AAR: Benefit of the Doubt

There are thousands of people, corporations, and alliances in Eve. So if you are one of the bigger groups, or better pilots, or more efficient teams, your name tends to get thrown around more. With that comes respect, but also wariness from others about your strength/skill.

So when a name like Sleeper Social Club comes across your chat window or passes by on comms you tend to be put on edge. Boasting a 401 man strong Alliance (at the time of writing), they are among the largest wormhole Alliance in the game. With that tends to come large fleets, which tend to ROFLstomp almost everything.

Note: I was not actually on grid for any of the fighting, I was listening on comms at the time of the first engagement and was told not to engage in the second.

The story starts with one of our best scouts finding a fight between a Confessor and an Astero on a hole. A short while latter Gui and Irohh were coming down the chain in two Svipuls to fight. After a brief skirmish and a dead Confessor more had come through and the fight was on. End result was a dead Astero on our side and 4 dead Confessors and a Svipul on theirs.

It was only after the skirmish we realized it was SSC. So since they had come with relatively little and in smaller sized ships than what they usually came with, we reshipped and prepared for a fight again. Gui was baiting in his Sleipnir and Tard and I were on the other side of the hole in our static with a Stratios and Zealot respectively. When they came back though, they came back with their customary heavy Armor and double Guardian gang. Tard and I got out fine, but Guirdarr was not as lucky, loosing a 1 bill Sleipnir and a Crystal set.

We gave them the benefit of the doubt that they would stay scaled down and smaller sized, but it was not so, and we paid the price.

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AAR: Follow me Boys!

Fighting is not just a contest of DPS, repair power, EWar, but also of positioning and leaning the fight towards your terms and not your enemies' terms. The center of this fight focused on this: choosing an environment to suit us and not them.

We were looking at Isogen 5, who we had fought before (in that instance we had again forced them to fight on our terms), and we attempted to gank a Phantasm of theirs that was running a gas site. We missed the kill so we warped back to the exit hole. As we landed though we hit bubbles that a Sabre had placed, which delayed our return to the hole. We made it through without incident as an 5 Ishtars, a Gila, a Cerberus and two Scimitars landed in pursuit. Now, they had 2 T2 Logistics ships while we only had a single T1, so we expected that the fight was basically over, and we would return to the high sec exit. Not so, the FC turned us elsewhere.

Follow me Boys!

The C3 was a Wolf-Rayet effect, which bonused us and nerfed them. They followed, itching for a fight. They were dropping so fast, being forced to jump quickly or getting vaporized before they had the chance to. We killed two Ishtars on the C3 side but loss a Curse and our Logistic and a Gila plus Sabre on C2 side.

It just goes to show you that environment plays an important part of a fight, especially in wormholes with the system effects. Good fight Isogen 5, better luck next time!

Total Killed: 882 mill
Total Lost: 365 mill



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AAR: Slowly Escalated

So there I was, sitting in the tower doing jack shit, while others go off to try to bait a Sleipnir out of his POS. On their trip out there though, they are caught unprepared by a different group, and loose an lol Drake, Pilgrim, and Sentinel. We regroup, and get an armor gang going, with my alt in an Onerios for Logistics. The system where the original skirmish took place was a Pulsar, so it was highly detrimental to our armor tanks. As a result our entire plan was getting them to jump into us and force them to fight on our terms. To do that, we had to regain their attention first, which was easy.

They did something that we did not expect though. Since one side of the wormhole we were fighting on was a Pulsar, and the fact that their last fleet was shield tanked, we expected them to return with shield ships. They refitted as we were were killing their Cerberus and returned with an armor gang, fully equipped with two Guardians, and jumped into us with no hesitation.

I had stationed my Logistic 50km off the hole while my fleet brawled the enemy fleet. I kept everyone alive, and could have done easily for quite a while if they did not have Ishtars shooting me with Sentries, and not have had an Astero decloak on me and tackle me. Regardless, I still held for some time with my Ancillary Armor Repairer, but I couldn't last forever so I did eventually pop.

As I warp off to refit into a Guardian (as well as another person), we also loose a Deimos. As soon as we return on grid we are instantly primaried by jams, but since we were still 50km out we easily survive through jamming cycles. We easily kept alive the rest of the fleet as well, excluding a Curse where both Guardians were jammed for a brief moment. As easily we kept the fleet alive though, it did nothing to break the enemy fleet's Logistics either, so eventually as their numbers kept steadily growing, ours stayed the same, so we extracted safely with no more losses.

Well played by Conquering Darkness, their steadily escalation and jams won them that fight and it was well deserved. It was a good fight, and its good to take a loss every now and then, as it tends to teach you more than a win.



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AAR: Shut Up and Take My Ships!

When most people fight, one side looses, one side wins. Usually the winner wants another go, and the looser wants to slink away and lick their wounds. Occasionally though, the looser just keeps on coming at you, and tries to constantly redeem themselves. That is what Absolute Zero tried to do for nearly 7 hours on Wednesday.

Note: For this first fight I was not present and the first paragraph is based on what I heard afterwords and battle reports. The rest of the night I was present.

It all started off with two Myrmidons baiting in a site in our home system, with two Guardians and misc DPS sitting inside their C4. We decide to engage the Myrms at the site and force their fleet to jump in and as they jump in we bubble them and split the fleet in half. A Myrm and Guardian die in the site. As we chase them back into their hole we kill a Myrm and Cane on the C4 side.

Two to three hours latter we see movement from them again, they are using our high sec static. So I grab an anchorable bubble and put it on their C4 in line with the high sec. Now, if anything warps from the high straight to the C4, it will be caught nearly 30km off the hole. After some time, a Vigilant and Harpy jump in from high sec, but they don't warp to the C4, instead opting to orbit the high sec, with the clear intention to fight on there. We don't want to play games with them jumping out to safety though, so we force them to make a decision: we warp a rapid light Cerberus at range from the high sec and try to blap the Harpy. Naturally, he tries to burn out and tackle our Cerberus, but he underestimates the rapid light DPS in a Wolf-Rayet effected system, so he panic warps off, straight to his home hole of the C4. As expected, he lands in the bubble, right next to my Pilgrim and he dies easily. Almost immediately after he dies a Helios decloaks next to the Harpy wreck. I am not sure why he did while I was sitting there, but it dies with a little prompting. A brief while later we do the same thing, but to an Arbitrator.

Such a pretty wreckage field

A half hour latter we are still staring at a Vigilant, which is still orbiting our high sec. We are in the middle of debating of trying to bump him off the hole but before we can make a move he bounces to a planet and warps to the C4, completely circumventing my bubble, and then jumps home. We have scouted their side before and we knew they had a cloaked Falcon and a Curse plus misc DPS in the POS, so we had no qualms at jumping after them with our gang. When we got to the other side though we found two Curses and two Falcons, which completely suppressed our entire fleet. Thankfully we only lost a Stratios.

After that small welp we resettle into kiting and sniping positions on the C4 and bottleneck them into their hole. We had most of the fleet cloaked all over the hole but we had a single Orthrus uncloaked nearly 50km off the hole. Another half hour after the last engagement a Daredevil jumps in and tackles our Orthrus, as well as a Cloak Proteus uncloaks and tries to kill it. the Daredevil underestimates, again, the rapid light DPS and melts, leaving a Proteus stranded off the hole alone, surrounded. He dies shortly afterwords.

After a three hour break, and hunting invisible Orcas we return to find them trying to roll the now verge C4 connection with a Hictor. Reacting quickly we get a Vigilant on the hole and use 90% webs and stop the Devoter they were using from getting back to the hole. Our Vigilant refits to a Phobos and bubbles up on the C4 waiting for the pod to come back. But now comes the icing on the cake: the pod jumps out to high sec, and returns 15 minutes latter in a Dominix. Without a second thought or a scout, he blind warps to the C4, straight into the bubble, and dies, and is podded.

After 7 hours of killing, we had destroyed 2.5 billion from one group, all thanks to their own over eagerness and bad scouting. All for the cost of a single 397 mill Stratios. It was a fun night, but kind of sad as well, as it was almost no contest.



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AAR: Back with a Bang

Its been quite a while since my last post. When I joined Snuffed Out I thought it was because I was burnt out on wormholes, I wasn't, I was burnt out on Eve in general. The final straw was ironically joining Snuffed Out which put me into a type of gameplay style I did not particularly enjoy. After some thought I put my characters into Absolutely Certain, a reformation of my old alliance Protean Concept which lives in a C2 with C4 and High sec statics. I moved in basic equipment and proceeded to go away for two months, logging in occasionally for small pings.

I've recently been back for about a week or so and I feel much better. I am not a director anymore, I am with people I know and trust. I am playing with friends. Best of all I am in my favorite area of space again.

So I am a few days into playing again and I am scanning the chain and looking for fights. As I am jumping some holes while scouting, a Loki attempts to tackle my alt's Buzzard. He wasn't going to catch such a nimble ship unless I was extremely unlucky, but he tried anyway, so I called some friends in nearby and jumped a C3 to see if he would go for me again. I sit on the other side for a bit to wait and give us a little more time to form up; as currently all we had was my cloaky Proteus and a Stratios, with a Sacrilege and Curse on the way. As I am sitting waiting to see if the Loki shows himself, a Nestor lands on grid. Now, I have no idea who he was, what he was doing, but that shit doesn't matter, you always go for tackle when something like that falls in your lap. I point it with my Buzzard and bring my main and the rest in.

In the time that elapsed for the main group to get there my Buzzard did die, but it did its job of holding it until we got there. The Nestor jumps through the hole and I try to chase it, the rest stay on the C3 side. When I load grid he was not on DScan or on grid at all though, so I sit, along with our newly arrived Tengu. I tell Athenaa to jump through, and I cloak up to make the hole appear safe. As soon as we do that the Nestor decloaks off the hole and warps before I can get past my targeting delay and tackle him.

[ 2015.03.02 01:40:54 ] Lily Savage > ha ha

I felt embarrassed that I let a 1+ billion ship get away, but this quickly turned to anger at the realization that he has to come back through the C3 hole to get back home, and I was determined to camp there for as long as possible to get him. A pointless emotion as he came back not 5 minutes latter, on the other side in the C3; however, he called a friend in with a Golem to help him escape.

As the Nestor jumps I hang back on our side of the connection, in case he decides to jump away and polarize himself, I wasn't going to let him get away this time. That was not necessary though, as the Nestor pops with little issue. The Golem was a bigger issue though, as it was still on grid and trying to kill our neuting ships: the Stratios and Curse. Nef has to jump his Sacrilege out when he hits structure, so I jump in to replace the DPS lost. After some warping in and out from Mighty and Sexy in the neuting ships to keep them alive, we finally wore down the Golem and popped him. At this point the Nestor pilot had come back with a Paladin in a vain attempt to help. We could have killed the Paladin, he could not hit me and I was still able to use a scram despite his neuts, but both of our own neuting ships did not have enough time to repair and come back before a Navy Raven lands 70km off and forces me to leave.

It was a good fight/gank, maybe more of a gank than fight since it was PvE ships we were facing, but kills are kills, and they did not need to sacrifice an extra Marauder to us. But in the end it didn't matter, Bob was pleased.

Battle Report



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