Meet the Neighbours.

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It's quite normal to clash on the same neighbours. This post is entirely dedicated to engagements we had with Darkspawn, that live mostly on 1-7B6D, Wicked Creek.

Some other day, we rally a small fleet to roam a bit. HAML Drake, Dual Rep Fleet Stabber, and for some extra leverage, a Kitsune.

On the ARG-3B I see Darkspawn camping:

Cynabal, Taranis, Drake and 1 Unknow.

Now... When you see a gate camp and someone missing, it usually means "Falcon", so we just assumed it.

Can't see it?! Just assume it's a Falcon.

We were underclassed and outnumbred, but we had a plan.

1st step - Send in the Fleet Stabber, drag the enemy gang closer to the gate, force the Falcon to decloak.

2nd step - Bring in Drake and Kitsune, Jamm the Falcon, Jam the Cynabal, kill what you can point.

We would make  their ECM worthless!

It went terribly wrong ofc...

1st stept went fine, they took the bait just nicely like well trained boys, but when our Kitsune jumped in, it missed all our jamms on the Falcon. ALL of them! From that point, both Fleet Stabber and Drake died a painful, jammed death, though the Kitsune survived. We could have called it a day, but we don't give up easily, we underestimated them once, but we would go better prepared the 2nd time.

We were prolly too overconfident on this engagement, specially because jams tendo to miss, sooner or later, but hell, sometimes you just gotta go for it! Anyway, we went on pods home and reshiped imediatly.

This time we sorted 2 Harbingers, 1 Drake, (all with ECCM) and the Kitsune that remained to keep eyes. Darkspawn pretty much continued their camp, with no eyes on VOL-MI, so we went for the same tactic descrived above, just using a Harbinger instead.

As soon as Harbinger jumps in, the Cynabal, Drake and Taranis prepare for another quick easy kill, but this time, the Falcon never shows up, even though we were ready(ish) for it. We managed to get the Cynabal and Taranis, paying for our previous losses. Payback hurts!

Fight KM

Also seems a Tengu tried killed the Cynabal while we reshiped but failed. We're glad he did failed!

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Another day, we rounded up 2 Cyclones, a Drake and a Retribution. We went 1-7B6D to see if anything came at our bait Retribution. Fleet holded on the F-QQ5N gate and Retribution went in to poke them

After 5 minutes or so, they sent a Blackbird and a Caracal. Retribution managed to drag both ships to the F-QQ5N and engaged the Caracal. Unfortunatly the Retribution had to call backup from our main fleet, because jammed he could not do anything unless dying. Also F-QQ5N is a regional gate, so both Caracal and Blackbird bailed out easily.

Now they knew what we had, no more wild card up our sleeve. What you see is what you get!

We kept poking them. Fleet sat on stand by on the 1-7B6D gate, while warping station, our Retribution saw they had undocked a Legion, a Harpy and a Drake! They were rallying up, but since they knew our fleet, that usually means that we're gonna get overwhelmed soon. Carebears don't undock unless on much greater numbers.

We started to leave towars other place, when we noticed that they were chasing us. We holded a bit and the Legion jumps into us. Again, it was a regional gate, so he had no problem reaching the gate at 0km. We also had no idea on what was holding on the other side of the gate, but you don't say "No" to a Legion.

We agressed and they jumped into us a Drake, Loki, Blackbird, Harpy and Dramiel.

Blackbird was primary target, followed by Drake and then by Legion. Loki bailed out (fail point on us) and we finished off the Harpy. They primaried BoomEZ on the cyclone, but switched targets when the Retribution came close. The cyclone was just tanking too much for them, though we lost the Retribution.

When we though all was over, another Drake come in solo, and agresses... Now that just gave us an easy gank. The real prize was the Legion worth about 1 Bil

Fight KM

Are you a Vampire?

Being a Vampire will get help you long ways to grasp a hold on most precious ships flying around, most specially passive shield Cynabals, Vagabonds and Hurricanes.

One day, a Darkspawn fella comes into our home system and decides to camp our own bubble... The nerve! We actually had chased him couple days ago on ARG-3R (they like to camp there) but never actually got him.

So now he's on the bubble, D-Scaning for a quick easy prey. We send in a bait Retribution.

Would you bite it?

The most important features for a bait tacker, for me, are a Nosferatu, a Scram and lot's of Tank (speed tank with dual prop also applies here). Even guns are almost expendable if you got a fleet on standby, thought they are most handy at killing ECM drones. Just grab anything with teeth and claws and don't let go! That modest Nosferatu mod is the bane of most Cynabals and Vagabonds that rely on on Medium Neuts to get easily rid of tacklers.

Personally, I consider the Nosferatu to be mandatory on Fleet Short Point Tacklers. Nothing worse than hearing on comms "I Scrammed him! Oh no, I'm neuted! He's making range... Wait, damn! I'm dead...."

In this particular case, the Retribution easily got a tackle on the Cynabal, and a Hurricane came to backup the Retribution. With 2 points and a web on it, even the ECM drones could not save the Cynabal.

Cynabal KM

Here is the short video.

Also, noticed that Daredevil whoring the Cynabal? My corp Mates also took care of him some hours after. He should not have stayed around for so long...

Daredevil KM

In case you're interested here are some other KM where the Vampire tackler was key on holding a neuting prey for the fleet to finish it.

Curse KM using Retribution

Vagabond KM using Firetail

Outnumbred and Overloaded!

Fighting outnumbred usually ain't easy and diferent players figure out diferent solutions. 100mn Tengus, Link Alts, Cynabals, Snipers, and in some more rare cases, massive active tank.

Usually the main tactic is to make range on the enemy fleet and kill the tackers as they come at you. Personally, I think it's a waste to use 100mn Tengus and Cynabals to kill tacklers, when a Coercer pretty much does the job most of times.

EVE also provides the best emotions when you're fighting outnumbred and outgunned, no doubt about that! To face a massive fleet, snatch a couple kills and bail out, showing how the mighty fleet was unable to kill ya is trully awsome!

That is what I tried when a 40 man Eve University fleet came near home system. I took my Coercer out and went for it.

Tactic is pretty simple... Warped at Hemin Gate at 100km, and waited a tacker to come at me. An Ares quickly starts coming at me, splitting himself from the main fleet, just like I wanted!

Good! Let him come...

But here comes into play a massive defect PVPers usually have. PVP pilots always want a bit more from the mods... be that guns, propulsion, tank, whatever... you-want-MORE! And CCP is a nice chap by giving you the "Overload" option.

Of course, as soon as the tacker come into range, I activated my guns overloaded, to quicly kill the pesky ares, but instead of instapoping, he managed to get into a 20km+ orbit, avoiding most of my damage.

I kept overloading.

Some more tackers start to burn at me, in order to provide the ares some backup.

And I still kept overloading... Needless to say, my guns went "puff" even without killing the ares.

At this point EVE also provides you great emotions, most of them centred on how dumb you can be. I trully think no-one can become a decent PVPer on EVE, until you burn your mods on a critical moment!

At this stage, all I can do is die.... or gtfo and lick my wounds. As I try to warp off, I notice the hero Ares still has a point on me. Now... there are some tactics you can use to shake long range fast tackers off their point range, but none of those really work when you're being chased my even more tackers closing in fast.

I resort once more to CCP's gift, and I overload my MWD, while aligning out, quicly spamming "warp out!". Fortunatly I managed to break tackle range and survived, but I dumbly lost the chance to kill 3 or 4 tackers from mostly unexperienced players.

Here is the video:

Video Coercer vs Eve-Uni

As a curiousity, NCdot had also a gang 1 jump out. Something like 8 vagas, couple scymitars and few tackers. Both fleets choose not to engage each other, even though they sat still for 5 minutes on oposite gates, assessing the situation. Eventually, each gang went his own way with no confrontation....

Sunny, Shiny, Solar

So, after the frustration of letting a Machariel go away, I tried return there some other day, specially because Sov might change soon there, and drive away the locals.

We rounded up a Retribution, Drake, Cyclone, Hurricane, Sabre and a Sleptnir.

Plan: Go HJ-BCH, tackle something shiny, Loot and return home. But never does goes according to plan...

As we were about to jump into R-3FBU, guys on fleet mention local is going somewhat up.

Solar Fleet!

Unsure on what they got, caution dictated we jump into R-3FBU and reaproch as our scout gets eyes on them. A few seconds after, their scout sees us and we reach a crossroad. Both fleets on the gate, so what we do?

We jump in!

The following report was writen by Sygma, I'm just making it more colorfull and posting the backup video and some images:

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Blue: Sacrilege, Harbinger, Oracle, Sabre, Falcon, Thorax, Raptor
Red: Sleipnir, Cyclone, Drake, Hurricane, Retribution, Sabre.

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Blue Fleet: Blue fleet Jams out the red Sleipnir, Drake, Cyclone calling the Cyclone Primary. The red ASB Cyclone tank holds and sits un-aggressed on the gate absorbing damage from the red Oracle, Harbinger, Sacrilege and Thorax.

Red Fleet: The red fleet sends its hurricane and Retribution straight to the blue Falcon to get the Falcon off the field. The blue falcon takes jammer off the primary Cyclone to jam out the Hurricane whom is bearing down upon him. The red fleet Sabre concentrates on killing the blue Sabre creating the first casualty of the fight.

Blue Fleet: The blue Falcon continues to jam out the Sleipnir; Drake rendering their DPS useless, the blue fleet takes damage off of the Cyclone to concentrate firepower on the Red Sabre whom is pounding the blue interdictor. Within seconds the second red Sabre is out of the fight.

Red Fleet: The blue Falcon continues his jams on the Hurricane and Retribution allowing the Drake and the Cyclone, Sleipnir to put all DPS on the Oracle, the second blue fleet ship is down.

Blue Fleet: The Thorax, Harb, Sacrilege re-establish damage to the Cyclone and the ASB tank starts to fail; the Cyclone enters armor but keeps injecting cap boosters.

Red Fleet: The Hurricane and Retribution manage to finally take down the blue Falcon allowing the red fleet to now utilize its oft jammed Sleipnir and Hurricane. All DPS is called on the Sacrilege whose tank holds easily.

Red Fleet: The faction fitted red Sacrilege tank continues to hold even with four Battle Cruisers slugging away at it, faction fitting 4tw!

Blue Fleet: Blue fleet continues DPS on the red Cyclone; the Cyclone continues the fight although having massive armor damage. The Cyclone pilot squeezes a few more cycles from his ASB inevitably dies in a fire.

Both Fleets: The Sacrilege seems to be holding fine until he runs out of cap boost charges, he reps twice more while reloading cap boosters, but finally succumbs to the DPS caused by the Sleipnir..

Red Fleet: With only a Thorax, Harbinger left, the Red Fleet puts all DPS on the Hurricane.

Blue Fleet: Now having a massive DPS advantage the Harbinger goes down in flames, followed closely by the Thorax.

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SUMMARY

The fight could have gone either way, to be honest. I keep going over the fight in my head trying to figure out where the fight went wrong or right. I was the unlucky guy who died in the Cyclone but I was truly in awe of its performance (71,775 damage). If I would do it all over again, I think that we should have sent our Sabre, Retribution and Hurricane to the Falcon (along with all drones). While the main fleet went for the DPS (Oracle, Harbinger and Thorax, Sacrilege in that order)… we wasted too much time on a lower DPS HAC. Also on a personal level…I should have brought more cap boost charges…lol.

Sure you got enough of these around?

  If I were the Solar Fleet guys they should have made the Oracle and Harbinger warp at range allowing the snipers to protect the Falcon and kept them in the fight longer. I would have called the tackle and Hurricane primary, followed by the Cyclone, putting all ECM drones on the Sleipnir. All and all they called targets somewhat correctly, but once they lost the Oracle there went 1/3 their DPS. By not keeping the tackle off their Falcon, that eventually became the Achilles heel insuring the loss.

We can say what if, but it was quick thinking on the part of our Retribution pilot that drew agro from their fleet not allowing them to get into position to succeed. Once they aggressed, the fight was on, and either they jumped into us and died, or fought on the gate at the range we wanted."

Engagement KB 

Here is also the video from the Retribution point of view

 

Here Machy, Machy, Machy

How many times you get the chance to tackle a ratting Machariel on 0.0?

The perfect combination.

Personally I don't get that many times, and it can provide some intense reactions from the members of the fleet. It happened on HJ-BCH, where we like to go when RL does not allows for more than 1 hour to catch something.

Our gang was composed of a Sabre, Harpy and no-tank-gank-Enyo and as we land on gate Y5-E1U, it flashed. Without knowing what it is, we just chill on the gate waiting for a decloak. Could hardly belive when a Machariel decloaks, so we get on it as fast as possible, orbiting as close as possible, even knowing that there was a good chance he could insta-pop us, or just prolly tank us easily.

Our Sabre gets primaried, and after after a few seconds is instapoped! He had began to slowboat away from the Mach, for some reason (prolly a miss-double click on space), and lost his transversal, paying dealy for it.

After we took care of the drones and started to apply damage onto the Machariel itself, we had another jump-in. A Navy Mega decloaks!

Things were not going well for us. Not only the Machariel is getting backup, we're loosing a golden oportunity for shiny kills!

We still held a bit more, if they were escalading, they could still bring something we could kill. Those ships were PVE fit, so we could bail at any time. Soon after a Talos warps in! That could actually be the opportunity we had been waiting!

Unfortunatly the Talos had warped in at 25km, and my Enyo mate had been forced to warp out, because the Navy Mega started to primary him.

Choices:

A) Stay on the Machariel and be sniped by the Talos and Navy Mega;

b) Rushing to the Talos and try too Ninja it before we got sniped by the Machariel and Navy Mega

c) Bail out...

I actually went for option b) Ninja the Talos, but I got reminded on how fast our Sabre had been blown by that Machariel... Getting killed by PVE ships would not be a good option too, so I bailed out.

The locals docked up, and pretty much stayed there. We did got a bomber a few minutes after that undocked to check us out.

Engagement Final KB

When we were about to leave, a Pilgrim opens up a Cyno 100km off the station

"Hello..."

A Why so Serious fleet of sniping ships bridges in, and start shooting the station. Sov warfare is trully exciting. Even though it would have been great to stick around and try get a Fat Boy around, our time was up and returned home.

I trully hope that these Class Act Alliance make an "arrangement" with the new system owners, we like to have them around.

Let's show that station who is the BOSS around here!"

Brazilian Biquini

I log on and a Brazilian Vera Cruz gang chooses to pays us a visit:

2 Falcons, 1 Kitsune, 1 Broadsword, 1 Hurricane, 1 Talos, 1 Cynabal, 1 Raptor, 1 Scymitar and couple more fellas. They summed up 13.

We had 4 active players, so even though they don't have all that much DPS dealers, the 3 ECM ships and the Logi make any short range brawl.... suicidal. But hey, this is EVE, so there is always a way to try get some fun.

After a short talk we took some snipers out, so we got out 2 Tornados, 1 Naga and 1 cloaky eyes. We had a Large Bubble on the RMOC gate, so they were careful jumping into K-Q. They jump 1 Vagabond in and test our damage. With only 3 Snipers he had no trouble burning back to the gate, and soon after they all jump in and pop our bubble. At this point we expect them to move along, but they don't...

They actually start putting drag bubbles on our gate, getting pings off the RMOC gate and deploying probes. That is interesting! Luckily, our members start to log on shortly after, so our sniper fleet grows up to 5. Still not really impressive, but enough to try harrass them.

Target your primary!

The plan: Warp in, Snipe a BC, Bail

1st Warp-in - Talos, Cynabal and Vagabond bail out soon, so we go for the Hurricane, but with no tackle on him, he also gets out easily.

We need to improve the plan a bit, so we decide to go for another Warp-in, but this time, we use a bomber to get a Insta-Scram on the Talos to hold him in place. Our bomber slowboats to him, gets the Scram, Web and Tracking Disruption on the Talos, but something goes wrong (not sure what up to now), and it's instapoped  soon after, allowing the Talos to bail in 50% structure.

Other atemtps prove futile, as Vera Cruz quickly warps off when we land on grid, and at same time try to probe our positions. Since we were on a stalemate, they eventualy get tired and go away with some gf in local. After all, all the action was quite enjoyable.

Kills: 0

Losses: 1 Bomber

Frustration: Hurricane, Talos

50 Jumps - Nothing to see here, move along!

We had a couple hours free and guys decided to make a T1 Cruiser roam. We had not gonne to Immensia for some time, so we planned a 50 jumps route.

As for the ships itself, we came up with 2 Vexors, Thorax, Blacbird and Slasher for tackle.

Masters of the Universe!

 Wanna know what we found?

Nothing, Nicles, Zip, Nada, Rien. And I don't mean anything we could kill, or engage. Just simply another soul! Whole lot of Jump-Warp and D-Scan clear.

So here goes a message to all those big sov holding alliances:

NEED FOR YOU TO FETCH MORE PETS!Thks...

We all love Pets around! Everyone wins!

 As for the rest of the roam, we saw a little "blip" on the map, on the MB-NKE pocket, so we went for it. Thorn Alliance seems to be the new owner. Our scout goes in 1st as we hold on gate, and almost instantly manages a tackle on a Oracle about 70km off the station. We manage to finish him quickly, even before his assisted fighters do any damage. 

A few minutes after, D-Scan shows a Caracal on a planet. People should know that T1 Cruisers have no place on EVE (or have they?) and another quick warp-in gets another kill. An active Rokh was warping around, but never managed to get a hold on him.

Oracle and Caracal

Kills: 1 Oracle, 1 Caracal

Losses: None;

Frustration: 50+ jumps to get a kill 5 jumps or so out of home

Solo Hunting on HJ-BCH

So, couple days ago, all corp mates are AFK. This is actually a chance to go do "Solo" PVP. I decide to bring a Talos and a Slicer 

 

 HJ-BCH is home for Class Act Cartel Alliance (or some of it's members) and it's pretty much a careabear pocket. Yes, I prey on those "weaker" than me.

The plan: Keep Talos on the HJ-BCH gate, out of local, and send in the Slicer for some Tackle.

As soon as Slicer enters system, Sniper Oracle undocks. Actually that pilot had killed me some days ago

Previous fight on HJ-

I try to get transversal up, and as soon as he agresses, I go for tackle and bring in the Talos. At this point I don't know if they going to undock more ships (local was around 10). The Oracle was solo on his endeavor, because starts to deagress as soon as Rtb jumps into local. Station is more than 50AU away from the ingate, so it's a race against time.

Fortunatly the Talos hardly needs to shoot more than 2 times to finish the Oracle, making this a worthy 6 jumps trip.

Sniper Oracle KM 

I clear local searching for more targets on nearby systems but find nothing. As I return back to HJ-, on my way home, I detect a Scythe mining on a Asteroid Belt. I actually belive it's the 1st T1 Cruiser I ever saw mining on 0.0, so I quickly put him out of his misery.

But no roam is complete without frustration. As I return back home, a Darkspawn Drake jumps into my Talos on R-3FBU, and actually agresses! I gadly reply while trying to keep a "safe" range, outside Web range (he was long pointing me). Unfortunatly I trully fail at kitting, so, while keeping range on him, I slip into 32km, outside the 28km (overheated) point range. Even though I tried to chase with my Slicer, for 2 jumps, he managed to get on a Safe Spot.

Time to return home again, but D-Scan shows me another possible prey

Slicer spots a Red Alliance Eris on ARG-3R, and seems to be going to 1V-LI2. I park the Talos on a Safe Spot and it's time for another chase. I fail to tackle him a couple times because he just warps fast, but suddenly he just sits on the SG-75T waiting for me...

Eris on hold + Gate = ??

In my language that means "bait"

I jump inside SG-75T to take a peek, and their whole 30man fleet is waiting for me. Luckily I manage to burn back to gate in half armor (overload MWD ftw) and call it a day. My mates were also getting active, so was time to round up a fleet.

Kills: Oracle, Scythe
Loss: None
Frustration: Drake, Eris

No... I would not mess with the whole lot of those on HJ-BCH.