Sunday, September 12, 2010

Letrange's swan song

As most of you bloggers already know, my great buddy Letrange has recently stepped down as leader of Apoapsis Multiversal Consortium and taken his corporation out of the alliance in preparation for a much needed break away from EVE. So of course we just had to underline the event with as decent a fleet as we could muster. It wasn't exactly a blob but our skirmish gang was well equipped to play hard; Letrange had requested for everyone who would show up to bring a good PvP ship because he wanted to blood his PvP Loki. The call was heard, and this is what our skirmish gang looked like: Loki, fleet-boosting Tengu, Vagabond x2, Gila, Curse, Rook x2, Falcon, Arazu, Crow and Thorax. Yeah... things were going to get interesting unless we ran into huge numbers or capitals.

So we set off from our HQ in Gerbold towards Metropolis Low-sec space; though we had a very nice fleet, Letrange was not quite comfy with the idea to head to Null-sec (some of us, me included, were requesting a trip to Providence ^_^) so instead we did sort of a Tour de Low-sec, looking mostly for piwats but if we would've seen anything tasty in a belt or doing missions, we would've stomped on it. We get to the Evati system where our scout spots a criminal Harbinger hanging some distance off a gate (sorry, can't remember which), preying on whatever is jumping through. Our second Vaga pilot, me being the other one, jumps in and starts to annoy the BC to see if he'll get aggression, and sure enough, the Harbinger bites. The Arazu decloaks, the gang jumps in and warps to the Vaga, and the Harbinger gets, scrammed, webbed, jammed and fragged into next Sunday. He had a good tank so he could kill people around the gates, but our fleet over-powered him in no time flat. In a great stroke of luck it is Letrange himself who got the killmail, thereby blooding Hellhound, his unbelievably nasty Loki.

We next set off towards the Minmatar-Amarr border. At one point we had to evade a 40-50 man gang that cut off our original route towards Gallente Low-sec, where we knew we were going to see action. Unfortunately for us, there wasn't much action along the way. Kind of weird for a Sunday after noon. At one point we did have hopes way up as a Thanatos and a Chimera were clearly doing a deadspace complex; now, why would anyone do a plex in Low-sec in 2 carriers is beyond me. It would've taken a long time to kill them, but we had the jamming power to keep both carriers out of the fight. Unfortunately, just as our prober was about to land the 100% on them, the carriers disappeared as they jumped out to a cyno field somewhere. Good call.

At this point we are into Amarr Low-sec and we can start to make our way towards Gallente space from the other side. The plan is to go play with some of the piwat alliances (*cough*VETO*cough*) living out there. Once again we are met with a lot of empty space, but at one point a bigger gang (around 30) crosses our way. This was a bit overwhelming but where our scout didn't stick around long enough to get ship types, I felt that even at 12 vs 30ish, if the other fleet had too many weak links it would have been possible to kill enough of them to get them to disengage. Anyway, nothing happened as the bigger gang didn't stick around and moved on, leaving us once again in near-empty space. The op had been going on for about 2 hours now, and some pilots would be having to drop fleet. So we decided to find the one close place where we were absolutely certain to find some trouble: Old Man Star!

As is usually the case with OMS, the place is a complete mess; you cannot know who is flying with who or against who, there are ship wrecks everywhere, and a good number of people are tagged criminals. As we hang around on various gates, no one dares aggress us, which is a nice feeling. Meanwhile our Recon pilots are trying to find some targets, one by going to belts and the other by trying to probe a Tengu and a Nighthawk we had on scan. Our scout lands on a red Thorax who is asking for it. As we land he melts in no time, and all of a sudden about 6-7 ships land at a tactical from the belt. We have a short Mexican Stand-Off where we just looked at each other, but the arrival on scan of a carrier has us moving elsewhere because we were pretty sure these guys were together... call it gut feeling. We wait for news about the Tengu and Nighthawk to see if we can nab one last, really expensive kill, but they are safe inside a POS force field so that's pretty much it. The fleet then disbands, and Letrange is wished a warm "goodbye and have a nice one!".

After reshipping to a much cheaper Thorax, 3 of us, including a Hyena pilot who made his way towards the fleet as the op was about to end, wanted to find more trouble in Old Man Star, and sure enough we did. The story behind this: the Hyena and I are touring the OMS belts, looking for trouble. I land into an empty one and just as I warp off an Ishkur arrives. But unfortunately our Hyena pilot lands at the same belt just after I've left. A second Ishkur then shows up so the Hyena dies a horrible death. So it's Arazu/T1-rax vs Ishkur x2. We call the closest Ishkur primary but we make a discovery: these guys are flying the exact same way you would fly remote-repping cap-transfering Domi's. The Ishkur's tank holds and they are able to kill first the Arazu, and then my Thorax. The frustrating part is that if I had been in a T2 fit Thorax the Ishkur would have gone down with me. Oh well, such is The PvP :)

So all in all, this was a great afternoon and much fun was had. MAPU will be doing these kinds of roams more often the near future, and it also sparked some interest in some of the other corp's pilots. I personally can't wait to do it again! So Letrange, your last official roam was a good one, but if you feel like joining in the fun during your hiatus you'll be welcome as if you never left :)

Fly hungry

o7

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