Saturday 17 May 2014

First Capital Kill

I know I said I wouldn't return until I got blown up... but kills....

This story starts with two Bestower industrial ships being spotted leaving our static and heading down the chain to the highsec, at the time the chain looked like this:

Home > C5s > C5a > C3a > HSa 
                             |
                                        |_ C5c

After a morning of huffing gas and bringing in supplies this sounded like fun. We tracked the pilots to Jita, formed up in cloakies and then we sat and waited, and waited... and waited.. and waited...



During the wait people went poking around our other connections and noted a loki, chimera and orca online in another C5 connected to the static, we largely ignored them though - not much chance of killing anything with that Chimera about eh.

After much waiting, we saw the two Bestower pilots leave Jita, and this is where things started getting interesting, and a little bit weird. Scouts local to C5a started jumping around, we figured to scout out for their returning industrial, a pod and a Covops belonging to the C5c corp jumped past our cloaky hole camp and continued on their way to highsec. Then nothing. So we waited... and waited...



Finally the scout inside C3a reported an Absoultion command ship on scan, this must be that pod returning - screw the Bestowers we have waited long enough! "Hole fire", bubbles went up and the party started!


The Absolution started to drop, he was tanked well but the fleets DPS was slowly grinding him down. As he headed back to the hole to try and jump out of our trap a few of us jumped through to catch him, his desperate attempts to jump free of our trap left him in the loving arms of two proteus', who proceeded to finish him off. As the Absolution was going down an Orca arrived on field... was this our birthday?!



Bubbles were reapplied and we went to town on the Orca, all the while scouts feeding us information about the Chimera heading our way. Now we needed to drop this orca before the carrier got here to rescue it - which we achieved just in time.

Now for the capital - he was in trouble and none of us really understood the series of events that lead us to this part of the story, but who care fireworks to be had.  Pings went out on Jabber and afk members were poked in the face, a cap destroying fleet was assembled in a matter of minutes. 


Guardians were scrambled to give the neuting ships cap and offer some protection against the fighters from the carrier. The only real moment of panic came when a mobile depot was deployed, but we quickly dispatched it before he carrier could refit to escape. After about 5 minutes of shooting, excitement and prayers to Bob the carrier went down. Champagne was opened and loot was pillaged.




Friday 2 May 2014

First Blood

Before I tell you this tale I want to apologize for the lack of blogging, I've been in the process of moving house and real life logistics are worse than eve wormhole logistics! But now I have my new house and internet up and running. So, lets continue...

I've been missing eve and logged on for the first time in a while to do something other than update skills, I had an hour or so to play so thought wahey lets get stuck back in. I'd left myself docked up in Amarr so I got off the comfy station sofa, and jumped into my Proteus - it felt great to be back in space!

I jumped a few systems away from the hustle and bustle of Amarr and started scanning, I found a Z971 connection into C1 space.  I'm starting to learn that whenever you discover a wormhole that is not a K162, it often means that there is nobody active inside to have scanned out, or they have closed the wormhole down and will be watching the scanner - either way it's no good! I decided to jump in non the less and as soon as I refreshed D-Scan I was rewarded with a Drake and wrecks on scan. I perked up immediately, this could be my first kill! 

I tried to calm down a little bit and do some quick research, he could have come from highsec or be a resident, I narrowed down the tower quickly and linked the two corps - he was a resident. I have developed a small routine when I jump into a wormhole now, but all of this went out the window entirely - I was experiencing a rush that was made from a blend of panic, excitement and the need to get a kill under my belt! 

As I floated outside their PoS I turned on my sensor overlay to reveal the green diamonds in space that could contain my prey. Using a 15 degree Dscan I rapidly span my camera around pointing at every green anomaly  I could see, I finally found him in an ore site and warped in to 100km to make sure I wasn't de-cloaked:

I see you...!

I could see him, and he couldn't see me - it was really exciting and I challenge any other game to give this kind of thrill! I watched him for a second as he started to tractor wrecks towards his ship, I waited until a wreck got within 10km of him and bookmarked it.  I warped out to a near by celestial and then span my ship around - it was now or never. The possibility of a trap only entered my mind as I entered warp, but it was too late now trap or not I wanted this drake dead.

I landed, decloaked, activated my MWD and pointed straight at him to bump him. As I did all this I targeted him and breathed a sigh of relief as I got a positive lock and my scram pinned him down. I calmed down a little bit now as I was committed, I overheated my guns and set to chewing away on his shields. 

For the first 10 seconds it was all going really well, I was feeling confident... until he dropped ECM drones. I have read about how these little fun spoilers can ruin anybody's day so I thought he was going to escape - I did my best to keep bumping him out of alignment expecting to be jammed any second.. But the Jam never came! 


No jam please... (worst pun ever)

His missiles dented my armor a little and ruined the wax job I had gotten which was annoying, but other than that he did no damage before he eventually popped - I just wish I had grabbed a screenshot of that.

I felt great, I warped back to 70km or so off their PoS to see a tempest sat there... crap I had totally forgotten to pay any attention to D-Scan... Oh well I survived and have learn many lessons from this first kill! I saw his pod land and he reshipped into a Proteus and decided I'd leave their system and move on.

A good day was had and I am now hooked!