Our original incursion into 49-U6U was pretty uneventful with a few kills at the gates but no major resistance from GoonSwarm. Last night was very different. A moon mining POS and their Infrastructure Hub both came out of reinforced in the early hours of the morning.
After an afternoon shooting more of the Swarm’s infrastructure in system we reformed in good time for the main assault. There were almost 700 people in system with about 600 friendly and 100 hostile including the usual Goon bomber squads. As before the support squad was sent to guard the gates while the capital fleet did its thing. After a couple of hours the Goons opened two cynos in ultra deep safes (600+ AU) and bridged in their carriers and support. By now there were about 1000 people in system and the lag was pretty heavy.
Goon carriers were reported outside of their shields – repairing their POS, I assume – and the fight was on. I was watching the gate in one of the neighbouring system and it took me several minutes to jump in and then a further couple to load the grid once I arrived. This was my first major fleet fight and I’ll be honest with you, I pretty much went to pieces. The adrenaline kicked in and I was literally all over the battlefield doing nothing much of use. It took me about 10 minutes to realise that I had my orbit command set to 40 km so every time I tried to tackle something I immediately got out of warp disruptor range. After a few minutes I calmed down and began to get the hang of what I was doing. It was about then that somebody started shooting at me and I tried to bail.
No such luck, I was frozen in my ship even though it had been destroyed. I sat there for about 15 minutes looking at my ship with no structure and watching its shields recharge despite it obviously being destroyed. Eventually the server relented and I got an insurance mail. A few minutes later I was sat in my pod looking at my corpse and watching my pod shields recharge. What the heck was going on? Probably half an hour after I was initially shot and with the Goon fleet beaten back into their shields I finally woke up in my new clone. It looked like we inflicted heavy losses but so many killmails are missing (including my own and anyone I actually did tackle) that it is impossible to judge the full scale. With their POS repaired the Goon force withdrew ready to reship and return for the fight at the infrastructure hub.
Frustrated by a combination of my own ineptness and the fact that I’d been frozen out for so long I decided to call it a night and get some sleep (not that I was able to, but that’s a different matter). A second fight took place with both fleets dashing around the system trying to take out each other’s strategic objectives. While I don’t know the details Against All Authorities and our allies held the field and were able to initiate the second reinforcement cycle on the infrastructure hub while keeping our own SBUs alive. It looks like the week ahead could be filled with many more fights. Hopefully next time I’ll be able to actually contribute something useful to the battle.
In other news Libertas Fidelitas took advantage of our presence in Querious to anchor and, this time, successfully online territorial claim units in WD-VTV, SV5-8N, 9KOE-A, and F9E-KX. These are all former -A- systems that were allowed to lapse when the new sovereignty system was introduced. Just because we were unable to stop LFA making this claim doesn’t mean that we won’t be responding. They’ve also been entertaining themselves in HED-GP during our absence. As the meme says, this will be dealt with…
January 10th, 2010 at 7:44 pm
Sounds pretty crazy. I've never been involved in a fleet fight, let alone one of that magnitude. Do you know if a fleet-form had been filled out with CCP and the lag was still that intense?
January 10th, 2010 at 8:03 pm
For last nights it had been. This afternoon I don't think it was and warping into the hostile fleet took forever to load grid. I was flying around in circles watching damage notifications from people I couldn't even see. When I was shooting someone I didn't even see damage register. Mental.
January 10th, 2010 at 8:07 pm
Crazy stuff. One of the big drawbacks to 0.0 I suppose, dealing with that kind of lag. I have to admit it doesn't sound enjoyable, even as the results sound pretty epic in scale.
January 10th, 2010 at 10:11 pm
Yeah, I think after reading this I'd rather you did the grunt work, and let me enjoy the story. Also, mmmmmm sexay Wensley ass. Nice screen.
January 11th, 2010 at 12:09 am
Like you haven't seen it before…
January 11th, 2010 at 1:24 am
Bad dying like this.
When you're in a big 0.0 fleet, you can try to uncheck all graphic options (turrets effects and so on) and hide all brackets to limit lag effects. Deactivate auto-reload from your guns too, so they don't get stucked. When you shoot one time, if the guns get stucked, double-clic on their icon next to the the target, It should help them finish their cycle. Sometime, the mwd get stucked too but the capa doesn't get low.
These measures can't help you much when the lag is horrible like the one you describe. But with the usual fleet lag, it can help make things better.
January 11th, 2010 at 10:08 am
Was my first bug fleet fight too. Spent 20 minutes orbiting in a 'dead' Rupture with the structure siren going before I finally appeared in a pod which I miraculously warped out of the fight. Unfortunately just as I'd jumped through the 4-0 gate the message "don't jump through the 4-0 gate its camped" came on TS and I got podded.
Good time though and it looks like it wont be the last.
January 11th, 2010 at 10:40 am
Nothing exciting happened last night so I spent my time killing some stupid cloaky Goon who kept warping to our POS. Wish I'd just gone to bed.
January 11th, 2010 at 10:55 am
Welcome to my area
We had some good fights with AAA and U'K last night in f9e and sv5. The battles will go on i guess. But it has been a great weekend with alot pew pew 
To bad that SV5 allmost crashed when our reenforcement fleet of 160 where going to help out in SV5. I was stuck in SV5 for 30 mins before i could jump into f9e and home to D-G. Somehow i was in 50% armor.. dont know how that happen…
Amarr Victor!
January 11th, 2010 at 11:01 am
Welcome to Shit Creek Wensley – I know how it feels, I was in most of the initial gridfuck fleets against Atlas while everybody was trying to find ways around the grid load bug. It's incredibly frustrating and a huge change from low-sec, first few times your overview goes red with what looks like a Jita undock point's worth of hostiles is adrenaline inducing.
That adrenaline soons wears off while waiting for your guns to fire, ghost targets to disappear and sorting through 300+ targets looking for the primary (yes there are ways around this, I'm generalising for anybody who wants to flame).
Props to flying tackle in that lag, 0.0 guys tackle for fail.
After 3 months of blobbing, 6 weeks of lag bombs and verbal abuse from everybody who hates Wildly Inappropriate (and the NC) I'm ready to return to lovely lowsec and small skirmish warfare where skill actually counts for something.
Hope you come home soon laddie!
January 11th, 2010 at 4:25 pm
I was involved in a couple of the scuffles in the SV5/F9E area. Shortly after DT I was tackling for a small impromptu gang that was picking people off left, right, and centre in D-GTMI and then a couple of hours later I did a bit of tackling in the preliminaries for the main fight. Even then lag was pretty terrible (I was getting shot at by ships I couldn't even see) so I decided to head out and see what the outside world had to offer.
There will definitely be lots more fun fights in that area. It will almost certainly be more fun than shooting Goons. I can't wait.
January 11th, 2010 at 4:29 pm
Its not so much the lag as the sitting around waiting for timers that's taking the edge off it so far. That said there has been plenty of fast-paced skirmish action as well (<3 CVA). As far as skill in fleets goes I think there is definitely a place for it. From my experiences so far I think I am going to spend a lot of time flying tackle and anti-support (pressing F1-F6 and then selecting next primary doesn't appeal) but I know that scouts, bombers, logistics, and all the other components have plenty to do and that's before you start considering FCing. For now I have to say that this feels like home and its kind of good to be back.