Black Ops Part 3 (REBORN!)

After the Super Terrific Happy Squad adventure (1 month of WH joy) we had to put the Black Ops down to participate in the CFC wars. But I left my Blops, a jumpclone and alts in Irshah to do some hunting in Providence during 'downtimes'.

February has been Ok-ish. The only really spectacular kill this month was a Paladin sitting idle on a safespot. Another, let's say, remarkable, kill was a Rattlesnake ratting in belts using T1 Warriors. That aside, tens of Battleships and Battlecruisers; the usual stuff.

However, big ISK kills doesn't always make it a good kill, and low class BC's don't make dull fights. More than often it seems to be the opposite.

Flying with the same guys for an extended time has good and negative effects. Blapping kill after kill makes you feel over confident, almost cocky; taking a badly outnumbered fight, taking unnecessary risks (having 2 Interceptor on D-scan can be more threatening than 3 Battleships) and just "fuck it, let's go for it".

Most drops are fast-made decisions. And before you realise it, you're risking 5+bil on the field for a mere 50mil Battlecruiser kill. Why do we do that? Boldness, I guess.

But having a vast knowledge of the game, its ships and its mechanics can also give you a false sense of danger. "That Inty that keeps coming in and out of local COULD warp on top of us, and if he's got a scram our MJD won't work," or, "I saw an Arazu on D-scan earlier, he MIGHT still be in space with a Cyno to counter drop us," "Yeah I've been in local so long, and that Domi is still ratting, he's DEFINITELY bait!" Things like that play with your mind.

So you might be in warp to a Drake, but just when you're about to uncloak and tackle, you see local spike with 5+, some more ships appear on D-scan, and you got to decide if you still want to go for it. "Yes ... Maybe ... well, you know, we can probable melt him in 30 seconds ... Yeah alright let's do it."  And just when you all agree; the Drake warps off a you missed a kill.

And then there are the unpredictable game effects you can't really prepare for. I found 4 Mackinaws beaming around in an Icefield. I bookmarked their location and warp to them. But upon landing I found myself launched out the rocks 3km/s away from the Macks. I managed to keep a long point on them by overheating (I have 1 long and 1 short point fitted on the Loki), but other 3 got out by the time I was back in range. Oh well, to make up for the inconvenience, that one Mack was at least Deadspace fitted.

With most my wingmen being AFK/offline during the second half of Febuary, I tried my hand on some old school solo Blopsing.

I've sat cloaked on a Station in Providence semi AFK for a few hours (RL stuff, dinner, fapping). I knew of some rather clueless people in local, so I hoped they would undock their Navy Mega and Navy Scorpion again. They had warped between safespots for a while but I couldn't pinpoint them before they eventually left and docked. Alas, they did not come back.

Then, when I was about to log off a Raven undocked. Eager for a kill, I waited a bit longer to see what he was up to. He warped to an Anomaly! Rejoice! I followed him, I warped to 10k, he warped to 100k. I kept my cloak but I had to re-warp to get in point range. When I got back I noticed he dropped his drones and a TCU, but there was no sign of a Raven.

I bookmarked the TCU and another 30 minutes passed, sitting idle watching the Station, when he finally undocked again. However he was aligned wrongly; he was heading for a stargate.

Cynoing on gates is particularly dangerous, as it gives a clear and obvious warp-in, and is easy to report for defense fleets. But what's most daring is that you don't know what coming from behind you on the other side. A gang might be forming on the other side of the gate, and jump through by surprise.

Nevertheless, I was tired of waiting and followed the Raven to his gate. He jumped. I jumped. He died. I got rid of his pod using my Smartbombs and then GTFO. Luckily no one followed us through the gate, apart from a Malediction that warped to our gate just when the Raven died. He locked me but didn't pointed me.

I wasn't really in a hurry to leave the system, so I kept both my Loki and Panther cloaked up on a safespot. After things went quiet I noticed how another Raven was still on my scanner all that time. Completely oblivious to the fact I've been in local for 10 minutes, he kept on ratting in an anomaly, which wasn't a particular difficult prey. 2 Ravens, 1 system, 10 minutes. Not bad at all.

Unfortunately no fancy pictures of videos except for a crappy screenshot.

Earlier I said big ships don't make good kills, and small ships don't make dull fights. This is particularly true when Solo'ing. Later that evening I found a ratting Drake. I hate Drakes. But this Drake was a rather exciting kill. My Panther puts out about 1K DPS. That sounds like a good number, but the Drake can tank about 600 DPS. So you 'spend' 600 of your DPS to break it, and then you only got 400 DPS left to chew through 45k EHP. That extra minute to kill it seems like forever, like time slows down, when local spikes, and the guy spams a Defense Fleet-fleet invite in local shouting "GET IN FLEET WARP TO ME". He didn't had a point on me so I knew I could have bailed out at any point. But when a Drake is in low armor, and you see 3 Inties pop up on D-scan you've got a decision to make, and you got to make it fast. But sometimes boldness blurs the risks.

Scrolling through the 'Arby' launchers in my cargo I just looted I was quite satisfied how that worked out. At this point local went from 5 to 25, and D-scan was full of Interceptor and Interdictors. "gf o/" in local gave no response.

Note: Obviously I'm not linking every single kill I'm getting. If you're interested, you can visit my KB over here.

STHS - Super Terrific Happy Squad

STHS - SUPER TERRIFIC HAPPY SQUAD

This is the semi untold story of the partially romanticize adventures of the STHS!

The Super Terrific Happy Squad is group of Darkies we created last year with the idea to set up a POS in a Wormhole and live there for a few weeks. But why a Wormhole? Back in November we were dropping Black Ops in the Providence regions. We agreed nullsec hotdrops were the best Blops activity we'd get, but one region isn't big enough for us! What if we could access any region every other day? 

Week 50 - 2013
We purchased a C5 Wormhole today from our good friend and ex-Darkie Axloth Okiah. "Purchased"? Yes. Nowadays there is a complete market of explorers selling Wormhole systems and their exits. Axloth (who also co-runs a third party WH selling websites) got us the WH system we wanted and gave us a nice discount.

WH's don't get sold with an active POS on them, so we had to set up a 'holding' Tower ASAP. After a few collapsed holes and dead haulers (poor Martin) we got it up there. Meanwhile, Dark-Rising was going to war and the supreme leader put our plan on hold.

Week 2 - 2014
Dark has successfully merged into the EXE alliance, and done its duty on the Curse front. Having settled in Cloud Ring, it was time for the STHS to get really started! Setting up the main Tower (we took down the small, and launched a large with mods etc) went rather easy, except for the loss of an Orca in lowsec (again, Martin?!).
We invested a large sum of ISK into this, so the first task was grinding it all back by farming Sleepers. The thing with C5 wormholes is that this is absolutely not solo work. No, your uber solo Navy Raven won't tank 5k DPS, 15 neuts, webs and scrams.
We use 3 to 5 Tengu's with a subsystem to Remote Repping bonus to spider tank each other. This worked generally fine, until someone decides to burn out of repping range (Oh you didn't, Karashur!) ... On a few occasions I did lose my Mobile Tractor Unit, but fortunately they held no major loot.

Week 3 - 2014
Living in a WH POS is nothing like anything else. No gates to warp to have a peek next door, no localchat to spot a neutral coming in. The first thing you do when you log in is scan ALL the signature in your system - every day! Sig IDs change over DT so this becomes a daily ritual. You'd find new holes to scout and see if there are any other guys living next door to disrupt your Sleeper farming that day, or maybe for an opportunity to disturb theirs.
But this week we finally got into the fun business of our plan. Through the days we found wormhole exits literally everywhere. From The Forge to Stain, from Queerious to Outer Passage and Cobalt Edge. Unfortunately, being part of the CFC renders 1/3 of the Universe blue, so we had to pick our exits carefully. Nevertheless, we got our first shiny kills; Battleships and Tengu's! The best russian carebear is a dead russian carebear! (Sorry, Daro...) Especially when they drop a few bil on deadspace loot for us. ;) Nom nom nom!

Week 4 - 2014
Things are starting to pick up. We got the ISK re pay the invested money, so that leaves us more time for PvP. Underkings Loki wasn't “nullified” though, and roaming through the PvE systems proved difficult with all the shit I had to deal with:

Karashur luckily had more success finding us targets. Most notable kill of this week were 2 Tengu's ratting together in one Anomaly. It happened to be a crowded Station system with 20 or so lads in local. We killed one, but the second slipped out of our webs and got away. Given the chances of back-up warping on top of us, it was better to get one Tengu kill, than 2 Panther losses.

Week 4 - 2014 THE DISCLOSURE (of week 4)Saturday night started out as any other Saturday night. “You guys up for some pvp?” “Yeah, I guess ...”
The Hunter came across a very peculiar cloaky Tengu. About 5 times. But the 6^th time we got him and took his Light Missile fit out of his misery. This happened on a bubbled gate, when a random Brutix warped on top of us to join the PARTY OF DEATH and he too found his death swifty.

But all went not well. We took the risk/mistake of keeping our Blops in that particular system as a midpoint to extend our hunting field. Needless to say, all our names would be in any remote intel channel within seconds. Unaware of that at the time, Karashur found a Thanatos in an anomaly meanwhile. We jumped through, engaged, and that's when local went hot and Sabres and Inties warped in. All the 3 Blops got out thanks to the power of the MJD (their tackle was too naïve to think a Sabre's bubble was enough). Nevertheless, our Hunter Proteus died. Two lessons learned: 1) Don't keep a busy hostile system as your midpoint due THEIR intel. 2) Carriers die pretty damn fast with merely 3 Blops; before we MJD'd out, we took 25% of his armour out in half a minute.

 

Week 5 - 2014
Something about an unpaid bill and a Station, and 75 dead Titans. Yeah we missed that.
Moving on, this week we started on making some more ISK. We repaid all our 3 billion investments among ourselves, so all the ISK we got now is going straight to our profit banks. With 3 or 4 Tengu's running sites goes a lot smoother, and gathering a billion ISK a day seemed rather plausible. We've been less fortunate on getting nullsec exits, and the ones we did get were held by blues, so we had to keep our Black Ops at bay. Rest of the week we spend quietly killing more Sleepers.

Week 6 - 2014The POS fuel is slowly running out and RL complications were coming around the cornor, so decisions had to be made. My initial plan was to stay in the wormhole for about a month, so with 1 week of fuel left we decided this would be the last week. Or unknowingly, the last day. Monday early we found a Highsec route out so we decided to move all non-essential ships out (read: only keep the Blops!). We've made a fair bit of money and we thought it's best to spend the rest of our time on PvP. And so we did. That evening we sank an Orca and three Mackinaw's. And just when you think you're Frapsing some elite PvP action, someone opens up a convo chat and ruins the entire thing! Thanks Lev!!

Later that evening we got a new Highsec and agreed that this was it. After 2 long hours of hauling, probing and scouting we finally jumped our last wormhole back to "K-space" and we're back where we belong.

Thank you all,
Karashur, Martin Hartl, Kubiq and Prety Zinta