torsdag 12. juni 2014

Storytime 4: Dark nights of the soul

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So its been a few days since last post.  Summer has come.  I know a few of you who read this will not understand this concept of being outside the house.  Thats perfectly fine.  But the weather has been lovely.  Sun has been shining.  Temperature has been just perfect.  A slight chill in the wind but still warm and lovely.  Sitting on the porch with a cold beer has a special feel to every man on earth.  In some ways we are all the same.  That quiet moment when we can be just ourself in our natural habitat is precious to us.  It gives us a peace of mind.

Today we have come to a part of our story that might seem directly opposit.  But it was still early summer.  May last year.  But in our home wormhole the dark clouds had gathered.  We just didnt know yet.
We started May of by evicting the guys who first bought the c2 from corp.  We even brought our new alliance.  Invictus void.  After Eve ryuken decided to leave Malas was not what it should be and then all the corps left got swallowed up by IV.  In hindsight I think this was very bad for the alliance.  However.  We evicted the new c2 residents. They never payed up what they promised for the WH so down goes their POS.  Next week Nimon puts up a POS in our home but it is instantly taken down.  Again without much fight.  We're getting a few new members and growing.  Everything is going swimmingly. The new corp who buys the c2 join us with some combat chars in our c5. More caps are brought in and we decide the time has finally come for having a go at capital escalation. (if you are unfamiliar with this term it can be shortly said that this is the use of Capital sized ships,  dreads and carriers,  to spawn extra ships that is worth a lot to kill) Now this is our first go at this so we make sure to read up on Jack Mitons guide to cap escalation over and over. We go through our setup and feel confident we should nail it.  We got more lokis than needed and more dreads so should be easy.  Right? But as we set up to fight I (yes yours truly)  make a fatal flaw.  We have two carriers.  One triage fit (mine)  and one pantheon fit (member a).  As we are about to start I tell member A he can warp first instead of me.  As he lands in site togeather with first dread and loki's a cry go out from member A.  "I'm out of cap.  Cant do anything"  Down goes the first loki.  Dread pilot (member B)  cries out for webs.  He isnt hitting anything.  1st archon start going down as it cant rep without cap.  I make the call to bring in 2nd archon (me)  to try to turn the tide.  I land and hit triage but are soon neuted out as I overextend my rep ability.  We now got 3 full waves of sleepers hitting us. The faction battleships we brought in our confidence get burned away by the sleepers.  However the first archon manage to get out.  But without cap and in triage I really dont have much hope left and soon my archon dies. Now just one ship is left. Member B's Moros. And horribly it now just goes on dying, slowly.. very slowly. The silence on TS as we await its death feels like a thorn just digging, turning, then digging again. Its like a nightmare you just want to be over. Its like watching a murder in slow motion, having all the time in the world to stop it (but not the means). This would scar us all for months. And would be the reason for our very strange but VERY newbie friendly capital escalation fleets later on.
  Luckily we could afford to dig in and replace the capitals from corp wallet. But we did not attempt cap escalations again any time soon. (A 15 bill donation from a member leaving EVE basicly ment our very survival at this point. A big shout out to this hero)

A few days later a new incident befell us. SSC open up directly to us. Then they start moving ships and having small fleets about. We were basicly sititng and just watching. This was SSC. One of the big boys in wormholespace who had been here since the olden days. (well 2011 but yeah). And we were just this new corp without anything to our name. So we stick a scout into their wh and watch the entrance to our home. No fleet at the entrance. We start discussing. Should we close them out? The connection wasnt reduced so could be fast closed with a capital. But we needed some kinda support. We ask around what people have. Zoners have some rr domi's and some in our corp have some other battleships and random stuff. "Lets do this". I borrow an archon from Jeraad (since mine was lost just a couple of days earlier). We make the call and warp it all to the SSC connection. Scout reports a fleet landing as he jump home. We jump archon in and back. Wormhole close. But at least half their fleet made it through aswell. The engagement begin. The archon is... not fitted for combat. But got some reps and good enough cap to handle the incoming dps together with the rr domis. We start calling targets and down goes their deimos and then a proteus. Battleships are not known for fast tackle ability so they pull range with guardians and the rest of the fleet and kite outside our tackle range. This allow them to warp out when guardians dont hold. But mostly their guardians hold. This goes on for some minutes but then the fleet warp of. Except one legion we manage to get tackle on. Guardians return at range and keep him alive for a few minutes. Then suddenly comes a fleet in through static. KILL arrive. (At this time KILL was the biggest and meanest boy in wormhole class. Which was a factor that helped reduce our hope of survival :P ) Tackle goes on all our things and even jams land on the archon. One by one our ships start dropping until we warp out the rest and leave the archon to die. An extra 10 minutes that takes for them to nuke the archon down. But eventually it too dies. All the GF was exchanged before I died however :P
Full battle report

At the same time we come to a realisation that our new Alliance have totally overexpanded itself, combined with some rl stuff happening for its leaders, we decide to pull back out. It went from being a single wh alliance with a strong core and fighting group to a huge multiwormhole alliance that didnt have the same foundation anymore. As we left many of the other corps and key players also left and Invictus Void was no more. But let me just say that a lot of good people resided in that alliance and we parted on as good terms as possible. Today the main remnants of Invictus Void can be found in Kleinrock Group who live in a c2-hs/c3 and Psychosomatic who live in a c6-c3.
 Deciding we had enough of the multiwormhole alliances we decided to just form our own with Zoners inside our c5. And thus, at the beginning of June, Shadow Politics was brought back from a dorment state and we now had our own alliance.

June was a quiet month. Some minor engagement but really nothing to talk about (seriously like 20 kills and equal losses). We managed to recruit some more people and replace capitals. And we had another go at capital escalations. But a  bit different than most do them. Some student in on of our members classes said they used to do capital farming with daredevils. This sounded a bit strange but we decided to have a go. But we wanted to play it safe. So we started of with 3 guardians and some daredevils and lokis. Warp to site. Ok they live. Warp in dread. Start blapping. It worked :o. And so it was born. Our strange doctrine of running capital escalations with guardians and daredevils.
 I have to explain a little why this worked. The system we lived in was a wolf rayet. This gave bonus to armor and sig radius. Which means the daredevil is rather good. Not only does it have a 90% web but also better tank and kan speed tank in addition with an afterburner (a mwd increase sig radius which means that at a bad angle the ship instantly pops if shot at). And so we got a month of some quiet time. Well Nimon was still harassing us but nothing we had to really fear. Just had to be on our toes when he was online.

And as June passed and summer hit for real Nimon decided he had enough of us living in what he considered his home. He called his friends and in the beginning of July war had come. We were invaded.

Continue to Part 5 >>