#cainun

Raitaru Fight in FDZ

Don’t care, had fun

-Cainun

I saw the ping for Cainun’s fleet about five minutes after it popped.  There was a sense of urgency in it that made me decide to give it a pass.  If they were in a hurry about something I was probably too late to make it.  But a couple minutes later a follow up ping came up; Cainun  needed more people in fleet.  So I logged in.

Once in I had to dig around to see if I…

Raitaru Fight in Frarie

We had another timer waiting for us last night in Frarie.  Snuffed Out had previously reinforced a Raitaru we had dropped not too far from our Fortizar and the final event was at hand.

Counting Down

We formed up in Abaddons again, wondering if Snuff would show up for the timer or not.

Word was that they too were forming, and eyes on their home in Rakapas said they were putting together a mix of…

Learning Restraint in Placid

Our Fortizar in Frarie still stands.  Maybe there will be an actual fight over it at some point.

Named “Little House on the Frarie”

Last night wasn’t the night however.  I got home and saw a ping that we would be forming up to defend it.  Snuffed Out had come by and set the armor timer yet again.

Time running down…

As the time ticked down, we formed up in the Fortizar in our Abaddons and…

Abaddons in Low Sec Again

The Liberty Squad “good fights” deployment in Placid carries on.  There are no objectives to take, no territory to defend, and not much infrastructure to assail in low sec, unless you want to get involved in faction warfare, and we haven’t started doing that yet.

We are up there just to pick fights with the local power, Snuffed Out, and their allies.  And they seem willing to oblige now and then.

Liberty Squad deployed north over the weekend, and after the structure shoots in Tribute our FCs were clearly looking for some blood.  From the moment we arrived at our new staging in Frarie we were out trying to provoke a fight with Snuffed Out and their local allies.

It started with some reinforcement timers in Frarie.  We have citadels there and so do they.  But when, on Sunday evening they declined to show up for one of them after we had formed, Thomas Lear and Cainun led us out to Sujarento, about 8 gates away, to reinforce a faction Fortizar owned by one of Snuff’s allies Pen Is Out.

They gunned the Fortizar for that, which made it a busy time for our logi wing as our Abaddon fleet set the first timer.

Hanging around the Fortizar

With the timer set to come out in less than 24 hours we had effectively scheduled the next big op, all while only losing a single Augoror.  Of course, then we lost five Abaddons on the way home because the locals formed a small fleet to catch stragglers and we apparently cannot all align.  You cannot spell “Abaddon” without “bad” I guess.

You don’t tell me where to align!

Anyway, the blood lust was on us.  Pings went out to get people on.  We were going to take this fight.  And, the next evening, at 23:00 UTC, we were piling into fleet while it was reported that the Snuff and allies had about 200 people logged into their staging system.

Low sec still has local.

Once we got a pile of Abaddons together, along with some Leshaks, Cainun had us undock.  The call was for battleships ahead of logi, so I left my filthy Guardian in the hangar and went with the fat boys.  I trained up lasers ages ago so I like to use them when I get the chance.  So pretty.

An Abaddon blob undocking

We had battleships together, which were bridged in a group to the target, and dread alts on standby, logged in, in the fleet, and insurance windows open, ready to go if the fight escalated as we expected it might.

When we arrived we aligned to the target, which had already begun its 15 minute repair cycle.

The Pen Is Out Fortizar

Snuff had a Machariel fleet waiting for us, which was what we had hoped to get stuck into.  We got on grid… maybe a little too close, since we the station PDS was hitting us… and the Leshaks began hitting the Fortizar while the Abaddons began engaging the Machs.  That was a fairly busy time, especially for our logi wing again.  But even in the Abaddons there was much to do, including capacitor management.  The fit isn’t cap stable and when the station is throwing void bombs at you that drain your cap… cap you need to fire the guns and keep your hardeners going… you spend some time feeding in cap boosters and turning things on and off just to get another shot in.

We were exchanging when my turn came up to be primary.  Logi was busy so many of us were letting our armor sit unrepaired until it got critical, so when I saw the yellow boxes light up on my overview it seemed unlikely that I would get enough reps in time.

Sure enough, my ship exploded.

I was floating around in my pod, nobody had time for me at the moment, when Snuff began jumping dreadnoughts into the fight.  As soon as that happened Thomas called for our dreads to insure and undock.  I swapped windows, dragging my main over to the second monitor and my alt onto the main, and undocked the Naglfar.  We jumped into the fight, sieged up, and began hitting targets.

I think was the third time I had used a dread in combat, which pretty much means I had little idea what I needed to do beyond going into siege and shooting the broadcasts… and hitting the emergency hull energized when I became primary.

You know how this ends… Fortizar visible in the background

By the time my number came up Snuff had dropped titans on us.  I lasted long enough that I had a titan on my kill mail.  That might be another first for me.  The hull energizer kept me alive for a little bit longer, which may have saved somebody else as people had to keep shooting me for a bit.

After that I was sitting around in system in two pods.  At that point I realized that my main actually had implants and that maybe I shouldn’t let him just sit around.  I gated him safely home to our staging.

My alt was implant free however, so he stuck around on grid taking screen shots of the unfolding fight, some of which I put in a gallery at the end of the post.

Once the titans were on grid the battle was decided.  Dreadnoughts were as far as we could escalate, so after a few more targets people who could jump out did.

By any reasonable measure, we lost the fight.  We failed the objective, lost more ships, lost more in ISK value.  But it was the battle we had been aching for.  I, for one, had been dragging that Naglfar around with me since March waiting to drop it into a desperate fight.

I tried to do a battle report, but as I always say, low sec is strange.  Low sec groups can be as clannish as any null sec coalition, so it is difficult to tell who was there with Snuff and who was just there, so I sorted the header into Imperium and everybody else.

Battle Report Header – Click to Make Legible

That was a lot of people in system during the fight.  Enough to help make Sujarento the most violent system in the last 24 hours per DOTLAN.

Most Violent Winner of the Night

And lest you wonder, the vast majority of that violence occurred during a pretty tight time frame.

That peak, that is us

However, despite the pile up of players in system over a short duration, there was no time dilation invoked that I saw.  Maybe somebody had the foresight to reinforce the system.  There have been times in low sec where just gating a group of 60 ships have brought tidi into play.

Anyway, we have introduced ourselves to the locals by throwing them a nice party.  We’ll see how things develop from there.

Related Items

Cainun’s AAR on Reddit

Gallery of screen shots from the battle

Selected screen shots from my pod.  Click on the pictures to enlarge.

An explosion over the Fortizar as Titans loll about

A doomsday reaches out for a Naglfar

That Naglfar brewing up from a second doomsday as a Rev flares up in the background

Explosions and wrecks on the field

A dread explodes in the middle of the pack

Explosions so bright they out shine the stars

Will That be the Last Stick for Me?

There was a ping to go shoot a player owned starbase, a POS.  It was an NCDot tower over on the edge of Pandemic Horde space.  It wasn’t even fueled, so it was an easy kill… we just needed to be a bit patient.  It was a full sized Minmatar tower… as opposed to a medium or a small… so there were a lot of hit points to chop through to get the kill.  But unfueld meant none of the defenses were…

A Keepstar Goes Down in Aeschee

The War of the Keepstars carried on last night as the Imperium formed up in their forward base in Cloud Ring and went to… um… Aeschee… in the Essence region… to kill a Keepstar owned by Shadow Cartel, a 500 pilot low sec alliance.

That seemed odd.  Not that I think we need a reason to shoot a Keepstar.  If an alliance puts up a structure and cannot defend it, then it gets blown up.  But we are in…

CO2’s Keepstar Reinforced in DW-T2I

As expected, with our own Keepstar safely installed in 6RCQ-V the night before, operations directly against Circle of Two in Fade began.

Fade is not a big region, and while CO2 also holds a bit of Pure Blind as well, the bulk of its holdings are in Fade, including its capital and Keepstar in DW-T2I.  So that system and Keepstar are not far from where the Imperium’s own Keepstar is now planted as…