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Sunday, November 27, 2011

It didn't happen at NOL-

Entry: six hundred eighty-seven.

About six hours ago, while I was setting up tactical bookmarks in NOL- for a large scale conflict I anticipate in the future, I saw Suleimain Shouaa in local. What a rare chance to speak with someone whose public logs I follow! But it was a curious situation: The Tuskers were several hours late for the party with nothing left but preparation for the next conflict. Computer: play back private chat stream with Suleiman Shouaa.

Computer: "Confirmed."

*****
 
Suleiman Shouaa > o/
Truen1ght > nol should be dead for quite a while 

                > good luck huntin
Suleiman Shouaa > ah cheers
                           > we saw many kills on dotlan
                           > ::(
Truen1ght > 1300 in sys about 5 hours ago
                > station timer
Suleiman Shouaa > ah lol sov war
Truen1ght > evoke ddos'ed goons comms
                > and goon's backup comms
                > so, that didn't work out
Suleiman Shouaa > lolsov
                           > ty for heads up
Truen1ght > yup
                > lol sov
                > was there a wh to here from gallente low-sec?
Suleiman Shouaa > nope
                           > just roamed from hev
Truen1ght > ah
Suleiman Shouaa > hoping for :thunderdome:
Truen1ght > 1dh is probably best bet
                > black legion should be aroudn 1-smeb
                > my delve intel channel is dark though, so I don't think much is going on right now
                > KFIE is where you'd have the best chance of finding evoke
Suleiman Shouaa > we're heading back soon
                           > and in a "dram is OP fleet
Truen1ght > you were the only one i saw in a dram lol
                > saw a flicker of scimis and some other stuff, wasn't really paying attention
                > oh, derp, I think 1dh has a gatecamp
                > probably on the pr-gate
                > but, have a good trip back, gl on the kills
Suleiman Shouaa > nope
Truen1ght > weird
Suleiman Shouaa > on other gate
Truen1ght > a-e?
Suleiman Shouaa > y
Truen1ght > alright, i'll let you be
                > o7

 
*****
 
Quite strange to see pirates from Gallente low-sec all the way down in Delve, but interesting. Black Legion are the resident pirates in nearby low-sec. I didn't think anyone else would bother.

It was after this conversation that I realized that I haven't done much to explain the way things are around here much, however, and that perhaps I should do that. It would be best to explain why The Tuskers bothered to take a roam down to Delve in the first place though.

The Tuskers were four hours late for the major conflict in NOL-. Goons on one side, the DRF on the other, both vying for control of that system. Sovereignty Blockade units had been deployed by Goons, the station about to become vulnerable once the reinforcement timer expired, and the IHUB in line for reinforcement immediately after the station. Evoke was facing a serious threat of losing NOL-, a system that Goons seem to desire above all others at the present time.

It wasn't long after I logged in, activating my ship in the depths of space, that a bomber fleet was posted. It was difficult to understand the situation, as comms were constantly active. "Polaris fleet" was the keyword of the hour, and the only fleet I could think of to match that description is one similar in vein to the one destroyed in Tama not long ago.

This was not that type of fleet.

After joining fleet, I made best speed for NOL-, managing to stay one very small step ahead of the Evoke tackle wing in 1DH-, PR-, and NOL-. They were diligent about trying to catch anything making its way towards NOL-. I only managed to get in because of the rush they were in to get into position.

After escaping the clutches of the tackle wing, I notified my fleet of the local population: thirteen hundred. A population that size in null sec is all but unheard of except in the largest battles in null, such as one in Teneferis a few months back and a battle in Uemon nearly a year ago. The hell camp of 6VDT-H was only six hundred, and the major battles at HED-GP and GE-8JV never crested nine hundred.

The scope of the conflict to be had was quite clear to me immediately. "Epic" is only the frosting on the cake for what I expected to happen. I was sadly disappointed, however.

My fleet came into NOL- through a detour via HM-. Once in system, we all set up at the edge of the station grid, where we expected the fight to take place via our communication with Goons. Evoke had several triage carriers repairing the station, and it didn't take too much longer before the Goon fleet warped in to the station at zero and started attacking.

And almost as soon as they arrived, they left. Reports came through that Goon comms, both primary and backup, had been DDOSed by the enemy, preventing any sort of coordinated attack. The Evoke carriers were free to repair the station as local dropped from thirteen hundred to eight hundred and the Evoke subcapital fleet, consisting of a ridiculous number of Drakes and Scimitars, destroyed all four Sovereignty Blockade units within twenty minutes of starting the task. That feat is equal to using several Motherships in conjunction with a Battleship fleet of size seventy, per SBU.

The Initiative stopped by to try and ninja a few kills, but ended up being sent home with their tails between their legs.

My biggest issue with this entire conflict is simply that I was unable to participate. Our FC was someone I had never heard of, and while he knew the concepts and understood patience, did not have the brass balls to make an attack happen. I saw several opportunities to simply warp in and launch bombs, bombs which would have destroyed the large majority of the clumped up Evoke Drake-Scimitar fleet, both at the station and at SBUs. Our FC was overly concerned with not losing bombers and not concerned enough about destroying billions worth of ISK in ships and modules in thirty seconds of kinetic hell. Fourteen bombers, totaling approximately four hundred million ISK in trade for billions of ISK? It's a no brainer.

Pilots were chomping at the bit so fiercely that they began engaging Interceptors at the PR- gate once the fight was over with torpedoes and bombs. I logged out, frustrated, unwilling to give in and become a mindless idiot and lose my bomber needlessly.

After that break and cooling my emotions, I logged back in and set up tactical points all around stargates and the station for a future conflict in NOL-, one which I am certain will happen. It was during this time that I saw the Tuskers.

It's hard to blame them for not knowing the area, it's not like they live here after all. I didn't want to leave them with the bad taste of fruitless searching, however, so I offered some of my knowledge of the area, but perhaps not as much as I should have.
 
Goons live near JP4- right now, more accurately at and next door to Y-2ANO. Evoke in the area populate NOL-, Z3V-, and KFIE- for the most part, and roams from deeper regions of their space in Delve enter into upper Delve from those systems more often than not. 

Cascade Imminent makes its home in 1DH- with easy access to its controlled systems in Querious via F20Y-, but also patrols within a few systems of 1DH- in addition to roams towards Raiden in L-6BE1 or its former home of CZK-, which is currently occupied by DRF pets. Occasionally, White Noise, Against All Authorities, or Nulli Secunda will travel down to 1DH- when they are really bored, but those are only rare occurrences. 

Nulli Secunda lives not far from 1DH- in the region called Period Basis, and while easy to reach, are often out of the way for forces hostile to them. As for the final major player in Delve, Black Legion makes its home somewhere in nearby low-sec. I suspect Kaira personally, as they usually come into Delve via 1-SMEB. 


With the Goon freeporting mission in Delve nearly complete, I wonder what they will do once they are done with that, and how diligently they'll need to defend their assets in Delve from Evoke and Ewoks.
 
More importantly, I wonder if the pirates had much fun beyond wasting a Cynabal whilst in Delve.
  
Computer terminate recording.

9 comments:

  1. Yeah we had fun:

    http://tuskers.killmail.org/?a=kill_related&kll_id=11712455

    http://tuskers.killmail.org/?a=kill_related&kll_id=11712166

    http://tuskers.killmail.org/?a=kill_related&kll_id=11711642

    DRAMFEST2011 was to commemorate the coming dram nerf. Goal was to get all our drams exploded. We didn't quite succed lol.

    Overall it was a fun roam. And, no offence intended, holy crap some of the nullsec guys are bad. Each one of these roams is reducing my fear of null. Gonna have to start doing more solo roaming (and remember to bring a prober so I can gank more carebears).
    Always good to find more areas to roam. :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Actually we were aware of you guys live in 1DH- due largely to reading your blog. It's the closest we pirates have to super seekret intel sources/spies.

    And was a fun roam, came down through fountain, ganked some stuff. No massively gfgf, but it's kinda hard to find a genuinely good fleet fight when you're basically a dozen drams and a scimi.

    And some of us managed to successfully get our drams destroyed Naoru, you're clearly just not trying hard enough ;p

    ReplyDelete
  3. Naoru, your comment about some (my opinion is MANY) null-sec pilots being bad PvPers is right on the money. The majority of the good PvPers in my alliance are concentrated in Paragon Fury and Militaris Industries. Basically, no one else PvPs enough to be decent at it. I've seen the same trend across quite a few alliances, where the real combat pilots are concentrated into a few corps in any alliance.

    As a result, yep, the rest are pretty bad.

    To be fair though, you guys are dedicated PvPers while most of null are dedicated money-grubbers. I have no doubts that even as much as I PvP, the lot of you are better combat pilots than me.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Im curious why Goons didnt use EVE chat, since both their default and backup comms got screwed. Ive used the in game voice a couple times and it doesnt seem too bad, and sometimes more organized than vent or ts due to the built in suad/wing/fleet channels. And since alot of people dont train their fleet skills up super high, if multiple fleets are an issue, create a channel and use the voice in there.

    Just my noob thoughts though.

    ~Korvus

    ReplyDelete
  5. EVE voice is horrible for a fleet of 600+, especially in a system with heavy lag. That's why some many corporations have out of game voice servers: eve voice is quite simply unreliable.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Voice comms have made people lazy. Go back to the days of UO or EQ1 when you had a few hundred people to command using only text =P

    ReplyDelete
  7. We didn't roam to Delve specifically because of the reported activity in NOL, but it was a nice surprise!

    Basically, for a frigate roam you want to be in 0.0. Closest 0.0 is Syndicate which is fairly dead in EU Timezone, plus we've roamed there a fair bit recently. Fountain is the next logical step since Cloud Ring is fairly quiet and Delve is just a few jumps away.

    ReplyDelete
  8. I've only just seen this blog post, but it's funny how so many in the EVE blogging community seem to live in such a small galaxy. I was along for the roam with the Tuskers - I must not have been paying attention, or I'd have said hello! (Or, perhaps I did say hello and don't remember it - it HAS been a bit, after all.)

    ReplyDelete
  9. No sweat, I like to post a few times a week, so it's easy to miss some of my posts. I'm also easy to miss in local since my name is low on the local list.

    You didn't say hi, but it's ok. We were both busy: you guys with killing, me with preparing. Delve is going to be dead pretty soon though. Everyone except for a few FAIL and some Evoke are leaving pretty much. Goons are going north, and BL have become Raiden pets.

    ReplyDelete