Revenge, Domination, Starvation, and Acquistion

Entry: six hundred six.

The last few days have been incredibly busy.

Three days ago there was, as always, a CTA fleet, or more properly put, a Revenge Fleet. One of my alliances junior FC's gave his recounting for evenews24, but I'll replay the log here as well from his perspective.

I don’t really know what happened prior to Fatlas Agression forming an emergency CTA fleet, but what I do know follows:
I joined this fleet among shouts of “SAVE AN AEON” etc, but by the time I really knew what was going on -A-’s Aeon got killed and this fleet became a revenge fleet.

[21:54:10] Vince Draken > http://www.northern-coalition.co.uk/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=82024
[21:54:31] Vince Draken > never log as SS
Welp.
Anyways, our glorious FAIL FC shouted words of encouragement to us over comms, “WE WILL AVENGE THIS KILL (etc etc)” We formed up into the coalition standard hellgeddons (which didn’t really include -A- this time. Funny how they’re the ones who lost the super and they don’t even form up to save it?) We warped to a pos and sat on a titan, while scouts were relaying where NCdot’s gang was.
After much screwing around, NCdot jumped into V-3YG7 seemingly to spring our cyno trap. Eventually, they warped to the B-3QPD gate and FC ordered cyno up. Our massive blob of golden penises entered the system with very little lag (yay CCP) and approached the V-3 gate. The fight, it seemed, was imminent.
NCdot jumped a flycatcher through and proceeded to bubble us, while we had a sabre go through and bubble them. A tense Mexican Standoff existed for about 30 seconds, at which point NCdot put on their big boy boots and jumped into us. Primaries were called and drones were deployed and NCdot’s Abaddon fleet was melting to the might of our FAIL Penises.
However, about 2 or 3 minutes into the fight, NCdot lit a cyno and while only 3 titans and 3 carriers came in at first, there was going to be a grand total of 7 titans on the gate fighting us. This surely would scare us Stain refugees away wouldn’t it?
Yep, it did.
FC calmly ordered us to disengage and jump through back into V-3.
However, we would stand and fight on this side as surely no more titans would be available to fight us, and the ones on the other side had to cap up still, right? Basically, we were wrong. But this time it was only 3 titans that came through, and they did little to stop the annihilation of the mighty NCdot Abaddons. Several more titans came through and our FC got doomsdayed, so we de-aggressed and jumped out, losing some of our fleet at the same time.
But during this point and time, with next to no subcap fleet left, NCdot must have shit their pants with, “OH MY GOD WE HAVE TITANS TACKLED ZOMGGGGGGG,” for they proceeded to log on their entire supercap fleet lul.
Fatlas Aggression did the only honorable thing we could do: we ran. But while we were running, we were laughing our bums off at the thought that we very nearly wiped the floor with not only NCdot’s Abaddons, but also their titans.
GF NCDOT THANKS FOR THE FUN!!!! Next time don’t press the “I-Win” button and learn to fight with subcaps
-Nitor1013Z

I feel that his perspective pretty closely matches my own, however, I had the honor of making the fleet hate Rifters for the next few days, as I got called out repeatedly after that battle when flying a Rifter, and being told to never broadcast for reps while in a Rifter. Clearly, my usual gang, the Logistics portion of any CTA fleet, doesn't feel tacklers are important for things like webbing, scramming, and killing enemy tacklers. Sure, the Geddons are important, but so are the tacklers. Let's also keep in mind that the battlereport shows that we did not, in fact, have much of a fleet left to fight with. We were however reshipping at LGK, a mere five or six jumps from V-3.
 
Two days ago, there was, as always a CTA fleet, but this time it wasn't a revenge fleet. It was a proper fleet to disrupt DRF acquistion of null-sec territory. We formed up in LGK-, bridged in GJ0-, burned twenty jumps to another titan in R-XDKM, and bridged onto a DRF fleet in G-DON3. I was, as per usual, a guardian pilot.

Before jumping in, Archie told the dictor pilots to warp in, bubble the fleet, and get out, repeating as many times as possible during the fight. Once we bridged in, he called out target after target, sporadically asking us how the Guardians were doing. After a few minutes, when he next asked, someone mentioned that the Scorpions were jamming out the logis pretty hard. Archie then called all the Scorpions and had the fleet melt them. Once that was complete, our HellGeddons laid waste to the enemy fleet, taking very few losses from that point on. I got jammed out by ECM drones from time to time, but every time I did, I activated my smartbomb. I almost never ended up jammed for more than one cycle that way, as I either killed the ECM drones or they were assigned to jam out a different Guardian pilot.

After ten minutes of frantic target calling by Archie and frantic remote-repping by the Guardians, the enemy fleet started to disengage, trying to get away. The dictors continually swooped in and out, dropping bubbles, allowing even more carnage to litter the field in our favor. It was only when the enemy fleet was routed that Maka called in the hotdrop. Quite a few capital class ships jumped in to whore in on the fun.

With the objective achieved, a wonderful fight had, we bridged out of G-DON3 to R-X, docked in DZ6- next door for a break, then burned back to GJ0- where we bridged back to LGK- and called it a day.

Yesterday I was on fleets on all day, from when I woke up in my new quarters in FV- to when I went to sleep there. Despite being on four fleets that day, one of which was a CTA fleet against the DRF forces in what was just a few moments prior to and the first two hours of Imperial Order having lost all of their space, all I got to show for it was "blueballs" and a Sabre kill. Computer: link evenews24 report on Imperial Order's loss of space.

Today I wasn't able to make it out of station until very late. No immediate fleets in the area were up, so I decided to see about my ISK situation, and I scanned down a Pristine Sansha Abandoned Colony. I immediately went a known log of a former Stain resident for consultation, but didn't find any notes on what I would find in terms of opposition. I did however learn that there were five intact armor plates waiting to be had.

Jita puts five intact armor plates at one fifty-million isk. I was not going to pass that up.

Upon immediate warp-in, I burned away from the Drone horde to make a warp-out still on grid, some two hundred twenty meters from the main cluster. Once that was completed, it took some time to figure out how best to deal with the Drones, as there were five to seven Battleship class, about as many cruiser class, and about as many frigate class. My typical tactic, since I was piloting a standard nano cane was to warp-in, nuke a ship or two, and warp-out on grid to recharge. Eventually, I docked, got a sniper cane, and used that to draw a second deadlier spawn which showed up away from the main cluster, killing several of the deadlier drone frigates in the process. 

Once that was complete, I reshipped into the nano-cane, and destroyed the main cluster of drones rather quickly, warped out for a recharge, then destroyed the second cluster of drones about as quickly. It took about one and a half hours to complete this site with all the fumbling I'd done, so my ISK per hour ratio is quite high. On top of the armor plates, I gained approximately six million in minerals on insta-sell, various tech one salvage worth another few million, and some various tech two loot. 

All told, that site was worth about one hundred seventy million ISK. That can easily replace my previous Munnin loss, although I think it more likely I will invest said ISK into a second Guardian, as my first was destroyed in a failed AHAC fleet in A-E several days ago.

That's what I love about null-sec: it's a rollercoaster of all sorts. Politics, war, emotion, poverty, wealth, and friends, the whole situation one big mess that gives and takes just enough to leave you hopelessly addicted. I can never go back to empire after coming out here.

Computer: terminate recording.