Another Nidhoggur

It's corp night.  This means we all get on together, and run PVE sites.  Or, if we get lucky, do some PVP together.  Jayne and I cleaned out our local sites last night.  So we'll be looking for sites through our C4 static. 

Our favorite C4 anoms are Sleeper Information Sanctums, with Frontier Barracks second.  Command Posts are undesirable, but we'll do them.  Integrated Terminuses are not worth the time of our fleet.  So, we are looking for a good concentration of the first two. 

Or ships to kill.  We'll always take that if we can find it.

All of us are here except Jeedmo, who evidently has a life.  We get on coms.  We open our static, and Jayne explores it.  Two anoms, both Barracks.  Nope.  Not good enough.  Next.

We get out our PVE battleships, which double as hole-poppers, and do the merry dance of mass.  Out, and in, heavy, heavy, heavy light.  Presently, the hole is highly disrupted, and we have to get our hole-popping Onyx.  Out it goes super-light, and back heavy.  It takes three tries, but the hole pops and we regroup at our tower.

I get in my Manticore to scan down the new wormhole.  Scanned.  I warp to it, with Jayne's alt close behind me.  I jump in the new C4b.  As always when entering a new wspace system, I dscan.  Dscan is clear.  No ships, no towers.  Just a CO.  The system has five Barracks, and no other anoms.  That's odd.  It is indicative that someone has pruned the other types.  But five Barracks is just enough to be worth running.  We'll take it.

Before we can run sites, though, we have to scan down the system to find all wormholes.  If there are too many, we'll just abort.  If few, we'll pop them before running sites.  Also, we need to check for locals.  This system has only two sigs, which is great.  Our wormhole, and their static.  But just in case someone is around, we hold off on scanning for their static while I warp into the inner system and two remote planets to check for towers.

While still in warp, I am dscanning.  I see two sleeper wrecks, and drones.  And ships.  Fighters.  There is an Abaddon.  The other is a Nidhoggur.  A carrier.  Woop woop!

Ratting.

I relay this information to the guys.  Yes: a carrier.  With just one escort.  And using fighters.  (This is a sign they don't know what they are doing; fighters suck against most things, including sleepers.)  I feverishly narrow-beam dscan the five anoms, all of which are in range. 

I find the site they are running, and warp into it at 100km.  I hope I will not be decloaked by sleeper structure, and I am not.  This is good.  There they are, apparently oblivious to the new sig in their system.  Ratting away.  They have a mobile tractor unit out, which is quite convenient.  I bookmark it.  Saves me having to create a warpin.

Meanwhile, the guys scramble into a PVP kitchen sink fleet.  It's mostly our PVE fleet, which is Ravens, augmented with odd other ships. 

There are two outer planets yet to be explored.  I warp out to the nearer one; the further will be in dscan range.  There is a tower out here, and an Astero.  I find the tower and get on grid.  The Astero is manned.  But I am guessing this is just one guy and his alts.  So, the attack is all go.

I am needed to man the Onyx heavy interdictor, so I warp back home.  I swap my alt Otto out of his Raven, to get into his shiny new Cheetah, to go in to watch the enemy.  We pass at the static wormhole.  Otto warps on grid with the carrier, to make sure it has not left.  It has not.  Evidently they still have not noticed the new sig.  But they are down to the last two sleepers, a battleships and a cruiser.  We cannot wait much longer.

Otto has a peek.

The guys are ready.  A few last minute checks, and we are off.  I squad-warp us to our static wormhole.  We jump. 

All in.  Jayne gets our squad booster out into a safespot and online.  I squad-warp us to the enemy tractor unit.  A glance at Otto's screen shows they are still there, still going at it.  Probably it is already too late for them, but they might possibly warp right now and escape.

They don't warp right now.  We land on grid, and immediately I pop up the heavy interdictor's bubble.  Now they are trapped.  I have ordered our logi to orbit the carrier at 1000m, and everyone else 2500m.  We lock up both enemies and set our orbits.

Abaddon all hope.

I call the Abaddon primary.  My lock completes; I start shooting.  Then the battleships start.  They tear into the Abaddon and it dies in a flash.  The pod is out, and I lock it up and kill it too.  That's one guy permanently out of this fight. 

Now we turn to the carrier, and start shooting.  The shields are gone immediately, but the armor is hard.  We fire and fire, and we push it down toward half.  Then progress ceases.  It appears to be repping as quickly as we are damaging it.

I never take any damage, and nobody else seems to be taking any either.  Evidently the carrier pilot figured out pretty quickly that he cannot beat our logistics.

The carrier pilot suggests a ransom in local.  One PLEX.  I know this thing is worth at least twice that, and probably more depending on fit.  Also, his pod is probably also worth a fair amount.  We decline the offer. 

Ransom?

I am kind of interested in a ransom, but first I want to know what is on the carrier, so I fly Otto back home to get a ship scanner.  Unfortunately, we don't have one.  Oops. 

Anyway, we want the kill.  I am curious to see if we can break the tank on this thing.  My hope is that our nossing will eventually shut it off.  But I am not sure how many nosses we have.  Meanwhile, we keep shooting.  The Nidhoggur gets down to a quarter, then rises again to a half.  This keeps repeating.

Since Otto is home anyway, I think to grab one of our own tractor units to bring back with me.  I warp to the fight and land at the edge of the bubble.  Then I click "deploy for self", and start slowboating out where I can warp.  I get there, and warp to their tower to resume watching it.

Another minute or two of shooting the armor as it reps.

At their tower, Otto sees the third character swap into a stealth bomber and warp out.  Presumably coming to us.  Sure enough, it appears about 30 km off, and does nothing I can tell.  Presumably it shot at someone.  Anyway, some of us have warriors, and start locking.  Before we can do anything, it warps off.

Otto sees it come back to the tower and sit. 

I think at this point if they had a way to save the carrier, we'd have seen it.  If they had more people, we'd have seen them.  We need more damage.  Jayne proposes reshipping our squad booster, but I feel that Otto can do it.  So, I warp Otto back home to reship.  One more ship, I hope, can break his tank.  If he doesn't, we'll reship the squad booster.

Otto reships into a PVP Raven.  It's too bad we don't have Nova cruise missiles.  But we do have Inferno Rage, which should be fairly good against armor.  So I grab a full load of those.  I figure to maybe have to resupply other guys.

Otto warps back, then warps straight to Von.  He ends up at the edge of the bubble.  But that's OK.  He locks up the carrier and starts shooting and nossing.  Then he afterburns forward to join the group.

A new hope.

Now our damage starts to bite.  Timmay discovers that he is low on missiles, but that they are Precision missiles -- he's been doing 2/3 damage all along.  He reloads with Rage.

The new damage is enough.  Or else the new nossing finally shuts off the tank.  Whatever it is, the carrier enters structure.  And just a minute later, it dies.  (We've been shooting it for 18 minutes.)

A big explosion.

The pod is ejected, but helpless in my bubble.  I lock it up and give the guys a while to lock so they can whore on the mail.  Then I dispatch the poor thing.

Loot time.  And... where's the tractor I deployed?  Nowhere.  I guess I did not deploy it.  (In retrospect, my guess is that I was too close to the enemy tractor unit.)

It is just now we realize we made a stupid mistake: we did not shoot the enemy tractor unit!  It has been active the whole time, sucking in both wrecks and looting them.  Oh no!

Correcting a stupid mistake.

Well, nothing to be done now.  We lock up the tractor unit and kill it.  Ugh.  There's half our loot gone.  We get a hauler in to scoop the drones, and carry out as much as we can.  I gather both corpses for my collection.  We have to leave one fighter, but we get everything and salvage the wrecks.

Then we skedaddle back home.  Naturally, I get into my Manticore to go lurk, and see if I can catch the last guy being stupid.  But he is just sitting at his POS.

Jayne wants the last fighter, so he gets a blockade runner and comes out to get it.  I keep eyes on the tower; they cannot see the battle site from here, and they do not do anything.

The excitement is over.  Corp night is a success!  The guys all log off or go AFK.  It's just me left on.

There are two guys at the enemy tower now.  One is in an Orca.  I doubt he has the balls to use it, but on the other hand, I don't have the heartlessness to kill it if he tries to use it.  And I am not really hyped to explore through this system if he is thinking of popping my hole.  In fact I am not really hyped to explore at all tonight.  Tonight, I've got what I wanted from EVE.

Convenient.

I open a chat with the guy, my intent being to promise not to interfere if he wants to pop our connecting wormhole.  I do make this offer (he apparently declines), and we get in a great conversation about EVE. 

I try to tell him about the discover scanner; he claims he was using it and only saw us at the last minute.  (In retrospect I think he was talking about his dscanner.  Two different things.)  He's disheartened about wspace.  Understandable.  I sympathize, and think about linking him up to this blog, but don't.  I find out why his carrier pilot had an empty pod: he unplugged all his implants while waiting to die!  (I never thought of doing that.)  He wants to learn to hunt, and asks my advice on how to hunt, and fittings.  I tell him what I think.  We discuss Hyperion changes.  I find out he makes POS fuel, and offer to buy Minmatar fuel if he has it.  He does, 93 million ISK worth.  I offer to buy all of it, and he throws in an Iteron V for free.  I pay first, figuring if he scams me, I learn a lesson.  (He seems honorable.)  He is honorable.  We make the exchange in his system.  I get the fuel.  We part friends, or at least, friendly.

I hope to see him hunting and killing some people in the future.  But do be careful, Tebo.  Just because we are friendly does not mean I won't kill you.  I might not.  But I might.  That's just what we do in wspace.