As it happens in war, some people get stuck behind enemy lines, in this case it happened to be me. We started engaging a few alliances who were trying to setup a home-base or extension of operations in the well known region of Venal, previous home to many treacherous alliances such as Triumvirate. The idea as part of a clean up meant we were pushing the enemies out of this region so we can maintain some sort of control over the area. Well so far the operations have been largely successful.
One of our FC’s decided to put on a roaming fleet of battlecruisers and fly out to the enemies home system (for intelligence purposes the system has remained a secret). The trip was quiet and very uneventful, until we arrived in their system. What i can tell you is their system is an entrance to a dead end constellation, so there’s only one way in, and one way out. What also took us by surprise was the fact they stationed a large warp bubble on their out / in gate, interesting. Now here is where things started to go very sour for us.
We used a scout with little to no experience, who was also largely inexperienced with pvp in general. This lead to very poor information being passed along to the FC who expected certain pieces of information from the scout. Unfortunately the scout used a term the FC took as everyone move and engage and we basically left ourselves open to attack. Sure enough moments later an enemy fleet consisting of both short range and long range ships entered the field and we engaged them. Soon into the fight we popped a Raven and a Munnin but found ourselves loosing ships and quickly becoming outnumbered. The FC gave the order to bug out to a random point in the solar system and setup safe spots until we can figure out what to do. I let my ECM drones loose and found myself not being pointed so was able to engage warp away from the field. I believe we lost all ships but my Harbinger and a couple of crows. One of which was interestingly fitted with a cloak of all things. But that was to be my life saver.
Many pilots who had lost their ships decided to make a run for the gate during the downtime period, many took the pod express home but there was just me, the only one left in a ship of any size after both the crows made it out. Before downtime i did manage to get a warp-in to the stargate off the cloaked crow, which allowed me to place a bookmark close enough to the gate to get a scan and a quick warp. I returned to a previous safe spot and logged off. Several hours later I returned to find the system swarming with neutrals in local, similar counts to earlier. Warping to the gate safe also revealed it clear! Huzzah! I took the opportunity to exit and warp away as fast as I could. Sure enough I was followed. I made it all of two jumps to a safe POS where i was forced to make another log off in attempt to shake my followers.
A day later I made my return and there was a neut in system.. hmmm local didn’t change for a minute except for the comment “a harbinger eh, hmmmm”. I laughed heartily to myself before warping to a moon close to the gate i wanted to exit, and scanned.. Nothing! Huzzah! I warped to the gate, jumped see you later dudes. I wasn’t followed by him either so i guess he wasn’t keen on fighting me, or he was just a scout / ratter. So i followed the rule from that point, never warp straight to a gate if there’s a neut in system.. good rule i must say. By now i knew they would have operations in Venal and that was where i was. I also knew i’d be all over their intel by now too so i kept pushing forward. About 4 jumps into my journey I came across a drake about 80km from my in-gate. As tempted as I was to engage, I knew I couldn’t hit him from 80km, so I decided to warp straight to the next gate and push through anyway. I did so and sure enough he followed me. I knew exactly where he was at all times. The next system was clear and i quickly warped to a moon close to my outgate. He somehow knew i wouldn’t warp to the gate but didn’t expect me to warp to a moon instead of the planet. That worked to my advantage. I set myself up with two safe spots less than 1m km from my outgate and watched as he moved from the planet to the gate. This was getting good i thought to myself.
At this point I had a striking revelation, “SHIT! Hes got support, else why would a drake camp my outgate”. Right so I kept bouncing between my safes and hit up corp chat for some assistance. There was no way i’d be making a jump out of there without knowing whats on the other side of that gate. I watched as twice the drake jumped out trying to get me to approach the gate and get me to go through. No dude I’m playing this game my way not yours. Thankfully A friend in his pilgrim responded and made the 10 jumps or so to lend assistance. He arrived 2 jumps out when the neut drake pilot left my system for the third time. The order was to hold 2 jumps out. So we waited sure enough the predictable drake pilot arrived back into my system and I gave the order to move into the system next door to the one I was in. Intel reported 1 neut, not the same guy but a member of same alliance as the drake pilot! Fantastic, from here there is no more support from them should we either choose to engage or make a run for it. My pilgrim pilot cloaked up and moved to within 10 of the in-gate to my system, a zealot was waiting for us. Drake on one side, zealot on the other. I chose to engage but watched as the drake disappeared from my scanners but remained in local!!! NOOOOO!
I jumped into the waiting arms of the zealot but the moment i jumped, so did the zealot. It was a shame but at that point we knew they were refusing to engage 2 vs 2.
So we turned towards our out-gates and headed home. it was a very uneventful few jumps on the way back despite the local Intel channel going crazy a few jumps away. All in all a good bit of fun and a few learning’s along the way.
Some key tactics i would like to highlight here:
- Use of safe-spots
- Importance of Intelligence
- Out smarting the enemy
- PATIENCE! (I want to stress this point)
- No smack-talk
- Logoffski’s
Yes I did employ a tactic of logging off in safespots, no i did not use the log off at a gate technique.
Michan Yu