It's always fun watching news spread across the community, especially when it is something you were involved with. As the news of this kill started to filter around the different platforms it was interesting to watch the different reactions. Everyone has their own take, their own perspective, and their own axes that need to be ground. I'm eternally fascinated by this phenom.
First of all kudos to the pilot who undocked and flew the ship in combat. I don't have an AT ship so I have no idea what my own reaction would be. I'd like to believe I'd undock it and use it as intended, but I don't know. That ship alone is worth the amount I have lost in total over 16 years of playing Eve Online. Just to put that in some perspective. I am certainly not a risk averse player, but until you have one of these in your hangar I don't think it really hits home.
In my last post I avoided naming our players who were involved in this fight, solely to try and protect them. But the news has gotten out, along with a whole bunch of misconceptions. So let me try and set the record straight. As best I can.
We have some extremely talented and dedicated scouts in our fleets. And a whole web of intel gatherers working on finding out what is going on around us. As I suspect most combat oriented groups do. But in particular Ninouh is an exceptional pilot and extremely talented when it comes to scouting. In this specific case there were several tools in use that helped make this happen for us. Primarily the Keres that was lost while getting primary tackle. With links and abyssal rolled mods I believe the scram on that thing was around 30k or more. That is not an insignificant part of how we managed to catch the ship in the first place and can be rather unexpected.
And while we do have members who are also in pirate militia (which is not against the rules), in this case that player did not play a significant role in catching this ship. He was flying links in a boosher and did manage to help move a portion of our fleet closer to the target. But by then we had already secured multiple points on the Cybele from the Cynabals and Orthrus' in the fleet. Those ships happen to be very fast and, especially the Orthrus', also have very long points.
I know my own Cynabal was the second or third point that landed. I was not only running snakes, but I had also popped a Quafe when we entered local. And I was overheating the prop to burn the distance as quickly as possible. It was an Arty Cynabal also, so I was hitting the target from a significant distance already, which is one major reason why I managed to get top damage.
Oh, also, I was not FC'ing this fleet. The FC was Angor Mau. Just to set the record straight.
You should also know that there was a Raiju on the field with the Cybele. They were working together and this explains the fit the Cybele was running. He may have fit the ship differently if he was running it solo. Sadly we were unable to also catch the Raiju. And he mostly stayed at distance during the engagement. Can't blame him for that.
Eve often comes down to being in the right place at the right time in the right ship. And that is a big part of how this happened. But, more importantly, is the fact that we've been flying together as a group for a long time and we are well practiced at responding to opportunities. I was very impressed by our comms during the fight, how well everyone did their jobs and the calm nature of how well it was executed. That speaks volumes to our team's professionalism. Afterwards, well things got very excited obviously.
Anyway, hope that helps to clear things up a little more.