18 Nov 2007

A fun weekend's pirating!

I haven't station camped for ages and my last session (about two years ago) was so boring, I swore I would never do it again. However, the sheer amount of haulers vomiting forth from the stations changed my mind. Grunaca asked me if I wanted to give him a hand along with Jubes, and Mochur Villus. Yes, as a group - we have peeps who are normally Red to each other fighting alongside each other. In all cases, the standings are corp to corp and doesn't reflect the personal relationships between the pirates. Sometimes, you have to leave all that crap at the door and join a gang to kill other innocent peeps; right? Hence independence. Of course, if you're not in the channel - it's fair game.

So I found myself in my hurricane, insta-popping the never-ending tide of bestowers, iterons and sigils as they blindly left the station. Grunaca was in his sleipnir and it was tanking the sentry guns fine. He was also locking and destroying the haulers faster than I could lock. He had no tackling gear but with his alpha-strike ability; who cares?

However, the haulers kept on coming and I did managed to kill a fair few, their cargo varied from heaps-of-garbage to weapon caches to dolls. I find the last item a wee bit disturbing to be honest. Oh, the ships were also dropping lots and lots cargo expanders.

Jubes in his cane was doing a fine job but Mochur had to be careful as he was the only one of the four who was not recognised as a pirate. His security status was still a healthy +3.1 though it was dropping!

After about an hour, some of the haulers came out shooting in their drakes. Perfect, this was what we were waiting for and we engaged them with glee. The drakes popped almost instantly under our fire. Those farmers, used to dumb and predictable Angel zombies were probably a bit shocked at how quickly their drakes succumbed to our fire. The loot was all t1 crap though.

We had already decided on a scorched earth policy where we leave them nothing. We salvage their wrecks and corpses. I was in my mammoth for a fair portion of the morning, dropping boosters for Jubes and Grunaca and salvaging the wrecks and grabbing the cargo and corpses. We left the farmers with NOTHING. I was momentarily engaged by a Goonswarm myrmidon; that got an instant response from Grunaca and Jubes who came to my rescue. The myrmidon however, escaped. The Goon thought that I was a farmer! Yes, indeed.

However, two hours into the shooting fest, I undocked once more when I came under fire. All I saw in our channel chat was Grunaca yelling 'Hostile mammoth undocking!' The mammoth was me but Grunaca had a borked overview and blew up the useful industrial.

Silly Grunaca.

I got another industrial and the group continued popping the haulers, whose numbers were slowly diminishing but still coming. We were then joined by PvP God in his Deimos, another M34N pilot. M34N is the main pirate corp in Eifer and Gus and the surrounding areas, though Havoc Inc would want to dispute this am sure. I have neutral standings to them as, while I am friendly with a handful of pirates, I never drop my guard - we're pirates after all. It does well for some of us to be reminded of that! I have no idea on how the other's feel about me but I don't mind. Pirates have no friends, just accomplices but I have the back of all those who are in the independence channel. I will back them up no matter what.

As we continued to pop the haulers, some overseer must have got pissed off and sent out one of their more combat-experienced pilots in a raven. We cheered in the channel as we saw the big, white square appear in our overview. It didn't even get a chance to complete it's lock on anyone as we tore it to pieces. We howled with delight as the mighty raven-class battleship was reduced to sparkling scrap.

Concord, impassive as ever, recorded the kill.

2007.11.16 17:18

Victim: yinssoo
Alliance: NONE
Corp: State War Academy
Destroyed: Raven
System: Ingunn
Security: 0.3

Involved parties:
Name: flashfresh
Security: -10.0
Alliance: NONE
Corp: Independent Pilots
Ship: Hurricane
Weapon: 425mm AutoCannon II

Name: Jubes
Security: -9.6
Alliance: The Church.
Corp: Mean Corp
Ship: Hurricane
Weapon: Hurricane

Name: pvp god (laid the final blow)
Security: -9.9
Alliance: The Church.
Corp: Mean Corp
Ship: Deimos
Weapon: Heavy Electron Blaster I

Name: Grunanca
Security: -10.0
Alliance: The Red Skull
Corp: Fusion Mercenaries
Ship: Sleipnir
Weapon: Sleipnir

Destroyed items:
Infiltrator I, Qty: 2
Hammerhead I, Qty: 2
'Arbalest' Siege Missile Launcher, Qty: 2
Large Shield Booster II, Qty: 1
Ballistic Control System II, Qty: 1

Another 50-odd haulers later; I felt a tickle at the base of my neck: imminent combat so I swapped back into my cane and waited and sure enough (the farmers had a recognised mission team that infest the area) this time they engaged us. A drake, a raven and a domi all undocked and engaged my cane and Grunaca's sleipnir. Jubes and PvP God had left for a few hours but we had Telesk with us and the Muelac.

The drake was bait but it got blown to pieces by us. The domi was tougher and had caught Grunaca just as he ran out of cap boosters. Not good timing! We popped a few of the ogre drones and dented the armour of both the domi and the shields of the raven and warped out. We did manage to grab some loot off the destroyed drake before we all got out.

So the farmers showed some teeth. Good.

We regrouped and with Mochur back and Jubes coming back online - we went back to the station and continued to merrily blast the haulers with Mochur successfully selling 28 of the looted cargo expanders for a cool 1 million each! Amazing!


There was an incident of friendly fire in the early evening when some Pandemic legion pilots (vagabond and astarte) came close and Mochur (or was it Telesk?) opened fire on them. This provoked a hostile response (obviously) but they were blue to Grunanca and Jubes. I didn't return fire but decided to dock. Some hasty chat in chat and apologise from ourselves and the PL pilots were on their way.

Grunaca had about 150 kills by now and he frapsed the lot and made a fun video with a jollly tune here (hosted by EVE FILES - 'Death to all Farmers') or you can watch it from within the blogger........



The late evening became even more interesting: Havoc had come out in force and arrived at our station camp - initially they had one drake who sat far off the station. Only Mochur had the range to engage. Then local jumped and more havoc arrived. Soon the Havoc numbers included two drakes, two canes, one ishtar and a thanatos. Yes, there was a carrier.

Seeing what we regarded as over whelming odds - we docked and discussed our options. A friend of mine ('V') offered to help and undocked and acted as our scout feeding back good intel on Havoc's movements. Viper contacted some M34N pilots and explained the situation. Meanwhile the new pirate camp was merrily blasting the haulers in our place. Am glad that for the farmers, the misery did not end.

A group was hastily set-up with a common agreement on using a single voice comms system. However, it was obvious that the fleet had problems working together due to a lot of unfamiliar pilots - some actually flagged as red to each other.

The situation was also fluid - with potential targets located in Eifer in the form of a Claymore, ferox, caracal and stabber. Problem was, this quartet was flagged as blue to half the fleet! The Havoc ships were moving around and had relocated to Sotrenzur; with the thanatos undocking and then cyno'ing out of the Ingunn station. We gave chase, or as best as one could do but with no probe scanners it was going to be difficult. I joined Tiggertime at the station while the rest were vectored into a maelstrom, tackled in one of the belts and blasting it to bits.

The fleet however, dispersed after a while as there were no more viable targets due to standings clashes between the various pilots.

Pity - the night ended like it did but station camping is back on the agenda for me!

Anyway, take a bow gentlemen....




One can hope to have a chat here on this EVE-O thread.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nice write up, always good to hear of people who deal with these farmers. Added your blog to my list of Eve 'must-read' blogs :)

Omb

Anonymous said...

An honour to have you here Ombey, you've been added to my list too.

F