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Monday, March 2, 2015

We Got Snowballs

I've often said that the risk averse run around EVE armed with guns and missiles. My current corp, Signal Cartel, embodies that sentiment with its SL2 (shoot last, shoot least) doctrine of never initiating combat and when engaged, shooting as little as possible to get away. So imagine our surprise when a high sec corporation, Hodor vs Groot Battle Rap, decided to wardec our alliance in search of good fights. Looking at our killboard, I imagine their idea of a good fight was us dying. A lot.

Well, when your corp CEO is Mynxee, things tend to run a little differently, especially given the collection of pilots she's gathered. Risk averse doesn't exactly describe a group that thinks nothing of sticking their nose EVERYWHERE.  Look at our killboard for proof. Throw in G8keeper as the alliance executor, and things can get strange in a hurry.

Now, no one is ever going to make any corp Mynxee leads dock up for something as insignificant as a wardec. So, after our alliance leadership inviting our war targets to our home station in Thera, they huddled together to craft the perfect fleet doctrine to fit with our credo. Griffins fitted with multi-spectral jammers and festival launchers.

Combat isn't just about selecting the proper color of fireworks to fire. Our leadership pre-positioned a cache of Griffins in k-space one jump from an exit, gathered us up in Thera, and headed us to the top station in Lossa. Locator agents found a war target 11 jumps away.

Johnny Splunk led this first war fleet, teaching the members along the way the hows and whys of flying in a fleet.  If you've seen those videos of the calm and patient fleet commander, that's Johnny. He got us to the system in one piece, warped us around to make safe spots, and then we concentrated on our target.

Our war target, the sybian, undocked in a Vagabond. Armor HAC?! Most of the fleet were new, but I've got pretty good skills, and with an optimal range of 42km and fall-off extending to 75km, I wasn't afraid of any Vagabond. Apparently, he was afraid of 9 Griffins (he'd already killed an Amar frigate).  Then the Hodor and Groot Battle Rap CEO sandy d logged in, and the battle was on.

They undocked in a Vagabond/Hyperion combo, playing station games. We decided the sun was shining too brightly and decided they should fight in the shade. Fireworks filled the space between us. I don't think they were expecting fireworks.

They tried everything. One of our pilots even managed to scoop up a faction drone in a rookie ship before dying a second time. Eventually though, our opponents figured out the counter to our fleet. Marauders. They undoced in a Golem and a Vargur and finally drove us off.  But not before we managed to drop an MTU named with our motto, "Can't Stop The Signal".

I think we needed to leave anyway. We were laughing too much. So we departed in good order back to our temporary base to pick up our ships. The wormhole we had exited Thera from had closed, but Helios Anduath was in Thera probing down exits and found one four jumps away. Clearly, proof that Bob approved of our actions!

I stayed up way too late and lost a ship, but I had fun. I wound up logging off in space after 2am local time. Like I said before, things tend to run differently when Mynxee's in charge. Which is one of the reasons I joined the Signal Cartel in the first place.

5 comments:

  1. I genuinely enjoyed the story.

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  2. That's awesome :)

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  3. This, this and THIS!!! I swear if I wasn't so happy in HELPeR w/ my sons & old friends et al, I'd join Signal in a heartbeat!!!!

    This is one of the thousands of ways in which EVE is quite simply amazing.

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  4. The first great Signal Cartel war - A Tale of Fire(works) and Ice!

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  5. How did I miss this before? Great job telling the tale of this very fun fleet op! May we blot out the sun (and our war targets) with our HUGS!!! <3

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