We decided to go to null and poke former friends from Init in J5A and nearby pocket, but on our way, we decided to look into ratting pockets in Q-UA3C, XZH-4X, UI-8ZE
Even though Dotlan showed some NPC kills we were not able to catch any ratters. A good excuse is those were bots, a probably valid reason is we were a bit slow: when I see Ishtar of VNI on DScan I do want to ensure it is sitting on a POS and ... wasting time. Time-to-time people yell at me, so I move, but probably should move faster anyway.
Once we reached the desto, Niv showed up and tried to catch up with us. He went through the gate camp in F7C and we started moving towards it, but met in the middle a fleet consisting of a dozen of Cerberus, few Scimitars, a Sabre. My hand were itchy,... good folks stopped me from aggressing them. It looks like those folks were escorting Obelisk transporting ore or something. Niv tried to keep an eye on that Obelisk, pinged people to help catching it, but other than messing up comms that did not succeed.
At some moment, my NOmen was agressed by Atron, he escaped, and TBH I can't recall details. Though, my distraction almost cost me warping the fleet into a Cerberus fleet.
Thanks people for yelling at me again.After some shenanigan, we were able to move through those Cerbs, when... Shadow called: Raven jumping into J5A from B-D. He called this the moment i warped fleet on DY- gate... after 250AU (to DY- and back to J5A) we eventually landed on J5A, jumped through, and put our DPS on that Raven
In the process, we lost a Retribution
https://zkillboard.com/kill/74845083/ -56.1M
As Shadow admitted, he messed up controls and should have avoided the loss.
but eventually killed that Raven, just few seconds before locals formed up the QRF:
https://zkillboard.com/kill/74845109/ +182.6M
Init first landed Oracle + Macharial. I first thought about landing near the Oracle, but shortly they landed also a Sabre, Rapier, and I believe Atron, so we had to retreat. We warped back and forth through the system, staying in SAFE BMs, warping to gate on pings, checking space for combat probes. There was no much option to engage those folks (they had more numbers, DPS, and EWar), so I called to go into Init ratting pocket: 7X-02R and D2AH-Z.
We jumped into EO-O0D, and Niv (or Shadow, who already reshipped into a Malediction) spotted a Sabre warping to Z9PP-H and further into 7-8S5X. I assume that's another Sabre and 'took the bate'. We followed into 7-8S5X, and dispatched the Sabre, again, literally seconds before the rest of Init's QRF caught up with us:
https://zkillboard.com/kill/74845221/ +96.8M
I was last on the grid but was able to pull both my main and alt. Interestingly, my main landed on the Sun at 70km, and even though I initiated the warp out almost immediately, I was pointed by Atron, who also landed exactly at 70km from the sun. He did not have any chance:
https://zkillboard.com/kill/74845236/ +770k
This all was really cool, but now we left locked in a pocket and had no any means to escape: the other side of the gate was guarded by Svipul, Rapier, Machariel, Proteus, few other ships. There were thoughts to log-off... I warped to the ping on the out-gate... Kiwi landed nearby, and I was thinking how could we attract those folks into a system so we can either pull them from the gate and jump or just cross jump.
Opposing Proteus jumped and started approaching... Kiwi run, I was 'baiting'... when Proteus was like 40km I thought about running away too, but Niv (or Shadow?) called: "Budda, they are jumping to you, now is the ideal opportunity for you guys to escape".
Unfortunately, I was the only one near the gate, still I warped to the gate and jumped. People advised me to runt through J5A so I went out. On my way I've met Cerbs fleet again, luckily they cross-jumped while I was still clocked.
But in J5A I was "caught" by a Sabre with some support, whom I killed getting a 2nd solo kill this day:
https://zkillboard.com/kill/74845374/ +88.2M
In a meantime, the rest of the fleet escaped as well but went home from the Fountain through the Outer Ring.
Once it was quiet, I extracted my alt in a Slasher, but it went into a camp in J5A. They had a Flycatcher, Magus, Rapier, The closest was 19km from me and I thought I'll have time to warp away, but when the bubble was dropped it covered my Slasher. I've tried to OH MWD and run, but they webbed me so I could not escape. Later I thought that the proper sequence of actions would be to align out, click warp, and if webbed/pointed OH and turn on MWD. It is a bit micro intensive, yet doable. Ok, lesson learned.
https://zkillboard.com/kill/74845439/ -6.7M
While we had fun in Fountain, Niv was not resting as well:
https://zkillboard.com/kill/74845194/ +29.1M
Once I got my main into a relative safety I've tried to
I hope I did not miss anything important, and in total:
we killed: +379.5M
we lost: -62.8M
Was lots of fun, though a bit boring in the beginning. MANY THANKS TO ALL WHO JOINED!
Positive things:
- even though it was only 5 of us, we got good kills. Though, let's admit, that Raven fit is completely weird.
- (almost) everybody escaped the dead-end pocket
- I'm very glad I've asked Kiwi to fit a Scram for the fleet: that is probably a thing, which kept Raven on the grid with us
- 2 solo kills I got are done in a style I've seen on YouTube: pull somebody from the main gang, kill, escape before reinforcements arrive. Too much to be seriously proud, but first steps
- I saved my NOmen again, it is more than 2 months as I'm flying it and it is still alive
- I feel really rusty: very hungry for fights i'm going into suicide fights, should learn eventually.
- I love Niv for many-many things, but his ability to mess up comms is awesome. Niv: if there is something you have to do once you are in a fleet, please jump into 'command' channel, bring needed people in, and whisper.
- I don't know the region that well: when people name system It takes me 20-40 seconds to find them and understand what's that about.
- Assuming I had more numbers in fleet, what could I add so we could counter that Rapier? Keres with 3 damps? Kitsune with 4 full racks of racial jams and mobile depot to refit? Please advise.