth? Where’s an Amarr when you need one?), aside for a few minutes of skill changes and convo’s whilst I was supposed to be working.

We have a large product launch at work, so it’s been “all hands to the pumps” – a similar feeling when you’re desperatley trying to rep your ship and maintain your tank whilst under heavy fire.  That said, it launches tonight, so it’s do or die time.  

All being well it’ll be a “do” and it can be put to bed, although it does mean yours truly will be up half the night making sure everything is ok.  No change there, being on call 24/7 kinda sucks – although it does mean I get to play EVE at interesting times of the night when it’s quiet.

Hopefully I’ll be online again in the next day or two.  If you’re after the latest piratey (that should be a word btw) action then remember to check out Flash’s, Kane’s, Mynxee’s or Venom’s blog which I have linked (oh and o/ to the aforementioned).

I’m in *what* squad?

Strolling through the station corridors until reaching the docking bays I yawned, having just woke up from a nap after a lazy day doing nothing. Boarding the ship, I logged into the various comm channels only to find all hell breaking lose. There was excited chatter and people talking, yelling and shouting over one another.

I decided to wait a few moments before announcing my arrival to glean some information and figure out exactly what was going on. I’d managed to deduce that a small gang had tackled and were in the process of taking down a Domi. The pilot was refusing communication and rejecting ransom requests, so it looked like his ship was heading for the big space graveyard – when suddenly and unexpectedly he ejected and flew off.

The Domi was quickly boarded and docked up. It turned out to be a fully fitted T2, Trimark Domi – a very nice bit of loot indeed, especially intact. Even more beautiful was the fact that later that evening the pilot paid to have it back, so there was no need to strip and resell it.

I’d just cleared the station docking perimeter as the Domi was being hoisted away.

“Deimos heading to planet one!” someone yelled. I hadn’t been fleeted at this point, but instantly set a course and warped to the planet arriving about the same time as a few of the others. Flicking the overview into “battle mode” I locked the ship, and his accomplice. Before I could start my attack the Deimos was melted into scrap metal, just as I was activating my modules to fire. They switched over to the secondary ship which was hit hard with ECM attacks, the missiles had launched at the Deimos were speeding randomly into space.

“Blackbird at planet one!”

“Primary the blackbird” yelled the FC.

“Blackbird is friendly, it’s Alia” I repeated twice – just to make sure they heard me. It turned out the accomplice ship wasn’t a target, but another associate who wasn’t in fleet and I’d not had standings set.

After a quick and mostly harmless blue-on-blue we were both fleeted and my overview updated. Having barely got ourselves together once again another gang member had found a mission runner in a plex in a vengeance. It proved to be a nightmare to get to and was giving us the run around, taking up valuable time so we decided to spend our time more productively and moved on to bigger and better.

To that end we organised the squads into fleets and subsections so we could be as efficient as possible. Squads “Anus Fur” and “Shaved Ass” were formed, along with “Jam Doughnuts” which caused an insane amount of laughter on the Vent server as Flashfresh calmly recited the names without so much as a smirk, finishing off with “I can’t believe I kept a straight face through that” – which made it all the more funny.

We moved through a few systems, spreading ourselves out a little in the hope of maximising our chances of finding something juicy. That chance came to fruition when a Maelstrom was found in a mission. Arriving at the gate in staggered warps we proceeded through. The tacklers caught the mighty battleship dozing and quickly had it immobilised whilst the DPS laid in. Keeping the DPS and tacklers safe, I was up to my usual tricks and keeping his offensive capabilities to zero.

The ship was burning up, but not before a corp mate of his arrived to help in his Thorax.

“Incoming Thorax” I yelled as it appeared not too long after getting a hit on my scanner. I quickly locked the ‘rax and switched a couple of jammers over to him. One of the tacklers locked him down quickly and he exploded very shortly afterwards.

It was then back to the business in hand, and finishing off the Maelstrom. Which we did, and collected the loot. Not wanting to hang around too long as there were other members of the corp in the solar system and one jump over (nice of them to come help, huh?).

After the loot was safely tucked up, we headed down to Gurkala. The gang was split over several systems and waiting GCC’s and so on. A Jaguar was playing merry hell with our tacklers and dps one jump over. When they could get it pointed it was tearing chunks out of them, and it was very very quick indeed. I offered to go help, and left the rest of my gang members in their safe spot. Heading into Gurkala I warped to the tacklers chasing the Jaguar.

Dropping out of warp about 60km from the action I fired my sensor boosters anyway, it looked like this was going to get out of hand quickly. Locking and jamming the Jaguar kept some of the heat off our tacklers, which meant they had to concentrate on keeping him tackled rather than tackling and living.

“Ma’am, we’re about to lose our lock on the target” reported tactical.

I nodded and punched as much power into the ships engines as possible. Their bright blue ion glow light up the night sky as we made for the action at best speed.

We had no chance of catching this thing, not a hope in hell but that wasn’t my intention. The ship was a maximum speed, pointed towards my gang mates. As soon as one of them….

“Warp Drive Active!”, the ship was flung across the 150km distance to a nearby gang member landing me smack-bang in the middle of it once more. Re-locking the Jaguar at point blank range we unleashed our attack again.

“Load a full compliment of EM missiles” I said

“Aye Ma’am”

We could at least see if we couldn’t make some damage to their shields and help out the tacklers and DPS. Targeting data, trajectories, distances and massive amounts of other computations flowed into me via the pod/neural interface. Calculating and correcting as the missiles launched towards the speeding target, they struck well considering they were heavy missiles against a small, fast, moving target – but I’d always had a knack for that

Another rinse and repeat followed as I’d had to re-warp to gang members again, but the Jaguar was going down. Arriving this time, the tacklers had it dual webbed and it wasn’t able to return fire and keep them at bay. 20 minutes after the initial encounter it was finally dispatched.

A very skilled pilot, who probably deserved to live after all that – but it had made us even more determined not to let him. It turned out he was faction fitted, whilst it made him trickier to catch and kill, provided some very nice loot indeed for such a small ship.

We set a course homeward bound and were greeted by a command ship outside our “home” station, a combination of tiredness, a possibly broken overview readout and no standings/war dec in addition to being too close to the station guns got me attacked for my trouble.

Warping in a maximum range to try and keep out of sentry fire I locked up the target and started to attack, but I was too close! The sentry guns instantly swung round and spewed their projectiles at me.

“Ma’am we’re taking heavy shield damage”

“Active barrier! Full resists, lets get out of here ASAP” I said, wasting no time. I couldn’t head to a gate or a station as I had a GCC.

In the few moments it took to switch overview and get a planet up, our shields were knocked out and we were taking heavy armour damage.

“Alia, what’s going on?”

I didn’t answer at the moment as I was busy navigating the ship out. We were aligning to a planet and I willed the warp drive to kick in, but it seemed to take forever.

“Alia! Get out! Get out” yelled Flash as more sentry fire melted our ablative armour and bit into the hull.

The ship stained under the massive pressure of the manoeuvre to get out, it’s structure severely weakened. Alarms and sirens were sounding, damage reports scrolling down my vision, fires breaking out, consoles exploding and crew members running like headless chickens to either escape pods or trying to contain the damage.

Another salvo from both guns smashed into the ship, tearing through the hull in several places as pieces of ship armour, structure and contents were blown into space.

“Engineering reports there’s nothing more they can do Ma’am” said one of the bridge crew in an oddly calm matter. “We’ve got plasma fires across several decks and the external structure is burning”.

In what would have been split seconds from the guns “coup de gras” our warp engines finally kicked in and out – heading to the relative safety of a planet.

“Report” I yelled!

“Shields down, armour gone, but the structure is holding Ma’am – although we’re an embarrassment to even a minmatar ship at the moment”.

I couldn’t help but chuckle. The final damage report indicated we’d escaped with a sliver of structure left, a mere 8% which had been just and just enough to hold the ship together for our emergency warp out.

“I’m good! I’m good!” I replied over the comms letting my gang mates know I’d escaped.

All in all a very fun roam indeed, with some good kills and loot. The atmosphere in gang and on vent was superb and I can pretty safely say I think everyone enjoyed it. One of the most entertaining nights in recent memory – including the oddly named squads :s

Patch-day domain

It’s that wonderful time of year (well maybe twice yearly) when the devs start bashing the servers with hammers and large wooden mallets.  Hopefully it’ll all go to plan and we should be ready to roll by this evening once more.

So what to do on patch day?  I’m supposed to be working but find myself slightly distracted.  Instead I decided to register a domain and point it at the blog.  AliaXi.com was already gone, taken by some advertising spam registering domain hogging <expletive expletive> so I had to settle for CaldariPiratess.com – which is better than a poke in the eye with a stick.

Keeping an eye on the news, forums and so on until I can get an EVE fix again.  In the meantime I have a yarr related post to work on regarding last nights shinnanigans.  Watch this space….

Yoink…. Cha-ching!

Arriving in the docking bay, my docking bay I was greeted by a sight of chaos… still.  Partly assembled ships, equipment, tools, guns, modules and so forth scattered across the decks as far as the eye could see.

“You!” I yelled to one of the Caldari techs responsible for this scene of bedlam.  “Why are my fricking ships STILL not ready” I yelled into his face whilst grabbing his collar.

“We’re still fitting Ma’am, we need the protocols and assignment procedu-” I cut him off mid sentence.  “I don’t care! Make it work, make them them.  I don’t care if you have to put round bolts in square holes – get me some more birds to fly. Clear?”

He nodded, somewhat shaken at the ferocity of my yelling, and grabbing of his oily coveralls.  “Good” I said, much more calmly, half slapping, half patting him on the cheek.  “Off you go then”.  Bless them, being Caldari through and through they were keen to “follow procedure” unlike their Minmatar counterparts who’d quite happily just “slap it together and go”.

I looked around the station, I had to admit I preferred the Caldari ones – having grown up on one most of the time.  They were also more “clinical” and up to date compared to the Minmatar ones and a lot less noisy.  Ok, sure, they were all a uniform and boring colour but I could live with that.

An attendant arrived with a drink and some olives that I’d ordered.  Taking the drink in one hand I smiled, taking the olives in the other and calmly, carefully up-ending the container and tipping them onto the floor.  “These are black, I wanted green” I said solemnly as they rolled across the deck in various directions.

“I’m sorry, I’ll fix that for you” her voice trailed off as she’d turned and made her way back.  I hadn’t meant to be so snappy, at either of them, but I was having withdrawal symptoms from the various stims that I’d been used to taking, or nerve sticks to counter their effects when no longer needed.

I still had a choice of a few ships, and made my way to the preferred one and got ready to launch.  Happily in my pod, on board and clearing the docking ramps we headed out into space to see what could be found.  The comms were somewhat quiet with three of us talking, exchanging info on various possible targets and the like.

Another new recruit joined us and shortly after we found a Maelstrom on scan.  It was quickly narrowed down and tackled.  Our DPS arrived along with myself, and shortly after another tackler in the form of the newest recruit.  Fluffing up the initial lock, I managed to target a fleet member.  Realising my mistake quickly, I targeted the Maelstrom.  The locks were resolved, but I’d forgotten to disable one of the ECM modules.  For the several seconds it was active, I disabled one of the locks on our tackler – or so we thought.

Not to worry, we had another.  The other ECM modules were on the battleship and hitting decent regular cycles, I switched the last one over as soon as possible whilst the tackler re-established his lock.  Then everyone lost their lock – except for me being quite some distance away.

“He’s got an ECM Burst” someone yelled.  The tacklers did an amazing job keeping the ship pinned down, although a couple of the enemy drones were chewing one of them up.  Flicking the overview, I went to jam them but they were quickly popped before I had a chance, so I continued to focus on the battleship.

The pilot was invited to a convo and ransomed, we took off the DPS to “show willing” and were quickly rewarded with a blinky wallet.  “Points Off” said Raelyf who was conducting the ransom – the pilot was free to go.

A very nice reward for a few minutes work, and good teamwork and communication all round.

On to more business, this time a Raptor which had found our new recruit and tackler.  The Raptor engaged and sped towards him.  Giving his location we were quickly in warp from various points in the system all landing at our desired ranges, to see a fight well under way.  

Moments after arriving our tackler’s incursus exploded into fireworks across the darkness of space, but the Raptor wasn’t escaping.  We had him pointed with another incursus and our rupture was tearing chunks out of him, to ensure he didn’t escape by popping the tackler, you’re truly had him jammed up more than a jar of marmalade

We didn’t offer a ransom, but simply blew the ship to smithereens.  Unfortunately we missed the pod as the pilot made a very quick escape with his tale between his legs.

Waiting out and criminal countdowns, collecting loot and so on we then made our way 1 jump over with Hrothgar being in the lead.  He’d tackled an Enyo but I was still in warp to the gate.  Raelyf arrived to assist and they quickly destroyed it.  Dropping out of warp, about to lock the target and it exploded.

To our surprise it was faction fitted so they scooped some very nice loot from the deadly little frigate.  Nice work guys, brilliantly done.

The rest of the evening was pretty quiet, although we did have a look around to see what we could find.  A large enemy blob was cyno’d into a system near us, consisting of about 15-20 ships.  Being a mere 4 or 5 of us, not in a set up for that sort of thing we decided to steer clear and avoided their clear trap that they’d prepared for us.  They left shortly after without causing any trouble.

It seems it’s either really busy, or really quiet.  Tonight started off very quickly, with a ransom and a kill (plus another for 2 of the gang mates) after which it trailed off quickly.  No doubt being a Friday everyone is busy enjoying holo-reels and whatever their poison may be.

Time for me to do the same.  o/

Last chance…

If you enjoy the EVE fansites, blogs and other community sites it’s your last chance to vote today! The closing date for all nominee’s is tomorrow, 4th March.

If you haven’t already done so take a look at the nomination page which can be found here: http://www.eveonline.com/eonawards/

This shows all catagories and nominee’s within those catagories. Yours truely can be found as a nominee for “Writer of the Year” here http://www.eveonline.com/eonawards/default.asp?viewcat=29  and you’ll also find a well known and fellow pirate FlashFresh there too.  You’ll find his blog here (check it out) http://i-pirate.blogspot.com

You will have also probably heard of Mynxee, CEO of Hellcats.  She has been Nominanted in the following catagory http://www.eveonline.com/eonawards/default.asp?viewcat=37 ”Most promising newcommer”. Her blog is available here: http://lifeinlowsec.blogspot.com/

There are loads of others, but I can’t possibly link them all – just a quick “shout out” to Flash and Mynxee there

There’s some great pilots in New Eden, great people and great fansites and re-counts that people have taken time to design, write and tell.  If you like their content, drop a vote for them – I’m sure it would be appreciated.  I’m not being a shameless vote whore for me personally, I’m being a shameless vote whore for the community in general :p

Whoever wins, it’s a win for EVE in general and I’m sure it will encourage people to continue with their ingame and out-of-game work.

(Edit: If you were looking for a recent piratey tale, just follow onto the next post – or use the “Piracy” catagory)

The Falcon Hunter

Things were a little slow to get rolling that Saturday night, although there were various people wandering around looking for targets.  The one’s we’d managed to find on scan were either at safes, pos’s or just passing through.  I didn’t mind, I was in a relaxed mood and enjoying the scenery after a week in station or grounded to the planet.

“Ma’am looks very happy today” ventured a crew member.
“Mmmhmmm” I muttered, offering a slight smile and a wink.  I was just happy to be back in space once again.

Communications were buzzing lightly with general info coming in and some idle chit-chat.  We organised into a fleet and decided to start a bit of a roam.  Before we’d even managed to leave the system a Cynabal cruiser was found on scan.  The tacklers warped in and quickly pinned him down, along with the rest of the gang, myself in tow too.

No ransom was offered and the ship was quickly taken apart by our mix of frigate and cruiser gang, the pilot made good his escape and left with his pod.

Now the roam started proper and we set a course out towards the 0.0 boarder.  Jumping through various systems, scanning and probing we’d managed to find a few things here and there but it was very quiet all in all.  Nothing but the distance and vastness of space, stars and suns littering the sky and the occasional nebula – that and the mixed frigate/cruiser gang streaking across this back-drop with their engines roaring creating an ion trail which slowly dissipated like an aircraft of ancient Earth crossing the sky and leaving a vapour trail.

I was snapped back into focus again by our FC; “We’re going to head into 0.0”.  I needed to be a little more on the ball in that case, and stop my mind wandering so.

We briefly ducked into 0.0 to see what we could find, which consisted of a few large gangs and bubbles – more than our gang was capable of dealing with.

We headed back towards home after some reports of more activity back that way, the fleet quickly aligning, warping and jumping together.  A little while later we were back in Evati and a Sleipnir Command Ship was found on scan near a belt.  The pilot was known to some in the gang.

The gang now consisted on a Rapier, some frigates, cruisers and interceptors.  The Sleipnir was tackled and the rest of the gang warped towards our target like a group of hungry piranha finding lunch to snack on.  The tacklers did an amazing job of keeping him in place, despite on of them getting popped during the process they made sure his escape was not an option.

I followed moments later arriving at the action at 70km in my Blackbird.  Firing up the sensor boosters the Sleipnir was locked and quickly on the end of an ECM barrage.  From the distance I could see the rest of the gang orbiting, firing.  Trying to keep under the CS’s guns, whilst inflicting maximum damage.

The comms were chatty and I reported that I had my brought my full load to bare on the CS’s, hoping this would give our small gang time to take the CS down without suffering at the hands of it’s auto cannons and neut.

I scanned the tactical overview and our target, the ECM modules were cycling but we weren’t getting a single jam cycle in – not one.  I decided to get in a little closer to try and make a difference, although we were pretty much almost at optimal.  Closing to within missile range I ordered our offensive weapons to open fire too, which they did.  Continuing to fire our ECM and missiles at the target it became clear that I wasn’t going to get a cycle in.

“Alia here, I’ve not had a single jam cycle! He must have ECCM”

One of our pilots was pinned down by the CS’s warp disruptor and was taking heavy fire.  I cursed at fact that I couldn’t get a jam cycle off as this would have allowed him valuable seconds to get out, but it wasn’t to be.  The Sleipnir claimed an interceptor, in additional to it’s earlier stabber (which I’ll point out was a ‘temporary get me home stabber fit’ one of our guys was flying).

Now I know for a fact I can jam a command ship in a T1 cruiser, with T1 modules so by this point I was utterly convinced he had ECCM. 

“Ma… Ma’am”
“Yes, what is it?” I replied snappily as I was concentrating on other readouts and systems.
“I.. I can’t get a jam cycle off”
I sighed heavily.
“Very well, transfer systems over to my pod – I’ll do it myself”
“Yes Ma’am” the tactical officer said sheepishly.

The ewar modules were transferred over to the pod, where I realigned them making quick adjustments here and there.  Every attack angle, every vector, every option was met with quick resistance and compensation – there was no way in.

“Neither can I, transferring control back to you – I’m busy, but keep trying”
“Yes Ma’am”

It didn’t matter too much as the cruiser and frigate gang polished him off rather quickly all things considered and without any additional casualties.  The pod was quickly in warp before we could lock it down.  The loot was scooped and loaded and we headed to safes and stations to wait out our Criminal flags.

Checking over the combat logs I was astonished to find that the pilot had fitted no less than THREE ewar counter-measures to his ship.  This explained the fact he was invulnerable to my attacks, but of course left his ship very vulnerable in other areas.  He told us that he was trying to kill a Falcon – hence the very strange fit, and very strange behaviour.  I felt a little better in the fact that there were 3 eccm modules fitted and nothing I could have done would have made a difference.

After a quick rest we were off again, the gang now consisting of only 6 pilots.  The rest had other business to attend to, or were refitting.  Hera had spotted a Drake heading through to the Todi gate and followed it through where they went head to head, Drake Vs Brutix.  Hera was also under sentry gun fire and ECM drone attack.

“Break the gate cloak and get that Drake locked down” I ordered, whilst manoeuvring the ship into a more suitable position.  Tactical and weapons officers made busy and we were ready almost right away.

I was the next to arrive on scene, quickly breaking my gate cloak and locking the Drake who returned the favour.  As were were almost at point blank range, there was no need for any additional boosting, I just let rip with my ECM and missiles.

The Drake pilot was quick – and smart.  He pulled his ecm drones off of the Brutix and onto me, hoping to “jam the jammer”.

“Ma’am, the Drake has re-deployed it’s drones onto us”
“Reinforce the shields” I snapped, assuming at first they were attack drones.
“Yes Ma’am” as our shield hardeners kicked into life.

I quickly realised they were not attack drones and we cancelled our additional defence to save our precious capacitor for our continued EWAR attack against the Drake – which was pretty much now Permajammed and unable to return fire upon either the Brutix or myself.

“Defensive – stand down on shields”
“Tactical – get ready to re-establish lock if we’re jammed”
“Weapons – keep our ecm on the target, I don’t want it getting a shot off and switch missiles to EM”

A chorus of “Yes Ma’am” echoed around the bridge as the crew continued their work in the dimly light surroundings, which had a faint red glow. It was not only to signal we were in combat, that much was obvious but it made readouts and operating the systems easier for people.  The bridge was packed with high-tech equipment – even by Caldari standards.  It was boxy though, I was used to something more spacious, but I’d had it fitted to my own specification to match my styles and skills perfectly.

The gate activated but we were calm in the knowledge it was the rest of our gang jumping through to help break the Drakes tank.  2 Interceptors, a Thorax and a Rifter arrived to reinforce our attack against the immobile, disabled and helpless Drake.

Hera’s Brutix, Ronin and 3Jayne in their interceptors and Jack in his Thorax quickly ripped through the Drakes shields whilst an additional tackler, Porcus kept the Drake locked down and sharpened his auto cannon teeth on the shields.  The Drake was utterly helpless, unable to move, unable to fire it’s fate was sealed. 

I’d seen this many times before.  The Drakes shields crackled under the final strain and barrage unable to keep charge with the incoming damage, they were down and incoming fire was striking the paper-thin Caldari armour taking chunks out of the once proud ship.  The armour and hull were quickly breeched and the ship veered out of control exploding moments later as more ordinance ripped through the mangled ship causing it’s warp drive to explode, and in turn the entire ship.  The crew braced for a shock wave from the explosion, which was absorbed by our shields just causing a slight buffeting.

No criminal flags, so we were able to slow boat to the gate and jump through.  By this time it was getting very late (or early depending on which way you look at it) so I decided to dock up and get some sleep.

A pleasant night-time roam and some good kills.

Busy doing nothing…. allegedly

So I’ve had the week off work – great I thought, time to cram in some serious EVE time. Ha! I should be so lucky, my feet haven’t touched the ground.

It’s been about 5 days since I last managed to grab some play time and I’m now suffering major withdrawl symptoms. Hopefully I should be around tonight, or at the very latest, tomorrow.

Apologies to my usual gang mates, I have missed your crazy ways and antics on the vent server.

Just so you know :p

Hauled over the coals

 

The ship dropped out of warp directly in front of the gate, a few seconds behind the rest of the small gang.  Contact alarms, sensors and indicators light up across my view as we’d landed slap bang in the middle of the enemy ships.

Whilst the rest of the gang got to work I raged at my bridge crew “Why the hell have you dumped me in the middle of this!” I demanded.  “I… I… I didn’t see it Ma’am”.

“You didn’t hmm?” I retorted

“No Ma’am”

“The get the hell of my bridge, and send someone else in who is more attentive”.  With that he scuttled off.

“Take us out, quickly” I told the crew as the ship came about on it’s axis having no other celestial objects to get to, we have no option to return or safe.  Taking the quickest option, we were shortly in warp once again.  The warp conduit and spatial distortions, which I usually love seemed to last for an eternity – and we still had to get back, again!

“Hurry up! Hurry up, damn it!” I cursed.

A similar pattern re-occurred, as the ship swung around once again.  The best we could hope for was 100km and to get out of sentry range asap.  We didn’t actually need to take that precaution, but it made sense.  I was in a tin can crammed full of electrical wizardry, keeping the distance and making them work for it made sense.  Besides, more friendlies or neutrals could jump through to assist any moment – who might not be -5 flashy.  No point in getting mashed by sentry fire, or having to leave my gang mates.

We raced across space, no expense spared to get there as soon as possible.  The ship shuddered as it decelerated out of warp, landing smack bang 100km from the gate.

“Weapons systems, target all hostiles – ECM officer standby”

“Yes Ma’am” various voices echoed around.

“Get the sensor boosters on-line, inject range scripts – and get us away from the damn sentries”.  Thankfully we only needed to be another kilometre.

Preparations were made, all systems were ready.  The ECM burst into life, emitting their invisible but deadly rays towards the enemy targets.  I’d decided to split the load 50/50 across the primary and secondary targets.

The nimble frigates and interceptors whizzed around the geddon, which was having trouble tracking them.  It was slowly but surely being torn to pieces to smaller, faster and more deadly adversaries.  The Nighthawk command ship was in a supporting role.  The gang dealt with various drones that had been deployed admirably, and kept both targets pointed at all times.

“Alia, are you jamming these?” the voice comms crackled.

“Yes, we’ve got 50/50 on each and getting in a few cycles here and there” I replied.

“Ok, switch to the nighthawk, the geddon is taken care of”

“Roger” I replied.

I disengaged the ECM on the geddon, and switched everything over to the nighthawk.

“Get us in closer, helm!” I snapped.

There was a few brief glances exchanged.

“We need optimal jamming on that command ship” I clarified “Keep us at maximum, but optimal”.  

“Aye Ma’am”.

The nighthawk was now under electronic attack from our 4 jammers, supported by sensor boosters and distortion amplifiers.  Now we were closer, we were getting off a hell of a lot more jam cycles – sometimes between 20-40 seconds across a staggered formation.  A perma was too much to hope for against a nighthawk in our poxy tin can.

As the EW attack wreaked havoc with the command ship, this brought valuable time for the gang to finish off the geddon which exploded – after de-agressing and then foolishly re-agressing.  That had sealed his fate.

The gang switched to the nighthawk, buzzing around it like flies but there was no way we could break the tank of this monster with our current deployment.  Suddenly, and rather wonderfully the vent came alive with a recently arrived corp member.  “I can bring a BS with some neuts”.

We quickly withdrew and re-grouped.  There was some smack in local from the enemy ships, but we kept it cordial and didn’t take any bait.  Shortly we were ready once more, and with a neuting BS in our arsenal which would tip the balance ~evil grin~

“He’s on the gate, the nighthawk” intel reported “And the wolf is back again”.  The plucky frigate pilot had quickly re-equipped and got back into the fight.  Fair play indeed.

The gang warped to engage once more.  We held position until they were in place and had the command ship pointed.  Warping to 70km this time, a rinse and repeat ensured – with a few differences this time.  The CS had full ECM attack 100% of the time, and our neut BS was taking chunks out of his cap and ergo his tank.

The command ship was going down – slowly, but was going down nonetheless – his tank was broken and it was only a matter of time.  The wolf had scattered pretty quickly, maybe warping to a safe or another point – we were busy on the CS.  It’s shields were about 45% – which is concerning for a Caldari pilot and were continuing to drop.

The question was – why wasn’t he de-agressing and jumping.  The answer soon became clear as friendlies to him jumped into the system on the gate.  With what we had there’s no way we’d have held them off, plus broken the tank of the CS.  There weren’t enough neuts or ECM to go around.

“Disengage, disengage!” the FC ordered as we scattered to safe spots throughout the system.  The enemy ships actually made good of their smack previously and offered “gf” in local, which was returned.

All the time the comms were alive with various chatter, scans and intel popping up.  The most interesting one, and most accessible one which got every pirates attention was an AFK freighter heading towards a high sec gate.  He was only 15km from safety.

“Point it, get webs on it – lots of them” the FC said.  Pirates scrambled over themselves to get to their ships – a combination of battleships, tacklers and so forth to take down the freighter.  The lumbering hulk was quickly multiple pointed and webbed.  Going a mere few km/s it’s fate was sealed as the DPS ships laid into it.  Warping to 100km and backing off out of sentry gun fire, we powered up the sensor boosters and offered our DPS for what it was worth.  3 heavy missiles launched across the 100+ km distance and slammed into their target an eternity later – their damage was limited but every bit helped before the freighter jumped into high sec.

“Shall we…” ventured a crewman.

“Yes, why not” I laughed as our ECM modules attacked the freighter across the void.  They were even more useless than the heavy missiles, but still, why not.

We tried to ransom the hauler when it reached structure.  The lumbering hulk swaying as it crawled towards the gate.  It’s shields inactive, it’s armour melted and massive holes in it’s structure venting cargo and oxygen into space.

There was no response – so we blew it up and snagged the pod.  Again no response, so the pilot was quickly returned to his medical facility courtesy of The Bastards + Co.

Some nights are quiet, some nights you’re down – and others, you’re busy and right back up again.  Ride out the lows, and enjoy the highs.  A good night all round with an awesome gang and corp, what more could you ask for?  Sure, solo is good for a while but there’s only so much you can do and only a few people to share it with.  When you have a good gang, and a good bunch of guys then it just amplifies the experience.

A good time was had by all, and looting to boot.  Yarr!