Drag Queen Federation Pwned

What do you do when you have two fleets approaching your pipe system from the opposite directions? Well, of course you make sure they collide.

VJ was in Oyonata when Heavster, a known ally of the Sahtogas-based Dragoon Federation, started aggressing his Tempest at a station with a Drake. Obvious bait was obvious so VJ just docked. Of course a group of Drags and their other allies ARETR soon moved to the Kurniainen gate to camp him there.

At the same time, our friendly scout reported a biggish Russian fleet in Saidusairos.

Bozo went to scout the Oyo gate in something fast and agile and Drags - a Myrm, a Curse and a Drake - aggressed him so he warped off.

The Russian scout was already in Kurn so I convoed him and told him about the group at the gate. Sure enough, the Russian fleet quickly moved in and annihilated the four Drags/friends who were still unable to jump back into Oyo (although I'm not sure how the Anathema managed to die).

As a bonus, Bozo whored on the Curse killmail (check out the pr0 fit).


Drag Queen Federation - as long as it's fun (their real motto)

In other news, I finally bagged a Dramiel kill with my Thrasher of Boredom.

Thrashers Suck!

Really, I haven't flown a ship more boring than Thrasher. I've been trying to do some small-ship solo work with it to record a video but realised it's not worth it.

You just find a faction or T2 frigate, wait for them to eagerly engage you, scram, web, neut and watch them die within mere seconds.

Not only does their support fail to arrive in time, your own buddies fail to make it onto the killmail. Jags, Slicers, Comets, Firetails, Taranii, stuff just melts. My only hope right now is meeting some challenge in the form of a Dramiel or a Daredevil.



YAAAAAWN

I've Got the Tower!

My mate was on his routine patrol of nearby wormholes when he spotted an Amarr Control Tower on his directional scanner. We have a habit of visually establishing the location of every tower we find because there's a slim chance it will be unanchoring or will have run out fuel, making modules like corp hangars vulnerable to attacks.
Upon warping to that tower, my mate saw that it was unanchored! There was also an industrial ship dropping fuel in cans next to the tower, accompanied by a Harbinger and a Legion, all of them apparently coming in through a different wormhole.
My associate VJ, who has recently acquired a cloaky hauler, was called in. Embarrasingly, though, when he tried to scoop the tower we realised his cargohold was too small due to the absense of rigs. Time for plan B!
VJ scooped the fuel and rushed back to switch to a combat ship. The owners of the tower were nowhere to be seen.
In a few minutes me, VJ and our associate in a Mammoth were back in the wormhole system. Just as Mammoth was aligning to warp out with the tower in his trunk, the three other pilots, all from the Revival of the Talocan Empire alliance, showed up on the d-scan. Their Harbinger landed next to where the tower had been but failed to scramble the hauler, telling him to return the loot in local instead.
VJ's Tempest was there as well by that time and pointed the Harbinger while I sent my Mega into warp. The Harbinger was joined by a Legion and then warped off, apparently stabbed. The Legion wasn't stabbed though and stayed to fight for some reason despite being fit for PVE. Needless to say, it didn't end well for him.
No reinforcements showed up and we returned home, approximately 500 million ISK richer.

Pirate Pack 2.0

Since Jager has quit Eve, I've decided to take over the Pirate Pack he had created - a bundle of blogs by Eve pirates. The new version of the pack can be found here. If you want to suggest that I add or remove something, please get in touch.

Go go good countrymen

Everybody must read this http://twitter.com/#!/search?q=%23eveshakespeare

Beating My Chest Like King Kong

"We're gangstas and thugs, we embrace with love

And beat the hell outta anybody that £$%^ with us"
Eminem/Trick Trick

It's been a nice couple of weeks since my last update.

LOWSEC CONCORD

First, I made a glorious contribution to Hulkageddon IV without leaving lowsec (after screwing up on my first attempt and killing a retriever ONE MINUTE before the start of the campaign). One of my associates was minding his own business in Tannakan when he spotted a Mackinaw in an ice field. A Drake was also present on scan but not on grid. I quickly undocked my Cynabal and made my way to the warp-in spot kindly provided by a cloaked fleetmate.

Just as I finished off that abomination of a ship, the Drake warped in. I loaded EMP and settled into a 20 kilometre orbit while he sat still, tanking my DPS quite well. Bored and willing to kill him quicker, I closed distance and that was when the Drake ignited his own engine and sarted burning in my direction at full speed. This allowed him to shut down my MWD with a scram and start pounding my shields really hard. To make matters even worse, a Huginn warped in and put a web (or probably a couple) on me.

Tackled!

After repeating "OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT" in my head at least a dozen times I tried the only trick that could save me and put my medium neut on the Drake, which, according to my overview, was neuting me as well, most likely with a small device. That was his mistake which cancelled out my mistake: as I got into armor, his point dropped and I was free to warp to a celestial to which I had already aligned. The Huginn never came closer than 30 kilometres and his webs only helped me get into warp faster. Phew, humiliating loss avoided.

I did manage to screw up even worse a bit later, losing a Drake and then a Dramiel to a well-piloted arty cane. The Dramiel loss was especially stupid since I undocked with a neut instead of a nos and simply got neuted. That's what happens when you get mad and want to retaliate immediately. I should really make other people behave like that instead of doing it myself. Props to my opponent for flying solo and doing it well.

I healed my ego a little bit by stealing a Zealot kill from an unlucky Pen Island pilot shortly afterwards.

COMET ME BRO

On the following day, my associate VJ was more lucky when a gang of three Navy Comets, one Rifter and a Heron engaged his Cyclone in the nearby system of Sosan. The Cyclone, its fit shamelessly stolen from the Genos killboard, tanked the frigs easily and neuted and killed them one by one.

His success must have caued me to underestimate Comets and later engage one in a Rifter, which resulted in a tense fight but a convincing victory for the faction frigate. I guess the MSE gank fit was not the right one there but at the moment I thought: if it works against a Taranis, it should work against a Comet. Most importantly, he had a nos which allowed him to keep shooting and repping despite my neuting.

GANGING UP

Later on the same day, I joined a Shadow Cartel-led roam, taking part in my biggest fleet to date. This was a very interesting experience, being part of a 30-strong gang of battlecruisers, battleships, recons and logistics ships. Doing dozens of jumps nonstop is stressing though or maybe it's just something I haven't got used to. Unfortunately, I joined the fleet late and only got on one kill, although it was quite juicy: a Heretic faction-fit smartbombing Typhoon Fleet Issue.

Finally, yesterday, I was finally able to join my first Wensley's Wednesday roam. I acted like a bit of a scumbag, being mute on voice comms, arriving in Egbinger in my pod and asking Wensley for a ship. Our gang was to be made up mostly of battlecruisers and logistics but Wensley wanted to have some light tackle and I gladly hopped into an Ares. Nevermind that I could not use it's Tech 2 railguns or anchor the bubble Wensley had put into its cargohold (at least I bought blasters somewhere along the way).

Just like the previous roam, this was something completely new to me - roaming nullsec in the company of celebrities like Laedy. Of course, I screwed up a few times, for example by failing to notice that the gang went in a different direction than the one suggested by our autopilots.

I will not go into the details of the roam as Wensley will surely explain this much better from an FC perspective but it was quite productive in terms of kills and I think most of the gang (me not included) made it out in their ships as well. We snatched a few DEMON HUNTERS by camping their station, got into a few other small engagements and tried, albeit unsuccessfully, to bite something off a BC/recon/T3 R.A.G.E. gang.

Being a mute interceptor pilot, I was only good for tackling and challenged myself to try and point stuff faster than fellow gang member Dian Lung who was flying a Stiletto. Unfortunately, I was on par with her at best and probably even slower taking into account the natural "lag" between the pointing and its announcement on voice comms. So much for my PVP veteran image. Also, dying to the R.A.G.E. gang was completely unnecessary.

I think I should get some ships of my own ready in Egbinger by next Wednesday as I'm definitely looking forward to flying with Wensley again.

I had only done really small gangs before

Farming PWNAGE

Grab your glocks when you see 2pac
Call the cops when you see 2pac

In late January, we moved from Placid to Bleak Lands to try taking on some locals.
We set up shop in Kurniainen, a nice pipe system and home to our ally bozoKaido and his mates.
Kurn is just eight jumps away from my old home of Amamake and is part of the Amarr-Minmatar war zone. It is also connected with Gallente lowsec so there's always somewhere to go when one is looking for fights.

Very often though all you need to get a kill is undock and check your overview: FW mission runners never stop visiting and we have already killed eight stealth bombers here.

Then there are regular mission runners and ratters who of course are forced to pay for polluting our system with wrecks. Sometimes they reply with juicy tears and hatemail.

And, finally, there are naughty neighbours who are seeking fights themselves.

Zen, who has only recently joined Pyrotechnics, scored a nice kill a couple of weeks ago when his Thrasher faced an Incursus and a Dramiel. It was funny because just before that I was telling him how only an incompetent Dramiel pilot would die to his Thrasher. Here's how Zen himself described the engagement:

I encountered these 2 at a gate, they immediatly warped to a nearby planet. So i followed, i immediatly landed on top of the incurses which fell in 4-5 volleys. but the dramiel liked to orbit at about 13km just outside my range. Even though he was faster i ran from him. at about 20km he started catching up so i swung around and bumped him at full speed. turning on my scrambler which shut off his speed and he began to melt. idk how he did it but he managed to launch himself back out to 9km but it didnt matter he suddenly popped :)

ended the fight with 70% structure.

they aggressed me, no kill rights, no sec status loss as bonus :)

Sormani > was damn fun
good guy the dramiel pilot was.

but what they did wrong... neither one of them deployed their drones. :)

A few days later, we were chilling in Kurn when our scout reported that a Rapier was in the system, piloted by an experienced pirate. One of our mates was out "ratting" in a Myrmidon while I switched to a Rupture to provide another soft target for the recon ship.

Before long, our Myrm pilot reported being tackled by the Rapier. Bozo and me warped to him and quickly dispatched the Tech 2 cruiser. His mate warped in twice in a Thorax only to warp out immediately. I needed to abandon my ship after that and thus paid little attention to the killmail.

It was hours later when I had a good look at the report and realised the Rapier had sported very expensive faction modules. Then I remembered the Thorax warping in twice and realised he was trying to salvage the loot. Frantically, I started asking my partners if they had been able to get to the wreck first. A flash of my wallet was the reply.

Then it was Zen's turn again to introduce us to the neighbours by killing an Amarrian Retribution Firetail and, together with our partner St3r1on, a Drake piloted by a member of SOAPY alliance (mostly notable for their frequent camping of the Ala-Gratesier stargate).

Later on the same day, I was (battle-?) cruising in my nano Drake when I noticed a Broadsword in a belt, an obvious bait most likely set up by another neighbour, the Dragoon Federation alliance. Having just been heard about how terrible they are, I decided to spring the trap by tackling the heavy dictor and orbitin it at 20 kilometres.

Sure enough, a Harbinger soon warped in. I quickly sent my ship flying upwards, a direction where enemy reinforcement were unlikely to come from, and switched point and fire to the Harb. It gave chase, despite being considerably slower than me and I had to slow down to keep him in the disruptor range. Soon, a Pilgrim also showed up but both the recon and the Broadsword appeared to be slower than the Harbinger. I don't know why but the Harb pilot never stopped chasing me even as he went into structure. By the time he exploded, both of his mates had abandoned him.

Fast forward a few days, and we spot a Sleipnir running a mission in Kurn. Now this requires a serious approach. A lot of mission runner ganks fail at the probing stage, especially since probes have been added to overview filters. In order to minimise the chances of this happening, our prober moved out of d-scan range before deploying a set of combats. He scooped them up and redeployed them immediately after getting the initial hit. This technique requires the target to refresh his scanner less than every 10 seconds (or get lucky with its scanning cycle) to spot the probes - something that I think would drive most people out of their minds.

With the target located, the goal was get it tackled. This is another part of the gank that often fails due to people being aligned or just moving out of point range. Come Arazu, a ship that can disrupt the target's warp drives from over 57 kilometres with just a Tech 2 point. Together with an armor Tempest, the recon warped towards the Sleipnir's last known location.

The choice of tackler proved to be right since the mighty (and expensive) command ship was about 40 kilometres away. Both pirate ships engaged their microwarp drives and the Tempest soon had the Sleipnir (which was slower due to using an afterburner) pointed and webbed, allowing the fragile Arazu to leave the battlefield.

The Sleip was not going down without a fight and got our battleship into structure before its tank failed under heavy fire and neuting. A well-planned and perfectly executed gank - such a rare occasion in the life of Pyrotechnics!

Finally, last night me and Bozo were checking out the 'hood in our Cynabals when I spotted a fresh FW mission beacon in Kurn and immediately warped to it, alerting Bozo. My directional scanner registered three stealth bombers: a Hound, a Nemesis and a Purifier. However, just after I passed an acceleration gate, a Rapier uncloaked next to me and quickly put a point and two webs on my Cynabal.

Stealth bombers, which initially cloaked, started decloaking and pounding me with torpedoes. They were each between 30 and 50 kilometres away from me but what is 50 kilometres to a Cynabal? Click-click-boom! Click-click-boom! Click-click-boom! Six rounds, three dead bombers.

By this time I was down to about 25 percent shields but the Rapier started disengaging once I turned my guns to it. Fortunately, Bozo had already arrived and together we finished off the recon which, I think, was sitting there to gank incoming pirates or pilots of the opposing faction. Gank report is here (warning: a lot of PWNAGE).