After the previous night’s VNI fight, things started to go downhill a bit for me. First, as I noted at the end of the last post, during an interceptor roam through Pandemic Horde space, I managed to avoid the hostiles only to get popped by a Serpentis dreadnought.
Then last night I got back on in again, a little late to catch Asher, but was able to join DBRB’s bomber fleet to join the defense of one of the citadels we have scattered about the north right now.
My Purifier with the Empress Catiz I jubilee skin
That did not go well however. We never got a good run on them, and were probably shy of the numbers we needed to be effective, so lost some bombers, including my own, while the hostiles were able to kill the Raitaru.
Tempests inside the new blood orange hictor bubble
Still, these things happen. I fetched a replacement Purifier out to our staging and then logged off for a bit to do some things around the house. But I came back to find another Asher ping forming a fleet with targets in mind. I was good to go for that and only a couple minutes late, but was able to get out and on the black ops battleship to wait with the rest of the fleet as things got set up.
The targets were a pair of Rorquals, the capital mining ships that have boosted the mining numbers all over null sec, up in Deklein. The plan was to drop on them, bomb the Rorquals, kill their excavator drones with torpedoes, then see if we couldn’t maybe kill one of the Rorqs before the inevitable defense fleet showed up to see us off.
The time came, the bridge went up, and we dropped on the pair. I let my bomb go on one of the Rorqs, then missed getting any of the excavator drones because I had a warp disruptor fit and was rushing in on one of the targets to hold it down and keep it from getting away. I was a bit quick on that… or people were a bit slow with their bombs… because I ended up getting my shields stripped away and some armor damage from them. But I got my target locked down and started blazing away at it with my own torps.
Asher called for everybody to start hitting it and it seemed to be going down pretty well when first one, then the other Rorq activated their PANIC modules.
Still taking fire while invulnerable in the PANIC bubble
This made the pair invulnerable for several minutes, during which I suspect they both expected to be rescued by a defense fleet.
By that point we had done what we had set out to do, which was kill some excavator drones. Now we had the option to hang out and see if we could get one of these ships when the PANIC modules went down, but that meant also hanging about for a defense fleet we knew was coming and facing that peril in our flimsy bombers
The pair of them in their PANIC bubbles
We cloaked up and warped off to wait out the PANIC cycle as the defense fleet arrived in system. A mix of Cerberus and Caracals with support, they did not seem very energetic in their attempt to defend the pair. When the two Rorquals were vulnerable again the fleet did not go after the bombers, even the ones locking down their comrades. Of course, we dropped in a distraction.
A cyno went up and we brought in a sacrificial Revelation dreadnought to try and pound down at least one of the Rorquals. A Rorq is worth a few dreadnoughts on the market, so worth the exchange if we could get just one.
The defense fleet seemed entranced to have a big shiny target of their own to shoot and focused on that while the dread and the bombers hit the first of the Rorquals.
Let the pounding commence
At that point I was headed in to help hold the Rorqual down when another bomber pilot let loose with a bomb to help speed things along and I caught it full in the face, destroying my Purifier. People who had hit me previously were apparently down or gone, so Jinx Hita, the bomber pilot, got credit for a solo kill.
Freed from the demands of combat I hung around to watch the fight. The hostiles left me alone for a while, so I was able to watch things unfold, including the destruction of the first of the Rorqual.
Rorqual down, op success!
Since I was still alive, on grid, and had done damage to the Rorqual recently, I appeared on the kill mail. That’s what it is all about, right?
At that point we were ahead of the game, we couldn’t lose enough for the enemy to win the ISK war. But we were not done yet. The second Rorqual was going down fast, and even after the hostiles dropped a Minokawa force auxiliary on grid to try to save it, it was too late. The second Rorqual went down. Again, I was still alive and had done some damage, so got on that kill mail as well.
At about that point I caught somebody’s eye and my pod got popped and I was sent home to grab another Purifier. As I started flying the new ship out to our staging, I heard the ongoing fight on coms, where our dread pilot was able to pop a Cerberus and a few Caracals before finally meeting their end. That put the final tally at about 3.5 billion ISK lost by us versus about 24 billion ISK lost by the enemy. And it all happened in 0P-F3K, which was my home system way back in the day when TNT was in Deklein.
The survivors left the scene and we were all happy with our success. But even as we were starting to think about getting back home, word came down that another Rorqual was lolling about, oblivious to danger, not too far away. High on two kills already, we were keen to try for a third.
I hurried at best speed back to our staging system to join those who had to reship. However there was still a good chunk of the fleet that was off in Deklein, while our target was in Fade.
Soon we started running into that series of obstacles that can often pull apart an op. We had to get everybody together at a third staging point, we needed two black ops battleships, we needed fuel for bridges, jumps, and cynos, half of us needed bombs, and we needed a plan. The target, which had been joined by a second Rorqual at this point, was in a cyno-jammed system, so we weren’t going to be able to drop another dreadnought, and close to where we expected a defense fleet to form up and come get us.
Those of us at staging got bridged to the mid-point first, the Astrahus we had defended with the VNIs previously. After two bomber losses that night I decided that the Empress Catiz I SKIN might be unlucky and changed to Rata Sunset.
My third Purifier of the night tethered at the Astrahus
We sat around there and listened on coms as the building series of complications tried to get sorted. It seemed to me at several points that Asher was just going to call the thing off. The plan, as it eventually shook out, was to slip somebody into the system, put a deployable warp disruption bubble between the anomaly with the Rorquals and the Fortizar in system where they would likely dock up, then spook one or both of them to get them to warp to safety, only to catch them in the bubble, drop on them, bomb them, point them, and kill them, all before a defense fleet a couple gates away showed up to wipe us out.
I could hear the skepticism in the whole idea in the voices of several people on coms and could see how it all depended on the hostiles obliging us at a few points. And if it didn’t come off, we wouldn’t even get any excavator drone kills. But we were all there, ready to go, and were far enough ahead on the night with the two previous Rorqual kills that we went for it all the same.
We listened as the drag bubble got deployed, the covert cyno was put in place, and then as the Rorqual, tipped off to flee, at which point it actually warped off exactly as we wanted. The cyno was lit and the bridge went up.
A Redeemer black ops battleship with bridge up
As we arrived we were rewarded by the sight of a Rorqual caught in a drag bubble and waiting for us to go after him.
Landed on our target, already under fire
We plowed into him, Asher called for people to overheat their launchers to increase their rate of fire, as we tried to take him down before the enemy could react.
As we hit the Rorqual we saw a Rifter flying around us. A few of us took a shot at him, but he seemed disinclined to get involved. But then a Stabber showed up on the scene. He was a lot more interested in getting some kills and he chose me out of the bunch. I though I was surely going to lose my third Purifier for the night as he chewed through shield and armor and nearly 40% of my structure, but we popped him before he was able to finish me off. Then it was back to the Rorqual.
Rorqual showing heavy damage
We were able to kill it as the local defense fleet showed up. However they seemed a bit hesitant to jump on in and we cloaked up, warped off, and plotted our escape.
Then, of course, we had to get out of there. This entailed a few awkward steps in getting fuel and black ops battleships together in the right location, bridging the fuel truck, transferring fuel, dealing with the people left behind on one bridge and the guy who went through the wrong bridge with the fuel truck, which was headed back into the system we were leaving.
Eventually that got sorted. Asher said that those of us hanging about were free to burn back to our staging. My Purified, having been repaired by the tethering service, was ready to go. Of course, once I got one gate along one of the black ops pilots bridged people back home. But I got there safe all the same.
We ended up getting out of the second drop having lost a pair of bombers while knocking out a Rorqual, a Stabber, and a Cormorant from the responding defense fleet. About 100 million ISK loss for us and close to 10 billion ISK for the hostiles. That, with the previous two Rorquals downed made for a pretty good night.
Below a gallery of screen shots from the evening, with a few that I couldn’t fit into the post along the way.
My Purifier with the Empress Catiz I jubilee skin
Tempests inside the new blood orange hictor bubble
Still taking fire while invulnerable in the PANIC bubble
More hits on the PANIC bubble
The pair of them in their PANIC bubbles
Watching the pair from a cloaked perch
Let the pounding commence
Rorqual down, op success!
My third Purifier of the night tethered at the Astrahus
Redeemer waiting to send us off
A Redeemer black ops battleship with bridge up
Landed on our target, already under fire
Rorqual showing heavy damage
The final Rorqual close up
Three Rorquals Down After the previous night's VNI fight, things started to go downhill a bit for me. First, as I noted at the end of the last post, during an interceptor roam through Pandemic Horde space, I managed to avoid the hostiles only to get popped by a Serpentis dreadnought.
