The Captains Log 27/12
Solar System: A1-AUH; Esoteria. Amarr; Domain
Shiptype: Drake Class Battlecruiser, Prophecy Class Battlecruiser, Harbinger Class Battlecruiser
GoonSwarm in all their might and glory came to our space in a Drake and support gang. While the battle raged there another fight was brewing in Amarr in agains Privateer Allaince. Who was to win these battles. Read and find out.
The Captains Log 25/11
System: TPAR-G; Peroid Basis
Ship: Rokh Class Battleship
For those of you who have being regularly following my blog you will know that GoonSwarm tried to invade Esoteria not to long agao, which failed miserably. Well over the last week or so the StainWagon Coalition has returned the favour and launched a invasion TPAR-G, a GoonSwarm held system in Period Basis.
The Captains Log 26/10
The last week has seen the steady grind of POS warfare on both sides of the fight. Goonswarm would put our POS’s into reinforced, we would then rep them and then put some Goon POS’s into reinforced only for Goons to rep them. So far this has only taken place in two systems, A1-AUH the chokepoint for Esoteria as it divides the region into four parts (North, East, West and South) and G-YZUX, which is one of the station systems allowing for SOV 4 to exist. There is little actual fighting going on between us due the time zone differences between the alliance (Goons US and Sys-k Euro), despite this there have being a few battles when the play time of both the alliances overlap, with Goonswarm putting Stealth Bomber fleets to good use when attack the Sys-k battleship fleets.
The start of the war also saw the start of a new propaganda war with the Mittani releasing chat logs of a Simmering Rebellion taking place in Systematic-Chaos, in which the CEO and a Director of I.M.M and a i.NET director were talking with Zapawork about siding with Goonswarm in the coming war. Liam Freeman (the Sys-k leader) passed this off as a joke of which he was fully aware of. The fact that these chat logs have being released to me indicates that any deal that may have been made has fallen through otherwise the Goons would not be releasing this information and giving away their hand. Furthermore, as a member if I.M.M I can say that there is a lot of anti-goon feelings in the rank and file and that any pro-Goon decision made by the leadership would not sit well with them and probably lead to a insurrection in the corp ranks.
The biggest battle to take place so far occurred on the weekend when 16 Goonswarm POS where coming out of reinforced, which lead to a 500+ strong allied fleet turning up for the fight giving them the numerical advantage. The battle resulted in a large number of Goonswarm capitals being destroyed along with the majority of the POS’s that were coming out of reinforced. Goons claim the capitals lost were a suicide fleet as their insurance was about to expire.
While this loss may have not bothered the Goons much the loss of their Titan in a separate battle with Red Overlord probably did. Apparently a Goon mining POS placed in ROL space came under attack so Goons jumped in a Titan without support which was promptly tackled and engaged. So Goons launched a rescue mission with another Titan, which successfully allowed the original Titan to escape only for the second one to be caught and destroyed.
So the big question is why is Goonswarm invading Systematic-Chaos space? Well the first and the simplest answer is to give their members something to do. As a PvP alliance they have to keep their members active otherwise they may just disappear forever. However, the possible strategic reasons for the invasion offers further insights, which can be seen in the Goon post here. Basically the objective of this war is not about territorial conquest but to induce a failure cascade in Sys-k as they are the alliance the fields a lot the sub-capital support in the Stainwagon coalition. Be removing Sys-k from the equation the Stainwagon coalition will have a large cap fleet but limited sub-capital support, thus removing the whole coalitions as threat for awhile. Furthermore there had being rumours going through the alliance that Sys-k would soon be invading the space formally occupied by KIA and now Zenith Affinity. Invading Esoteria therefore is a pro-active from of defence.
So how long is this war going to go for? Well providing that Sys-k doesn’t failcascade I don’t foresee this war going on past Dominion (depending on how Sov is going to work) as with the release of the new Sov system all the major alliances are going to have to pull back and consolidate what they currently hold. Also from what CCP has released so far it does not seem that interregional wars are going to be the norm now, instead there is going to be more intraregional wars. Even if Goons mange to obtain the space occupied by Sys-k they will most likely not be able to hold it very easily post Dominion (again depending on how Sov works) thereby allowing Sys-k, or whatever it is afterwards, to reclaim it. So all Sys-k has to do win is hold the fort for one month. If we can do that we have won the war.
The Capatins Log 24/8
Capital Destruction
So after I logged off the day began to go badly for Sys-k. Goonswarm got a couple of cyno alts into J-A and proceeded hotdropped 40 capital ships on top of our fleet. Reading COAD (horrible I know) it seems that Goonswarm and Brick are not allied (or they weren’t at the time of the hotdrop); instead Goons saw an opportunity to take out our caps and took it. The result was around a 20 capital ship loss for Sys-k. There is a Frap available here to watch (if it does not work it is at the bottom of page 5 on the COAD link above). You would think that our members would be disheartened from such a heavy loss, but we weren’t and we came back the next day and repaid this loss many times over.
Titan take down
About 12 hours latter (or there about) we began setting up in 6QBH for another op into enemy space to help a friendly POS, when it was noticed that two Burn Eden titan pilots logged on. For all we knew they could have logged on to do some ratting, but they didn’t, instead they cynoed into 6QBH and proceeded to double doomday our fleet. In amongst this field of destructive energy my CEO, Hawkeye (his alt anyway) flying his Onyx not only survived both doomsdays but also got a tackle on one of the titans piloted by Syrian. He then had to survive and hold the tackle for one minute before the rest of our fleet was able to get to the battlefield and beging taking the titan down.
Burn Eden Titan is tackled
In an effort to save their allies titan, Brick Squad also cynoed in their capital fleet only to have it tackled. The result was the destruction of Burn Eden’s Titan and the Brick Capital fleet. The second Titan managed to escape. The final battle report is (thanks to Manasi)
Brick/BE: lost 1 Titan, 11 Dreads, 10 Carriers, 4 BS, 2 recons, 2 interceptors, 1 dictor, and a few others…( total of 43)
The combined allied fleet lost:
4 dreads, 2 BS,1 BC, 1 Stealth bomber, 1 Heavy Assault, 1 Dictor ( a total of 14)
As with any great battle there is much discussion on the forums so go to COAD and Manasi’s blog for other perspectives. Also there is a YouTube video of the take down as well.
Now that I have recounted what happened I have to say I MISSED IT. I got up one hour too late to find out we had killed a titan without me being there. I am very unhappy.
The Captains Log
Day 1 – Kills for me and you
I have broken the weekends ops into two posts due the contrast in the ops and what was killed.
So I log on Saturday morning and we have another op on to hit Brick Squad, the fleet had already reinforced a POS and was now repping one of ours. I got in late so I decided to use my Taranis for this op. Getting into J-A was no problem, though I thought I was going to get trapped in a gate camp as Brick sabre was following me on the route I was taking. However I joined up with the rest of the fleet without incident and proceed to camp the station with the rest of the support fleet.
Patrolling a bubble
Flyby over a friendly Pheonix
The first kill of the day (for me at least) was a Taranis. While patrolling the outskirts of the bubble a Taranis undocked and flew directly in the bubble. Big mistake, I was all over him. My scrambler knocked out his MWD and my blasters proceeded to strip his shields, tear a hole in is armour and then bring about the destruction of ship. His pod was promptly squished. Checking the kill mail I had 100% of the damage on the Taranis.
While patrolling the station we had a distress call from one of our fleet members in belt, he had just being caught in a belt flying a Stabber Fleet Issue. So we all promptly warped to him in an attempt to remove the enemy fleet from existence. While in warp the stabber died but we managed to tackle a Harbinger before he warped out. A shiny blue explosion announced the demise of his ship.
Back at the station we killed several pods as they undocked and then had a Tempest try and sniper us for awhile, which we failed to tackle. One of our scouts then reported a hostile captor on the other side of a gate going into J-A so the support fleet warped there to try and get him when he jumped. Unfortunately, he didn’t. However, the Drake was not so lucky. He warped in on top of us suspecting nothing and then promptly tired to escape us and jump through the gate, right into the rest of our fleet. Even with the Drakes amazing shield tank he died quickly and was reduced into smocking wreckage. After our carriers finished repping our POS we all titan bridged out and went home.
After our carriers finished repping our POS we all titan bridged out and went home.
Day 2 – More fleet ops
Again I arrived late in my Taranis right into the middle of battle. It was easy enough to get into J-A, though I had to run a Brick Ceptor gate camp. The fleet was trying to take down the POS that we had reinforced the day before with Brick Squad harassing us with sniper battles ships and putting up a good fight. During the time I was there we got a number of kills, though I only got on two, an Apocalypse and a Crow. I then logged off at our POS in J-A, and missed all the fun.
Part 2
Tune in for the next episode to find out about captial destruction and the death of a titan.
The Captains Log 19/8
For the whole week I have been itching for a fight as earlier on in the week I lost an Abbadon to some pirates in a low sec gate camp. Due to this I had wanted to shoot something but had being unable to so, however come the weekend sys-k had some CTA’s planned to make Brick Squad hurt. Just what I needed.
Op 1 – POS work
This op was composed of three fleets, support, battleship and capitals. I was in the support fleet with my Onyx and was given the task of bubbling a gate and preventing anyone from coming in along with my squad. The Op started off with the usual Titan bridge into the target system, however the titan pilot made a mistake and instead of bridging in the fleet jumped the titan into the target system on top of a deathstar POS. The mistake was quickly rectified and another titan was used to bridge the rest of the fleet in.
As soon as we entered the system I hit a gate, put up my bubble and primed my launchers.
My Onyx stationed at the gate
The first victim was DariusIII in his Manticore who quickly died to the combined might of my squad. The next victim was an Ibis who died even faster than the Manticore. Soon enough we had a Hurricane jump into the system. Fortunately for him, he was too fast to catch and was able to get of my bubble while none of my squad managed bump him. Ahh well next time. Upon checking my kill mails I also noticed I had killed a Bruitx and that he was a sys-k member…. hmm according to the mail though I had done 0 damage and the station guns had killed him. Then came along my favourite kill of the day; a Retribution. He warped into the bubble and decided to make a run for that gate and he was doing a good job at it. No one could bump him to deviate him from his course, he was repping all the incoming damage; he was going to get away. I could not let this happen again. I turned on my microwarpdrive and hit approach on the retribution, I wasn’t going very fast but I was a hell of a lot bigger. When our ships hit each other it was like the Retribution had run into a brick wall. It died in a spectacular explosion shortly to be followed by the pilots pod.
After that Brick Squad began harassing the station camp with sniper battleships and managed to kill a couple of us though it did little good in the end. The POS we were attacking was put into reinforced and Manasi informed me that the battleship fleet was now ready to engage the Brick Squad fleet that had been harassing us. Brick Squad though didn’t like the idea of this, so it didn’t happen. We therefore packed up and left to return home.
The Fleet eclipses a moon
The Fleet Eclipses a gate
Op 2 – Bombing Runs
After the POS op Brick began to attack our staging area with roaming fleets. While most people docked up I saw an opportunity – bombing runs. So I fitted up my Stealth Bomber with a bomb launcher and got a couple of other people to join me. Unfortunately, we didn’t manage to kill anything and we lost one of our bombers, which led to me writing a little guide on how to use bombs.
Op 3 – A little Roam
I came into this op a little late so I brought along my Taranis. Apparently though there was KIA gang and Brick gang flying about, which it was decided would be good to take on. However, in my opinion the FC was to slow to act so we didn’t manage to join the party and have a three way battle (I was looking forward to that). The KIA gang though got mauled by Brick leaving us the leftovers as the survivors tried to get back home netting us a pod and a Blackbird and the pilots pod as we sat on a gate (I only got one kill, the gang killed them to fast : ( . The gang then continued on into Brick space where they undocked four carriers. Knowing that we couldn’t take them on we began to leave. Brick also had a few choice words to say about Manasi and his blog, which Manasi covers here. However, a Brick pilot couldn’t let us go without taking some pot shots at us in his Vagabond.
The Vagabond jumped through a gate we were sitting on as we got ready to leave. The call went out “bump him, tackle him” and with a voice of reason in the bloodlust the FC informed all the ceptors to not engage and jump into the next system and get ready to catch the Vaga when he jumped through. The other interceptors and I jumped after the Vaga and proceeded to sit on the gate; my microwarpdrive was cycling, my points were hot. I was going take this Vaga down. We waited and waited and the Vaga didn’t uncloak. Damn we had missed him, he must have entered warp before we managed to jump. So I jumped back into the system to join the rest of the fleet … just as the Vaga uncloaked. I was pissed; I had just missed out on a good kill. Fortuantly the majority of the ceptors had not yet jumped so they caught and killed the Vaga. After this I burned the rest of the way home.
All in all a good weekends work.
The Captains Log 10/8
So continuing on with the Brick Squad Campaign we had another CTA to take down more Brick Squad POS’s. Originally I was not going to participate in this op as it was late for me, however the last op had a very poor turnout for the ex-cartel members, which Liam, our alliance leader, was not very happy about. So I pushed for more of us to come this time around (myself included, though I did leave a early). For this op I decided to bring along a Onyx on Prometheus09 and continued to use Fishy Night as a scout, incidentally Fishy saw more action during the fleet action.
On the way to the staging point I came across a hostile Omen. I readied my bubble to catch him as we both jumped through a gate, however my ships systems took too long to recalibrate so I lost the Omen and he was able to enter warp before I could. He didn’t get very far before I saw him again though. Two jumps out, a Stain Empire Sabre had managed to tackle him so I joined in and put my bubble up to help the cause. He soon went pop. First kill of the day, poor Drakkon Dral was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
After arriving at the staging system I had a chat with Manasi while waiting with the rest fleet before we entered the target system via a Titan bridge, the first time I have ever been through one (bring back the old graphics)
However, even in the support fleet people managed to get there ships destroyed due to bombing runs by Brick Squad Stealth Bombers. I still think they are (and lots of others) are failing to utilise the full potential of Stealth Bombers. You need to use them in groups and fire multiple bombs at once, this will yield more kills and in a POS takedown where you have lots of Battleships next to each other, could possible turn the tide of the battle.
The POS was destroyed in short order and we began to reinforce another POS. I had a little trouble getting to the next POS and ended up about 300km off from the rest of the fleet (not the best way to standout in a fleet).
It was then I had to leave the fleet and sleep. While I was the gone the POS was put into reinforced though we did not finish it off latter as it was in a bad time zone. So Brick squad get a grace period, but we will be back.
For Manasi’s version go here.
So continuing on with the Brick Squad Campaign we had another CTA to take down more Brick Squad POS’s. Originally I was not going to participate in this op as it was late for me, however the last op had a very poor turnout for the ex-cartel members, which Liam, our alliance leader, was not very happy about. So I pushed for more of us to come this time around (myself included, though I did leave a early). For this op I decided to bring along a Onyx on Prometheus09 and continued to use Fishy Night as a scout, incidentally Fishy saw more action during the fleet action.
On the way to the staging point I came across a hostile Omen. I readied my bubble to catch him as we both jumped through a gate, however my ships systems took too long to recalibrate so I lost the Omen and he was able to enter warp before I could. He didn’t get very far before I saw him again though. Two jumps out, a Stain Empire Sabre had managed to tackle him so I joined in and put my bubble up to help the cause. He soon went pop. First kill of the day, poor Drakkon Dral was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
After arriving at the staging system I had a chat with Manasi while waiting with the rest fleet before we entered the target system via a Titan bridge, the first time I have ever been through one (bring back the old graphics)
Waiting with the rest of the fleet
Through one side ...
... and out the other
The order was given for the fleet to align to the POS, then for the Capitals and Battleships to warp to the POS and engage. The support fleet (including me) got to hang back and watch.
Us and the targe
However, even in the support fleet people managed to get there ships destroyed due to bombing runs by Brick Squad Stealth Bombers. I still think they are (and lots of others) are failing to utilise the full potential of Stealth Bombers. You need to use them in groups and fire multiple bombs at once, this will yield more kills and in a POS takedown where you have lots of Battleships next to each other, could possible turn the tide of the battle.
The POS was destroyed in short order and we began to reinforce another POS. I had a little trouble getting to the next POS and ended up about 300km off from the rest of the fleet (not the best way to standout in a fleet).
It was then I had to leave the fleet and sleep. While I was the gone the POS was put into reinforced though we did not finish it off latter as it was in a bad time zone. So Brick squad get a grace period, but we will be back.
For Manasi’s version go here and Selina’s go here
The Captains Log 8/8
Well joining sys-k has already provided us with plenty PvP. Sys-k has decided to attack Brick Squad further up in Stain to show that no one messes around with us and our allies. The first roam I went on involved a T2 frigate swarm, I was in a Taranis, in which we managed to kill a whole lot of shield on drake (but not the drake itself), before we had to warp due to Brick Squad reinforcements.
The second Op I was part of involved was a large alliance fleet op. In this op I managed to get a point on a pod but not much else. However, my probing skills were put to good use when I brought in Fishy Night to probe out some enemy ships. The big event that happened during this op was when we were leaving the system. A hound appeared on the gate and launched a bomb at us. I was too close to the gate to get away, but not close enough to jump, so I did the only thing that could save me; turning off my microwarp drive. This saved me as the bomb only took me down to structure, to close for my liking.
I personally want to get a large amount of Stealth Bombers together so I can fire lots of bombs at a gate camp just to see how much damage they can do. The only time I have used a bomb was for a test run, in which I managed to kill a whole lot of Heavy armour bots a friend had out (oops).
The next day another op was run to put some POS’s into reinforced. Unfortunately for me, I only caught the tail end of it and could only do a bit of scouting. However, I got some nice picture of a Titan.
All up it is good to be in some large fleet ops with clear objectives.
prometheus09