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Roam through providence
And so as I mentioned I was going to do in my last post, I took my trusty Onyx and had a bit of a trip through Providence.
My Onyx Heavy Interdictor…. it doesn’t look good from any angle
This being the first time I have jumped into 0.0 space since I left the game two years ago, I was overly cautious. I had my alt scout and basically took my time to go through. My friend followed in his trusty rifter and we spent a bit of time going over the basics of nullsec survival. We made bookmarks near the gates, we had a bubble demonstration and eventually made our way to 9uy. Last time I was here I had the pleasure of bubbling the station for pew pew. This time I bubbled it for the lols
I was a bit disappointed however, there were only 5 in system, no hostiles. Still, it freaked me out a bit. In High sec you can be fairly safe assuming you’re not carrying anything of great value and there are no war decs against your corp. in nullsec with a proper alliance you can be certain of your safety if local contains only blues, but in Providence, despite the NRDS intention, you can’t tell who is going to kill you.
We met some nice proviholders from Sanctury Pact, and I remembered that seeing an onyx on screen is probably not the most peaceful ship you’d want to see. If it was me, I would assume that if I saw a lone HIC coming towards me, there would be a medium to large fleet of HAC’s or battle cruisers arriving shortly thereafter.
So I made my intentions clear in local (emiko is my alt):
[ 2012.05.16 12:08:13 ] EVE System > Channel changed to Local : XHQ-7V
[ 2012.05.16 12:08:37 ] Marites Camates > Konbanwa
[ 2012.05.16 12:08:56 ] Marites Camates > ogenki desu ka
[ 2012.05.16 12:09:10 ] Akura Kawanaka > nihongo o wakarimasen
[ 2012.05.16 12:09:23 ] Marites Camates > skosh
[ 2012.05.16 12:09:31 ] Akura Kawanaka > watashi mo
[ 2012.05.16 12:09:44 ] Marites Camates > Amirican living in Yokosuka
[ 2012.05.16 12:09:58 ] Akura Kawanaka > Australian pretending to be japanese living in australia
[ 2012.05.16 12:10:04 ] Marites Camates > haha
[ 2012.05.16 12:10:11 ] Marites Camates > Okage sama de
[ 2012.05.16 12:11:00 ] Emiko Kasono > we’re peaceful btw – just sight seeing, despit the fact Akura is in an onyx
[ 2012.05.16 12:11:26 ] Marites Camates > rgr, we are drinking, couldnt fight ..cant see
[ 2012.05.16 12:11:42 ] Significant other > dam coffee
These guys were sitting on one of the gates in a cane and a cruiser that I don’t remember. Unfortunately, when we were on the way out we noticed a 8-10 man gang from “Forceful Entry” alliance (never a good sign) and noticed a BC wreck on one of the gates – looks like our friend was smooshed.
On another note – on that killmail was a corporation called Centrelink Australia (this is sort of the Aussie equivalent of Social Security)
http://eve-kill.net/?a=corp_detail&crp_id=99309. I thought that was pretty funny.
So I also spoke to the recruiters at ANZAC Alliance. It turns out that my corporation name backfired and Rooman thought that I am an Alt. I’m certain I can convince them otherwise however.
I’m looking forward to a bit of alliance pew pew. According to The Ancient Gaming Noob I will be entering the north again (ANZAC is in Executive Outcomes alliance) just after a major conflict. which is probably good, it will give me a chance to settle in before the next round begins. I was never a fan of cloud ring though – as it connects with NPC held Syndicate, it was too easy to attack. the system is large and there are only a few bottleneck systems that we could defend easily. still, we had some of our
Political Update
The result of the last fight that I spoke about <a href=”http://evemonkey.wordpress.com/2010/03/04/renovating-providence/“>here</a> the system was taken and given to Sys-K. it turned out that it was just an over-eager sys-k member thinking that the station had been killed before it actually had who removed the SBU’s before their time.
Thankfully CCP has changed the sov mechanics so that the defending force would have had to repair the station to a certain level in order to trigger the restart of the station timer cycle. Since we maintained superiority in the system after downtime, CVA were not able to repair the station and it was merely a matter of waiting the three hours for our SBU’s to online again, after which, the station was taken without a hitch and the TCU was destroyed. Later that night Sys-K’s TCU came online and the system takeover was complete.
—-
The Against All Authorities Alliance leader posted a very informative post on our forums about the current political situation. I have to say, I really really appreciate it when alliance leader or High-Council representatives keep the grunts like us informed of long term strategies and goings on that we aren’t normally privy to.
Here are the TL;DNR points in bold and my comments:
Providence: Remove the threat install content for us and replant the rain-forest.
This has been interesting – We liked Providence the way it was – it provided a good training ground for new pilots and some good pew for the others. We liked the fact that there were so many targets there but we couldn’t stand by and let threats to our sovereignty stand and hence CVA had to be removed.
Stainwagon: Big mess over misunderstandings …. AAA is keeping a close eye and trying to make sound judgment before decision.
(Apparently there was a bit of a fuss over the stain empire etc resetting a number of alliances in the area including IT alliance. a hesitant peace has been brokered).
Northern Coalition: What to do about the threat they pose? the Jury is still out.
The next biggest threat is now the Northern Coalition. This interests me greatly as once again, the Eve universe has polarised into two massive groups, the Northern Coalition + goonswarm and the Southern Coalition + IT Alliance.
The Southern Coalition headed by AAA, Atlas, Systematic Chaos and IT alliance are less tight-nit, preferring to be individual alliances with the chances of good fights between all.
The Northern Coalition however is a very different story. Having spent the majority of my nullsec career in the NC I know they are Extremely tight-nit, with each alliance readily deploying their forces to aid any of the others that come under sustained attack. and they intend to remain this way indefinately.
AAA sees the NC as the biggest threat to their existance in eve currently. I dissagree however. In my experience the NC has been a purely defensive arrangement with only the occasional poke into the south. The New sovereignty mechanics have made it very difficult to engage in a sustained campaign away from home, effectively preventing the “AFK empires” that existed pre-dominion. If alliances cannot muster their forces in time, a station system is only 5 days away from being taken over – far less than was possible in the old system, where so long as the system was not tightly locked down with the attacking forces had to be ever vigilent against new Pos’s being erected.
However, with the possibility of one half of eve uprooting and attacking the other half in a coordinated manner, the risk is minimised that each individual alliance will be vulnerable to a concerted counter-attack.
IMHO, the NC deserves to win any fight – they’ve proven to be the most solid and long-lasting coalition of alliances in the history of Eve and the recent attacks on their sovereignty in Fade and Pure Blind have only strengthened their ties. Triumverate, by no means an incompetent alliance has been broken on the bullwark the Northern Coalition presents time and time again.
The difference between the threat that The NC presents now and the threat that the Greater Bob Community presented last year which turned the rest of Eve against them is that the NC is not expantionist in any serious way, whereas BoB openly was.
Only time will tell, but at the moment, as it has been for the past year or so, Branch is possibly the most stable region in the entire universe. and to take it, any opposing force will have to wade through nearly 15,000 pilots. not something any coalition will want to do without very strong inter-alliance ties and the ever present threat of ex-providence holders re-taking their space in the south.
Renovating Providence
I was able to participate in my first CTA for about one and a half weeks today – a lot has happened since my last decent battle report.
The long story short is that Providence region is being divided up into small little pieces by Atlas, Against All Authorities, Systematic Chaos and Ushra’Khan. Sylph alliance has completely gone from the influence map and it won’t be long before CVA disappears entirely also.
Sir Pewalot on an Erebus, waiting for a jump bridge
Today’s CTA was called in order to complete the take over of R3-K7K just before downtime. It was planned that Systematic Chaos were going to have this system, but -A- and U’K had brought a fleet to assist.
I had the pleasure of flying with my corp mate and long-time blogger Wensley of Rifter Drifter in the tempest here
The first part of the operation went smoothly – we had to take two titan bridges to get from our home system of GE- into the target system of R3-K7K. The middle system was 9UY – the Ushra’Khan-owned station system that fell a couple of weeks back.
Using only carriers/supercarriers and sub-capitals, we jumped into the target system on top of a small battlecruiser-heavy gate-camp which sensibly bugged out as fast as they could. We then warped to a POS and jumped our small dread fleet in.
carrier fleet aligning to POS
Next it was the station – We warped everyone to the station and started pew pewing it. I knew that we would likely be doing this so beforehand I contacted my mate at CCP and got them to refit my Megathron with Special GM lasers as you can see in the shot below. This meant the station dropped far more quickly than it would have otherwise.
Super-mega-ultra-pew-pew railguns
As you can see here: Wensley was a bit slack and didn’t call in any CCP favours and his weapons are somewhat lacking 
Note the station name: “Science and Slave Augmentation Facility”. This is honourable work we are doing here, removing the slaver blight once and for all.
Nevertheless – there cannot be a battle in providence without some kind of drama. In all this time, despite the fact that Systematic Chaos were going to be given the system, there were no Sys-K pilots in our fleet, nor in local until just before the station was about to die (about half structure). Then a couple popped in and unanchored their Sovereignty Blockade Units, rendering the station invulnerable and preventing the system take-over just before down time.
I don’t yet know the fallout from this, hopefully it is not a prelude to war between -A- and Sys-K. I don’t think so because they’re involved in their own war at the moment apparently and they probably just didn’t want the system to be theirs anyway, but they went about it the entirely wrong way.
Now, after downtime, we’ll have to anchor our own SBU’s and wait for three hours while they anchor and online, then siege the station again – another five days of sieging……. bah. such is life in 0.0.
Also: Hi everyone reading this via Capsuleer! *waves* It feels good to be part of the blog pack! I’d appreciate some feedback: I base my blog very heavily on screenshots. is it easier to read the blog with full shots like above, or with clickable thumbnails like this:
Thoughts and ramblings
Before I continue, I would like to say that I mean no disrespect of any kind to the people in providence region. nor am I trying to contribute to a propaganda campaign.
I just have a few thoughts on gaming in general which this campaign in to providence has made me think about. Particularly the part where today, with 400 in local, the vast majority of which were -A- and Ushra’Khan we reinforced the station in 9UY without even a wimper of coordinated resistance.
TL;DNR:
My new theory: Role players may not be of the type of person that are able to beat those that are playing the game for the purposes of being good at it, for winning.
Let me explain:
—
I am a type of gamer who plays to be the best, I don’t play games for fun, I play for the satisfaction that comes from winning. I joined the Northern Coalition and then Against All Authorities because they are among the best in the game at what they do. I wanted to experience all there is to experience, and I want my alliance (and by extension, me) to win. As a result of this, I will shut up on Team Speak when the FC is talking, I will do exactly as he/she says, I will bring the best ship I can, fitted exactly as the alliance leaders dictate. When there’s a CTA on I will be in fleet and on voice chat and I will do my absolute best to be the best at my role in fleet. I try to have my “game face” on at all times.
Recently, during the lockdown of D-G one of our FC’s said that when CVA + pets were bubbled in their own POS, instead of jumping out, they should have dropped the POS forcefield and started shooting. That’s what our FC’s would have done.
Recently in a campaign against the goons, the goons defeated the -A-/IT attack by reinforcing their own ihub. They wanted to win, they used game mechanics to do it.
-A- are committed to winning this war and we will use every legitimate tool at our disposal to do it.
My alliance leadership are the same. They want to win at all costs, it’s what they enjoy doing. I am going to reproduce a post from the -A- forums here – I hope it doesn’t get me into trouble, but I’m sure it’s fairly harmless:
During this campaign: DO NOT EVER EVER EVER TALK IN LOCAL….If you have something to say ….do it in corp/alliance/ and if its damn important ..gang. Kill provi with silence. Kill Provi with guns. Kill them any other way but trying to do it in local. Close local.. Keep it closed. I know that the smack comes from other alliances as well. -A- will not do it. Burn it all to the ground with a grin on your face.
What is providence supposed to do in the face of such cold determination?
Does a roleplayer even play for the same reasons? I don’t know, I’ve never really met any.
My theory is No. I believe having dedicated roleplayers who truly get pleasure out of playing this game for those reasons at the head of your alliance will cause them to be less focussed on winning and more about “fun” or whatever roleplay reasons they have chosen to adopt.
Perhaps I am an ignorant non-role-player, but I have an image in my head of a fat guy playing mock up medieval battles with foam swords Vs a hardened heavy cavalry knight from the actual middle ages.
Proviholders
-A-/U’K
or perhaps this image would be a better representation of the current state of affairs:
Am I being too harsh/Ignorant? do I have a valid point perhaps?
This is a campaign that relies on the morale of the enemy breaking, one of the reasons that 9UY was chosen as a target. Please tell me that CVA wants to actually hold their territory rather than just go off to empire with a wimper at the first sign of a fight.
Going for the heart of providence
If I didn’t know better, I’d think that title was some sort of romance novel. In fact this story is one of a love/hate relationship, which I am unfortunately not qualified to tell from the beginning, being in the North when it started. I only joined the fighting on the night that Against All Authorities took D-GTMI from Paxton federation, one of the Providence region holders.
Apparently the providence holders were offered a truce. Being the grunt I am, I was not party to the discussions, but from what I heard here are the events that brought us to the current situation:
—-
This brings us to the subject of today’s blog:
—-
A vengeful battleship fleet prepares to jump into 9UY
I was at work, following twitter, when I read a post from my corp mate Wensley saying that the providence holders just got a nice surprise. I hastily tweeted back “What? What happened?!?!” knowing that the conflict had likely escalated. This was met with a “log on, get in fleet” and then a private “We’re taking 9UY”.
By this time it was 6:30pm anyway and after mouthing a big “O…..M…….G……” I decided I didn’t have to work late anyway and literally ran to get the next tube home.
9UY is a fair way from our home staging system, and so I was hoping that I hadn’t missed the titan bridge. it turned out that they had already started sieging the system, but CVA had counter attacked by dropping Sovereignty Blockade Units in our empire access system of HED and in the newly taken D-GTMI. Our fleet had returned to kill the attacking fleet and the SBU’s and I managed to catch the bridge back into 9UY in my Megathron.
Fleet jumping into 9UY
On a side note: the -A- fleet megathrons are a very tight fit. I have Advanced Weapons Upgrades to lvl 5 but I still needed to replace my 3% capacitor recharge hard-wiring implant with a 1% CPU implant in order to fit everything. Same goes for the recommended Eagle fit, I need a t2 power grid module, a power grid rig and energy grid upgrades to lvl 5 to even fit the damn thing…(yes, I have a new shiny… I can finally fly HAC’s after putting it off for so long. but that’s another blog post).
Unfortunately the battleship fleet at this stage didn’t see much action as the providence holders had exausted their resistance. Their jump bridge network was incapacitated and they didn’t seem to have any titans with which to bridge around from. whereas we were able go from HED, to D-G to 9UY at will with our titan pilots seemingly everywhere at once.
Shortly thereafter both the station and the infrastructure hub were reinforced and the timer was is a very favorable saturday night.
The order was given to return back to the home station and come back in roaming gang ships to lock down the system. I had my client set to have all the visual effects on for once and managed to get a shot of an open titan bridge:
Titan Bridge open. ooooh, shiny
I thought about taking my eagle out. This baby can hit at 165km, which for a cruiser is pretty damn good. my other option was a falcon which I haven’t flown for ages or my trusty onyx. after actually undocking and jumping into the system where the next titan bridge was going to be, I changed my mind and went back for what I know. My faithful Gothic Robo-Chicken has been through multiple wars in the north and has yet to let me down.
We bridged into 9UY again and proceeded to lock every gate down. At this point the FC explained why he chose this system to attack, fairly simple really: Rather than grind through all the station systems one-by-one, we’re going straight for the heart
9UY is a trade hub, and a number of CVA freighters were seen dropping off stuff at the station in recent days.
9UY is a crossroads. if you look at a map of Providence region you will see that it is a vital system, tying together the alliances CVA, -7-, STEEL and SLYPH who control a small portion of neighboring catch. in order to marshal their forces, the providence holders would need to pass through this system. Also, if, perhaps one were to look at their jump bridge map, not that I approve of metagaming, but perhaps I have been privy to information that suggests it is a fairly central point for the providence holder jump bridge network.
These two things have been the case for years and so this was a very obvious target for anyone wishing to shut down CVA and pets as fast as possible.
Onyx Heavy Interdictor on a gate
It was quite fun actually there wasn’t any more than about 150 in the system at any one time, but we had almost complete control over all the gates. Large mobile warp disruptors were anchored on most of the gates so I parked myself at one that didn’t and threw my bubble up. A friendly MomSupercarrier pilot sent me some fighters and although I managed to get two hostile battleships into armour, I didn’t get any kills before they burned to the gate as there were only 3-4 of us on that gate at that time. I mentioned on TS that they may want to come help kill the 15 man battleship gang that was attacking my poor little (albeit very heavily tanked with 115,000 hp) cruiser but for some reason the battleships decided to burn to the gate rather than face the might of the one heavy assault missile on my ship and they got away. good times
For some reason, throughout the night, there was a gang of about 50 hostiles that appeared in 9-F, two systems away and went back and forth, playing chicken with our support ships. as soon as we jumped in, they’d safe or dock up. this happened about 5 times.
Bubbling their station out of frustration. Wait…. that’s a minmatar station!
Eventually we left a cloaked interdictor there and Soundly Spanked them it looks like they were not all that prepared or just threw their fleet together at the last minute.. it looks like its trying to be a battlecruiser gang I guess. In any case, as you can see from that killboard link, the fight was reminiscent of the fight for D-G. we killed 34 ships and 11 pods for a loss of 5 frigates and two pods. lots of “gf”‘s in local afterwards, and at the time I thought we were fairly equal, but it seems not.
I think I need a good beating from a providence fleet to give me a reality check, because I’m starting to think they’re generally incompetent.
Another bit of fun we had that evening was when we killed a HAC gang that warped to the gate that I was at. The FC called primaries and we dutifully killed them one by one. Then at the last one, a guardian logistics ship, the FC told everyone to stop and get rid of their drones from him. Then he said to rep him up, “he’s our pet now” he said.
and so we did:
Bubbled and Scrambled and Neuted and Jammed and Target Disrupted
It’s those little moments in eve that make it such an enjoyable game to play. Even the guardian pilot seemed to appreciate the joke, saying “awww, AAA loves me” in local.
We thought it was only propper that we send him home the express rout and eventually killed him and his pod.
The -A- killboards for the operation in 9UY (not including our kills in 9-F) show the VERY favourable result of 222 ships killed for 16 ships lost. This was becoming a recurring theme in our engagements with providence:
To finish off. I was very nearly able to reproduce the screenshot that I showed on my fourth blog post ever. The angle of the Nyx wasn’t quite right to get the sun glinting off the top, but it was damn close. I still haven’t managed to get a clear view of a Hel. I got one the other day, but it had about three titans in the background, ruining the shot (I never thought I’d say that).
Nyx MotherSupercarrier by Starlight
Currently I’m logging in and out at a POS in 9UY, helping with the 23/7 lockdown of the system which will continue until it is in -A-’s hands in about 5 days or so.
The station comes out of its first reinforced cycle on saturday, I hope I can be there for that battle also.
First impressions of the South
So I have recently joined Against All Authorities. I originally applied to Ushra’Khan, but weighing up the options and pros and cons of each option, -A- suited me better. I’m used to being in a large space holding alliance while Ushra’Khan is more of a roaming-bases alliance. Every corporation generally has requirements to remain part of it and the Ushra’Khan corporation that I applied to required a payment of anywhere between 2 and 10 million per month per member to support the role-playing wardec against the providence members. The corporation that I have joined as part of -A- requires that every member get 20 killmails per month to remain in the corporation. This was more to my liking, and so I chose to join them. There were some other smaller reasons that also contributed. The 20 kills haven’t been hard to accomplish, having been on 26 ship kills in 4 days. some of those were of course as part of the large battle for D-G, but nevertheless I think it won’t be hard to maintain a good rate.
Before I go any further, I’d like to set the record straight about Goons and the Providence holders. I blame Podded Podcast for the source of this misinformation but I have since seen many people on both sides of the battle lines deny that the goons and providence holders are in any sort of non-hostile agreement, including seeing declarations to that end in Ushra’Khan pilots bio. I’d like to apologise for perpetuating this myth.
Against All Authorities Market system of G-E
First Impressions of the south:
Against All Authorities
This alliance seems extremely well organised. It seems like there is almost 50% russian pilots and so every fleet that I have been on except the small roaming gangs have had the fleet commands translated from english into russian either by the FC himself or a translator. Most of the important fleet commands are also transliterated into fleet chat in english, which most of the russians can apparently read better than they can understand spoken english. This is quite cool. I think though I will make an effort to at least learn how to count in russian so I can get an idea which gate they’re talking about before the translation comes along.
It is hard to compare it to my previous alliance Mostly Harmless because there has also been some changes in the sovereignty mechanics since I last participated in large fleet fights. It seems that Capital ships are deployed with an almost reckless abandon compared to what I’m used to and Battleships are relegated to an almost support role. This is good in a way as it increases the incentive for pilots to train for capital ships. I’m certainly inspired in any case. on Saturday night we had a CTA to go and destroy some goon POS’s in Querious and the battleship fleet wasn’t used for anything except destroying cyno jammers so that the capital fleet could warp in and do its thing.
General fighting
The highlight of the evening was coming back from querious to Catch via empire, where the fleet of 50+ battleships stumbled upon a 5 man war target camp in a 0.9 security system. our scout mentioned they were there and one of the alliance undocked a freighter at the station and warped it to the gate. The wartargets must have been so busy wetting themselves that a freighter had been stupid enough to warp to the middle of their little camp that they didn’t notice the battleship fleet jump in. We killed Two Loki’s. Very cool.
Also of course, we had the huge fight in D-G the other night, the same day I joined.
Fleet Salvation Initiative
My first thoughts when joining the alliance and reading alliance mails about CTA’s was that everything was fairly similar to what I’ve been used to for so long. Get the Teamspeak details, get the jump bridge map, bookmark all gates along the main routes etc. but then they kept on referencing “FSI” as in: “CTA 18:00 Dreads > Carriers > BS > FSI > support” which usually tells you what to bring in order of priority. After asking around I found that FSI stood for “Fleet Salvation Initiative”. this is simply the most organised bunch of logistics ships that I’ve heard of in a nullsec alliance. if you can fly a logistics ship but can’t afford, or don’t want to afford one. just grab an alliance logi ship before the op and hand it back afterwards. Pilots are encouraged to rotate out from damage dealing ships into the FSI every now and then.
Casual Roaming
My prior experience to frigate/cruiser roams have been mixed. In the north, unless we stumbled on a gang of empire guys wanting a bit of pew, or some pirates that ventured into nullsec for a change, most of the fights were close things. We would go roaming down through cloud ring and syndicate where Evoke was at the time and during these roams we all knew it was only a matter of time before an equal or more powerful fleet of evoke or Sons of Tangra was formed to take us down and it would be an intense fight on a gate somewhere, after which only one side would emerge victorious.
My first roam through providence however was completely different.
I dusted off my Onyx, which hasn’t seen action for a couple of months and joined up with a mixed cruiser/frigate gang that was going for a little roam through southern Providence. Ga’len a fellow blogger from Ushra’Khan joined up in his vagabond and about 20 of us roamed free, back and forth through a few dozen systems owned by CVA and Paxton Federation. No one stopped us, no one seemed to care. We hit a little bit of a gate camp at one point but they were quickly dispatched. We went to one station system and bubbled the station, staying there for a few minutes while unsuspecting proviholder members undocked and died. Now, when I first joined eve, I spent a little bit of time down in severence’s space and I had access to their intel channels. When a red was reported nearby you safe’d up and waited until they went away or got destroyed. I find it hard to believe that providence’s intel channels have degenerated so far that people were so willing to die to our fleet.
Bubbling a station
Perhaps it is just a lack of morale after losing D-G to -A- or perhaps it’s just a general incompetance. I don’t want to jump to conclusions, but my initial impressions are not good.
What was good however, was getting back into my Hictor. they seem to be appreciated a little bit more in this alliance. I did stuff up at one stage – that station in the screenshot above is an amarr refinery. I’d never seen one of these before and moved to the other end and bubbled, not realising that the undock point is the flat end, not the pointy one. “Fail bubble” on teamspeak and a sorry from me in fleet chat and I changed to the position you see above. I won’t make that mistake again.
Other thoughts
I am in the same corporation as Wensley of rifter drifter fame. he is also a new recruit. it will be interesting comparing our blogs. I think we have different blogging styles and we come from different backgrounds in the game so there shouldn’t be too much overlap. hopefully he’ll pick me up when I exaggerate too much about -A- victories
Station Killing D-GTMI
once more we find ourselves in D-GTMI.
The destruction of the i-hub went swimmingly, you could say it was almost overkill:
Then Thursday night the station came out of reinforced. This time, as before I slipped into the system in my tengu.
shortly after, however I was accepted into -A-.
I don’t have much story to tell here, so I’ll let the screenshots do the talking.
Capitals at a pos ready to go
the cap ship battle commences and we warp in our big guns:
sixteen titans!
I managed to get on a kill with my token multi-spec ECM (I couldn’t find heavy missiles on the markets in the vicinity)
As the station came out of reinforced, our cap fleet warped to the station, blotting out the sun.
CCP atlas turned up in a Polaris frigate and for some reason seemed to pop our large T2 bubble that was on the station:
Towards the end, there was almost 1600 in system, with everyone weighing in, including Atlas.
one of my corpmates flying a titan posted this in corp:
23:34:32 Combat Your Judgement hits rhialto [GSY](Revelation), doing 679547.9 damage.
Here is the final -A- killboard – as you can see it was quite a slaughter:
http://www.a-kills.com/?a=kill_related&kll_id=353578
last I checked it was 232 kills for 11 losses. and of course, we took the station.
it was certainly a good first day in my new corp
The battle for D-GTMI
This has been reported elsewhere and is perhaps overshadowed by the news that NOL has been taken from the goons in the heart of Delve but here is the story of last night.
I had finished hauling a large amount of my ships down to the high-security systems just outside providence/catch last night when I decided that a whiskey-fuelled roam through nullsec would be just the ticket to celebrate. I knew in the back of my mind that I’d likely lose the ship but I didn’t care.
Turns out I didn’t though. Initially I thought I’d have one more roam through providence while I’m still not red to the residents there, but I got sidetracked.
I fitted out my tengu with an interdiction nullifier, covert configuration, warp core stabilizers and nanofiber internal structures. this is as hard to catch as any ship you’re going to get and it paid off. There was a heavily populated gate-camp by Against All Authorities (-A-) on the gate from empire but I blew past them. A few systems in and I went through another large camp with permanent bubbles anchored. it took me a while to realise that I had stumbled on a major battle between -A- and allies vs the providence holders.
I thought I’d hang around to see the show despite being neutral to both parties. I had my graphics turned right down due to the nearly 900 people in system so sorry for the quality of the shots.
Current location: D-GTMI
Sovereignty > Paxton Federation (Vulnerable)
Constellation > 4BZ-R3
Region > Providence
Security Level > 0.0
Immediately after entering the system, an old corp mate of mine from a year ago convoed me. Turns out he had been in Systematic Chaos for 6 months or so and was fighting on the side of -A-. It was good hearing his side as it went along.
First of all, it was my duty to take a screenshot of a Sovereignty Blockade Unit which I had never actually seen up close before, having always had something more important to be doing, like shooting the bad guys. Now I wasn’t allied to anyone and had warp disruption bubble immunity so I had the freedom to move around the battlefield:
Sovereignty Blockade unit and two anchored bubbles at a gate
Next stop was my very first deep safe. Both sides jumped in capitals at a deep safespot, which, although I’ve not used these much, give time for whoever is jumping in to get their ships out before anyone can possibly warp to the cyno beacon.
Deep safespots 253au away from the station. the safespot bookmarks you see there are 14 AU apart.
It was actually quite funny at one stage. The first cyno I warped to was lit by an -A- blackbird. after hanging around for a while about 10 or so severence stealth bombers turned up. I thought they’d target paint the blackbird and shoot it with torpedos or something. but no… they launched bombs…. I counted 9 bombs (at 1mil or soeach) before the blackbird died. talk about cost efficiency…….*rolls eyes*. They left and the cyno pilot was dead so I scooped the loot: some t2 ecm modules, t2 10mn mwd etc. not bad for all the not fighting I did to get it.
At this point I was told by my mate that they were “titan bowling” where they warp titans into a hostile pos, hoping to knock out any ships inside….. then they blew up the pos as you’ll see in a screenshot at the end of this post.
Next was a trip to see the aggressor’s capital staging POS. Here was a fairly largeish fleet of both -A- and UNITY (Ushra’Khan) capital ships that seemed to be slightly smaller than the Northern Coalition brought a while back vs PL but not less impressive by any means:
Capital ships in a POS.
Shortly, their non-capital fleet warped to the station. I thought I’d be smart and warp to the station from the opposite direction of the POS, but it turned out to be a bad Idea. I warped to an asteroid belt first, then back to the station at 100, only to land about 10km from the bulk of their fleet. luckily I didn’t become decloaked, but it was hairy there for a few minutes.
-A- and UNITY sieging the station
Then they warped in the big guns….
capital ships land at the station
In case you missed it, that’s eleven (11) titans on the field according to my directional scanner, five avatars and two each of the other titans.
This image: pretty much sums up the fight
Business is War
I am a business man by nature, as are most of my race. The Caldari have always been and will continue to be in the foreseeable future. Supply and demand. These are the two irrefutable laws that we live with just as other races live with gravity and the principles of thermodynamics.
My decision to apply to The Ushra’Khan is not, therefore, based on any political motivation, nor is it a self-righteous crusade to free the Minmatar slaves. Although I can sympathise with them, I also understand the desires of their Amarr overlords. Yet still I believe the practice of holding slaves inefficient. Amarr society should be freed from this burden, the slaves replaced by automations, “robots” if you will, which are far more cost effective.
Nevertheless, the demand that has compelled me to join with the Minmatar freedom fighters is a purely selfish one. I have a grudge against the Goonswarm and all their allies. A grudge which has caused great demand, and vengeance must be supplied. It has become apparent that the Amarr loyalist Providence holders have chosen their side in this conflict. It is my decision, therefore as a business man, to free them from themselves, from their inefficiencies, from their mis-placed loyalties, from their yet still living corpses.
Business is War, as they say…. and I have business to attend to in Providence.
