Wormholes

Apologies for this taking soo long, RL issues sometimes interfere too much with internet spaceships.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gAJcx1y6IU
Video courtesy of our resident FRAPS artist, cheers CitricPilot.

TL:DR GF Hard Knocks
https://zkillboard.com/related/31002377/201407060400/

The weekend was relatively quiet. Hours spent rage rolling Friday and Saturday had proved unfruitful.

I logged on Sunday and to my surprise found a good number of pilots itching for something to do. Well something other than keeping watch on a POS in a C2 down the chain, which they had been doing.

We quickly formed up again and set to rage rolling. Again our efforts were denied, but unknown to us Bob had put other plans in motion.

We had an operation planned to start in a few hours and 19 combat anomalies in DEEP (our home wormhole). I made the call and we reshipped for PvE while bookmarks were made to make running the sites more efficient (something I hardly ever actually bother with).

We were in late US time zone on a weekend. A lot of other wormhole groups would be rolling for pew as we had just been. I made sure everyone understood this, while also reminding the fleet of their actions on drills.

The first site went flawlessly (wow these BM things make things easy) and while in warp to the second site I gave the same speech. Again reminding everyone that though it was getting late for US TZ, it was a weekend. I even specifically mentioned Hard Knocks, using their drops of NOHO and RCC as examples.

https://zkillboard.com/related/31002378/201406262100/
https://zkillboard.com/related/31002368/201406080400/

On finishing the second site I called in the noctii to salvage. Just as they landed, comms went silent at two words.

“New sig”

Called for fleet to stop align and re approach carrier. Confirmed that someone was scanning, to which our silently amazing scout replied in fleet chat.

>in warp<

Told the noctii to keep salvaging and be ready to bail.

We have had new sigs appear during PvE plenty of times and they have always turned out to be nothing. But I have learnt through hard experience to trust my intuition. Those seemingly random gut feelings everyone gets at times. They were telling me that this time was real..

Asked fleet for cycle timers to which all our capital pilots replied that they were out. At this point I could have called us out while the new sig was investigated, but I had designed this fleet and the strategies behind it for this exact situation. Though neither had ever been tested, I was keen to do exactly that.

I knew some pilots heart rates would have already jumped up and some hands would be shaking. After all there was easily over 40 billion isk on the field. Regardless of what happened this was a perfect time to train actions on drills.

I verbally went through the actions on drills again, while waiting on further intel from our scout.

>sabre<
>hard knocks<

Called the noctii to bail and reship. Told everyone else to double check their ships and get ready.

Verbally repeated the drills for the last time.

“Dreads refit brawl, lokis orbit carrier and refit eccm, carriers check distance. Ping.”

I heard my phone go off moments later, confident that as usual pilots from all across the world would awaken and respond.

>sabre in warp<
>wormhole fire, multiple<

The sabre landed at 60km from our carriers, obviously using the anom as his warp in. This made me smile, as any other day he would have landed on top of us. Regardless he turned and started burning in fast.

“Deploy drones, pop the sabre”

>fleet in warp<

He popped shortly after, followed by his pod. However he had achieved his goal, managing to launch his bubble over our fleet, trapping those noctii still left on grid. A truly heroic sabre pilot.

Unfortunately this was unnecessary as I had already decided we were staying, no matter what was brought against us. I quickly cemented this decision with my next commands.

“Archon triage, dreads siege”

Their fleet landed and I quickly called a legion primary while assessing their fleet and looking for ships that could be tracked easier by our dreads capital sized weapons. Our noctii pilots had managed to exit the bubble and warp home, reshipping and heading straight back into the fight. Then a bhaalgorn landed with a nestor.

Switched everything to the bhaalgorn, which was holding remarkably well. This was an unexpected turn of events, something must be wrong.. It was about then our loki pilots started calling jammed at an incredibly alarming frequency.

Our archon pilot called his cap was dropping, but he said he could hold for a while. This was going very wrong, we needed more tracking and webs.

“Dreads go to site fit”
“Lokis refit more ECCM, primary nestor”

I had seen their nestor on Hard Knocks kills before, amazed it was still alive I was determined to change that.

I was relieved to see the nestor go down quickly. Moved everything back to the bhaalgorn, its armor slowly dropped. The HK logistics was impressive managing to hold the bhaalgorn up for a long time, too long. Was about to switch to our secondary when a couple big hits saw the bhaalgorns armor drop real low.

Our archon pilot stated that he would really be in trouble soon. Despite the calm in his voice, I knew from experience that just the fact he was letting me know meant that he was really hurting. Called dreads to overheat two cycles and was very glad to see the bhaalgorn explode.

An excellent read.

Also: https://zkillboard.com/related/31002377/201407060400/

Good read =] gj guys

Good read. Looking forward to the vid.

Great writeup. Much respect to HK for going balls deep.

Looking forward to the video :)

Great BR, you had prepared your fleet for a gank and survive because of that, good job!

Hoofin!

Very good read. Thank you

TL;DR it was faster to watch the video.

Nestor: Just say no kids