Small Gang Fight

I am afraid that these next few posts are not in any order...

Last night I hop onto John, and see few others in corp on. Alliance looked to be 30-40. From first glance mainly miners.

No obvious threats on intel channels and on comms. A corp mate cheerfully told me that he had beaten me to all the relic sites in our pipe but, there were two wormholes that he had bookmarked, but not investigated.

So out comes the Helios, a ship that I have had for over a year now and has done very well.

So hop next door, pick a bookmarked hole at random and jump in. Nice small hole, all planets within Dscan range.

So usual routine, Before I break cloak I bookmark the entrance, Dscan for ships and then for structures.
No ships, 4 towers 1 force field and 2 Ship Maintenance Arrays. Could be lucky so I warp cloaked to a random planet and dscan them down.
Both SMAs are around a planet with 2 moons and only one tower, and a force field.
I warp to it anyway to look. No ships, no activity and corp has 10 members. so 1-2 people and alts.

That determined I warp to a safe and drop probes. An Ore site and 4 combat sites and 5 sigs up.

I already knew that this hole has a Null static, and it took 5 mins to resolve the sigs as all gas sites.

Not something that I was set up for.

So exited and warped to other hole and repeated the process.

This was a C2 and had a high static and was very messy. 13 anomalies and 12 sigs to scan down. 2 active towers, both belonging to different corps, but no activity that I could see. A short time later I had a High Sec hole, another Null and a C5 looking hole and a frigate only to low sec.

The High sec when I popped through was 7 from Dodixie. so result. I did not bother with the low sec, and was meaning to investigate the other null, but did not get around to it.

I corp bookmarked both sides of the interesting holes and sent a message out. There is always someone that wants to buy/sell in a trade hub, and this was a painless way to do so.

As I finish, comms comes alive with reports of a Test fleet entering our space and so I race back to the station to reship.
We had a FC on and 3 Mutts and a couple of other PvP characters in other corps.
Test fleet seems to consist of a Sabre, 4 T3 destroyers and a couple of interceptors according to our scout.
They first go to V-S9YY, mainly as it has an ice belt and there is a chance of the stupidity of an AFK miner that is not watching local or intel.

This gives us time to reship to Destroyers and 4 of us made it to the gate to V-S.

First one through is a Jackdaw. The FC had basically said shoot whoever decloaks first, so its him.
Just as he was in armour  they all un-cloak and the Sabre pops a bubble. Fire is then called to switch to the sabre.

I died first, My Glorious Thrasher  followed by the other two Thrashers and a talwar. Hearing about the bubble I assume the other two remain safely docked...

The Sabre was however dead Dead Test Sabre before the Talwar. Pod express saved us the 6au warp back to station. That's the problem with bubbles...pods seldom escape. Its therefore important to have no implants. It also means that your get a nice sweet smelling pod rather than a battered used one for next time.

Helpfully the remains of the Test fleet warped to the station. We re shipped into more thrashers and un docked. This time there were 7 of us.

We managed to point and kill a
Jackdaw
and
Stiletto

and both pods before the remaining Jackdaw and Svipul ran away. I am not 100% but think that there was another interceptor and T3 as well.

We chased them across 5 systems and gave up. Basically a normal destroyer could not keep up.

When we got back to station we found one of our merry band had stayed and looted the wrecks, and was tastefully collecting the corpses to supply his private collection... No idea what he does with them, but he is a solitary soul...

Test will be back. They come to gank miners, but to be fair they also want a fight and know that if we are around, even just one or two Mutts will undock and try.

Then, bored, I loaded up all the salvage I had collected over the last few days and went through the hole to Dodixie. Picked up a couple of skill books for others and came back.

Missed another interloper as I was just entering the hole when they killed a solo cormorant (Looking for miners).

So one evening play, I earned no money (did get some by selling loot) but did not earn it, lost a ship and got on three kills. I sold the salvage for 120 million but spent about 20 on stuff.

It looks like Test killed four of us for about a 40 million loss, however, we killed three of them for about 130 million.

ISK war won!


Pipe-  what do I mean by it. Well in most cases a string of systems where there is only one way through. In this case we have seven systems with one way in and terminating at a dead end. Locally we call it the pipe. Maybe others call theirs something else...?

FC - Fleet Commander. Anyone can in theory do this, but its a hard job. You have to know your ships, you have to know where to go. You have to have the guts to stand up to your friends when you get them killed. Alcohol helps.
Mutts have 2 very good ones and a couple that will stand in for home defense.  It's a thankless task. Also, someone always asks to bring a Drake...
I am not one. It takes practice and its not me.
I am quite happy to follow one, but remember the golden rule, if you chose to un-dock it it.... its a bonus to dock it back up again. Expect to die


Have fun all

John