There is a long history of fights on our killboard with Null Sec roaming gangs. Some go well, some are fairly even, others are just straight up welps. More often than not, fights in null sec for us end in welps, and while others may disagree, I have no fun welping ships and just throwing killmails in people's faces. There needs to be a contest between two forces for it to be fun for me, and welping or getting blobbed offers no fun as a result.
Which is why, as I look at other wormhole entities, I scratch my head and wonder, how are they able to get seemingly so many kills in null sec, where we just fail? Is it persistence? Do they just have the numbers more often? Do they have lots of ex-null pilots so more experience? Do they just play the meta very well (interceptors and Ishtars for example)? I don't know the answer. I don't have the null sec experience to formulate one as I have been in Wormholes since my 3rd month into Eve.
Despite all our losses in Null Sec, we keep going back, repeatedly, and dying nearly every time. So plans go into motion to try to find a way to get content and kills out of Null Sec, without welping the fleet as a result. So I set my eyes on this battle report. What had happened was we had tackled a ratting Thanatos, in Deklein, goon central. I could just smell the thunderbolt getting ready to come down on us, and it did, as we got Titan bridged.
So whats so special about a Titan bridge? Sure it allows force projection, sure it allows instant reinforcements, sure it allows you to save ratting carriers. But there is more to it than that: it allows absolute target selection.
Lets just imagine that we had enough people and a good enough fleet composition to counter what they could have dropped. They would have not had bridged, as why waste an entire fleet when you can just sacrifice a single Thanatos. Now lets imagine that it was a roaming gang, its exposed, easy to pin down, and now within killing range of our superior fleet. One instance has a bridge and saves the fleet (albeit lost a Thanatos), the other has no bridge, and lost the whole fleet.
The point is that a bridge allows you to select what you use your fleet on, while overall keeping the fleet safe from threats while a target is found. Your bait or hunter also is solo or in a very small gang, making you seem easier to take on compared to a giant roaming gang. Its a great tool to level the field instantly, sometimes so much so, you can flip a fight from being a gank in one direction, in the completely opposite direction.
So, what allows us to do something similar to a Titan bridge that is not a Titan? Black Ops.
And so I get EFTing and theory crafting and reading up on it. I have done Blops before, my first one was with Bombers Bar and we got a Thanatos, so I was well aware what they were capable of if we had enough Bombers. I also stop and think of the advantages that we uniquely get using Blops as wormholers. The foremost being we can appear anywhere on the map, as we can be in Feythablois one day and Insmother the next. Also motivation for our members to participate, as everyone in wormhole space praises the Cloaking Device, which Blops use extensively obviously.
So, I've done my theory crafting, now I just need to poke some people and get their interest, and I get a few that help me push the agenda. I train in the meantime, and buy a Redeemer for bridging. After several weeks, we finally get formed up for the first op this last Sunday.
-----
I throw my Hunter-Killer out and look for targets, all I find is a Sabre and some interceptors and me forcing to use the fear of the cyno to scare them off.
We move staging system, and this one went much better. Exponentially better, as it netted us a 1.8 billion Rattlesnake kill. Everyone is hyped now; we just slaughtered something that a roaming gang of interceptors would have lit up intel channels like a Christmas tree and everyone would be docked.
We move staging system again, and I jump into a small gate camp with my H-K. Cyno is up, bridge bridge bridge! That's three dead ships.
Latter on my partner H-K finds a ratting carrier, but they bring in ISOboxers to save him.
-----
The next day we try our hand at using Black Ops in combat. We cyno on an Occator, which was most definitely a waste of fatigue and fuel.
About an hour latter, my H-K is hacking an ESS for some easy ISK when a Dominix warps in. What he was thinking I have no clue, but he dies to our Sin and Bomber pair.
-----
The next day we try using a Battlecuiser as bait to bust a small gate camp. It works perfectly, even though some of them were able to get away.
-----
We go Blopsing again two days latter, and hit a wall with only three Bombers as DPS, which was not enough to break a Tengu. So I have to jump in my Redeemer and use neuts to break him, my first time using my Black Ops to get on a kill mail \o/ .
-----
So far, it has been quite a success I'd like to say, netting us approximately 4 billion in kills, and the only loss being a Hound that died to NPCs. Blops let us take an environment and twist it to our advantage to get the most out of it. Now, it may seem I am a hypocrite, as earlier I stated that I needed a contest of forces for something to be fun, and blobbing something with Bombers does not seem like much of a contest. I respond with this: a contest of forces is not always directly between two groups of spaceships. It can be a contest between the hunter and intel channels, a contest to not be caught by gate camps, a contest to patiently out last your opponent. Things do not simply boil down to which spaceship explodes first, but how you get and arrive at that point. It is why I was attracted to wormholes in the first place, not necessarily the PvP, but the hunt itself.
Despite it all though, we are accomplishing what we wanted, and that is content in null sec without just throwing away our ISK at them every single god damn time. And that is an op success to me.
Blöd
No comments:
Post a Comment