Having failed to get any kills the day before I led a small group of cruisers into caldari low sec to see what is happening. One of our members has never been on a PVP roam before so we decide that cruisers are good thing to take. They are cheap and yet still should be able to do something, we have four of them. We go on about our jumps one system after another and see nothing.
Finally in Kubinen we find a good number of people around and I give the order to spread out and search the belts. See if we can find people mining or ratting. We warp to the top four belts and nothing, just a few rats here and there. So I give the order to warp to the bottom four belts, again for three people nothing. I find a single drake doing some ratting and order the others to warp to me. While I am waiting for them I engage the drake, knowing that he will probably crush me but should allow the others time to arrive....they land and engage. It isn't going well for me, he has 5 hobgoblin 2's on me and I can't tank their fire and his heavy missiles.
Not 60 seconds after I engaged him I go down in flames.....but right before I do I see a Talos and a Tornado warp into the belt at range on us. DAMN, that isn't good at all. I order the others to withdraw to the safespots I have been having them make during our trip. It is too late for one of my pilots and she is taken down next. Apparently a stabber fleet issue arrived at some point and I missed it.
The other two manage to break contact and get to their safespots. I tell them to keep warping around the system as we have 15 minute GCC's to clear before they can jump back into high sec for the return trip to our base.
After 10 minutes of warping around one of my pilots makes a mistake and warps to one of the planets in the system. One of the hostile ships is waiting for him and he is tackled and killed.
He gets his pod out and we resume warping around the system. It has now been 17 minutes since we engaged and I order the other two pilots to jump into high sec and head back to base. Although my GCC has been cleared I remain behind with my final pilot. I refuse to leave one of my pilots behind when I have the ability to sit and remain with them. I have him warp to me and I squad warp us around the system using my safespots until his GCC clears.
After another 10 minutes of continuous warps his is clear and I order him to jump out of the system as well.
He warps to the gate and I follow him, we both jump clear of the system and head back to our base.
This roam has not gone well for us, three cruisers down and we killed nothing. However, not a single pod was lost and in every engagement you learn something new.
Turns out someone had a big op going in the system that I didn't realize when we engaged that drake. As we were all bouncing around safespots I did some dscans looking for probes and anything else when a cyno lites and we have not only a thantos and nidhoggur in the system with us but a wyvern. I think I am going crazy and clear my dscan and reset it....scan again and all three show up again. DAMN....ah well such is life in new eden.
Ranger Gama
-UOT-
