LOL kill of a falcon in high-sec, on a gate. No-one is safe...

"Hey Flash, there's what looks life an AFK Falcon just sitting on the gate." Observed TheHermit. The Bastards had gathered together from our various travels and we were debating what to do. A falcon, sitting on a gate in high-sec all on its own?

Additionally, there was an obelisk sitting there as well. Both ships hung motionless about 12-13km from the gate into the Stacmon system.

Since the system was high-sec we had little chance to get into the system and ransom his ship but a quick, cheeky kill perhaps?

We quickly formed a plan: destroyers would be the ship of choice due to their low cost, high alpha and speed and we had about 11 pirates all ready to go. We were already roaming around killing and (trying) ransoming people but this was too good an opportunity to pass. We parked one of our cloaked scouts close to the falcon and kept an eye on him. The scout reported back that the falcon was not aligned, had zero velocity and there was no communication activity in local or otherwise.

The destroyers were quickly assembled, loaded up with enough ammunition for three volleys - any more and CONCORD would be on your ass and you would be jammed, neuted and killed so no need for more ammunition. The pilots then all raced to their pods and once inserted into the destroyers, signalled their readiness with docking clamps disengaged and their jostling for the exit point.

So, our scout reported that the falcon was still there and with a countdown - we undocked into high security space. Warning signs flashed up demanding that we leave the system due our criminal status but we politely dismissed them and sped our way to the hidden scout. We had to be fast, so soon as we dropped out of warp, we would lock the falcon and volley it before CONCORD drops on us. At most we would have two maybe three seconds to kill the ship. Hence, we needed numbers. Getting the pod killed would be a bonus too.

The ships computer counted down the range and I mentally readied myself as I have less than seven seconds left before dropping warp.

Six seconds. I pre-activated all my guns.

Five seconds. I overloaded the entire rack of guns.

Four seconds. I switched my overview to one that had ships only.

Three seconds. I hit the scanner to make sure that the target was still present.

Two seconds. I started to grin.

One second. My grin got bigger.

All 12 destroyers dropped out of warp and we all locked and volleyed the falcon. A dozen voices overlaid themselves across our communication net.

"Hermit has point. Firing."

"Selendris has point. Firing."

"Red Vegas is firing."  Etc.

A mix of small artillery and blasters spat out a devastating volley of destructive ordnance. My overview exploded with CONCORD ships appearing on top of us. On the overview, the falcon dipped into armour and before I could observe any further - I was jammed and then violently separated from my ship. CONCORD's superior weapons wiping out our entire party.

The falcon was down however! We cheered especially when we saw the drop - more than enough to pay for our destroyed fleet and then some; though it was sad to lose the sisters probe launcher. Now, most people would be unimpressed with the kill - he was obviously AFK and therefore couldn't defend himself but keep in mind that everyone in our party was -5.0 or lower in terms of security status and we were in high-security space; thus faction police would be trying their hardest to scramble, web and then kill us just for travelling through their space in anything but a pod. Any hostile action from us would automatically bring down CONCORD on our heads. Finally, we were shooting the falcon under sentry guns as well. All in the thin-hulled destroyer class vessel.

Naughty Spawn, held his fire and went for the pod instead and he successfully smashed the pod before he too was destroyed by CONCORD. Naughty Spawn especially enjoys the squishing sound of pilot capsules rupturing and the amniotic fluid flash freezing in space.

Sometimes, people just don't pay enough attention and pay for it. Now, if only we had a fleet 20 times the size of our rag-tag destroyer fleet we would have then gone for the obelisk! Could 320 destroyers alpha an obelisk? I need a channel where I can call upon pilots to do just that.

The fun continued however: someone took offence at having criminals in their space. A pilot called 'Ydnari' came out in an area and managed to pinch Red Vegas on his way out. On returning we noticed that the 'Yndari' was now in a vexor and blocking up the undock point of the high-sec station that were racing towards.

We decided to take revenge and undocked en masse and kill the vigilante pilot, high-sec or not, we wanted his loot.

So we did.

High security space is 'safer' space. Not safe space.

Frigate roam

Everyone loves frigates and there has been much discussion within our ranks of going back out using these small, nimble and cheap ships for maximum mayhem and damage. I never left them but we've had an influx of new pilots join our ranks and the ship mixes in the fleets have been a bit too haphazard for my liking so the 'senior management' have decided on trying to fix this.

Using the frigate as an example, we decided to maximise its strengths of speed, tackling ability and cheapness with a scattering of frigate based ECM. Quite straight-forward in anyone's books but it was useful just to go back to basics. The aim was also just to get some of the newer pilots used to flying with us. A date was marked in the calendar and we started talking internally on what would be the ideal fleet setup(s). Operation D-Day was the 13th October, 19:30 EVE Standard Time.

A quick roll-call and we set-up a fleet with an emphasis on speed, DPS, tackle and cheapness. We're pirates and need to maximise our isk flow; most of us don't have the luxury of GTC selling or alt mission running.

The fleet was as follows:

Thrasher
Thrasher
Catalyst
Incursus
Incursus
Incursus
Incursus
Rifter
Rifter
Griffin
Griffin

Taranis*
Stabber**

The taranis and stabber were the odd ones but they proved to be excellent additions. However, the operation didn't kick off as swiftly as I would have liked but no matter. With a route in mind, the fleet roared out of undock, startling the dozens or so of sleepy haulers lumbering out of the station. With two scouts racing ahead we tried to zip through systems as quickly as able but one jump from Evati we were already rumbled. Under the various Minmatar republic intelligence channels, our fleet was announced system-wide.

We ignored it and led by our scouts we soon made good progress.

It was Platinum who called a pause in the movement.

"I have a blinky brutix here. It is a Mean Coalition ship. Locking him." Platinum was in his taranis, he had no other frigate hulls available and opted to go expensive with the taranis, a close-range face melter. The brutix didn't immediately fire on the taranis and Platinum wisely didn't engage it - doing so would have given the Brutix time to activate the star gate and jump through. Excess energy from any weapons discharge would take at least 30 seconds or so to entirely dissipate before the star gate can safely engage its own drives. Such are the mechanics and rules of conflict around star gates.

Anyway, the Mean pilot, Kashmyta, like many of her colleagues are far from stupid. They are skilled operators having years of experience in low-sec. He didn't immediately engage but warped to another gate. Platinum followed but was joined by Coochie and Maltrox. The latter coming in from our home base in his stabber.

"Maltrox - engage the brutix and force him to jump." I said, still with the rest of the frigate fleet two jumps out.

"Roger." The communications channel went hazy as Maltrox spun up his auto-canons. "Engaging."

"Coochie here. Engaging as well." Coochie was in his incursus, a ship he had perfected into a T1 killing machine. I moved the fleet closer.

"Frigate fleet jump into Sotrenzur, warp to the Ingunn gate and hold." I repeated the order two more times to ensure it was understood. "Execute, execute, execute."

The frigate and destroyer fleet whipped into warp space and raced towards the gate, meanwhile Coochie was giving us a running count-down and the Brutix had eventually decided to fire back. He had drawn aggression and until he stopped firing, he could not activate the gate. He was also pointed. Cue Platinum to join-in.

We held and waited but only for a few minutes as an intelligence source informed me that Mean corp had mobilised and dispatched a dominix class battleship to assist the beleaguered Brutix. It was only seconds from activating the gate.

"Frigate fleet: jump, jump, jump." With a flash, our fleet disappeared from normal space and were thrown millions of kilometers to the Ingunn solar system. We raced towards the engagement, our ships dropping out of warp, together like a deadly swarm. The Brutix was held tightly and attempting to fend off the other three ships; now joined by a dozen more.

"Primary is Brutix. Primary is Brutix. Watch out for his drones."

The rest of the fleet responded and poured fire onto the battle cruiser. The star gate flashed and I checked local. Right on cue: there was a pilot from the same alliance as Kahmyta. It was Serenator and my intelligence source was correct, dominix-class battle ship.

"Primary is Brutix. Secondary is Dominix." Like a well-oiled machine, the fleet re-adjusted itself to confront this new threat. There was a blinding series of flashes and Jellyworm cried out:

"Smart bombs! The domi has smart bombs!" These weapons are deadly to anything smaller than a destroyer and it was a mild 'surprise' that this ship came in one of the few weapons systems to really hurt us. However, the smart bombs went off too soon and didn't catch anyone.

"Fleet: orbit the domi at 9KM and maintain point and focus on primary and secondary." The brutix eventually caught fire and was badly hulled. At this time, we lost a frigate and our DPS dipped slightly.

"Drones are on me. Bugging out!" Said Platinum, his taranis spurting fuel and atmosphere as he turned and raced to safety.

"Watch out for the domi's drones!" I said to no-one in particular. The brutix was entering structure and I ordered Cpn Planet to drop his point on the hull and prepare to snag the pod. He was in an incursus and shouldn't have any problems.

I was buffeted by the sudden appearance of an armageddon, flown by 'General LaoTse'. He wasn't aligned to Mean Coalition so we kept a wary eye on him. He jumped through, no doubt calculating on the odds of his survival if he engaged. Oddly, Mean didn't scramble anyone else to assist, their HQ was only 2-3 jumps and we knew they had ships out and about. Maybe the Domi pilot didn't feel like calling for help? Either way, our DPS wasn't high enough to my liking though the Domi was dropping through structure.

The brutix finally exploded in a bright flash and Cpn Planet attempted to snag the pod but Kashmyta knew her stuff and her pod slipped into warp in a blink of an eye. The Domi was aligning to the gate, it may have been her attention to race for the gate - who knows? There was the flash of incoming gate fire and we were engaged by a Mean Coalition maller-class cruiser; it's distinctive slab sided, 'long-chin' appearance already flashing with impacts from our own ordnance.

"Primary is Dominix, secondary is maller." I said as I increased my orbit to get out from potential neut range and put some distance between me and the new hostile. We lost another frigate and a destroyer by the time the dominix finally exploded. However, a thorax had dropped in, the armageddon from a few minutes ago (found a pair finally) and a phobos flown by my good friend, Muhaar. The fact that he immediately locked me didn't distract me from waving at him.

The thorax and 'geddon were friendly with each other and no doubt with the Mean Coalition but seeing the odds and that we've had our pound of flesh, I ordered a withdrawal and everyone smoothly disengaged. I was already on fire from multiple hits and couldn't hold the ship together and popped as I entered warp. No matter; we had done well in this engagement though disappointingly, we didn't pick up any of the dropped loot!

Bah.

Altogether, a successful engagement with some worthy adversaries.

The fleet was on its way back much buoyed up due to the fight. We had some pilots leave and new ones join the fleet for part 2: a roam into null sec. We came close to hi-jacking a mining operation inside a null-sec system but were a fraction too late to point anyone. We did lose two frigates to an enterprising destroyer pilot.

Part 3 was a run down to Amamake, FC'ed by Cooch and a fourth roam had z0de as FC. I had, by this time already retired from the field. Still, great to be back with a fine bunch of lads and lasses.

Destroyers, Star Trek and Bombs

It was with some trepidation that I walked down to my ship hangar and looked at my destroyer, a thrasher class vessel packing eight 200mm auto canons and gyrostabilisers to ensure maximum damage. I was going to run a two hour roam, just to get to reacquainted with my pilots (old and new) and to stretch my wings so to speak. The theme was naming our ships after Star Trek vessels but Gorgoleon insisted on naming his after some Star Wars vessel. There was an encouragement to start using the more infamous quotes from the films including: 'Beam me up Scotty' (not actually said in any film), 'Klingons on the starboard bow' (from a song!), 'Set phasers to stun', 'make it so', etc.

Like all Bastards roams, we didn't go far - Zach had scanned down a myrmidon and the fleet, already assembled raced across to kill it and then a 15 minute cool off period as our globals counted down. Of course, we were further delayed when someone spied a dominix and off we went, yelling, hooting and hollering. The dominix was dropped in short order and the pilot pulled into 'yarrsom' for the negotiation of his ransom.

"Two hundred million isk please and you and your pretty little implants can leave un-molested." I said, a most reasonable request in my view.

"Five million." Shot back the reply. I chuckled and grinning I repeated my demand.

"Two hundred million isk please. You have ten seconds." There was a pause as the pilot was thinking about the offer. Meanwhile, the pirates were grabbing dropped loot and salvaging the wreck with wild abandon. We do have a second motto as well here at The Bastards and it is 'Leave no wreck or loot, behind!'.

"Nah, I have only +3 installed. I don't have any more." Decision made. I gave the order.

"Pop the pod." Even before I finished the sentence, the pod was smashed open and the corpse of the capsuleer flash froze in the vacuum of space. This too, was scooped up.

A few pilots linked in, thinking they were late asked where the fleet was. They were delighted to find out that thirty minutes into the operation, we had not even left our own system. Mynxee was along for the roam and she said,

"The roam started thirty minutes ago, we just haven't jumped out yet!"

Local was filling up and we finally left and zipped into Geminate via EOA-ZC; the system was empty with a lonely warp disruptor bubble sitting 20km of the gate, no doubt set up to catch those trying to fly back into low-sec. My two scouts, Zach and Jmarr went in two different directions. Zach had hostile contact and he vectored the fleet towards him. We arrived at the gate just as Jmarr yelled out that he was also tackled and webbed. He was too far from us but he kept his head long enough for us to get a picture of the ships that caught him. Mainly frigates and assault frigates.

Not being able to assist with Jmarr we attempted to assist with Zach but he had disengaged when we arrived.

Switching around to racing towards Jmarr's last position yielded nothing too. Disappointed we left this rump part of low-sec and went towards Oijanen and the infamous, BWF-ZZ system.

Finding nothing we went round this time with Happy San as out scout. We giggled when we entered 4-CUM5 but targets were elusive and we didn't have a prober with us; an ommission that I realised but hoped would not be detect.

It was only when we were almost back that we encountered a fleet of stealth bombers and assault frigates. With a whoop and cry we engaged some of them and then the stealth bombers released their bombs. Never knew much about them and from what I have been told, they were expensive and difficult to use. Well, after a few changes and upgrades, they proved to be devastatingly effective and popped half of our destroyer fleet before we could get one of them! Much alarmed, we all whipped our pods out and then raced back towards the relative safety of Evati wit a cloud of hostile ships chasing us!

A successful evening due to the fun we had, AstPlatinum got the award for using the best Star Trek quotes during the roam but I HappySan and Jmarr got honourable mentions for using the most in the evening. However, one can't hide the fact that our destroyers got themselves, destroyed.

Later on, HappySan, n00bish and I tried to unsucessfully tackle a missioning hurricane and yet later on, another fleet tackled two mission drakes and popped them. We got the pods and ransomed them but they weren't too keen to pay us ransoms. Instead they smacked endlessly in local. We then had another roam into null-sec hunting for a complex-running Ishtar - we missed it and ended up losing a cerberus and an expensively fitted rapier to a -AAA- HAC gang roaming through.

Finally a bunch of Bastards went hunting through a worm hole and ended up destroying a POS, stealing a T2 fitted drake, T2-fitted cheetah, mods and killed a ratting raven for lols. Netting a cool 290 million isk. All in inties. Even better that we had some potential recruits in our gangs, no better way to see whether we fit their expectations then flying with us.

Without HappySan's permission, I include his corp account for your fun and enjoyment. Please note that HappySan will have a spiffing new blog out soon. Now to his summarised account:

1. Raelyf finds a wormhole in *****.
2. Raelyf finds wormhole within wormhole - leading to WFC-MY in Catch! (AAA space)
3. Interceptor fleet formed for fun roam
4. Drake & Raven sighted in system next door by scout, at a POS
5. We start heading through the system, planning to roam - Raelyf is more awake than the rest of us and notes that the POS has no Force Field!
6. We warp to POS just in time to see the Raven log off
7. Drake is stolen! DJ sacrifices his Incursus to the cause, which we then pop and collect loot from. Drake turns out to be T2 fit with purger rigs!
8. Corporate Hangar Arrays are destroyed, yielding ~60M3 trit, loads of crappy t1 mods and come simple reaction stuff from the POS. Nothing of great value
9. Ship Maintenance Bay destroyed, dropping Raven, Cheetah, Thrasher and Iteron V! Pilots called in to help move these ships, as none of us really want to abandon our Interceptors.
Raven is T2 fit with rigs, yay!
Cheetah is T2 fit with rigs, covert ops cloak and dark blood armor rep (lol?)
Thrasher is salvager, we destroy it
Iteron V is useful, fitted with 5 Cargo expander IIs (No rigs ) - we use this to grab a load of the stuff which dropped from the hangars and haul it back!
10. Ships are taken away to **** via wormhole, and we continue our roam!
A few jumps away in Y-PNRL, just one jump away from AAA's outpost in FAT-6P, our expert scout Ravenesa finds and locks down a Raven ratting in a belt! (A fitting tackler, I'm sure you'll agree)
11. A quick kill later and we fly away with some nice shiny T2 loot, and decide to head back before our luck turns for the worse.

Yay!

Involved parties and special thanks:
Raelyf (Thanks for exploring and getting a roam started!)
Happy San (I'm awesome)
DJ Akula (Sacrificed his own ship to ferry the Drake, and also flew our stolen Raven back!)
Tallitar
Kai
Ravenesa (Yay for Raven tackling a Raven!)
me0de (Kicked that Raven's ass)
Inko (Stole a Cheetah for us!)

Yay for piracy!

It's great to be back.

Oh, we've also signed up for the Alliance Tourney but we're in the random pick list so imshallah that we get in!