POS Bashing, A thorax in hull and their blob and EWAR is bigger than our blob.

The POS Action

Back in the Independence bar, I sat in the private member's lounge that only had Black Flag, M34N, TSL and Hellequin pilots in there. Kane is an honorary member of BF and has membership but apart from him, no one else is allowed in. Gulping down some bitter coffee, I looked at the morning's tasks. Being a Pirate Captain is increasingly turning out to be a full time job, I have a 1000 odd crew members to pay, house and feed. A hangar-full of ships to repair and numerous bills to pay, mostly to the authorities due to the antics of my crew. Beginning to sound like a legitimate businessman aren't I?

I noticed someone quickly coming into the bar and make a bee-line straight for me. It was Jubes.
"Jubes. You're up early."
"I haven't slept." Replied Jubes smoothly, not betraying any tiredness. I pulled up a chair for and prepared to call over the bar man when Jubes stopped me.
"Bro' can't hang about - we need some firepower; we're going to cause some pain for the new POS owner. The fleet is a bit thin at the moment." He pushed a thin plastic card to me. "The co-ordinates are there. Dogz and Grun' already in the system. Am going there in 'cane. See you there. Soon." Without even waiting for a reply, he turned and stalked out. I slipped the card into the data reader built into the table and scrolled through the contents. A few hours before, Dogz and Grun had popped a hauler bringing in ammo to the POS; then it was obvious that they started to fire on and take down some of the weapons batteries and the POS owners came out to repair the shields. This resulted in the POS owner losing a scimitar, to the same pair.

It appears that between Black Flag and M34N we had three ships in total. Who had ever heard of a POS blockade with only three ships?

Soon to be four, I thought as I made my way to the hangar, striding through towards the turbo-lifts that would take me down the where I had my ships. I would bring out my newest addition to the fleet: 'Paths of Pain', another hurricane-class battlecruiser. Slipping out of the space dock I punched the co-ordinates into the computer and was on my way. I had a smaller crew today as I was not expecting too much ship versus ship combat.

I called ahead to the fleet and ensured that I was heading in the right direction and that there were no operational scrambling or webbing batteries. They would hurt and cause me too much pain. Arriving at the POS, I saw Dogz and Jubes firing at the AC batteries, taking them down so they offlined. Grun was in his rapier, lurking. I could see a Jaguar and an Abaddon inside the pos, drifting inside the POS shields. A lot of the AC batteries were now offlined and by the time I had locked the AC battery - it too went off-line. We switched our attention to the webber battery, blasting it at close range and taking it's shields down. Even so, the prize would be the ships inside the POS. Sooner or later, they would be coming out. Grunanca was ready with his rapier. The Abaddon was piloted by an Inferno Inc pilot going by the name of 'Dronius'. He drifted his 'Abad up to 500m of the shield boundary and stopped. Not too sure what he had in mind but whatever, we were all ready.

Dronius drifted his Abaddon closer to the shields and after reducing his speed to 3m/s and 15 minutes later, the majestic form of his ship exited the shield.

"Abad is out of the shields. Abad is out of the shields. Lock and engage!" I said, I was 39km away, Dogz was 45KM and Jubes was even further. No matter, I hit the MWD and tore myself over there.
"He is locking me. No laser fire but he has locked me." Said Dogz, sounding entirely unconcerned. Dronius launched his drones and then his engines flared and he popped back into the protective embraces of his POS shields. The drones, obeying the last set of instructions, sped over towards Dogz and attacked his typhoon. We laughed as the smart bombs popped them all.

The next hour or so had this cat and mouse game where Dronius would stick his nose out and then duck back in. Was he trying to bore us? Also, we were surprised that there were no new friends coming in to help him. The scimitar pilot, someone called 'Sansey' - came back online and undocked in a typhoon class battleship. Now we had two battleships and an assault frigate inside the POS. Outside, we had three Black Flag ships: me and Jubes both in hurricanes, Grunanca in his rapier and one M34N corp member in Dogz in his ever-dependable typhoon.

The Abaddon and Typhoon both started to slowly power themselves towards the shield boundary; after two hours of messing around, it appeared that they felt confident enough to take us on? I started to ping both ship with my target locking but each time the POS shields prevented it however it was clear they would be exiting the POS shield in under a minute.

"Guys, hostiles about to exit shields. Get ready." I said.
"Grunanca: ready. They'll be dual-webbed and fucked."
"Jubes, ready."
"Dogz, ready."
"Primary will be the 'abad then the phoon. Leave the crappy Jag 'til last."
"Roger."

The abaddon was out a fraction of a second before the typhoon and they both locked Dogz' typhoon. We replied in kind and fired up our drives and closed the gap.

"Webbed and drones are out." Informed Grunanca as he shifted his rapier into an optimal locking and firing position. I closed the gap and locked both ships then opened fire. My hurricane shuddered as the gyrostabilisers strained to spread the recoil of my six auto canons. Nex to me, Jubes and Dogz also opened up and the deadly broadside began. It was clear from the first salvo that Dronius was horribly outmatched. Our munitions smashed gaping holes in the golden side of the abaddon. Fearsome as it was, it was webbed and could not turn round and get back to the safety of the POS shields, a mere one kilometre away.

Bright lances of light streaked out from the Tachyon lasers and touched Dogz but the tremendously thick armour of his typhoon class shrugged off the damage. Fires were now visible on the sides of the Abaddon as internal explosions ripped the shipped apart from the inside out. There was a plume of fire jetting out from it's starboard engines as some energy containment field failed and the abaddon, dipped to it's side like a drunken sailor. The explosion was tremendous and incinerated all the life pods that were streaking out. Dronius survived and zipped back inside the POS shields. We didn't care as we locked and did the same to Sansey's typhoon.

The loot was quite poor to be honest.

After another hour, we disengaged - there was no more help today to add to our four ships attacking the POS, but no matter. We had dreads and we would bring them in when required. Today was quite a profitable morning I thought as I docked up and had to take care of some important business.

Thorax down to hull

Later on, there was another Black Flag gang in place with Yoshi ( a BF prospect) in his thorax and Dogz in his typhoon. It was formed in response to some intelligence reports we had of a small (4-5) battlecruiser gang in eifer. While I was sifting through the reports, trying to ascertain on the accuracy of the intelligence, Dogz had already undocked and was on his way to Eifer!

The first that anyone knew of this was Dogz informing everyone that he was at the top belt and was scanning. Scrambling, the fleet bolted out of space dock and got to the Eifer gate just as Dogz had located the enemy battlecruisers and was en-route to them.

Our fleet comprised of:

Gwendoline - Ishtar (the source of the original intelligence.)
Dogz - typhoon
Yoshi - thorax
Krypt - hurricane
Flashfresh - hurricane

"Contact. Contact!" Yelled Dogz as he had obviously found the mysterious battle-cruiser gang. "There's only three of them. Two drakes and a brutix. Warp to me! Warp to me!" Okay, not a gang of five then.
"All ships: warp to Dogz. Primary is the Brutix, Dogz and Gwen points on the brutix. Krypt, Yoshi and me will point the drakes in alphabetical order. All DPS on the brutix. Then we process the drakes in alphabetical order. Clear?"
"Roger!" Chorused the reply as the Eifer gate flared up and gate command shot us through into Eifer. As soon as we arrived, we aligned our ships, located Dogz' location and then jumped to his position.
The warp tunnel wrapped itself around me and the hurricane was set to red alert, already, my tactical computer was picking up weapons' discharges that were distorting the local gravitational patterns.

The Brutix was already into armour as I put my points onto a Drake. This Drake-class ship was called 'Unbreakable'. We shall see. My guns opened up with HAIL that tore through the Brutix's thick armour. It shuddered and died. However, it wasn't going all out way as Yoshi in his thorax was being hit hard by the missiles from the drakes as well as the surviving drones. He was down into armour but holding. I checked the overview and saw that Kyrpt was frantically repairing Yoshi's shields and keeping him in the fight. I was too far away to do the same as I locked and proceeded to exchange hostilities with the 'Unbreakable' drake. Yoshi had to warp out but he was alive thanks to Krypt's work. We love our hurricanes!

With a Brutix down and only two drakes, we had the upper hand however, our overviews suddenly flashed as the ships detected increased with another three ships, all flagged as red, materialising some 150km from our current position. They were from Capital Storm Alliance, an anti-pirate alliance that we had many engagements with.

The odds were shifting against us but we focused on the job in hand. If these CS guys warped in, then we might be in trouble. Maybe they were frantically trying to contact either of the pilots of the two drakes and attempting to form a gang with them and then warp to them? Who knows? Who cares?

'Unbreakable' proved to be very breakable and popped, showering us in debris and bits of killed crew. The last Drake also blew up in a most satisfying explosion. The three new hostiles did not engage but disappeared from Eifer, leaving the field to us. The loot was okay - plenty of ammo mainly.

Our Kills: Brutix, Drake (No 1) and Drake (No 2)

Here's a picture of Yoshi as viewed from his cockpit GUI. He was down to hull and his near full shield was thanks to Krypt. Good job by Yoshi for rolling with us.

Their blob and EWAR is bigger than our blob.

We did eventually engage Capital Storm. It was a well-executed trap with some assistance from the sentry gun fire. Early in the engagement, we saw two Cynabal class cruisers in Gusandall local and we liked that immediately. It was flown by Dohle and Soraji and they moved freely between Eifer and Gusandall. We tracked them and tried to hunt them down but they were good and kept moving. They were also near the Emol gate with Gwendoline buzzing them in her Taranis - goading them into engaging us. We then saw DeltaUK1 in local and knew that there was also now a falcon, lurking and ready to engage. When we see DeltaUK1, there is a good chance that either Miriablis or Solon or Yoriks would be close by. More or less the same bunch we engaged yesterday.

We baited but they were not biting. All we could see were the two-Cynabal cruisers, a hyena and an unknown Cerberus near the gate. Yoshi was scouting in Ingunn and spotted a Rokh but it was unknown whether it was part of the hostile group.

Some 'pleasantries' we're exchanged in local between Dogz and the anti-pies. All fun and banter really, it comes with the territory. We saw two cynabals, a hound and a cerberus camping the gate.

Dogz, in his Typhoon was sick of the waiting in a belt and barelled into the gate with a 'YAAARRR' (or should that be 'LERRRRROOOOOYYYY!!!!'? He was on his own but we couldn't leave him there could we?

"Dogz engaging. Rokh there. Engaging. Yarrrr!!!!"
"All ships warp to Dogz. Primary is Dohle, Secondary is Soraji." I said, confirming the details we discussed before. However, from the reports there were an awful lot of ships there and all hostile. By the time I arrived, I landed in the middle of a much larger than expected fleet. It now included a Rokh (Yoriks), Cynabal (Dohle), Cynabal (Soraji), maelstrom (Miriablis), arazu (tatzu), Hound (Solon), Hyena (Stan G), Cerberus (Gladstone gander) and Falcon (Deltauk1).
"Primary is Soraji. Dohle is too far." It was Dogz, remarkably calm as he was being in the middle of a hostile crowd.
"Roger. Soraji is primary. Chasing." I replied as I hit the micro-warp drive and chased the speedy cruiser. It was down into armour and was racing to get out of scramble range. It was fast and even though I was running at 1000m/s it was moving away from me. It warped away when I was 50km from gate and he was 80km when he warped.
"Crap. Am perma jammed guys." It sounded like Krypt.
"Jammed too." That was Dogz. I desperately hunted for the Falcon and saw it: about 90KM from me. I was then jammed. Deltauk1 was doing his job very well. Too well and the fight had definitely shifted.
"Everyone, disengage and jump. Get out." Our ships all tried to turn but Krypt was in trouble. I watched with alarm as his shields disappeared and then the damage biting deep into his armour.
"Get out Krypt. Get out!"
"Too late. Abandon ship." There was a burst of static. "Krypt is down. Krypt is down."

I warped out as well and the pirates dis-engaged. We lost this one. Krypt was hit by nine ships as they (correctly) primaried his ass. Later in the evening, Dogz once more charged in but got his ship shot out from him by more or less the same group. Details are here. Dogz's single Typhoon versus 3 BS, a falcon and an inty. I didn't even get a chance to change ships before Dogz' ship loss was made known.