Double furball in Vlilirier

"Oh shit guys, I screwed up. They've got me pointed."


Like many good fights, this one started with someone making a small mistake. We were hunting what was supposed to be a small Caldari militia gang estimated at about 6 frigates and destroyers lurking around faction warfare complexes in the Vlilirier system, the home system of our corporation, Justified Chaos. Vlilirier was not in any danger of being captured by the Caldari at that time, but every plex they captured would require a counter plex operation by us. Stopping them was therefore a priority.

3 of us settled on a plan. We would take 3 ships to the medium complex where the gang was last spotted. I would take a Hawk-class missile assault frigate together with another pilot in a Vexor-class drone cruiser, and would enter the plex and get the enemy engaged while a third pilot in Stabber Fleet Issue Heavy Cruiser would come in a minute later.

The Stabber Fleet Issue (SFI) is a real beast of a ship, packing heavy armour and a heavy punch, with excellent turret tracking allowing it to rapidly shred frigates. It is also very expensive, costing more than the rest of put little gang combined.

And unfortunately, it was our SFI pilot who announced he screwed up.

By the time the Vexor and I got into the medium plex, it was empty. We settled down in there waiting for our SFI to join us. But when he landed out of warp at the acceleration gate to the plex , a Caldari militia Comet class frigate and Stabber-class light cruiser were waiting for him and managed to target him and engage warp disruptors on him before he could activate the gate and join us.

"Oh shit guys, I screwed up. They've got me pointed," came the disappointed voice over our comms.

This was bad, but even a Comet and regular Stabber together should be no match for a Stabber Fleet issue. The regular Stabber is a light cruiser, barely doing more damage than some frigates. Nonetheless, with our SFI now asking for help, the Vexor and my Hawk warped out to return to the acceleration gate.

Before we landed, as expected our SFI soon announced that the Comet was destroyed. There were still several seconds left until we dropped out of warp, and I began to wonder why the two ships thought they could stop a SFI. My question was soon answered by our Vexor pilot, reading his scanner output

"Guys, watch out - Cane on scan coming to the medium"



The Hurricane-class battlecruiser was once considered to be the best ship in EVE. The ship design was later changed to make it less powerful, while changes in Faction Warfare mechanics made all battlecruisers a much rarer sight in the warzone. It remains a ferocious creature, capable of greater firepower and heavier defences than even our SFI.

My Hawk landed on the battlefield moments before our Vexor. Our SFI was tightly engaged with the enemy Stabber but the Hurricane was charging into the fray as well. I quickly began targeting both ships while maneuvering towards the Stabber. The targeting lock cycle completed and I could see the ship was already heavy mauled by our SFI. I began blasting salvos of Scourge Rage rockets from my ships's launchers into Stabber and he blew apart seconds later.

By now the Hurricane was alongside our SFI, had him tackled, and was unloading into him. I fired up my microwarpdrive and burned in toward the hurricane.

Our SFI reported that he was now almost out of capacitor due to the Hurricane's energy neutralizer. For a moment this made me pause - a neuter out frigate would lose its speed advantage and soon be a dead frigate. Then I decided that I could still survive if I was orbiting as close as possible to the Cane, getting in so close that his guns couldn't track me. That would leave just his drones to contend with. Activating my webs and rockets as soon as I was in range, I activated my webs and rockets and settle into a tight orbit on the battlecruiser. His shields began going down fast under assault from my Hawk's rockets and our Vexor.

At this point our SFI couldn't last any longer and exploded. The Hurricane turned its attention to me, and I couldn't see my capacitor level start to sink and disappear completely, switching off my warp scrambler and webs. Luckily my rocket launchers needed to capacitor to fire and so I continued beating away at him. Once in a while my capacitor would flicker back into life and I could activate one or more stasis webs to stop the Cane from getting away, while our Vexor kept the heavier ship pointed and unable to escape, and under assault by a swarm of drones.

Though my shield alarms began screaming as the Hurricane's drones burnt through them with salvos after salvo, this was one damage race that the ship would not win. We finished stripping the shield off of our prey and rapid pounded through his armour, pulverising the structure underneath and finally seeing that beautiful blue flash that signalled this fight was over.

Loot was scooped and we took score of the situation. We lost about 75 million ISK worth from the SFI, but took down a 75 million ISK Hurricane, and a 30 million ISK Comet together with a 35 million ISK Stabber. Clearly a victory for our side.

We barely got a moment to recover before we found ourselves balls deep in the next fight. While I docked up at our home station to repair my ship, our Vexor remained at the scene of the last fight, curious about a Condor-class light frigate showing up on his long-range scanners. The Condor duly dropped out of warp on top of him and warp disrupted the Vexor. Our pilot called for help, seeing the remainder of the frigate gang that we were originally after show up on long-range scan as well.

I immediately undocked together with our former SFI pilot, now in a Griffin-class electronic warfare frigate. Warping to the fight, I made the mistake of loading in long-range, low-damage Scourge Javelin rockets, expecting to fight the Condor first at ranges of 15-20 km.

Instead, I landed in the middle of the enemy fleet, with the closest target being a Kestrel missile frigate just 6km away from me. I could either reload with Rage rockets but waste 10 seconds waiting for the reload cycle to complete, or stick on with my Javeline. I chose the latter.

Our Griffin pilot called out that he was beginning to jam a Bantam-class shield repair frigate as I finished locking up the Kestrel. My warp scramble and double webs landed on him and I knew he was going nowhere. Volley after volley of rockets left my ship and slammed into the Kestrel, but I noticed with dissatisfaction how much lower the damage I was doing to him was due to the Javelin rockets. Nonetheless, I avoided retaliatory fire as the enemy fleet stayed focused on our cruiser.

The Kestrel finally exploded at the same time and I searched for my next target - a Corax class missile destroyer that had already taken heavy damage from the Vexor. Learning the lesson from earlier, I finally reloaded Rage rockets, watching patiently as the Corax's shield disappeared while my reload took place. Finally I opened fire as the Griffin pilot shouted that he lost his ship and that our jammers were gone. The Corax dropped deep into armour before its shields shot up again, but the next set of salvos from the Vexor, its drones, and my Hawk quickly reduced the enemy destroyer to a floating wreck in space.

I knew that the enemy logistics had to be cleared off the field quickly. The Bantam frigate was keeping at range 30 kilometers from the fight, but activating my microwardrive let me quickly catch up to it before the pilot reacted. With double webs and a war scramblers once more holding him in place he blew apart in seconds, and without his repairs, an expensive Caldari Navy Hookbill frigatewas swiftly dispatched by the Vexor pilot.

The fight was almost over now. The Caldari Militia now just had a single Burst-class repair frigate on field, as well as the Condor that started this second brawl. Once more I activated my MWD to try and run down the Burst, but he swiftly warped out of the fight while safely out of range. The Condor stuck around though, and the reason became clear when the Vexor pilot nervously called out that he was heavily damaged, with no shield or armour remaining and just 60% of his ship's structure operational. The Condor continued trying to shoot it light missiles at the Vexor while simultaneously staying our of range of my webs and scrambler . Finally he started burning away from us and warped out, enabling the critically damaged Vexor to enter warp and safely return to station.

With the battle over, the butcher's bill could be totaled up. Justified Chaos lost 2 ships worth 77 million, and exchange bagged 7 ships worth 208 million. Holding the field also enabled us to loot the wrecks, helping offset some of our SFI/Griffin pilot's substantial losses.

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Thoughts and Conclusions

1) Never hesitate when landing out of warp and trying to enter a plex, else you end up pointed like our SFI.

2) We were lucky that the 2 Caldari fleets operated separately and didn't communicate with each other.

3) The first gang operated near perfectly. It was truely a good fight, almost equal in the amount of ISK committed on field

4) The second Caldari gang was bluffed by the reputation of the Harpy for being heavily tanked. They ignored my presence on field despite having the DPS to quickly pop me. Their focus on the Vexor instead allowed me to quickly dispatch 2 of their DPS ships and half of their logistics. That said, it was arguably the right call by them because should I have turned out to be fitted for maximum tank, they would have spent too long breaking my defence down and would have risked the Vexor whittling them down instead. So it was the right call, bad situation for them.

Hunting the hunter

He was out there, watching me, studying me, waiting for his moment to strike and score an easy kill off of me. It's a funny feeling, being nearly certain you are being watched, but unable to do anything about it. For him, this should have been as easy as reaching into a box of chocolate and taking out something sweet and delicious.

This time though, he would be sticking his whole arm into a bear trap.

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It began with me in my Enyo, sitting inside a Gallente Medium Outpost in the Eha system running down the timer to help the Gallente Federation keep control of the system. War targets were nowhere to be see when Keisuke Fujiwara appeared in the Local channel. Friendly pilots in system immediately began scanning trying to find him, but came up with nothing.

I brought up and looked at Keisuke Fujiwara's employment history.... any information is power. He made for an interesting read. He was in the NPC Faction Warfare corporation for the Caldari, that infamous famous haven for noobs. But he was a much older pilot than I, having been created and presumably training since 2008, as well as having 2 tours of duty in the hi-sec Red vs Blue war. And yet he was in the NPC FW corporation?

I quickly decided that he must be somebody's alt account, almost certainly used in a cloaked up covert ops frigate to keep eyes on enemy activity. I pushed him out of my mind and resumed running the plex,  lazily checking d-scan to see if he would make a mistake and be visible. The plan resumed.

And then the plan fell apart most unexpectedly. D-scan picked up a Pilgrim-class Force Recon Cruiser on scan, within 14 Astronomical Units. I quickly reduced down to within 5% of that and discovered that he was less than 1 AU away from me.

I got nervous and called into voice comms. "Hey are any of our guys in a Pilgrim?". The answer came back negative and so the adrenaline began flowing. I paid close attention to every inch of my screen, knowing that if the enemy was in a pilgrim, I would be lucky see anything was amiss for more than a fraction of a second.

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The Pilgrim is a nasty ship to face on its own terms. Packing a covert ops cloaking device, it can warp around systems while invisible, has heavily bonused energy neutralizers to render a ships offensive and defensive systems inert, has good damage from drones and strong armor, often with a local armour repairer to patch up damage during a fight.

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Any cloaked ship in EVE will decloak upon getting 2km or less from any object in space, such as the acceleration gate for entering a medium complex such as the one that I was in. The Pilgrim began cloaking while in warp, but for a fraction of a second I saw a little flash of red in my overview display before his cloak cycle completed and he vanished.

I had spent most of the previous month in similar Force Recon ships, hunting inside medium complexes the same way that this Pilgrim pilot was doing. I knew that he wouldn't know that I saw him for a second, and that this gave me a possible way to turn the tables.

But first, my Enyo was not a good ship to face him in. Too little armor, and the guns relied on it capacitor. I report the Pilgrim in voice comms, and then warped to the Eha station while we discussed what to do. Finally, a plan came together. I knew that often, when I was stalking someone in a medium plex, they would warp off when nervous, but then come back for greed. You could make an easy  15-30 million ISK defending them. I had to look greedy.

I would return in a Stabber-class light cruiser while Vexor-class drone cruiser piloted by Djazic from the Level Up Corportation would wait in a neighboring  system.I quickly entered the plex and began thinking about how to not look suspicious to him, having just changed to a bigger ship that did not rely on capacitor for its weapons.

First, I moved to a spot just 4km away from the warp-in point to the complex, and then turned my ship around to face the warp-in . Bringing my ship to a halt, I now looked like a close-ranged brawling ship waiting to ambush someone coming into the plex.

We waited, waited waited for over 3 long minutes. I started questioning myself. Was he out there, watching? Did he warp out cloaked and was somewhere else, while I sat there glued to my display, looking for the moment of warning I would have when he decloaked. Was I making Djazic waste his time? I apologized to him, but he dismissed it, saying that he didn't mind waiting for a possible Pilgrim kill.

Sometimes, your plans go wrong because of something unexpected. Someones, though, something unexpected makes your plan go exactly right.

In this case, a friendly Vexor from a different militia corporation warped into the complex, paused, turned around and warped out. I quickly turned this to my advantage by sounding as harmless as possible. Typing a message in local chat to him so that the Pilgrim pilot could see, I thanked the Vexor for letting me keep the LP from the plex, rather than sticking around so that it was split between us. Now I didn't look like a pilot hunting a Pilgrim..... it looked like all that I was interested in was the LP from the plex.

Then things got even more right and opportunity knocked on my face. The friendly Vexor responded back in local chat, saying that he only came in to see if I was the war target in system. I immediately shot back a response saying "I think the war target is in a deep safe (spot). I haven't seen him on scan since he entered". Now I looked blissfully unaware of the pilgrim.

Keisuke Fujiwara must have felt very confident now, because seconds later he decloaked. I immediately targetted him, and charged to close the range completely with my Microwarpdrive. Calling on Djazic to come back into Eha and hit the plex, I turned on my warp scrambler, guns and missile launchers and waited. 

Surprisingly, despite having me webbed and warp scrambled, the Pilgrim was only gaining distance on me very slowly. My capacitor was also lasting much longer than I thought it would. but time was still against me. My shields were failing fast and my armour was not enough to take much of this pounding.  But the Pilgrim was not having an easy time of it either. I had managed to blast through his shields and was chewing hard through almost half his armour, despite his armour repairer. And somehow, I was now managing to close the distance to him.

By now, help was landing on the field. A friendly Tristan-class frigate landed a stasis web on the pilgrim and so my stabber began closing the distance again. My shields had just failed and the Pilgrim landed another cycle of neuts, nearly killing my capacitor complete. "Djazic where the hell are you, he'll kill my cap in less than 10 seconds and then I'll drop point!" I nearly screamed into comms.

Djazic's reply was music to my ears. "I'm landing on field now". A few seconds later he called out that he had point on the Pilgrim. With my armour half gone and and the Pilgrim now doomed to die from Djazic's Pilgrim, my job was done and I warped out. Even before I landed back in real space, Djazic announced that the Pilgrim was destroyed, and that they got his pod too.

http://zkillboard.com/detail/31007699/

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This kill puzzled me. How was I always able to not only keep the Pilgrim in range when I was webbed and scrammed, but also have enough capacitor to keep him warp scrambled?

The answer partly came from looking at his fit. Without a cap booster, he would have struggled to keep his armour repairer running as well as his afterburner and his neuts. The very slow rate at his which his 2 neuts drained me also testified to him having relatively low recon ship skills. Maybe level 1 or 2 rather than the 4 or 5 you should have if you want to solo in any recon.

In short... I think that the Pilgrim lost the fight because he managed to run out of capacitor himself and could not get away!

Skirmish at Innia - June 6th, 04:35 EVE Time

They just sat there, on the jumpgate to Eha from the Innia system. Smug, comfortable, knowing that they would be able to perfectly ambush anyone entering the system, and easily able to get away from anything they didn't want to fight.

We had been dancing around each other for 15 minutes now, one system to the next, both sides looking to fight but only on their own terms. Finally, things were coming to a head. Only problem was, we were outnumbered and outgunned.

Sure, our side was strong by any measure. Our 3-ship gang included a Cynabal-class cruiser from the Sicarius Draconis alliance and my Enyo-class assault frigate, both in the Eha system. A Taranis-class interceptor from Sicarius Draconis was waiting on the other side of the gate.

But the Caldari gang was stronger. A Coercer-class Destroyer, backed by an Algos-class destroyer, 2 Corax-Class Missile Destroyers, a Harpy-class Assault Frigate, and, backing them up, a Kitsune-class Electronic Attack Frigate, no doubt bristling with ECM jammers to render us toothless within seconds. 4 destroyers, 1 assault ship, and ECM on field.

Our Taranis pilot spoke up first. "How do we take them? Reckon you can handle their DPS? They must have over 1500 DPS at least?"

There was a pause while we considered this, then he answered his own question. "Well, if you take down the Coercer first, that's a big chunk of their DPS, then maybe a Corax?"

Jeremiah Killbrew reluctantly agreed from his Cynabal. Boredom and the urge to fight have a way of counteracting the fear of losing an expensive ship. The Taranis pilot finally settled the matter. "I'll tell you what - if you lose your ship I'll pay for it. I just really want a fight".

And so a plan quickly came together. The Cynabal and I would jump through the Caldari gang into Eha, then the 3 of us would double back and jump into Innia within seconds.

The Taranis would burn for the Kitsune to try to panic the pilot into focusing all jams on the Taranis, while the Cynabal and my Enyo would burn down the Coercer and other destroyers. Jeremiah and I duly moved into Eha and jumped back in to Innia.

No plan survives contact with the enemy, and this was no exception. We didn't see the weakness in our plan until too late - the Taranis both being default Fleet Commander as well as primary target for the Kitsune's jammers.

The Cynabal and my Enyo had both barely uncloaked when the Taranis pilot cried out that he was jammed and couldn't call targets. I waited for a second, but heard nothing from Jeremiah. Every second counted and hesitation would risk split damage.  I couldn't wait any longer. The Coercer was 10km off me and the plan had called for him to die first. I hit my Microwarp Drive to charge towards him, activated my warp scrambler on him, and growled into comms. "Coercer is primary. Target the Coercer". 

The range ticked down. At 6 km I began unloading Caldari Navy Antimatter into the Coercer and watch his shields  melt down fast. With relief I noticed that his armour was melting just as quickly - it was an untanked all gank ship, and taking his down first was the right call. In preparation for the next target I called out a nearby Corax as secondary target.

My ship rapidly slowed down as one of the Caldari landed a warp scrambler on me, shutting down my MWD. My shields began taking a heavy pounding as well, but assuming it was the Corax, I continued unloading into the Coercer until rewarded with a beautiful flash as it exploded. No time to go for the pod, I opened fire on the Corax......

.....and my shots all missed. Quickly looking at my screen, I discovered that he was now over 17km away from me. Worse, my capacitor was suddenly at less than 33% capacity. That was when I discovered the Algos, now just 3km away from me and  letting rip on me with blasters and energy neutralizers, rapidly working through my shields and about to bite into my armor.  Even worse, the Taranis pilot announced that he was now heavily damaged and had to warp off.

We were now one ship down, and the enemy ECM was still on field.I was warp scrambled and escaping was out of the question.

I had to assume that the Cynabal was still nearby. With the Algos scrambling and neuting me, catching up to the Corax was out of the question. I opened up comms and called that the Algos was the new primary target. My targetting lock cycle completed and I let my guns pound into the Algos at point blank range. His shields and armour plates collapsed in seconds under the beating from the combined blasters of my Enyo and the 425mm autocannons of Jeremiah Killbrew's Cynabal. 

As the enemy destroyer blew apart my ship was finally freed from the warp scramble. Checking my overview revealed that the Corax destroyers and Harpy were still burning back to us from where they had chased our Taranis off to.With my Enyo now having lost its shields and half of its armor plating, surviving a fight against three more ships seemed unlikely, even without factoring in the Kitsune's jammers.

"We're done, bail bail bail" I called. My Enyo quickly warped out into the safety of space, followed seconds later by our Cynabal.

Result: 6-man gang of Destroyers and T2 frigates engaged by 1 faction cruiser and 2 T2 frigates. 2 enemy destroyers killed for no friendly losses. 

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Our Taranis was the real hero of this fight and it would have gone very differently without him. He burned straight away for the Kitsune,  and stayed aggressive despite being jammed, not only forcing the Kitsune to burn away from the fight, but also drawing off the 2 Coraxes and the Harpy to try and save the Kitsune.

This left the Coercer and Algos behind - the Coercer was scrambled and couldn't move fast enough to try to save the Kitsune, while the Algos pilot correctly realised that with the heavy 400mm plate on his ship he couldn't move fast enough to help out anyway.  

The enemy fleet was thus split and totally unable to use its numerical and DPS superiority to take control of the engagement. Defeat was inevitable.