Wow guys. I mean really, wow. I just want to say a huge thank you to everyone who has donated me ISK or ships within the last few days. I honestly couldn’t believe my wallet this morning! I can’t wait to go to Jita and buy a bunch of ships and fittings ready to have fun and find some stories to tell.

Once again, thank you so very much.

Last night the call went up for Drakes and Scimitars. It was our regular 23:30 gang and despite the fact that I had a long night the day before I still signed up and grabbed myself a Scimitar. Sitting in a Drake and moving with the gang is all well and good but I like the extra challenge and responsibilities that being a logistics pilot brings.

Once we had formed up and got a decent fleet composition sorted our gang of 40 moved out and headed down to BLAST space. Our target was BLAST’s home space in Minotaur constellation. The plan was pretty simple, head down there, poke some of their infrastructure and see if we can get a fight from them. One of the great things about this alliance is that we have lots of good action without having to worry about fighting for sovereignty.

While we were idling in V6-NY1 our scout reported a Rorqual in a jump bridge POS. Our scout prepared a warp in and the fleet hot footed it to the jump bridge system. With the POS password entered into our computer systems we warped to the Rorqual and began the process of bumping him towards the edge of the shields. Just before he entered our heavy inderdictor’s bubble the capital industrial jumped out to safety. Or at least he thought it was safety… Scouts were sent to nearby cyno generators and we pretty soon had a hit on the Rorqual. The fleet burnt towards the target but this time made sure that we left some tackle on the original jump beacon. Once again the Rorqual was inside the shields but this time he appeared to be AFK. We went for the bump again and this time we were able to get him out, bubbled, and pretty soon destroyed.

With the operation off to a roaring success we then moved to 9DQW-W where we began to shoot the cyno jammer. This didn’t provoke a response and after gently extricating ourselves from a very spiky, messy POS we moved on to one of the jump bridge POSes and started working on that. Thankfully, although it was gunned, this POS was far less difficult to work on than the original and we didn’t have too much to do. Which is good, seeing as I was jammed for the whole fight. As the jump bridge slowly went down we got word of a Wildly Inappropriate armour HAC gang on their way into the area. They were reported as being about 80 strong with half a dozen or so Guardians. We had pulled ourself off the POS and were ready to engage them when local began to spike and they were reported entering system. It was on. We warped in to them and as soon as we landed our FC began to burn away and gave the order to anchor on him with MWDs on. Our superior speed began to move us out of range as targets were called and we began to punch through the hostile reps. The WIdot gang had a Rapier who decloaked and webbed our anchor, slowing down our whole gang’s progress and before a secondary anchor had been assigned they were upon us and melted two of our Scimitars before we could keep them up. A second anchor was assigned, the fleet began to pull range again, and we removed the tackle from our FC. With this done the fight went by the numbers and we used our range and speed to chase them off and hold the field in a victory that was marred only by our Scimitar losses. The Stabber Fleet Issue that we killed was equipped with lots of faction loot including an Officer plating worth about 100 million ISK despite our killboard’s lower estimate. We managed to lose a third Scimitar when we turned around and began to reapproach them at one point, rather than keeping our gang between him and the enemy our fearless pilot burnt his logistics cruiser straight into the heart of the enemy fleet and got himself melted.

The fun wasn’t over, though. We got further intel that there was a sniper HAC gang moving into the area and we prepared to engage them. We found them set up on 57-KJB gate in A-HZYL and the order was given to jump in. The FC hesitated over the order initially but I’d hit jump as soon as he said it the first time so I was one of the first into system. We held cloak and then first of all our heavy interdictors, then the Drakes, and finally the Scimitars were given the order to decloak. Because I’d been there so long my cloak broke earlier than intended and the first I knew about it was when the hostile fleet locked me up and an Arazu tackled me. I quickly hit the orbit command on our FC but because of our relative position this sent me careening towards the enemy gang with my MWD blazing and my transversal at almost zero. I overheated my hardeners and my fellow Scimitars got reps on me fast enough to keep me out of trouble while I got myself heading in a sensible direction and negated all the incoming damage. While this was going on our fleet had burnt into the heart of the hostile gang and we began to let rip into them. Another victory for NCdot with our only loss being the Ares that had originally scouted the LAWN gang.

While we mopped up the field and set up scouts and tackle one of the WIdot FCs was invited onto our TeamSpeak and explained to us that the WIdot gang was a training fleet and hadn’t intended to fight us. Various smack followed and people who died were ridiculed. Not expecting to see them again we were surprised when a scout reported them heading towards us. We were down to just a few Scimitars and had lost our gang links already but never mind, we’re up for a fight. The omens for this engagement weren’t good when a rather drunk Broadsword pilot seemed to have fallen asleep at his keyboard and got himself killed. The armour HAC gang warped to us and we began round two. The initial engagement went pretty well but when the WIdot gang warped out to a ping spot in order to come back in to us at their preferred range things went a bit wrong. On their initial warp in we had been instructed to align to a planet and the Scimitars had burnt ahead to pull some extra range. It looks like I didn’t hear a new alignment being called because when they warped in the second time I was away from our main gang and seemingly burning right for the hostiles. A sharp turn and some frantic hammering of the warp command later and I was safely out of trouble but it meant that I wasn’t on the field for the main fight and had let my gang down. The third engagement of the night didn’t go so well in our favour and in the end we were pulled off the field by our frustrated FC and burnt back home to lick our wounds and be told off for not even getting the basics right in a simple gang format.

I blame tiredness for my own errors. When we set out it was 00:30 for me and we didn’t get back to 4C-B7X until 5:00. Far too late for my brain to be functioning properly and something I am regretting this morning. Still, the Drake format is a very simple gang to participate in with the only things you need to do being orbit the anchor, burn your MWD when told to, and shoot the primaries. If done well it doesn’t matter about warping in and out against armour HAC gangs because in the time it takes them to warp in you are already burning out of their range and able to shoot them in relative safety. Scimitar pilots need to be paying attention to align points and making sure that they are in the right position. A dead Scimitar is of absolutely no use to a gang and they are vital for keeping our DPS ships alive. I definitely learnt some lessons last night, and not just that very late night gangs are a bad idea. Next time out I will be a better Scimitar pilot.

I recently replaced my old laptop because it died and now I have a shiny new Windows machine. The definite up side of this change is that Eve runs much better and looks vastly slicker than on my old Mac. The downside is that I haven’t been able to get any of the video recording software out there (Fraps, XFire, Play Claw) to work nicely. Whatever settings I pick it seems to drop my framerate down to about 10 FPS which is far too slow for me to PvP effectively.

So, does anyone out there have any suggestions for how to get videos to record nicely on a laptop with an ATI Mobility Radeon 4200 HD graphics card?

In other news I did some more bubble camping last night because I’d missed the roam that had gone out. It was a bit quiet but in the hour I was there I killed a shuttle, an Ishkur and an unfit Maller. During the Maller fight the cheeky killmail whoring Purifier got right into scram range but by the time I had deactivated it from the Maller he had managed to escape to a safe distance again.

Its been a while since I’ve posted. Partially because I haven’t been in game much but also because I haven’t really felt like writing either. Well, now I’m getting my writing hat back on so I can once again tell you some stories.

Since coming north, Rionnag Alba have been enjoying ourselves a lot. We’ve been flying with the Northern Coalition. alliance. No, not the big best friends forever Northern Coalition but the alliance formed by D00M, The Wretched, and Digital Fury Corporation to harass and troll the NC. Think of it as Triumvirate IV (Rionnag Alba have been part of all the iterations of Trimuvirate so far). Anyway, after a few months flying alongside them and getting lots of kills we have finally joined them and added yet another alliance to R A’s chequered history.

The main down side of life up here is that there has been a pretty definite drop in European numbers and while there are daily ops in the US timezone there have been far fewer that I can attend. A few of our FCs have been pretty busy and hopefully when they return activity and numbers will increase. This isn’t helped by Darkside alliance moving into X-70MU with us.

Whenever I’ve logged on and found things to be pretty quiet have been doing what I probably do best, grabbing a frigate and going to find some trouble. For a while I flew the Dramiel but it can be pretty hard to find targets and the ship just feels a bit too overpowered and flavour of the month for me. Instead I have finally tried the Taranis and I understand what all the fuss is about. It really is a brilliant little roaming ship and I had quite a bit of fun killing scouts before I messed up and got myself blown up.

Last night, though, I went back to my Minmatar roots. Grabbing a small bubble and a Jaguar I set out to set up camp in KLY-C0 on the 7RM-N0 gate. This is a nice place to set up a bubble camp because with a single small bubble you can catch people from all of the other four gates in system. Its also part of a pipeline between the different parts of Pure Blind so gets a reasonable amount of traffic.

The first victim of my trap was a Hurricane. I saw him on scan as “Just Jake’s Hurricane” and straight away decided that he was a worthwhile target. I hopped down to the bubble from my perch and waited for him to land. Despite seeing a hostile in local he had warped straight to the gate and landed right in my clutches. Web, scrambler, and autocannons engaged. He returned lock and the tell-tale streams of capacitor warfare began to arc between our ships. My heart was in my mouth for a second before I realised that he had engaged a nosferatu rather than the dreaded dual neutralisers. Even more pleasantly he had webbed me but appeared not to have a scrambler fitted. It also appeared that he had no drones and I pretty quickly settled down into orbit, chipping away at his armour. The final surprise was when I saw that not only was he missing me with every shot, but the guns he was using were Heavy Ion Blaster IIs. I was definitely doing him a favour by destroying his abomination of a Hurricane.

As the battlecruiser began to dip into structure a Sentinel jumped in through and put his tracking disruptors on me. Because I was at point blank range this did very little to my damage output and the Hurricane exploded. I quickly began to switch to phased plasma and burnt towards the Sentinel but he wasn’t up for the fight and bugged out leaving me to return for the Hurricane pilot’s pod and, more importantly, the loot. I’m glad I stuck around, too, because I found a Dark Blood Armor Explosive Hardener amongst the wreckage. That alone would net me a cool 15 million ISK in Jita.

With the wreck looted and the Sentinel pilot out of system I returned to my position and waited to see what else would land in my trap. I’ve been caught short in bubbles before now so this time I was hovering in a scan spot 300 km away from my bubbles. If a new contact enters local I start to hammer my scanner and keep an eye on the nearby gate. If I see something I fancy then I can warp down to the bubble and be ready by the time it lands, if the incoming target looks to be too much then I am safely out of trouble and can warp to a better location.

The 7RM-N0 fired and a Dramiel decloaked but warped off before I could align and warp to the gate. A few seconds later a Federation Navy Comet also jumped in and I was quite relieved that I hadn’t been locked in combat on the gate. I would happily have taken the Dramiel on, though.

The next couple of targets to land in my trap were pretty soft and I was able to kill a Rifter and Thrasher without really breaking a sweat. When two targets with very similar names entered local my interest was piqued. I aligned to my bubble and began to hit the scanner. The first item to appear was a shuttle and I initiated warp. As I entered warp a Cerberus also appeared on scan. It looked like the shuttle was his scout. Perfect. Unfortunately I wasn’t fast enough to catch the shuttle and he was able to escape my clutches. I wasn’t too bothered. The Cerberus was the prize that I wanted. Despite having seen my trap with his scout he landed smack in my bubble. In my excitement I accidentally locked my own bubble when he landed and the delay in realising my mistake meant that although I got lock on him and even managed to web him, I was unable to land a scrambler and he got away.

At this point I began to team up with novasux, a member of Digital Fury Corporation. He was patrolling the pipe in a Sabre so we decided to set up shop with him on the gate to catch any incoming ships and me on my bubble. Unfortunately for novasux he had a dangerous job and when a neutral Devoter jumped in and aggressed him he burnt for the gate and jumped to safety. Or at least what he thought was safety. A Tau Ceti Federation gang was waiting on the other side and their HAC and battlecruiser gang was far too much for novasux’s interdictor. I’m not entirely sure why he jumped through rather than burning away from the Devoter and warping off but then I’ve made plenty of mistakes of my own so I’m not going to criticise.

After the excitement of the hostile gang passing through I was able to catch a Slasher and had a Rifter escape from me despite landing my scrambler on him. It was getting late and I decided that the most sensible course of action was to take my loot back to X-7OMU and call it a night.

It just goes to show that even if there’s no gangs up or if you’ve just missed one that has left, its still possible to have fun and get some PvP in null sec. I’m definitely going to have fun flying frigates up here when there’s nothing major going on. It doesn’t matter if its an epic 20 jump Taranis roam or a bubble camp in a Rifter. Its got to be more fun than spinning ships in station and hoping someone forms a gang.

If you haven’t seen it yet, I highly recommend that you check out Hallan Turrek’s excellent stealth bomber guide. I used to have a lot of fun in DKOD running interceptor and bomber gangs. With their speed, cloaks, and high damage they are an excellent way or running guerilla operations in hostile space. In fact, next time things are quiet I should probably take out another of these.

While I’m on the topic, you can also roam solo in a stealth bomber to grief enemies. Military 5 systems and jump bridges make excellent places to cloak and up wait for unwary targets. Valadeya’s guide is your friend here and will get you up and running.

I like to fit my Hound with a bomb launcher so my fit is something more like this:

[Hound, Gang]

Covert Ops Cloaking Device II
Bomb Launcher I
‘Arbalest’ Siege Missile Launcher, Caldari Navy Bane Torpedo
‘Arbalest’ Siege Missile Launcher, Caldari Navy Bane Torpedo
‘Arbalest’ Siege Missile Launcher, Caldari Navy Bane Torpedo

Phased Weapon Navigation Array Generation Extron
Catalyzed Cold-Gas I Arcjet Thrusters
Phased Muon Sensor Disruptor I

Ballistic Control System II
Ballistic Control System II
Co-Processor II

Small Hydraulic Bay Thrusters I
Small Hydraulic Bay Thrusters I

It might not have the lock range of Hallan’s fit but it can operate outside of 60km which is the maximum drone control range (without augmentors).

Things in the South are pretty quiet at the moment. I’ve been doing a few corp and alliance roams as well as a little bit of solo but there hasn’t really been anything really worth talking about lately. At the moment I am flying my Scimitar a lot and currently maximising its abilities before making my first cross-train to the Guardian. Logisitcs ships are a lot of fun and, summer weather aside, I hope to be able to tell you stories of the fun I have had flying them soon. For now, though, the sunny outside is calling to me. Until then, fly reckless!

Another lazy post, I’m afraid. There isn’t a huge amount to report from Catch. Rionnag Alba have our own constellation now and we’ve been working on getting its military index up so we can have juicy anomalies, complexes, and wormholes. I’ve done a bit of unsuccessful solo roaming and some small gang stuff. That’s about it, really.

Manfred Sideous has made an official announcement about our impending resets. As of downtime tomorrow we will only be blue to five of our closest friends. Everyone else is fair game. Apparently some of our nearer neighbours aren’t entirely amused. Bring on the fighting, it should be great fun!

Well, after the failed invasion of H-W9TY combat operations in the North dwindled to nothing more than a few roaming gangs. People were starting to ask why we were up there and what we were doing. While this was happening people were continuing to evacuate assets from H-W9TY and I’d gone AWOL for a while.

Now I’m back, though, and we just got word from Manfred that its time to pack our bags and move South. We weren’t prepared for the invasion of the North. Everything had been rushed, we didn’t have objectives, and we lacked the FCs to mount a serious campaign. On top of that we’d also been slowly shedding some of our better PvPers and small gang FCs. So we’re heading back to Catch to lick our wounds, learn our lessons, train some FCs, and reset all but our closest friends. Hopefully the future involves roaming, fun, and far less burnout.

For us the Northern campaign was a failure but then nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Anyway, after a couple of weeks away I’ve logged back in, undocked, got shot at, shot at people, and docked up in the same ship I started in. Maybe soon I’ll have some stories to tell.

So after a successful day on Monday it seems like we are now back to square one in H-W9TY. Despite winning control of the system we were unable to hold onto it an the Northern Coalition managed to get some serious numbers into the system. By the time our POSes were coming out of reinforced there were over 1600 people in local with the vast majority of them being hostiles. There was pretty much nothing we could do about it and it wasn’t long before the node crashed and gave up the ghost. After three hours of trying to log in (I gave up after one) the order was given to stand down and reform for another attempt today.

At least our allies were able to take advantage of the NC’s home defence effort to relieve them of sovereignty in 6GWE-A, E9KD-N, MI60-6, O-N8XZ, and C8-CHY as well as Ev0ke destroying the infrastructure hub in EC-P8R. So things could be far worse. Let’s see what we do next…