Over the weekend I got accused on Twitter of being one of the reasons people quit playing Eve Online by one of those weird accounts with one follower. Then we had perhaps our worst Alliance Tournament practice so far where nothing we tried worked like it was supposed to work. So it only seemed natural to FC a fleet of scum-sucking Pirates yesterday and try to have some fun. What could go wrong?
I had called for armor frigates but in true Stay Frosty fashion our pilots took the definition of what an "armor frigate" might be and got creative with it. We had Ventures. Nergals. Garmurs. A Draugur. And more along for the ride. As for me I had recently discovered an old Cruor that was sitting unused in a nearby system, so I decided to bring that along. I had been flying it a little the week before even though it had two neuts on it for some unknown reason. I decided to leave it that way to honor whatever it was I was doing whenever it was that the ship had been originally fitted. Again, just for fun.
Everyone was feeling their beans yesterday and anxious to get moving. Even before the roam had officially started we were out and about looking for targets. The "where is fleet" requests kept changing so quickly that I had to start looking to make sure where we were at any given time. I won't bore you with all the small engagements we managed to secure along the way. Frigates started dying as we moved along. Which is what happens on these roams. We started to hear reports about a Gila that might be running missions nearby and I sent our scouts out to start looking for it. We waited on a gate so as not to spook the Gila. They can be nervous ships. That's when the gate flashed.
Sure enough the Gila had jumped into us. Without logi a bunch of frigate-like ships started shooting him. Shoot, warp off, maintain point, warp back, fighting like that is like a dance. But once you become practiced at it, it becomes second nature. I'm playing this up in anticipation for something that happens later, so bear with me. Oh, and yes the Gila vaporized.
More kills. And then someone noticed a Procurer on scan named BAIT. I had seen this ship on scan at various times during the week and just assumed, since I was usually alone, that it wasn't worth the effort. That plus the fact that it never settled down long enough to catch. Since it was a Razor pilot we figured he was probably actually bait, so we went for it. We were hoping he was bait, but he wasn't. Bummer.
While waiting on another gate for our scouts a Catalyst jumped thru. Once again we began the gate dance but this time it was easier because it was a smaller ship. The Catalyst died obviously. But just then Angor posted a funny avatar profile in fleet chat which I opened. And yes, I am totally 100% blaming him for doing it as I forgot to notice the gate guns shooting me until I was already in structure. Boom! The old neut filled Cruor evaporated and now I have a pink NPC badge on my zKill page. Sigh.
The roam continued while I slinked back to Letta to re-ship. Astral was kind enough to loan me another Cruor, yet again an old one that had been sitting in his hangar for years. This one also had neuts fitted and no prop-mod. So I fixed the prop-mod issue, but once again I decided to leave the neuts. As I was flying back someone in local convo'd me about an Astra that was coming out in a few minutes, wondering if we could assist with the take-down. I asked everyone if they'd be interested and, of course, they all wanted to do it. So I quickly turned around and headed back to Letta to re-ship into something better suited for a structure take-down.
Not much to report, we all jumped into Oracles and other high dps ships and went back to help take down the Astra. We were hoping to grab the core, but a handful of defenders showed up and they managed to grab it before we could. Still, the Astra exploded. I talked with the Astra owners afterwards and they were cool about it, turns out someone in their group wanted to learn about structures and put one up without everyone knowing. I'm guessing they learned that like anything in real estate the key point is location, location, location.
After that we had some time left and decided to jump back into our frigs for a quick jaunt up towards Heyd and OMS. See if we could get into any trouble. We chased a few targets and then I got some intel that there was a big frigate fight going on up around Nenn, so we decided to head in that direction. We never made it that far. Lufax reported on a Stabber that was alone in a medium plex in OMS and he went and grabbed tackle. I sent a couple of ships along to help him so he didn't end up dying. Which he did anyway. But we did manage to grab the Stabber.
And then magic happened. As always I am constantly d-scanning while we are engaged, moving, or otherwise in space. It is a habit. I want to constantly know what is around me. And so it was that I first saw the Kronos on scan. Now OMS does have a HS entrance gate and sometimes you can see some weird stuff on d-scan in that system. But usually shortly afterwards you'll lose the contact because they've jumped back into HS. And sure enough, the Kronos disappeared off scan. So I warped our gang straight to the Heyd gate. If he'd gone back into HS there was nothing we could do, but on the off-chance he hadn't done that...
So, just to be clear here - we don't see a lot of Kronos-ing in Low Sec. When we do they are usually in a mission with scouts, intel, and pre-aligned. What we also never see is a Kronos auto-piloting to gates! But sure enough, this one landed right smack in the middle of a scum-sucking Pirate gang, in low sec, on the Heyd gate in OMS - I mean this isn't Tama levels of oops, but it is very, very close. Now, from our perspective, we are all in frigates. So potentially this sucker might go into siege mode at anytime. A huge fleet of enemy ships could pop thru the gate, or any number of horrible things could go wrong. So we started bumping him and preparing to do the shoot, warp off, come back, keep him pointed dance. But then - he aggressed us.
There are times when I wonder if we don't have too much information and guides and tutorials and videos and blog posts and other information aimed at helping people play Eve better, and then something like this happens. There is no reason why this should have happened, but yet here it is. He doesn't even have the same ammo loaded into his guns, which means they aren't even grouped. I could go on and on, but I will leave some of the discoveries to be made for you. I don't want to spoil anything.
After that kill we decided that the day was not going to get any better and we went home and docked up. That is one for the record books.
Stay Frosty.