Rifter Drifter

Well my move is finally complete. Wensley now lives out in Catch with his new corpmates in GE-8JV. Moving out to join a large alliance is a bit of a culture shock. Having only ever been part of small corporations in past I was in danger of suffering from overload with all the new information I had to assimilate. I took my time over it and eventually managed to find all the key posts on the alliance forums, get to grips with the jump bridge network, find the right intel channels, sort my out-of-game channels, meet my new corporation, and get some ships. Phew.

By the second day I was pretty much up to speed. Most of the alliance wee away on a call to arms (CTA) that I had been excused from I took my new Typhoon down to my corporation’s constellation and set about the local Sansha ships. The first belt I warped to contained a faction spawn that dropped a True Sansha Large Armor Repairer worth 125 million ISK. I could get used to the riches of nullsec…

As the alliance came back from their operation things were pretty quiet and I settled into the carebear system and got used to my new battleship. Alliance channels lit up with reports of a friendly mothership tackled in a belt. I was too far away from them to be able to rush down and help but it seems a gang formed to save him. Why anyone would choose to rat in a mothership on the border with hostile territory is beyond me. From what I gather the rest of DKOD were equally unimpressed.

A little bit later a home defence gang began forming and I headed back to GE-8JV to grab my newly fitted Muninn. The FC had called for sniper HACs and I was looking forward to trying out my new toy in anger. I’ve never flown in a sniper gang before so the whole thing was going to be a good learning experience. By the time the gang had formed the invaders had left and the FC decided to go to northern Catch and play with the Providence holders who lived there. Our fleet was 8 HACs, 2 recons, a Caracal, 3 interdictors, 9 interceptors, and a bomber. At first it took me a while to get used to the fact that intel was being relayed in Russian and fleet commands were taking place in English and Russian but after I while I was able to tune in and even began to learn some of the Russian commands – this came in useful later on when things got hectic.

We moved around pretty quickly and ended up ganking a lone Drake in E-YJ8G before moving on. In CBL-XP we killed a Rifter before heading into CB4-Q2 with the intention of cutting off a whole constellation. An enemy fleet was spotted in N-8BZ6 and we were ordered to jump in and warp to the station. Most of their fleet was able to dock but we picked off a Slasher, a Rokh and an Armageddon. As we withdrew from the field the enemy gang jumped into CB4-Q2 where they set up a camp on the gate.

The decision was made to break through their camp, burn out to snipe range, and engage. Just as the call was being made my client crashed and I had to log back in again. I missed the main fleet jumping in and had to chase after them, getting caught in a bubble in the process. I burnt out of it and warped away as my shields took a pounding. I quickly returned to the fray and experienced the true joy of a sniper HAC gang. Their fleet of about 30 or so battleships and battlecruisers hung on the gate as we picked off as many of them as we could. They had strong remote repair and most of them were sensible enough not to aggress our gang so actually taking them down was hard but we were able to get 12 kills for just the loss of our tackle. Eventually the decision was made to disengage and head home but we were too slow and they camped us into CB4-Q2. Their jump bridge network allows them to get ahead of us and set up roadblocks. By now their gang was too large for us to break through safely and we retreated to a safespot.

A second gang began forming to come to our rescue. They set up snipe positions in EX-0LQ while we waited for a chance to break out. While we waited they had a small skirmish with part of the hostile gang but didn’t have the numbers to make any impression on them. Eventually the hostile bubble on our outward gate dropped and we leapt into action. The fleet warp to the gate, jumped, and warped to safety before returning to join the relief force. Another small skirmish followed but we were only able to kill a Megathron before they disengaged and jumped out. Three hours after we set off the road home was clear and we all headed back to GE-8JV and the comfort of our quarters.

All in all I’ve had a pretty good first couple of days in my new alliance. It already looks like I’m going to get exactly the kind of action that I was hoping for and I haven’t even begun to look at the possibilities for small gang and solo work. I’m going to need to spend a bit of time earning some ISK for ships and ammo but that’s to be expected. The bilingual nature was definitely a culture shock but I’m getting over it and really looking forward to lots of action over the weekend. There’s still lots that I need to learn.