Fight Night!

Image from flickr user rockfingrz Photography

Aideron Robotics fielded a sizeable fleet last night consisting of 14 pilots. We captured one plex but the emphasis was on finding a fight and boy howdy, we got a couple of nice ones! I finished the night with 4 kills and 1 loss, though obviously my part in the kills was very minor) and one nail-biting encounter. The fleet was put together by Marcel and others to make best use of our numbers.

I *wish* I'd recorded last nights actions and in future I will do so, so hopefully I can post interesting bits here (with the permission of those involved).

Round One

Our first fight was with some familiar faces. We were in an FW plex, waiting for them to come to us. A Stabber sat on the gate outside and we bounced to him, taking him down. I was lucky and struck the final blow, which was a nice bonus.  A few minutes, and some smack talk later, our two fleets met and we took out another five ships but lost seven of ours, including me. I managed to get another final blow on of them before I was taken out.

We re-shipped into cruisers: Vexor, Blackbird, Exequror, Thorax, but I stayed in my trusty cheap Derptron. I don't yet have the skills to effectively fly those ships and this turned out to lead to some unexpected fun. We jumped back into Fliet looking for a followup to the first fight. We went into a medium plex (which allowed all of our ships in) and taunted them in Local chat.  They sent a ship out of to scan us and declined -- we were too strong for them.

Round Two

So we looked for another fight, and boy did we find one. A pilot in Local chat was bragging that he owned the system and was sitting at the sun. I'm told to warp there and report. "There's a Damnation here at 20km".  I'm wondering what kind of ship that is when "WHOAH!" come the responses, filling me with confidence that I'm utterly safe.

"What should I do?" I ask.
"Does he have you locked?"
"No."
"OK. lock him and point him......fleet, warp to Vic!"

So I lock a ship whose name I've never heard of (not a good sign) and dive in to attack it! To my surprise, I easily lock and point him (prevent him from warping away). I open up with my 2 peashooters and actually make a good dent in his shields. The fleet arrives and joins in and we have him down to half armor (I think?) when his buddies arrive.

It turns out that a Damnation is known to be a "cyno-bait" ship. Its job is to draw attention to itself, then  open a jump point (a "cyno") and its fleet-mates can jump directly there.  And here they come! Vindicator, Megathron, Abaddon, Legion, Loki, Armaggedon, Ares, Tempest, Archon: we lose five ships quickly to a swarm of battleships (and a carrier!) that far outclass us.  When the Ares arrived the small ships (i.e me and a couple of others) were ordered to attack it and while doing that the order came to bug out. I survived the whole thing having been either too small to bother killing or too small for battleships to hit.

Checking my combat logs afterwards I found that I'd done about 1000 HP damage to the Damnation
The guys were pretty stoked about the size of the ships we'd stirred up and though they agreed we didn't stand a chance against them, it was a fun fight and a good introduction for our new recruits to show that we find Good Fights.

On the way back to Yvangier, however, Marcel got podded by a smart-bomber. It looks like podding is what this guy enjoys!

Other Stuff

I was sent out ahead of the fleet a couple of times tonight; it's nice to be relied on. I did make one mistake -- when asked if there was a medium plex available I said there wasn't, but I was looking in the wrong place. The overview didn't show one, but there was an "un-popped" medium in system. When I heard Marcel order the fleet to a medium plex that he was going to pop, I assumed he had jumped in after me and was seeing the same plex. Turns out he wasn't -- he was back in the previous system and talking about a medium plex in there.  I delayed things by a minute or so, but that wasn't a big deal.  I'll remember to look at the Probe Scanner instead of the overview next time and report from that list.

My plan to squeeze in a level of hacking and another of archaeology, to aid in exploration, will have to wait. I'm training Weapons Upgrades V and it is due to complete just a few hours before next week's fleet. That will give me time to squeeze in a couple of advanced skills that may see me able to fly a more powerful ship before we undock Sunday night. I heard one of the guys mention he'd come back with 2 billion in loot from his last exploration run through low-sec so I may ask to tag along on one of his fishing trips!

I had planned to spend some of my loyalty points to buy datacores but have been advised to save them instead. The usual activity is to accrue LP until we fall into Tier 1. LP are handed out in small amounts, less datacores get bought (because the price is fixed, regardless of your Tier status) and the price of datacores will increase. We, the Gallente Federation, are close to Tier 1 and since I don't really need the ISK I'm going to hang on to my LP for now. I do have a lot of exploration loot up for sale and I'll keep an eye on how that sells. So far, not great.