Category Archives: Wormholes
Cut off and escaping an ambush
A quick tale for you people who bother to read.
Last night, we attempted to launch an assault on some site runners in a Class 4 wormhole, only to have the critical-mass wormhole collapse with a token force inside. No big deal, so I decided to scan out today, link up with them and we could continue the assault. Easy.
Our C4 static leads me to an end-of-life C4b, which leads to… an end of life C4c. No big deal. I scan that to find… an end of life C6a. This looks more promising but gives me 2 end of life Nullsecs, an EOL C5a static and an inbound C4d. I decide to head home and await for the wormholes to die naturally, only to find C4b -> C4c has collapsed.
Damn it.
The C5a leads to another C6 and, quite frankly, “fuck that”. I decide to check out the C4d inbound. Maybe there’s an inbound there?
The good news is I find a C2a inbound. The better news is that there’s a highsec static there! The utterly fantastic news is that there’s sleeper wrecks on scan. There’s also a Thrasher.
Launch probes out of range. Use Directional-scan to locate the site. Probes dropped at 1 au. Thrasher hit. Warp drive active.
Hello.
I decloak and burn at the Thrasher, popping drones ready.
Then the Thrasher warps and a new contact appears on overview. A Manticore bomber has decloaked 15km from me and… I’m pointed. Shit.
D-scan lights up with a host of ships, so I lock and burn at the Manticore. He starts moving away but at afterburner speeds, and it’s moments before my drones, scram and guns are on him. Within seconds, he pops. As my drones return, the hostiles land on grid. I cloak and hit warp to a random Custom’s Office at range. Better luck next time gents.
o/
Rolling a wormhole creates a capital engagement
There’s activity on scan as I log in. I’m alone in the alliance channel, yet an Ares and combat probes light my directional scan. Interesting. There’s an inbound C5 a few hours old, so I kick the warp drive into gear and head over to check it out. I’m met with a fight.
Two other alliances are currently engaged in combat. In my home! The cheeky gits. It looks like Sleeper Social Club are engaging another force of ships belonging to The Laughing Men. Unable to intervene in any meaningful way, I sit and watch for a few minutes. I do not know the source of either fleet, but my playtime is limited and I am content to watch them fight. I see just one ship (of Laughing Men) die during my time here before a larger SSC force jumps through and they all warp off. A few SSC ships return to loot the wrecks and drones before departing, leaving my home as quiet as before. I choose this moment to safe up and log out.
—-
Some hours later, Silent Terror and Firefly log in. Upon seeing the inbound, they decide to be done with it. I’m told Firefly asked “ST, help me roll this wormhole”.
A quick scout revealed nothing unusual, and they began the rolling process, dropping a Thanatos to close the wormhole for good, leading to a nice quiet system.
Or so we thought.
As our Thanatos jumped home, a new contact appeared on d-scan. A Vigilant had just landed on grid with our Carrier. ST promptly found himself pointed. As it turns out, we had missed an inbound. This mistake could cost us dearly.
As ST begins maneuvering and applying ECM drones, multiple hostile ships land on grid. It’s The Laughing Men, and they fully intend to do away with their prey. A trio of Guardians with various Tech 3 and Recon support lands and completes the ambush. The battle is on.
Not content to watch his friend die, Firefly commits a Loki and a Tengu into the fight, using the Carrier’s remote repairs to try to pressure the opposition away from the Carrier. Meanwhile, ST is busy gathering our forces. I get a message. It has two words. “PvP. Now”
Dropping the PS3 controller (Battlefield 3, yo) I log in alongside Mick, Splut, Lykwidian and Barrak. Our initial plan involves ECM. Lots of ECM. We’re going to jam out the hostile tackle and extract the carrier – we have no eyes or scan of the enemy wormhole and their fleet is increasing by a ship a minute, so we’d like to avoid losing it. We launch 4 Falcons into warp and await a good opportunity to strike. Unfortunately, a Mistake Was Made and 2 of the Falcons miswarped, decloaking early. One Falcon goes down whilst the others bail off field. Plan A is marked as a failure.
Fortunately, we have a plan B – we commit a second Thanatos onto the field and hit them with armour dps, using a Scorpion as an ECM platform to try and break the Guardian chain. Lacking my Absolution (I lost another one) I grab an old Myrmidon for myself. We gear up and send in the second Thanatos first, with our fleet not far behind.
I am aware my overview is a clusterfuck. I like it like that.
First up? The Curse. We landed about 14km away and promptly blow it up before his repairs land. The pod escapes, likely to reship, and we choose a Guardian as the next primary. Our own Scorpion is primaried and explodes before we can repair it. The Guardian dips into low armour before repairs catch on. Dammit. Our two Carriers are keeping ourselves up nicely now, but the enemy have made no move to disengage. They must have an ace up their sleeve. Disregarding the first Guardian, we swap targets to the Oneiros only to get it to 75% structure before the reps land. Moving quick, we swap all DPS to the original Guardian. The swap catches them off guard (hah) and the first Guardian explodes. We burn down the second Guardian and take it down too. The third Guardian warps off as the Oneiros meets his end.
We begin chewing into a Legion as a Bhaalgorn lands and starts neuting out one of our carriers. Firefly gets a point as we continue on the Legion, finally finishing it off. The Vigilant follows,
A silence falls over Mumble as we move towards the next target. A new hostile has landed. “Dreadnaught on grid”. A Phoenix has just landed and began his Siege cycle. This is their ace.
As we start plinking at the Tempest Fleet Issue, a lone Guardian also lands on grid. D-Scan reveals three more. We burn our guns to finish the Tempest and the Loki as the Guardians land. 2 of them burn to range but 2 remain close and we pull the same trick as before, alternating targets to catch one out. We succeed in killing the first. As we start on the second new Guardian, the other remaining two warp, as does the Bhaalgorn – some ECM drones successfully allowing it to evade.
Yes, the drone flight is sub-optimal. In my defence, I grabbed this in a hurry.
The last Guardian dies and we start clearing up the remaining subcaps. Our first Thanatos is now dipping into structure, but the remaining enemy subcaps no longer have it pointed, so it simply warps away. Op success?
Only a few enemy ships remain and the Phoenix is firmly in Siege, so we eliminate the remaining Proteus and Onyx. Our remaining Carrier is starting to buckle and the tank is failing, so we warp it out too.
Finally, only the Phoenix remains. He exits Siege and tries to warp but is pointed, so he re-sieges. Confident he is not going anywhere, we warp a few people out to prepare some new ships. I grab my Proteus and start scanning for that possible inbound as we ready *our* ace in the hole. Our ace is 4 of our own Dreadnaughts.
Image courtesy of our Rev pilot
The last of the hostile ships explodes, taking his pod with it. We offer “gf”‘s to any of them still in local and proceed to clean up the field.
The EVE-Kill Battle Report is here but does not include our original Falcons, nor 2 of the hostile Guardians we killed (because they were the same pilots). You can check our alliance kills and losses for a better picture.
All in all, a really fun fight. I’ve never been prouder of our alliance. I honestly thought we were going to end the night down a Carrier. Props to The Laughing Men as well for having the balls to commit such a fleet into an enemy-controlled system.
Dropping on Tornados and clearing Thrashers
My corpmates have been busy – they managed to secure a few kills earlier in the afternoon whilst I was at work, the gits. I’ve logged on to reports that the Tengu gang have reformed with a Tornado gang plus a HIC in support. They also have a Probe frigate in our home scanning away.
We know they’ve reshipped to Tornados because one of our own tried to snipe one and met his end in the process. They’re in our C4 static, sat on another C4 wormhole. Well, they’re actually about 30km off, so we assemble a fleet to hit them. We pile up a fleet on the C4 wormhole only to hear that the enemy fleet has warped away from their position, along with their Deimos. Curses. There’s another C4 in there, which is probably their home.
Imagine our surprise when this sniping Tornado gang lands on the other side of our wormhole and jumps in.
They realize their mistake immediately and jump everything back. What does this do? Polarise them.
Their Tornados sport no tank whatsoever and are practically volley’d into their Capsules.
We clear the field with no trouble and head home. Their Probe pilot smacks us a bit in local, but no to real avail. Battle Report.
It’s time for this week’s Ganked Roam. I pod myself to kspace and grab a Hookbill. The theme today is “Faction Frigates & Cruisers”
We decide to hit Lowsec first and promptly run straight into Fweddit who drop 40 Thrashers on us.
The brave Fweddit gang were, however, outgunned somewhat. We wiped their fleet with no losses.
We moved on, killing Poetic Stanziel again in another system.
Finally, we killed a smartbombing Typhoon and his Slave Pod. Sadly, I had to bail at this point and was not able to follow into Nullsec. Hence this only being a short summary.
Overall, not a bad night!
Losing an Absolution, Oracle and very almost a Proteus
It’s been an eventful 48 hours. Bear with me. There’s a few interesting stories.
First off, a quick trading update.
Still slowly increasing but a bit of slowdown over the past 36 hours due to heavy workload. I anticipate this picking back up towards the middle of next week. I think I’ve managed to locate better items to trade in, so we’ll see. 160mil in 5 days from 5mill start is not a bad beginning though!
The Absolution Loss
Friday night. In an odd twist of fate, our C4 static is the old home of one of our new corps in the alliance. We still own the Custom’s Offices! In addition, there’s an inbound C6 Magnatar to home. That’s not so bad. What is bad is that AHARM have their C6 home connected to it. Oh dear.
So what do we do? We ask them for a 5v5 in the interim C6. We can’t field against their main PvP fleets, so why not a fight we can give them? Fortunately, they accept!
We have a scout reporting they are fielding 5 Tier 3 BCs so, whilst I am not FC, I float the idea of a sensor damping Lachesis. The wormhole gives +100% Damage but -50% targeting range, so the plan is that we damp them into a range we can engage them. We field a couple of med-range BS with a Proteus as tackle and my Abso as more med-range dps in addition to the Lachesis.
We warp in and setup as the AHARM gang, in Tier 3 BCs, land 120km off. The Lachesis calls damps on all 5 ships but they still manage to alpha him off field at 110km. Uh. Crap. They start chewing into our remaining 4 ships who, without our Lachesis, cannot effectively force the enemy to close the gap. As a result, we slowly start dying one by one. I call for us to warp but am refused by the FC – we have to stay for the e-honour. As my Absolution explodes, they tell us in local we can warp with honour. Oh good. The Proteus escapes, the lone survivor of the massacre.
Saving the Sister Tower and losing the Oracle
Now needing a new general combat ship, I use a highsec to move to Amarr and grab a new Absolution. Whilst en route, corpmate Penny, resident of our C4 Sister Wormhole (and author of Tiger Ears) reports a new tower in her home wormhole. It’s a Small Amarr tower with no defences, and a mere Ship Maintenance Array and Corporate Hanger Array. It could be a siege in the process of being setup, or just some visitors. Regardless, it is a concern for Penny and rightly so. Not content to sit idly by whilst our Sister Wormhole is under possible threat, we move a siege fleet out into kspace and make our way over. Penny sets up some bookmarks as we start heading in.
After a while, we eventually land and start the siege.
20 minutes later and the tower approaches 25% shields. We’re expecting the tower is stronted and as such we would have to resume tomorrow. Fortunately this is not the case tonight.
We finish the tower which leaves us with a mere 10,000 ore from the CHA. Oh well. We pack up and head home.
Except we don’t, because ST and Mick decide to test my Oracle’s tank and volley me to armour. I’m in a shield tanked Oracle.
They then forget their drone aggro.
Scratch one Oracle to friendly fire.
We eventually head home, with myself in the new Absolution, and log for the night.
Splitting the fleet
It’s now Saturday evening and I return home from work to discover we’re assembling a shield fleet. There’s a C5 Pulsar down the chain and we’ve lost an Armour Curse and Proteus to a Transmission Lost fleet in there. Whoops. We’re forming a retaliation fleet. I grab a Curse to join the 2 Tengus, Drake, 2 Basilisks and shield Myrmidon as we head down the chain.
We fleetwarp to the C5 and are ordered to jump on contact. There’s just one snag – the wormhole is now Critical. Therefore it collapses before the Curse and Basilisks can jump. On the other side, our Myrmidon dies whilst the remaining 3 ships escape. They finally evade their way to kspace and back to us. Phew.
A Self Destructing Thanatos
tgl3 is Thanatos capable as of today too. Fitting it is a different matter (another month!), but I’m in a position now to look into buying one. I mention it on comms during general scouting work, so Wrath claims he’ll self destruct one just to annoy me. The git.
The chain today contains a lowsec, and Wrath is moving ships and needs a cyno in there as an interim for his trip. I volunteer and send a cyno frigate out to jump him in. The jump goes smoothly – the Thanatos cyno’s in and docks up.
He then undocks and does the last thing I would expect.
[ 2013.02.09 23:53:42 ] (notify) Thanatos belonging to Wrathhammer self-destructs.
The bastard bought a carrier and got me to cyno it just to self destruct it. Heh. Wormholes make you crazy rich. Or just plain crazy.
POS Guns result in a very on-fire Proteus
The chain from the Thanatos is still active and one of our new corps in the alliance requires some bookmarks. I decide to drop some off in his tower. I warp to it and alt-tab to update market orders on the alt.
I alt-tab back to find myself sat 11km off the shields. No problem, he must have changed the force-field password! I move to cloak up and warp away.
[ 2013.02.10 00:05:57 ] (notify) You cannot cloak your ship as you are being targeted by someone.
Wait, what? There’s nothing on overview?
[ 2013.02.10 00:05:59 ] (combat) 306 from Possum [DMICE](Amarr Control Tower) – Small Beam Laser Battery – Glances Off
Oh crap. POS guns.
I start to warp away and hit the armour repairs on the Proteus.
[ 2013.02.10 00:06:05 ] (notify) Armor Explosive Hardener II requires 30.0 units of charge. The capacitor has only 3.4 units.
Oh crap. Neuts on the POS.
[ 2013.02.10 00:06:21 ] (combat) 806 from Possum[DMICE](Amarr Control Tower) – Medium Pulse Laser Battery – Penetrates
STOP THAT.
Fortunately the points have not cycled on the POS yet and my Proteus enters warp. A fortunate escape.
[ 2013.02.10 01:07:38 ] Alliancemate > you bad
[ 2013.02.10 01:07:43 ] tgl3 > Know what’s bad?
[ 2013.02.10 01:07:47 ] tgl3 > Your tower config.
[ 2013.02.10 01:07:59 ] tgl3 > I WAS ON FIRE
[ 2013.02.10 01:08:01 ] tgl3 > FIX THAT SHIT
I then went to bed. Enough for 48 hours for me.
Using the home field advantage
Following yesterday’s Rorqual kill, I am anticipating today to be rather slow. Logging on shows a C5 inbound to home, along with a Nullsec outbound. A quick scout of the C5 reveals an empty system with only an end-of-life null inside it, so I choose to scout the Nullsec in home. Firefly is out scouting the main chain, so I’ll leave him to it.
I manage to find a ratting Macharial in Nullsec and tackle it, only to have his 5 ECM drones get a lucky jam off and allow him to escape my Proteus. Not a good start to the day.
—-
Some time later, Firefly reports a Highsec down the wormhole chain leading to a system 4 jumps from Jita. In addition, our static C4a has some pilots in their tower, though they’re not doing much right now. Silent Terror logs in and runs an Orca out to the high, only to have a Proteus jump into highsec directly behind it. There’s a corp hunting in the C2 leading to the highsec. Oh good. Meanwhile, the C4a pilots have jumped a probing covert ops frigate into our home system. So they could be hunting us shortly too. Oh good.
Finally, as we assemble a standing PvP force at a tower, a Loki decloaks 150km away before recloaking quickly. Talocan United are in our wormhole. That Loki didn’t decloak by accident. I launch a probe but there’s no new inbounds – they came in from the earlier C5. I warp to it at range to check, merely to see a Sleipnir Command Ship sat on the wormhole. Talocan United.
“Bait” says I. “Trying to provoke a fight”
“OK” says Silent, as he warps a Proteus straight at the Sleipnir and engages. Wait, what?
The wormhole flares. Once. Twice. Three times. More. A second Sleip has jumped in, as has a Devoter and multiple Tech 3 cruisers. ST jumps away and evades them on the far side. Trap sprung – we counted about 11 total.
Time to take stock. We have myself, Silent, Firefly, Mick and Josh online. We’re fighting a larger enemy force with an unknown force awaiting elsewhere in their connection.
We do, however, have the home advantage.
The plan involves us commiting an Archon. We warp it and an armour fleet to the wormhole and attempt a jump, engaging on the far side. If we need to, we simply jump our fleet and Archon back, collapsing the wormhole due to mass. Probably. Josh jumps in his Archon, which causes the Devoter to re-appear and bubble up on the wormhole, thoroughly gutting our plan. We can’t jump a ship if it can’t reach the wormhole.
This raises another query – if they know we have an Archon and willingly bubbled up, what else could they have waiting? They’re obviously willing to fight. Local confirms our suspicions.
[ 2013.01.25 21:25:17 ] Sith1s Spectre > Going to fight today or just pos spin?
[ 2013.01.25 21:25:43 ] tgl3 > Can I go 50/50?
[ 2013.01.25 21:25:53 ] tgl3 > Perhaps phone a friend?
[ 2013.01.25 21:25:53 ] Sith1s Spectre > nosir 
[ 2013.01.25 21:28:39 ] tgl3 > Y’all know if that null in that c5 is gone by now?
[ 2013.01.25 21:28:48 ] tgl3 > I need to update our bookmarks, yo.
[ 2013.01.25 21:28:55 ] xZardoZx > Yup
[ 2013.01.25 21:29:04 ] tgl3 > <3
[ 2013.01.25 21:29:17 ] xZardoZx > oh shucks
Meanwhile, I’m watching for their bubble to drop. They currently have the Devoter and 2 Sleipnirs – one Loki confirmed cloaked in system and everything else is next door, being watched by Silent. We can’t afford to throw the carrier at the bubble and if we go for Guardians we then lack the DPS to break the Sleipnirs. Tricky situation.
Suddenly, the bubble drops.
“Bubble down. Fleet go. Warp.”
Our initial Archon, Loki and Absolution warps to the wormhole. I warp away for my own Absolution as Mick warps his Typhoon in. Both Mick and I get caught on the now re-deployed bubble. The wormhole flares repeatedly as we engage.
Welcome to our home! Please leave your shoes by the door!
Mick comes under heavy fire – the slow Battleship off the wormhole making it an easy target. The Archon keeps him alive and Firefly decloaks a Falcon alt to relieve the DPS, causing the Falcon to come under fire. Each ship we primary jumps away, but there’s nothing we can do about chasing them right now. We’ll chase whatever is left – the early leavers do not matter. Both Sleips are forced through the wormhole, as are several of their Tech 3 ships. A hostile Falcon jumps in and is volleyed to armour before he jumps away. Our Falcon is ping-ponging armour as one of the Sleipnirs jumps back in, now polarised. Works for us.
We go for their Devoter next, expecting them to fall back alongside it when it runs low since we’d be able to warp reinforcements in freely (if we had them).
Josh’s Archon providing glorious repairs
Most of their fleet has jumped away and as the Devoter falls, so do the rest. We follow with what we can of our fleet and tackle a few before they can run. The Devoter is first.
Most of their Tech 3s are away, but we also grab the Sleipnir and try to grab the Loki.
The problem is that this is a Black Hole – meaning 85% increased speed, but also a decrease to agility. The Loki, which is webbing, is flying off far faster than we can be bothered to chase. In the mean time, a Falcon is hampering our efforts to catch the Loki anyway.
The Loki does indeed escape, but I manage to tackle the Falcon. I get him to half armour before he gets a Jam on me and warps away. Argh!
Just before the jam, obviously
That’s that. We throw “gf”s into local and jump home, collapsing the wormhole behind us.
Not exactly a record breaking amount of kills, but we’re happy to take what we could! Kudos for the Talocan guys for staying around, too!
