Did He Say Jump?

Sometimes it’s all about the good fight. You try not to ship too high, or bring overwhelming force in the hope that your enemy will feel comfortable engaging you.

And other times, it’s simply about burning everything to the ground.

I logged in last night to a sleepy corp. Many were online, but few seemed active. Until, Punchy, one of our directors and FCs, logged in and announced abruptly that he was starting a fleet. 

Now, I’ve flown with Punchy many years now. And in flying with someone that long you start to learn little things –like the frame of mind they are in by the tone of their voice. I jumped into fleet very quickly, for Punchy’s particular tone of voice last night told me that some sort of spaceship violence would be occurring in short order.

It didn’t take long to whip up an armor HAC gang with Guardian support. And it quickly became evident to me that we had a destination, a target, and an Ace up our sleeve. Even though on the outside our little gang looked like a standard, spontaneous cruiser roam.

Sure enough, as soon as Punchy made the call to depart, we were burning toward Enaluri –the home system of Did he say jump? Alliance and their FC, Predator Elite. 

We set up in a Medium Plex, aligned out to the Hallanen gate. We were burned nearly 100K off the warp-in when Predator’s fleet finally arrived, closely matched to our own with armor HACs, armor cruisers, and several Guardians.

As soon as hostiles began landing on field, the command was made for our fleet to warp to Hallanen, and jump upon arrival. And so we did.

The End

(Just Kidding)

Pred’s fleet followed close behind, and we began to engage them quickly as they followed us into Hallanen.

Both sides were fully committed in the fight, and we were fairly evenly matched. That is, until our surprise arrived –a medium sized fleet of arty sleipners belonging to ‘The Bastion’ –who had decided to come around to our neck of the woods to visit a friend of theirs in IFW.

It was a classic EVE ganking, and it didn’t take long for Pred’s fleet to realize it. They began disengaging and escaping back through the gate.

Now, it is typically the case in this scenario that you gank your prey, you giggle a little, and then you go home. But it was apparently not just Punchy who wanted to make things explode last night. Intel quickly alerted us to the fact that Pred’s gang was shipping up –to battleships.

Battleships including Faction Battleships and Vindicators, with no logistics. Which, could only mean ones thing. They were bringing triage.

After a few minutes of watching them reform into their new comp, Punchy had us warp to the Large Plex within the system. While it wouldn’t completely prevent triage from arriving, it would make things a little more difficult as cynos cannot be lit inside FW plexes.

We then started getting more alliance mates into fleet. It’s amazing how many people who were ‘AFK’ suddenly are not AFK when there’s the possibility of capital kills.

A cyno went up, and Pred’s triage entered system. Local climbed as more of our own guys arrived –in a few BSes of our own. A few folks asked if we wanted to bring our own triage, but the call was made to not bringing any caps of our own. 

Local spiked with the hostile battleship fleet, and as they landed inside the plex, their triage carrier –an archon –arrived with them.

Their triage held up fairly well as we began testing squishier targets. Our logistics were getting heavily neuted by Armageddons, but we had brought some neuting power of our own in the form of Bhaalgorns, which were slowly working on the triage’s capacitor.

The Bastion lost a logi, but it was simply not going to be Pred’s day. Even as his second carrier –a Thanatos—arrived to assist the first one. 

Around the time the Archon died, a third carrier arrived –another Archon.

In the end we killed all three carriers, two vindicators and a bunch of other stuff. The Bastion lost a ship or two, and Snuffed Out managed to end the fight with no losses. (Probably because I wasn’t flying logi…lol)

Over all it was a good night. And as someone cheekily commented as we were going home, “we didn’t even have to drop supers.”

The battlereport is here. (Unfortunately, not all the hostiles on field will show up on it since nobody in Snuff died.)