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I know I've been neglecting this thread! Weekly round up then.

Memorable events from last week. Mostly skirmishing, I did run one small frigate gang. We were all in Navitas, 8 of us, 2 in Logi and 6 in gunships for a lol. We were only out for about 20 minutes, but believe it or not we took down an Abaddon that was soloing about, next we killed a blingy Hookbill which dropped a Caldari Navy Ballistic Control.

I took part in a Blops drop to kill a Loki. A T3 gate camp had been spotted, it had a Loki and a Proteus plus reps. Mickey Nox ran the op, he decided we didn't have time to burn down the reps before they deaggressed and jumped away. So he put one of us in a Falcon to jam out the reps while we burned down the Loki. Worked perfectly. I took a Hound and managed top player DPS, but second to the gate guns. It was a real blingy fit with 2 faction webs, faction scram and gyrostabalizer, + 2 faction hardeners. Loot fairy was terrible though, only given up a single True Sansha Kinetic Hardener (7M)

Shortly after that we found a Charon on the Kourm gate in Huola. Someone convo'd the pilot later and he said he was on his way to Jita and hadn't realised he had jumped into low sec. Lol. He managed to jump to Kourm but someone caught and held him until we had deaggressed and jumped through. He dropped the only cargo he was carrying, a single cheap skillbook.

I lost a crow and empty pod trying to run the Guristas Epic Arc. I reshipped into a second crow, but lost that on the way back to possibly the same T3 camp that was the subject of the Blops drop later. I lost an Augoror in an easy cruiser fight after telling my repping buddy to bait rep me and then he burnt his reps out trying to catch me too late. We still won the fight. I blamed Zen for losing me a Thrasher after he dropped fleet boss on me in the middle of a solo fight against a Tristan. This well confused me as the dialog box to replace the fleet ad popped up. But I made plenty of mistakes myself and later apologised to him. I lost 8 Breachers to various skirmishes, some unnecessarily.

I got a very satisfying Catalyst kill. I was attempting to run a plex in Kourm and had my cloaky alt eyes on the outside of the plex. A small pirate gang, about 6 of them, were trying to gank me and I kept warping to a station and docking up. As I watched with my alt, a fight broke out on the gate between them in a variety of Frigates, Dessies, Cruisers and even a Tornado against two neutrals in an Arbitrator and a Scythe Fleet Issue. They killed the Arbitrator, but the Scythe Fleet Issue gave them the run around killing some of the smaller stuff and kiting them away. The pirates kept reshipping into larger stuff and then one came back in a Catalyst with no prop mod. It landed on the gate well away from the fight. I saw my opportunity, reshipped into a Caracal, warped in, popped it and warped out.

The second Frigate of the Fortnight event (Punisher) came to an end. It wasn't as well attended as the Slicer, 13 people took part, I just scraped into positive isk efficiency figures with 2 kills and 1 loss. But of the other 12 only 3 managed positive results and it really boiled down to a contest between Zen and Destru. Overall though results were good. 1.8B of 'solo' kills (+50% of the damage to qualify) for 714M Punisher losses. The next frigate is a much better solo ship and I'm looking forward to this one, but all I've managed so far is one loss with it.

Ended the week 82 kills for 14 losses.

Friday 25th April 2014

The Frigate of the Fortnight is the Kestrel. I expected this to be a good ship for me, but almost a week in and all I've managed is 1 kill for 2 Kestrel losses. For those unfamiliar, the competition requires you to do over 50% of the damage with the specified ship (Kestrel) for the kill to qualify, with addition prizes for goliath kills (Dessies or larger), best K-D ratio, best Isk Kill and others.

So anyway I dedided to make a serious attempt at this competition on Friday night. It started well, I undock to find a WT Hookbill sat 130Km off station. I burn out and kill him stupidly easy.

A few minutes later I'm in a plex in Huola when an Enyo and Stabber come in. I tackle the Enyo and thread my way around the stabber. To be honest I primary the wrong thing, the Enyo. Wrong because the only thing that can hit me are the drones from the Stabber and I work my way through most of my cap charges struggling to tank them. A friendly Kestrel and Sentinel respond to my calls for help. The friendly Kestrel dies. The Sentinel primaries the Stabber, I finally realise my mistake and switch fire. We kill the stabber and then finish off the Enyo (71.7% damage).

A group fight in another plex sees several of us fire at a Condor and to my surprise I find I managed 52% of the damage with just one salvo. But right after that we engage another group on the Kourm gate in Huola and I'm certain I've made a qualifying kill on another Enyo, but then the KM shows me as top damage with just 48.21%. Carma.

The evening wears on, a series of small group fights in Kourm see me clock up another load of qualifying kills, but I lose 4 Kestrels doing it. Then a fight with Fweddit beckons in Huola. I get people into cruisers. Fweddit are spread between a large and medium plex, we rush the large but they bale and ball up in the medium. We arrive on the gate, but they have reps and a blackbird, are about 10 strong while we are just seven. I call blue balls and return to station where I reship into a Kestrel and undock. I'm intending to go back to Kourm, but then someone reports that a single Fweddit Rupture had returned to the large plex. I warp in and tackle it, call the rest of the guys in, telling them to return in the same ships as before. They and the rest of Fweddit feed into the fight. It is chaotic. I call primary repeatedly, without effect. Everyone is so scattered. Their blackbird has to die I keep telling them, I burn out twice to it, get jammed out both times but each time the blackbird is forced off field. A Fweddit Condor grabs me on one pass and I kill it (100% damage). Next priority I tell people is the Exequror. It goes down painfully slowly and the reason shows on the killmail. With a Kestrel I managed 85.22% of the damage. After that it is fairly routine to mop them up. We kill 2 Ruptures, an SFI and a Hawk, possibly others, in addition to the Condor and Exequror, for the loss of an SFI and Belacose.

It is late and I should really have binned it, but I keep playing solo in plexes in Huola and Kourm and a string of solo fights or 1 v 2 are had. The night ends on a downer though, I'm coming back to Huola top station and notice a neutral noobship cyno on the undock. That will qualify I think, dock, undock on top of it, shoot and bale, drop dock gun aggro, return and kill him. If I'd just left it there, but I just automatically went for the pod. Killed it, then too late realised that the dock guns had re-aggroed on me. I pop, losing a Kestrel for an empty cyno pod. Still at least it won't show on the killboard I think - NPC kill. But when I check my loss mail, I find that the last two people I engaged are both on it. I won both fights, but both broke my point range and baled in low armor/structure. What an idiot, now it looks like they beat me. lol.

Ended the night 32 kills (22 qualifying kills) for 5 Kestrel losses.

Sunday 27th April 2014

A day of small ship skirmishing. I was almost exclusively in a Kestrel trying to consolidate my lead in the FotF competition.

I got on a little before downtime and sighted 2 WTs, an Inquisitor and a Tormentor in a novice plex in Huola. I crashed through them at the warp in, got to range and started taking down the Inquisitor. He had a local armor repper and it took a while, but eventually I was a salvo away from killing him. I switched my orbit to the Tormentor that was ABing around trying to catch me. The last salvo landed on the Inquisitor and removed the last of his structure except he didn't pop, the tiniest sliver of structure was left. Then he was out of point range and out of the plex. I could have kicked myself, but I got point on the Tormenter and started taking it down.

However, I picked up the Inquisitor on short scan coming back. I overheated my missiles, the Inquisitor landed in the plex, but too late to save the Tormentor, it popped and then I switched point back to the Inquisitor. He had repped up the armor and a bit of shield had regenned. I hovered the pointer over his structure - 1% remained. This time I took him down much faster, he had an AAR and must have still been in the reload cycle.

I returned to Eve in the Evening. There were around 8 or 9 people loosly skirmishing around. I got them organised into one fleet and we came together for a few fights against a similar sized Amarr gang. A few times larger neutral gangs got involved and some of these we engaged. Generally good fun, but nothing outstanding.

The final engagement of the evening saw me switch into a Heretic to engage a Sentinel in a plex in Huola. Frankly Sentinels are way OP in my opinion. There isn't a single frigate that has a chance against them 1v1 and only some missile boats among the larger ships. Even then it is difficult to keep them pointed. In short I have no qualms about pulling out a Heretic when a Sentinel turns up. It took 4 or 5 salvos to kill him, but I still lost point near the end and he could have got out if he had been more switched on. Although if the latter, he wouldn't have taken the fight in the first place.

Ended the day 27 Kills for 3 Kestrel losses, but sadly although most of the kills were done in a Kestrel, only 3 qualified as competition kills.

The Minmatar have hit Tier 4 and I run a circuit of missions (15) on Friday night which net me around 1.2M LP and 50M Isk, it takes around 2.5 hours. I run another circuit on Saturday and plan to do another couple over the bank holiday weekend.

However, I've made a real rod for my own back with FotF (Frigate of the Fortnight - Kestrel), after going well ahead the previous weekend I find my lead cut drastically by Destru Kaneda. Thus I take to the Kestrel to secure my win on Sunday. I don't have a good day. I manage 16 kills but lose 8 Kestrels and a noobship in the process. Only 4 of the kills count as competition kills too. However, I do end the competition winning most kills, most Goliath kills and most losses which nets me 220M Isk. I lost 20 Kestrels throughout the fortnight costing me 240M Isk. I carried off a load of loot and earned LP and bounties too, so would have been well up. However, that Sunday did it for me, I'm not going to get as competitive as that again. Famous last words.

So on Monday afternoon I ignore the new FotF and it's quite a relief to return to what I want to fly, I choose a Breacher. A small group of us are loosely running plexes around the Kourm / Huola area including Lory. I catch a Thrasher in a Huola medium plex, crash through the warp in and start kiting him to death. I stay silent on comms, but Lory rolls up in a Vagabond and wh*res on with 21% of the damage. Next I catch a Punisher in a Novice. Again Lory rolls up, now in a Dramiel, but this time I pop the Punisher just as Lory lands in the plex (titter), we share the pod though. I then catch a fast Firetail and this time I cry for help as I'm struggling to hold onto him and break his tank. Lory and one other arrive, but we are so far off the warp in, they can't actually reach us. I get the firetail into half structure inbetween a reload cycle of his SAAB, but then I cap out, my MWD shuts down and he escapes. Of course, I need to relearn the Breacher, unlike the Kestrel, it isn't quite cap stable.

After a long break for some RL stuff, I return in the evening. I need to do some admin on my JF alt, I have a large courier package to run in from Amarr. But I decided to take the opportunity to deal with some big orders in Jita. I've been training leadership skills on the JF char and I'm now ready to go for a boosting ship. I did in fact have a loki, but you can only run 4 links at a time on this and the tank is non existant. So I've had orders up for 2 Claymores and 2 Astartes. Intending to put one of each in Huola and Kourmonen and use a covops to shuttle between the systems.

While I'm shuttling them around, I pick up 15 more missions with Trant. I jump the JF into Huola with the 4 command ships, 3 Wolves, 3 Cruors, 2 Purifiers and a Dramiel along with some mods and the courier contract. Then start running the missions. With 13 of them complete, Annah comes onto comms and starts organising a Sac/Guardian fleet to take on a neutral gang (U.C.F. Alliance) in a similar comp.

I burn back to Huola just in time and jump into a Sacrilege. We follow them towards Anka, reach Sosala as scouts report them coming back to the Sosala gate. They jump into us and seem to be taken completely by surprise finding us there - don't they use scouts, not even a plus one? They immediately crash back to gate and jump back to Anka, but lose 2 Sacrileges doing this.

We are aggressed and can't immediately follow, they bale to an Anka station. After a long pause we finally jump in and warp to the station. They initially engage us, surprisingly we take down a Guardian and then they warp off. After a bit of a chase around they warp back to the Sosala gate and jump out, we follow and find them setting up on the other side.

We finally get the fight we are looking for and I can't help but wonder what difference that Guardian and the 2 Sacrileges would have made, if they had scouted us out and taken the fight at full strength. It was still a tough logi stalemate for a long time, but we gradually worked our way through their softer stuff, most notably a Falcon that was causing our Logi problems. We were outnumbered but all we lost was a Celestis. Eventually we killed a Curse, Munnin, 2 Onerios, Falcon, Rapier and Deimos, before they deaggressed and jumped away. Narrowly missed killing a Proteus and another Guardian, in the crawl back to the gate.

I return to normal ops and ran the last two missions, to make a total of 46 missions run over the long weekend which altogether netted around 3.7M LP. My intended final action of the night was to set up my new Claymores and Astartes, moving one of each to Kourm.

Then I had a chance to try out my new link man. 4 War Targets came into Huola local, I did a show info on them and identified that they were all in the same corp but 3 were under 3 months old, I took careful note as to which one was the older. Initially I couldn't find them, so I decided to warp to a novice plex in my Breacher, set up and see if they would find me, assuming they would be in Frigates. By chance they warped to the same plex at the same time and I landed on them. The 3 younger players were in Cormorants and the forth was in a Catalyst, none of which could enter the plex. I activated to escape. They moved to a small plex. I warped to range and found they had gone inside. So with a full set of Claymore boosts (Siege and Skirmish) running I decided to go in to them. They almost caught me on the warp in, but I managed to coast out of scram range and restart my MWD. However, they then baled before I could point one of them. Annoyingly the plex was capped, it must have only had a couple of minutes left on it.

Continued...

Tuesday 6th May 2014

I start the day in a Breacher in a Novice plex in Huola. I'm doing a bit of admin at the same time, checking for new recruits, sending some mails and updating some forum posts. There were no War Targets in local, about 15 friendlies and 8 or 9 neutrals.

The first notice I get is when the lock alarm goes off. A neutral Slicer has entered my plex and engaged me. I belatedly start my MWD, lock him and set orbit. I'm going down fast though and start one of my ASBs. It takes the full 9 charges to bring me to good shield health after dipping to half armor at one point. I have to reset my orbit to 25Km to ease the damage, thankfully I had my Claymore boosts running and keep point. I run into cap difficulties though and point and MWD keep dropping towards the end, but after a few seconds each time I can restart them. The Slicer pops and then I pod him.

He convos me to ask how could I keep point on him at 30Km? I tell him boosts. He doesn't know what boost are, so I link the modules to him. Then he asks why did I pod him, which I think is hilarious. It seems he didn't think I'd be willing to take the sec hit for a pod. But I was already -9.84 and besides he fired first so I didn't take a hit for either the ship or pod.

Lory was running his Rail Moa comp starting at 7pm (Eve). He asked me to fly an Osprey and I took over as logi commander. However, I was also double boxing my cyno alt (having switched out my boosting/JF alt) scouting out targets and tbh it was a bit much and made for a rather stressful evening. I did locate a 'Royal Pirates' gang of Guards and Fleet Canes + other shinies. Lory brought the fleet out to metro to engage them. We did briefly engage them on the Anher gate in Eviti, losing a Stiletto before we jumped away.

We set up on the other side expecting them to jump into us as they had the superior force. They sat on the other side for an age and then ran away. We started to move back to Huola, but bumped into a faction frigate gang coming the other way. They jumped into us, engaged and we took down 11 + 3 pods without loss.

Next a shiney SC gang were sighted and we raced to Aset to engage. It went down very fast, we jumped from Floreswin into Aset and warped to the Avenod gate but they jumped from Avenod into Aset and cross warped. We warped back to the Floreswin gate and both sides arrived somewhat strung out. Very quickly our DPS ramped up and we took down 2 Guards, an Ashimmu, Ishtar, Astartes, Navy Harbinger, Rapier and an Omen before the rest of them baled. We lost another Stilleto at some point but I'm not sure if it went down in the main battle or in a side show while in transit. We scooped the loot and quickly ran away, expecting a bigger response, one we wouldn't be able to handle.

Unfortunately as all targets engaged were Neutrals, my drones wouldn't assist and I missed a lot of the kills. Ended the night 12 kills for no loss.

But enough from me. Let hear what our enemies say about us on a recent Mittani article, explaining why with just two systems left in Minmatar hands the Amarr didn't press the offensive against Huola last March/April.



http://themittani.com/news/amarrminmatar-fw-update-imperial-tide-recedes

And for those interested here is a write up of the Arzad campaign:

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=3110416

Ok there has been a slight hiccup in the recruitment process in that CTRL-Q is currently 'full up'.

CTRL-Q was about 60 strong before the Amalgamation with Oxide Nation and Penguins at the start of the year. That took us to about 85 strong, but then we purged a dozen inactives. Since then there has been a gradual increase in membership. Currently we have 12 people on trial, which has been pretty consistent since January. Usually about 40% of them I end up booting, there has been a little natural wastage, but generally we have been gaining around 6-7 people per month and have now hit 101 members. I'm not quite sure how it works, must be CEO + 100 was our limit.

Anyway S5family, the CEO is currently training Corporation Management V, to allow him to then train Megacorp Management, which adds 100 people per level. That ought to hold us for a while. But it is going to take him about 5 days before he can update the corporation and we can start accepting new applications again. Sorry about that.

Monday 26th May 2014

Started the day running 9 TLF missions which brought in about 700K LP. Although I nearly forgot to hand them in as I was waiting for the Tier to bounce back up to 4.

After that I was running around with 5 or 6 others skirmishing away in various plexes across Huola, Kourmonen, Kamela and Dal. Some great little scraps, ended the day 25 kills for 4 losses.

Wednesday 28th May 2014

Zen was running an advertised Tristan/Inquisitor gang tonight. I came on a bit early and started the fleet up ready for him. Shortly I notice 4 WT AFs in a small plex in Kourm. I posted in corp telling people to get in fleet and comms and come and back me up. About 8 people joined fleet, but they are scattered and some are going to take a minute or two to arrive. Worried that too many would turn up at once and scare off the targets, I activate gate and go in. The WTs are in 2 Vengeance and 2 Retribution. I crash to range and then tackle one.

A couple of fleet mates arrive and I tell them to spread points. But I'm not paying attention to my position and get myself webbed and scrammed. I fire up both ASB but they only hold as long as it takes to burn through the charges. My Breacher goes down as does a friendly Tristan and Firetail, but 3 of the AFs are killed and the last one runs.

Zen is online and takes over the fleet and I reship into a Tristan. We start out and sight a Shadow Cartel Cruiser fleet, trying to bait in Kourm. Their comp isn't right and we suspect they have more hidden. So Zen ignores them and we head off towards Sosala, then Anka. A neutral gang or cruisers and BCs, follows behind us, again too big and blingy for our comp and we initially ignore them.

However, Weazls arrive in an Armor Cruiser gang with Logi and engage them on the Sosala gate in Kamela. We rush back and land on the opposite side of the gate. Then after a moment we jump in, only to see them cross jump us. They were deaggressed and had eyes on us. However, we weren't aggressed ourselves, so we jump back hoping to catch a few before they warp off. Instead we find them setting up. We break and engage, expecting Weazls to jump in as soon as their aggression is down. However, Weazls aren't on comms with us and frustratingly they have their own TS server when they are not working with us, which makes switching to their channel difficult. There is confusion as to whether they are going to jump in or not. Eventually they do, but we had been slaughtered by then. At least Zen, Lory and Myself all die, the three target callers. We pod run our way back to Huola, but Zen has had enough and decides to bin it there.

Lory takes over and we go out in the same comp, this time I'm in an Inquisitor. We go back to Kamela as it is vulnerable and the Amarr are trying to flip it with Dragoons. We land, they scatter, we catch and kill two. But then a much bigger Amarr gang of cruisers 45+ strong are reported incoming. Presently we come across Weazls engaging them on the Kamela gate in Kourm. They are in a logi statemate, so we wade in, thinking we will be largely ignored but instead we're primaried and slaughtered again. 3rd loss of the night.

The Amarr deaggress and jumped to Kourm. We try to contact Annah to join Weazls fleet, but he is distracted or scenting blood and wants to do it with his own corp only. Eventually we ship into kiting cruisers and head off to third party the fight as Weazls jump into Kourm and re-engage the Amarr. We jump in and burn to range, kill a Falcon and a Rook. But the Weazls logi wing of 3 Guardians had gone down and the rest of them bale. Lory orders bale and we should have all got out, but once again I'd not paid attention to my position and got tackled just before I went to warp. Loss 4 was a Caracal.

I'd had enough and binned it for a couple of hours. Then rejoined a few guys skirmishing around. We engaged a very skillful solo player in Sieside, he was boosted and I suspected drugged up too. We managed to kill him in a Hookbill and then an SFI, but he took down several of our frigates during the fights and I lost another Breacher at that point.

Really crap night to be frank, 10 kills for 5 losses and I think my main problem is that I'm distracted by a big event I'm planning which is due in a few days.