Engagement Report 1 - Shield Myrm/Osprey

Since I got a new job for the reminder of my life (A.K.A . ”Daddy”), I had to change drastically my EVE style. I’m only able to log after kid goes to bed, I hardly do fleet coms because I’ll wake Mini-Plen while screaming for people to spread scrams, and I fit a cloak on my every ship, so that I can go afk in less than 10 seconds safely because Mini-Plen changed his status from “sleeping” to “raging like hell”. Yes, that means that I provide hilarious Killmails with cloaks in my Myrmidons, Vexors, Svipuls etc…

But I digress…

So, Wallymarts probes a new WH to Goon Space. Me, being a leech, took advantage of his work, logged on, took a shield Myrmidon and a backup Osprey, and went to take a peek.

There were lots of fellas around, I almost scrammed a ratting Ishtar, and 5 minutes later almost got a ratting Navy Vexor. As expected, I started to get the locals attention… I see a Scorpion warping to gate, a Legion warping to a POS near me, an Eos undocking and holding, some Interceptors warping to different gates (never know if those guys are just travelling or not, but still…). I was starting to get stalked upon.

Time to retreat a bit and see what develops. I jumped back to the system where I had my WH and noticed local to have an idea on how many follow.

Local rises by 14!

Crap… Too much for me, and being on a brawling ship , it means it’s pretty much game over. I can engage the occasional trigger happy guy before a home defence fleet is formed, but I cannot engage a decent target with a proper fleet behind him. As I try to warp off, a crow lands on me and long points me…

There are a couple reasons I use a Myrmidon instead of a Navy Vexor, and one of those reasons is called “Micro-Jump Drive” mod, or as I like to call it, “LEARN HOW TO FIT A SCRAM AND COME CLOSE TO ME OR SEE ME BAIL YOU WUSSY!” mod. So no worries, align to the WH, hit the MJD, spawn 100km away, warp to the WH and….

My ship starts to spin 180º instead of warping the the damn WH! W…..T….. F….. How did I messed up so bad!! For some reason I had aligned to a wrong spot, and now I have a crow coming at me at 5000m/s. You know how fast BC’s warp if they’re not aligned properly? Well, not faster than a Crow can burn 100km and point you again…

Now I’m in trouble! I hit scan and I see Legion on scan while local is rising. Even though I try to burn away, at 800m/s I’m not gonna lose that Crow. I have a MJD for a reason and I just managed to screw it. On top of all, Crows scrams me, and I become a sitting duck. Unfortunately I do NOT have a Neut on my Shield Myrms, but I scram it back and send my Hobgoblins. Before he dies, the legion lands 7km, long points me and webs me. Almost got out, but I’m not dead yet! I scram the legion back (don’t have a web on my shield fit) overload MWD and try to burn away from him. I also bring in my Osprey because he’s really killing my fast. I might have 1000dps in the Myrm, but with only 2 shield extenders for tank, I hardly have more EHP than a cruiser, and shields don’t tend to like lasers coming from a Legion all that well. I also had a set of ECM drones in my osprey, and put them onto the Legion, I could get lucky! As you might be expecting, stuff starts to land, about 30km from me, and either it was only an Afterburning Legion, or he forgot to hit on his MWD, because I managed to warp off as soon as I reached 25km! This also means that he was using a non-faction Warp Disruptor and had forgot to overload it! Thanks to both factors I managed to get safe and cloak up with both my ships.

Not long after, I start to see Combat Scanner Probes on scan. A quite predictable move from the locals... I must confess that having a cloak is quite handy in this situations. I can go AFK while aggressed and take a break!

So, what was so different? Me being chased outnumbered 10v1 and then running away like dog with his tail on fire? That happens to me pretty much every time I undock. The different part starts now!

I got so pissed I had targets, but could not really do anything about it solo, so I risked it… I joined comms and asked who was online. Zen and Incorr were alive so we started to think what we could do… Locals had Legion, Scorpion, Phobos, Eos as main ships, and then some dessys and tacklers, but it’s their home, so they could reship or get backup fast. So Zen suggested:

“Why don’t we go tripple geddons on those guys?!” Well…. Why not!? In the end we changed Setup a bit, cause we did not wanted to get jammed by the scorp and die a slow death, so we settled by 1 Geddon, 1 Anti-Scorpion Scorpion, 1 Mega and 1 Oneiros. I would dual tab the Scorp and the Oneiros.

There was yet and important factor. I wanted the engagement to happen near the WH and not on a gate. BS are SLOOOOOWWWWWW as hell, so we need to take the most of positioning advantages. Also I needed to come back and reship.

I brought only my Osprey back into the WH. Since the locals already had probes out, and alsoy had all gate exits covered and almost for sure added me to watchlist, I exited system with 1 ship, cloaked my Myrm near the WH and looked out for probes. Not long after I see probes quite near the WH and disappear a bit after! Terrific!!! Now they know where I came from! I’m pretty sure they have my WH bookmarked and that the prober is looking at it! I uncloak my Myrm, jump out hoping that the prober sees me go out.

Right now is a critical moment. Without any Neuts in local, my targets will probably disband, but at same time, I need to reship, so we do this as fast as possible. We need to get back into their space as fast as possible, before their FC (I’m gonna say it’s the Legion guy) goes AFK.

As I go back reship, we have 2 more mates login in! Blue Grass and Needle join us in 2 more Megas!

The Plan:

Connection to Goon space was quite linear and quite close: K-Q>>2AU in Sleeper Space>>Goon Space. We sit with main fleet in K-Q, send in bait Mega, wait near WH for enemy fleet to arrive, bring main fleet.

Unfortunately, when Incorr in our bait Mega gets into Goon space, there’s only 3 in local instead of 15. They had gone, DAMN! We would not just give up, so we adapted the plan. Main fleet got on the WH to Goon space and our bait Mega warped to a gate. My previous efforts payed out, because they started to fill local, even before our bait arrived the gate. Before he got tackled, he warped back to the WH! 

Once again, a new critical moment. It’s good to be near our bait, but then again, if we get scouted, our foes will easily evade us, so in order to prevent any foe from jumping into the WH and getting eyes into our main fleet, Incorr in his bait Mega, starts to MWD away from the WH some 20km. This way seeing the Battleship off the hole, and thus being unable to jump out or run away, the locals might not even think about checking the other side of the WH. It’s a gamble, but tends to work most of times.

The WH was indeed bookmarked by the locals, and the Legion (my old friend) tackles our mate. With more stuff landing Incorr calls in the main fleet and its time to engage! The Legion melts, the phobos jumps out, the Scorpion lands close to us and starts to melt, but he MJD away, and we kill a couple more frigs. From the 15 that got back into local again, only 5 or so warped to the WH…. A pitty.

We were looting and about to get back home with only the Legion kill, and the Phobos comes into us! Instead of warping off he re-approaches, but was probably not familiar with WH mechanics and gets polarized… Don’t have to say that he melted right?

No more action was going on, WH was End of Life and this was indeed the 1st time in more than 2 years that all of us used a battleship!

Oh, btw… I failed to jamm the Legion, failed to jamm the Scorpion and failed to jamm the Phobos in my Scorpion. I felt overall pretty useless….