I’ll try to diversify a bit more the range of news we cover other than GoonSwarm / Raiden. news. Rest assured I got several GSF/Raiden. battle-reports queued, but in the interest of variety let’s read something fresh sent by a NoirDOT pilot.
The G0dfathers and NoirDOT exchange kisses of death.
A rolling six hour long engagement, exhausting to any FC. Formed up for a YZ-LQL (Fountain) POS kill at 20:30 against The G0dfathers. Our snipers took to the field in time to hamper their repair teams, scoring us an early Scimitar kill.
Our sniper gang continued to pound the tower, taking it down to 15%. We had scouts out all over and easily spotted the incoming POS save fleet, which was 45-50 strong and featured a core of Artillery Tornadoes with tackling frigs but scant logistic support. Obviously our tiny sniper fleet, numbering around 15, could not trade shots with that. So we went back to our staging system MN5N-X and sorted fleet comp for 2PAC [dual prop AHACs/T3 we've been using for a year now for you non-Noir. readers. Also: you're welcome RZR ;p]. Feeling was that with their light logi we could engage and win if the fight was initiated at close range. They chased us to MN5N-X and backed off to 2 systems away. Our fleet grew to about 17 with a nice 7 logistics. We shipped back into snipers to bait their fleet back to us. It worked but they went the other direction when we did a quick switch in MN5 and chased them into 75FA-Z, intending to engage on their in gate, forcing them to jump into us.
Order of Battle
The initiation went like clockwork, as we landed on time and after a short period of sizing us up they jumped right into our 2PAC fleet. A Drake was called first, perhaps not the best primary but it died right away and a different target wouldnt have made a difference. Our Lokis killed a few frigates but not nearly as many as it turns out we would have needed, as their frigs were doing webs+paints for the Tornadoes and killed our dictor/Kitsune. Their Falcon was jamming our Guardians consistently, obviously prepared to face an armor fleet. Reps were holding but barely, as the alpha was taking ships to 1/4 armor or less before reps were applied, after which they’d get moved back up to full. A perfect storm of webs, paints, and wrecking shots came together and volly’d one of our Guardians right off the field, followed shortly by a Muninn instapopping. I called for us to deaggress and jump after that to prevent further alpha losses.
We had some time to think things over, and I decided that if we could catch the Falcons (they added another one) on the jump in and pulled a few tornadoes down before G0dfathers got range, we could engage with more stability and use an alt for repeated warp ins like we originally planned. G0ds cross jumped us into IC so we were back to square one in 75FA-Z, with a few less ships but what i felt was a better engagement plan. G0ds jumped back into us and it was on again. Unfortunately, G0ds did everything right here and we came away with nothing. The Falcons were able to cloak despite the crowded jump in, and had insta range tacs so they were at 80km seconds into the engagement. They then jammed up our Lokis which enabled all of their snipers to pull range at max speed, which was deceptively fast. As a result, we held onto nothing and they poured in fire on us with more ECM vs fewer logistics. Our NeutLegion was shredded like the logi ships werent even there. One of our Proteus pilots had hero tackled our only viable primary 40 off the gate and was nearly alpha’d off, but we pulled back to full from 10% structure. Aaaand then my Onieros got popped, and while the Proteus valiantly tried to get back to the gate for the deaggress there just wasnt enough rep power to save him and he died *just* shy of jump range.
We chilled in I-C ’till the G0ds left, then moved the fleet back to MN5N-X and dissected the engagement. There were a lot of upset pilots, Jess in particular, but I maintained the view that we fought well, but were out fleet comp’d, out numbered, and out played. It was a painful learning experience about the numbleness and firepower of these new battlecruisers, especially at the hands of experienced fighters (I learned from Siex later that G0ds have been running this fleet pretty much since release and have developed a rep for executing it well).
While the 75FA-Z slugfest and the subsequent discourse was going on, we were getting a break from an unlikely source. A Red Overlord roaming bomber fleet had discovered the tower we reinforced and was harassing the repair crew in our absence, even killing some of them. So the tower was still at 40%, unable to be stronted. I had sent Siex and Kunnilar, leaders of The Forsaken who we knew from one of our Syndicate jobs, since one of their members chatted me up in local and mentioned how much they hated G0ds. I was hoping to do a joint fleet with them earlier (see above big fight) but Siex had only just logged on 30 minutes or so after that engagement ended. So seeing as our efficiency was hopelessly fucked from earlier, I took an opportunity to be annoying as hell and have fun by renewing our attack on the tower.
Die Hard, with a Vengeance.
And holy shit was it worth it. We went with Bombers + Recons this time, since I was a bit leery of using sniper BattleCruisers given all the enemy activity. Turned out to be a good call, as G0ds didn’t seem to know how to deal with stealth bombers that didn’t die as soon as they looked at em. We engaged the tower with about 10 Noir. guys and 3 Forsaken. We hammered it back down to 25% or so before G0ds got serious about protecting it and sent in a Cynabal + Muninn to force us off. We kept trying to reengage but they kept buzzing around us, and our Rapier (which didn’t have a point since it was setup to support our snipers) wasn’t in a good position to web them down. Forsaken was trying to get more pilots in and we were doing our best to coordinate via chat since we weren’t sharing comms.
One of our bombers made a repair and ammo run at the station and reported a G0ds Jaguar outside station. Now a Jag’ we could go for, and go for we did relocating our fleet cloaked to sit just off the station. Conveniently the Cynabal joined us just in time to team with the Jag in blowing up a noob ship. With the targets aggressed and our fleet ready, it was on like Michelle Kwan! Cynabal was called first and got shredded as torps caught up with it’s webbed ass. The Jaguar lasted long enough to be joined by more G0ds guys. A hostile Hound de-cloaked and primary was switched to him. As we switched back to the Jaguar, a Muninn joined the party followed by a Taranis and ‘Geddon. All targets were dropped in quick succession thanks to our bomber damage + Rapier webs, while our ships were kept safe thanks to damage controls and distributed EWAR. Also, we podded that noob a bunch.
BACK TO THE TOWER!
Still shooting it, it’s crawling ever so slowly down. G0ds decides to get some revenge, and shows off a staggering number of sniper spots around their tower for Hurricane, Zealot, Tornado and even a Vexor I’d never seen before that deployed warriors on me at 115km, backed up at times by a Dramiel and various ships poking their head out of the tower shield. When a sniper arrived, we cloaked and waited to see if our Rapiers (we got another one with a point now) or the Forsaken tacklers (they brought more guys by now, good thing since we had some log offs due to EU players not being able to stay up any longer) to get warp ins. A lot of tries, a lot of misses, a lot of very near misses. The Forsaken bombers were not tanked at all and not really moving much, causing at least 6 to be claimed by sniper fire. They tried to kill Noir. bombers several times but couldn’t since we’d eat a volley and warp off, or cloak before they could even lock. Eventually we got their patterns figured out and landed tackles on the Zealot and Hurricane in quick succession. Bubbles were deployed and while they kept trying to snipe for a bit, they seemed give up after a few too many close calls and it starting to get pretty late.
With harassment over and many of the dead Forsaken bombers reshipped and joined by more of their friends, the tower was finally killed at 02:23, almost 6 hours after op start.
Took 2+bil in losses spread over two 15ish vs 45ish fleet brawls then reshipped to bombers and went on tear to kill 1bil with no losses. This op had a little bit of everything that makes small gang warfare and the sandbox of EVE so friggen fun, and it was a great finale to our contract here in Fountain (even tho we lost).
- Alekseyev Karrde
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