How many times have you tried to catch a covert ops ship? I have tried and tried and tried and tried with very little success. That is until recently. Someone I flew with recently used a different strategy to catch covert ops ships and I have decided to try it myself.
I am mostly AFK when a scout in a Helios jumps into our system. He scouts our system and then jumps into our static. Once he jumps our static, I deploy probes and find the C4 he came in through. He comes back in a bit and logs off. The C4 he came through has 18 ladar/grav sites so we bookmark them and a couple of corp mates clear the rats and start mining gas.
Later that same evening the original scout jumps back into the C4. At this point, I jump into my new scout killer and warp to our connection. Sure enough the wormhole flares. I poop a bubble out and get ready to lock the Helios pilot. I lock him up as soon as he appears and he jumps back to the C4.
I follow in my dictor and poop another interdiction bubble on the C4. The Helios appears and cloaks quickly, but I was able to get his direction and decloak him before he can evade the bubble. Positive lock, guns active and just before he goes down at the edge of my original bubble, the timer on my first launcher comes back up and I was able to launch another bubble. Jack Barnes is separated from his Helios and sent back to the cloning vat! Finally! I was able to catch a covert ops ship!
Just to prove it wasn't a fluke, the same ship and technique worked the next day on Mary Castro and her pod.
Saturday, May 18, 2013
Saturday, May 11, 2013
Trying something new
The day has come to try something new. I have been in other people's corps for most of my Eve career. While many of those corps have been a lot of fun, a small group of us decided the time had come to setup our own corporation.
We moved out of our C2/C4 home with N0MEX and started the process of looking for a new home. The first step was establishing a fitting name. After much discussion, we decided to go with Fighting Carebears. We have frequently been harassed and mocked as carebears becuase we like making ISK, so why not fly with that name.
The second step was finding a new home. Several of us are getting close to being able to fly capital ships so we decided to start with a C5/C2. This will eventually give us the option to run a few escalations while using the lower class wormholes to find PvP.
This will be an interesting experiment. After avoiding director positions for much of my Eve career, I suddenly find myself as a CEO. Weird!
We moved out of our C2/C4 home with N0MEX and started the process of looking for a new home. The first step was establishing a fitting name. After much discussion, we decided to go with Fighting Carebears. We have frequently been harassed and mocked as carebears becuase we like making ISK, so why not fly with that name.
The second step was finding a new home. Several of us are getting close to being able to fly capital ships so we decided to start with a C5/C2. This will eventually give us the option to run a few escalations while using the lower class wormholes to find PvP.
This will be an interesting experiment. After avoiding director positions for much of my Eve career, I suddenly find myself as a CEO. Weird!
Friday, May 10, 2013
Rolling Fleet+
I log in just as another group finishes running sites in our static. They roll the wormhole and I jump into our new connection. There is a Helios and a tower on d-scan. A quick check shows that the Helios is at the tower. While I locate the tower, we have 2 people drop probes and resolve the system.
The Helios is piloted but is not moving and I quickly lose interest. The scouts resolve the system and find the expected C3 static and a K162 from a C4. I check out the C3 which has no visible sign of pilots. Another scout checks out the C4 and finds several ships and a tower on d-scan.
The scout goes to find their tower while we assemble a fleet. Several of the ships are piloted so we are hopeful to get some action from them. The scout reports a Scorpion followed by a Dominix warping to the wormhole and another pilot is in an Armageddon. We suspect they may be intending to roll the wormhole and sure enough it flairs in front of me. The Scorpion jumps in and back followed shortly by the Dominix.
I instruct one of our pilots (Kalseth) to move forward in his cloaky Legion and then cross jump the next trip. A few minutes later the wormhole flares and Kalseth cross jumps. I instruct the rest of the fleet to jump into our static and hold cloak. Kalseth reports a Dominix, Armageddon and a Scorpion. He is able to get a lock on the Dominix but the Armageddon cloaks before he gains a lock. and engages the Dominix. I fleet warp the rest of us to the wormhole with instructions to jump on contact and spread points.
As we are landing, on the now reduced wormhole, a Falcon decloaks and attempts to jam Kalseth. The fleet jumps and I modify the instructions to primary the Falcon. I point the Falcon from 43km and the fleet makes short work of Pedro Montana's Falcon. He quickly warps his pod away from the action.
As we spread out from the wormhole, we managed to decloak Oreamnos Amric in his Armageddon. Or maybe he just decided to join in the brawl even though he knew there was no hope of winning. Either way, the Armageddon went down and Areamnos was given a free trip to the medical vat.
Next up was the originally locked Dominix flown by StudleyManiac. Who also received a free trip for showing up. Now where did that Scorpion go? We know he was around here when this thing started and he isn't on d-scan anymore. We lost a ship somewhere. We spread out around the wormhole hoping to decloak him. We didn't find the Scorpion but we did uncover a Noctis belonging to Studley Doright. One more free ticket! I would suggest putting the Noctis further away from the wormhole next time.
GF is exchanged in local and I strike up a conversation with a couple of these guys. They ask if we mind closing the wormhole on our way out. They seem like good guys and so we all jump back with prop mods active but it isn't enough to collapse the wormhole.
Since there are a lot of sites in the static, I agree to a temporary peace treaty so they can finish collapsing the wormhole. A few minutes later a Loki jumps into the static and crits the wormhole. The Loki jumps back and the Scorpion pilot (so that is where he went) decloaks and collapses the wormhole.
A couple of days later, I received an email from one of the pilots with the following link which provides the story from their perspective. Fly dangerous my friends!
The Helios is piloted but is not moving and I quickly lose interest. The scouts resolve the system and find the expected C3 static and a K162 from a C4. I check out the C3 which has no visible sign of pilots. Another scout checks out the C4 and finds several ships and a tower on d-scan.
The scout goes to find their tower while we assemble a fleet. Several of the ships are piloted so we are hopeful to get some action from them. The scout reports a Scorpion followed by a Dominix warping to the wormhole and another pilot is in an Armageddon. We suspect they may be intending to roll the wormhole and sure enough it flairs in front of me. The Scorpion jumps in and back followed shortly by the Dominix.
I instruct one of our pilots (Kalseth) to move forward in his cloaky Legion and then cross jump the next trip. A few minutes later the wormhole flares and Kalseth cross jumps. I instruct the rest of the fleet to jump into our static and hold cloak. Kalseth reports a Dominix, Armageddon and a Scorpion. He is able to get a lock on the Dominix but the Armageddon cloaks before he gains a lock. and engages the Dominix. I fleet warp the rest of us to the wormhole with instructions to jump on contact and spread points.
As we are landing, on the now reduced wormhole, a Falcon decloaks and attempts to jam Kalseth. The fleet jumps and I modify the instructions to primary the Falcon. I point the Falcon from 43km and the fleet makes short work of Pedro Montana's Falcon. He quickly warps his pod away from the action.
As we spread out from the wormhole, we managed to decloak Oreamnos Amric in his Armageddon. Or maybe he just decided to join in the brawl even though he knew there was no hope of winning. Either way, the Armageddon went down and Areamnos was given a free trip to the medical vat.
Next up was the originally locked Dominix flown by StudleyManiac. Who also received a free trip for showing up. Now where did that Scorpion go? We know he was around here when this thing started and he isn't on d-scan anymore. We lost a ship somewhere. We spread out around the wormhole hoping to decloak him. We didn't find the Scorpion but we did uncover a Noctis belonging to Studley Doright. One more free ticket! I would suggest putting the Noctis further away from the wormhole next time.
GF is exchanged in local and I strike up a conversation with a couple of these guys. They ask if we mind closing the wormhole on our way out. They seem like good guys and so we all jump back with prop mods active but it isn't enough to collapse the wormhole.
Since there are a lot of sites in the static, I agree to a temporary peace treaty so they can finish collapsing the wormhole. A few minutes later a Loki jumps into the static and crits the wormhole. The Loki jumps back and the Scorpion pilot (so that is where he went) decloaks and collapses the wormhole.
A couple of days later, I received an email from one of the pilots with the following link which provides the story from their perspective. Fly dangerous my friends!
Saturday, May 4, 2013
Failure to Communicate
The story you are about to read demonstrates the dangers of communication failures. You can always count on stupid. This is a old adage which is especially true in Eve.
We roll our static and jump into a fresh wormhole to find .... wait for it .... nothing! That is what we usually find in our static but we are always so optimistic.
The C4 is empty of inhabitants but the sleepers have decided it is a good hideout. There are 18 combat sites and 14 cosmic signatures. We resolve the signatures to find the usual assortment of gas, rocks and the outbound static to another C4. However, these is another K162 in the system coming from a C2.
I jump into C2A while another scout jumps into C4A. The C2 is a C4/HS wormhole and while there are several towers, there is no visible sign of pilots so I head back to join a fleet to kill the sleepers. The other scout reports a lone retriever in the C4A which is not at a tower.
Since it does not take 10 people to kill a retriever, the scout is cleared to kill the retriever if he can locate it without spooking the pilot. In this case, the pilot appears to have been AFK mining since he never responded. The Retriever and the pod are destroyed with relative ease.
By now, the plex fleet is now in the static running sites with about 10-12 pilots. The scout who killed the retriever has moved to the C2 when a second retriever from the same corp warps in from the high sec and jumps into the static. The pilot then warps directly to the C4A and jumps on contact. The scout was unable to chase him down before he is in the POS.
While the scout is sitting there debating the next step, an Abaddon from a different corporation warps in, followed by a Scorpion from the locals. We warp our plexing fleet to the C4A and jump to engage both ships. The Scorpion is killed and we pod the pilot. While we have no idea where the Abaddon came from, we kill him and send him back to hisec as well.
We assume the killing opportunity is over and the plex fleet returns to killing sleepers in the static. The scout is heading back to the C2 to scan down that chain. When he arrives at the C2A connection, the wormhole flares and an Occator jumps. He engages the Occator, but the extra scram strength of the ship allows the pilot to escape. Hold On! He just warped to the C4A connection where we still have an interdictor and a bubble. Sure enough, he lands on the edge of the bubble and is quickly locked down by the small party sitting on that wormhole. We kill the Occator and provide a free trip back to hi-sec for Tabitha.
When you see 20 ships on d-scan, you might want to reconsider transiting a wormhole in a slow ass hauler. When your team mates get owned on your static connection by a large fleet, you might want to hold off using that connection to haul in supplies. You might want to consider voice comms if you live in a wormhole. Or you could just provide us with a few minutes of entertainment.
We roll our static and jump into a fresh wormhole to find .... wait for it .... nothing! That is what we usually find in our static but we are always so optimistic.
The C4 is empty of inhabitants but the sleepers have decided it is a good hideout. There are 18 combat sites and 14 cosmic signatures. We resolve the signatures to find the usual assortment of gas, rocks and the outbound static to another C4. However, these is another K162 in the system coming from a C2.
I jump into C2A while another scout jumps into C4A. The C2 is a C4/HS wormhole and while there are several towers, there is no visible sign of pilots so I head back to join a fleet to kill the sleepers. The other scout reports a lone retriever in the C4A which is not at a tower.
Since it does not take 10 people to kill a retriever, the scout is cleared to kill the retriever if he can locate it without spooking the pilot. In this case, the pilot appears to have been AFK mining since he never responded. The Retriever and the pod are destroyed with relative ease.
By now, the plex fleet is now in the static running sites with about 10-12 pilots. The scout who killed the retriever has moved to the C2 when a second retriever from the same corp warps in from the high sec and jumps into the static. The pilot then warps directly to the C4A and jumps on contact. The scout was unable to chase him down before he is in the POS.
While the scout is sitting there debating the next step, an Abaddon from a different corporation warps in, followed by a Scorpion from the locals. We warp our plexing fleet to the C4A and jump to engage both ships. The Scorpion is killed and we pod the pilot. While we have no idea where the Abaddon came from, we kill him and send him back to hisec as well.
We assume the killing opportunity is over and the plex fleet returns to killing sleepers in the static. The scout is heading back to the C2 to scan down that chain. When he arrives at the C2A connection, the wormhole flares and an Occator jumps. He engages the Occator, but the extra scram strength of the ship allows the pilot to escape. Hold On! He just warped to the C4A connection where we still have an interdictor and a bubble. Sure enough, he lands on the edge of the bubble and is quickly locked down by the small party sitting on that wormhole. We kill the Occator and provide a free trip back to hi-sec for Tabitha.
When you see 20 ships on d-scan, you might want to reconsider transiting a wormhole in a slow ass hauler. When your team mates get owned on your static connection by a large fleet, you might want to hold off using that connection to haul in supplies. You might want to consider voice comms if you live in a wormhole. Or you could just provide us with a few minutes of entertainment.
Saturday, April 27, 2013
Interrupting a POCO Bash
It is about time for me to log for the night when a scout reports an Abaddon and a Talos attacking a POCO a few jumps out. I guess I will trade sleep for a kill as I head toward the target system. The fleet is only 1 jump out, when the scout reports the appearance of a Proteus on d-scan who launches probes and scares the ships back to their tower.
We setup our fleet in the neighboring wormhole and wait for the Proteus to come to us. However, he must rate as the worst scout ever. Nearly 30 minutes elapse and he is still moving probes around and has yet to re-appear.
He eventually reappears on d-scan and then vanishes. We wait several more minutes and then our scout puts out probes and finds a new C4 sig. He heads upstream and reports finding a Double Down pilot just before our second scout still in the target system reports a Cheetah, followed immediately by an Abaddon and Talos reappearing on d-scan.
The danger has gone (or so they think) and they head back to the POCO. Our first scout returns and both scouts move into position. They decloak and tackle both ships while the fleet jumps and warps to the gank.
Both the Talos and the Abaddon go down very quickly. We lock Abel Sandoz's capsule and provide a free trip to the cloning vat. Next up is the capsule of MM3 McKee. Once the battle is over, we pull up the kill reports and almost fall out of our chairs laughing.
Pro Tip for MM3: If you are going to POCO bash in a half fit ship, leave the expensive implants at home.
We setup our fleet in the neighboring wormhole and wait for the Proteus to come to us. However, he must rate as the worst scout ever. Nearly 30 minutes elapse and he is still moving probes around and has yet to re-appear.
He eventually reappears on d-scan and then vanishes. We wait several more minutes and then our scout puts out probes and finds a new C4 sig. He heads upstream and reports finding a Double Down pilot just before our second scout still in the target system reports a Cheetah, followed immediately by an Abaddon and Talos reappearing on d-scan.
The danger has gone (or so they think) and they head back to the POCO. Our first scout returns and both scouts move into position. They decloak and tackle both ships while the fleet jumps and warps to the gank.
Both the Talos and the Abaddon go down very quickly. We lock Abel Sandoz's capsule and provide a free trip to the cloning vat. Next up is the capsule of MM3 McKee. Once the battle is over, we pull up the kill reports and almost fall out of our chairs laughing.
Pro Tip for MM3: If you are going to POCO bash in a half fit ship, leave the expensive implants at home.
Saturday, April 20, 2013
Ratting Paladin
I am paying less than half of my attention to Eve when an unusual scouting report comes in. Scout 1 reporting that I have a Paladin ratting in a C2 site. Say that again, please! I have a ratting Paladin in a C2 combat site. Oh whew! I thought for a minute that you had a Paladin running sites alone in a C2 combat site. I do! Why? Who knows but lets kill him!
We scramble the necessary jumps and make it to the system before he finishes the site. The scout tackles the Paladin and the fleet jumps and and warps to him. The Paladin goes down very quickly but we are dissappointed in the tech 2 fit. The pilot was probably underwhelmed with the performance against our fleet as well.
Thanks to the heavy interdictor, we capture the pod and make sure everyone gets on the kill. We clean up and loot the wrecks before clearing out and heading back home thinking this was the end of the story.
Later in the evening, we are stalking someone else when one of our directors reports that the pilot we killed, Lead Faith just placed a bounty of 20M on our corporation. We laugh and discuss this for about 60 seconds when someone suggests that we return the favor and place 20M apiece on him.
If you happen to run into Lead Faith, he was sporting close to a 300M ISK bounty the last I checked.
We scramble the necessary jumps and make it to the system before he finishes the site. The scout tackles the Paladin and the fleet jumps and and warps to him. The Paladin goes down very quickly but we are dissappointed in the tech 2 fit. The pilot was probably underwhelmed with the performance against our fleet as well.
Thanks to the heavy interdictor, we capture the pod and make sure everyone gets on the kill. We clean up and loot the wrecks before clearing out and heading back home thinking this was the end of the story.
Later in the evening, we are stalking someone else when one of our directors reports that the pilot we killed, Lead Faith just placed a bounty of 20M on our corporation. We laugh and discuss this for about 60 seconds when someone suggests that we return the favor and place 20M apiece on him.
If you happen to run into Lead Faith, he was sporting close to a 300M ISK bounty the last I checked.
Saturday, April 13, 2013
Trade: Loki for Tengu+
A scout has found an active system with 5 pilots moving around in various combat ships. We form up and move into position. I leave the non-cloaky ships C2A while the cloaky ships move into position on the C4A to C2B wormhole. The targets are in the C2B and have moved a Naga into position around 190km from the wormhole.
Our scout tackles the Naga with his Anathema! Go Jeanne! I send the Loki forward to assist with instructions to let me know when he wants me to move the Guardians forward. He engages and they warp a Talos, Hawk, Scorpion and a Tengu forward.
I make the call for action. The cloaky fighters (including me) jump the wormhole and immediately warp to our Loki friend. It is apparant while I am in warp that I made a mistake leaving the Guardians back what is basically 2 jumps.
As we are landing, I call primary on the Talos and secondary points on the Tengu. Two of my corpmates then ask what Talos? I do not see any Talos. I recheck my overview and since I have a Talos locked and pointed, it is a pretty fair assumption that they have forgotten to adjust their overview settings.
The Loki pilot holds out for a surprisingly long time at low armor, but my initial assessment during my short warp was correct. In spite of the efforts of our Falcon pilot, the Guardians land just as we lose the Loki.
The Ferox, Hawk and Scorpion bug out leaving us to kill the Talos, Tengu and a late arriving Tornado. Yay for 40km points! Good fights are exchanged in local and we loot sufficient items to pay for a new Loki for our friend.
Our scout tackles the Naga with his Anathema! Go Jeanne! I send the Loki forward to assist with instructions to let me know when he wants me to move the Guardians forward. He engages and they warp a Talos, Hawk, Scorpion and a Tengu forward.
I make the call for action. The cloaky fighters (including me) jump the wormhole and immediately warp to our Loki friend. It is apparant while I am in warp that I made a mistake leaving the Guardians back what is basically 2 jumps.
As we are landing, I call primary on the Talos and secondary points on the Tengu. Two of my corpmates then ask what Talos? I do not see any Talos. I recheck my overview and since I have a Talos locked and pointed, it is a pretty fair assumption that they have forgotten to adjust their overview settings.
The Loki pilot holds out for a surprisingly long time at low armor, but my initial assessment during my short warp was correct. In spite of the efforts of our Falcon pilot, the Guardians land just as we lose the Loki.
The Ferox, Hawk and Scorpion bug out leaving us to kill the Talos, Tengu and a late arriving Tornado. Yay for 40km points! Good fights are exchanged in local and we loot sufficient items to pay for a new Loki for our friend.
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