The Long Wait

The ping goes out to form up dreadnaughts and boot carriers.  I figure why not, I haven't shot anything with my Thanatos in a while so will go.  I dock my pod with the carrier and make sure that the new hull rep drones that I had shiped in are ready to go.  Shouldn't need them on a combat op with capitals but you never can tell where or what we will end up doing so might as well have them along just in case.

The drones are ready and I make sure that fuel is in the carrier and everything is standing by for the jump.

All we have to do is wait for the FC to give the order to undock and we are gone......after 15 minutes he says that the tower isn't out of reinforced yet so get some more guys into the fleet.....another 20 minutes and the tower still isn't out yet but we need more people so send some messages to your corps and get some people going.....another 20 minutes and it is change out your DL2's to heavy neuts and points we are going up against a rupture gang that looks to be trying to save the towers we are going after.  So lets make sure we can cap them out and hold them with long points.

Ok that seems odd but hey if we get to shoot something why not.  I refit to my disruptor and two heavy nuets and we wait some more.

Over an hour after the first call to form up the capital fleet we get the order to undock and jump to the first set of cyno's and prepare for combat.  Dreadnaughts and carriers begin jumping away to the cynos and move us to the final staging system.

Everyone arrives at the final station and we dock up to make sure that fuel is ready in the bays and that our capacitors have fully recharged.

The order to undock and jump is given.  As we are undocking and jumping the FC calls for us to get reps on him as soon as we jump into the system.  We are jumping directly on top of his carrier.

We jump in and his carrier is 5,000 m from me....I lock him up and as soon as my targeting system locks I put a capital armor repper on his ship.  Forutunatly we are able to save his carrier with minimal effort, helps when nearly 60 carriers jump in and each put a capital grade repper on your ship.

Our dreadnaughts go into siege mode and begin locking up the targets while the carriers get our gardes deployed and lock up the hostile capital ships that are near the pos.  One enemy dreadnaught and two carriers are within 20 km of our fleet as we jump in.

All the carriers begin putting nuets onto the enemy capital ships along with warp disruptors on anything in range and we begin to engage.

Their is a freindly sub-capital fleet in the area with us who are also engaging and we do our best to provide cover fire for them as they do so for us.

Within moments the three capital ships have been destroyed and we begin to engage the sub-capital support.  The enemy has a mixture of T3 cruisers with T1 cruisers and T1 destroyers along with some interceptors to provide fast tackle.

The FC gives the simple order to set our targets by range and fire at will.  We all begin shooting whatever is closets to us with occasional changes as the FC spots something that we need to focus on.  We have one target that is out nearly 90 km from us when the FC calls him primary and we all have to refit our carriers to get the heavy neuts off and the DLA2's back on to shoot that far.

Once refitted the T2 cruiser is quickly taken down and we go back to clearing out the other ships near us.

The FC gives us the order to stand down and hold our fire the remaining ships in the area of the pos are friendly and we are to recall our drones and get ourselves ready to jump back to the staging system.

The dreadnaughts are ordered to jump out while our carrier group covers them.  The dreads all report they are safe and our carrier group prepares to jump away as well.

The FC orders all the carriers to jump and we all head back to our staging system.

Elapsed time between our jumping in to save the FC and the order to hold fire......4 minutes.

Dread
Carrier 1
Carrier 2
Hictor
Destroyer
T3 1
T3 2

Apparently we were not supposed to shoot the destroyers cause they were friendly.....but ooops.  :)  We didn't kill too all many of them.....

Such is war.

Ranger Gama
TPOG

Triage Green

The ping goes out that we need carriers specifically triage carriers for an op in the coming few minutes.  Having only just gotten cleared by the coalition to fly carriers I decide that I need more experience in them and what the hell might as well go.

The call is for shield or shield transfer boot carriers.  I decide to go with a shield transfer boot carrier for the op and get into my Nid and wait for the orders to undock.

Not much is happening as cyno's are moved into position and scouts report on the area to make sure that we are not getting ready to jump into an ambush.

We get the order to undock and stop our motion outside the station to prepare for jump.  If you have never seen a capital fleet undocking it is a sight to behold when over 100 carriers all undock as one and prepare to go.

The FC tells us that we are ready and to jump to the cyno in the target system and we all jump.  Space seems to tremble as our drives activate and punch holes in the space time continuum to allow us to jump so many light years in a fraction of a second.

As we land he gives us the order to stop our ships and get our cap chains going to make sure that power is being shared among the boot carriers as best as possible.  The triage carriers don't bother with it given that as soon as we activate our triage module we will have so much interference that cap transfer modules no long function.  We also loose control of any deployed drones we have out and we can no longer receive remote repair assistance.

This is enough to make any pilot nervois about actually activating a triage module while hostiles in the area, even with the T2 version that I have equiped it means I am volunerable for 5 minutes.  While it does boost our ability to help repair others and our own repair capacity the fact that we can't receive any reps while in triage makes us worried.

We target the first starbase and the order is given to go triage green and rep the tower.  The 10 or so triage carriers all acknowledge and we send out the command to start the cycle.  Now we are relying on the other members of our fleet to protect us while we rep up the tower.

With a medium tower as the rep target and so many other carriers who are just using a shield transfer without going into triage we are able to rep the tower in less than 3 minutes and must now wait for the cycle to finish.

The FC tells us "Triage Red" on comms within 1 minute of starting the cycle as he is monitoring the tower and can see how fast its shields are going up.  We all still have 2 to 3 minutes when the shields are above the 50% line to allow for it to have the strontium replaced.

As the triage cycle ends we all align to the next moon and are warped to the next tower.  Where we repeat the whole process again.

As we finish repping the second tower the FC orders us to go triage red and we prepare to jump away.

The return cyno's are in position in our staging system and we are ready to head out.  Given how vulnerable our triage carriers are the FC orders all the triage carriers to jump away while the boot carriers cover us from any surprise attack.

Once all the triage carriers are away and docked up the boot carriers jump away as well.  Total time for our op to repair the towers and get back to our staging system, about 15 minutes.

I wish all our ops would be that easy and simple, especially when I am flying triage and don't have as much firepower on board my ship.

Ranger Gama

TPOG

Logi Freak Out

Call comes down from one of our squads main FC’s that he is going to be trying something new for our fleet.  He wants to attempt to engage BNI (Brave) with a harpy gang supported by scimitar logistics.  The key is that he doesn’t want to go in with overwhelming force, with the idea that BNI might actually undock and engage us if we give them the numerical advantage.  It is a risk but it sounds like a good plan.  If we are successful we will have engaged a fleet that outnumbers ours 3 or 4 to 1.  If we loose it will have been to a larger fleet that did a good jump holding us down and killing our ships.  Either way it might induce them to undock again and we can keep it up getting some more fights out of them.

The form up went well we had just over three squads of ships to go and engage them and it seemed their numbers were between 60 and 70, so a 2 to 1 advantage for them.  As we make our way the 4 jumps to the BNI staging system our scouts relay to the FC that Razor, another coalition member, is already engaging the BNI forces using Munnins.  As to be expected the kitchen sink fleet of BNI is not doing well against the coordinated fire of long range artillery fitted heavy assault cruisers.

BNI’s FC elects to dock up in the face of so much fire power and there is basically nothing we can do about it.  They have their own scouts out watching us, we know they do from cloak somewhere near the station, but with the razor gang still in the system they will not come out to engage us.

After nearly 30 minutes of playing around with them the FC decides that we will head home and stand down for a while.

On our way back to our staging system in Hemin we encounter the mobile warp disruption bubbles that razor has anchored on the gate in doril that we must jump in from.  They have put up enough of them that our whole fleet must pass through them over 40 km to get clear for warp.  Our fleet clears the bubbles and we make it back into hemin to the station and stand down for a rest.

Approximately 45 minutes later a new call goes out from the same FC to get into our Naga fleet doctrine and prepare to engage the enemy.  I run back to my pod and get into my scimitar once again to provide logistics support for the fleet.

We head out and are not really able to engage anything, there is a caracal gang (HML) that is warping about a system 5 jumps away and not really willing to engage us.  The FC tries several times to get a warp in on them and get them pined down so we can engage but each time it fails.  They are too far away for us to be able to kill quickly and simply warp off.

After 30 or so minutes of this going on the FC says the hell with this and we are heading home.  Now in order to get back home we have to go through the same bubbles that we did less than an hour ago.  Everyone on our fleet knows this and is annoyed but we still have to use that gate.

As we jump in the FC orders everyone to align to a specific point in space and turn on our microwarp drives (MWD’s) to get clear of the bubbles as fast as possible.  Given that we all come out of the jump in a random location 12 ish km from the gate those that are on the near side are up to 25 km from the people who came out on the far side of the gate.  With our MWD’s on the fleet is spreading out as individual capsuleer pilots have different skill levels with their ships.

It is at this point that one of the logistics guys (who was an unknown to me before that fleet) gets on comms and orders everyone to turn off their MWD’s because we are getting to spread out.  Now normally I am one who doesn’t speak up on our comms to often but in this case he was giving orders that the FC didn’t tell him to.  Not only was he not the FC but I was actually leading the logi group for that fleet.  And while I will admit I had already turned off my MWD to stay in range of the others that I came out nearly perfectly on that side of the gate and was well clear of the bubble, the fact that he said it made some of the people turn theirs off early.

My call over comms nearly overlapped the FC’s call to tell him that isn’t his call to make and to be quiet.  It is at this point that something I have never seen/heard before on a fleet happened.  He said that this isn’t how the other FC’s do it and he isn’t going to take it anymore and said “minus one scimi” and left the fleet.

With only about 30 or 35 of us in this fleet comms had been really good up until this point when virtually everyone on the channel just lost it and told him well fine we don’t want your kind here anymore and get the fuck out.

Everyone on the fleet has since started to call it the logi freak out.  Not sure what will happen to that capsuleer but given that the FC of this fleet is one of the two leaders of this squad I have a feeling that he is done in our group.  The amazing thing is that one of the others had a full scale malfunction on his ship and lost primary computer control.  So our whole fleet doubled back to make sure he was safe before we left the system.  He was able to go through a restart protocol and get his ship back up in less than a minute and we all warped off to our staging system together.  The logi who lost it on comms probably beat us back to hemin by 5 min at the most.  As a logistics guy it makes me so annoyed when he did that.  We have enough trouble finding logistics people to fly on ops and now this moron is making the rest of us look bad.

Ranger Gama

TPOG

PS

The most common question on comms after he went nuts was “*******can we shoot him?” followed by “but ******** we will all say it was a tactical overview bug and we didn’t know he was blue”.  In the end the FC ordered us not to fire but I am 100% sure that if he had the fleet would have fired and he would have died.

Capital Move Op

Finally after nearly two years working on skills and saving up for it I have my carrier and been accepted into the capital fleet of both TNT and the CFC as a whole.  My first official fleet was to help move not only my stuff but three other coalition mates ships to our new deployment in Hemin.  The coalition squad that I am in along with about 300 other capsuleers has been deployed back to curse as of last week to help shoot everyone.  The orders are to “shoot all the things” except for structures.  We really aren’t in the sov attacking mode right now after the long grinds of the Halloween war most of us don’t want to get into that kind of madness again anytime soon.  For the most part we are taking part in roams and getting into fights with the Hero coalition and the Provi bloc people.

The signal comes in to prepare to leave the staging system of QPO and jump out to Hemin.  Given that we are taking both carriers and dreadnaughts it has to be a slightly longer route cause the dreadnaughts don’t have the same jump range as the carriers, so annoying.

The FC orders the fleet to undock and has the first cyno pilot light his cyno.  We all jump and so on and so on down the chain.  One jump out the FC has the whole fleet regroup for the last jump into hemin.  We all dock and prepare to leave on his order.  He orders the cyno ship to undock in hemin and the fleet to undock and prepare to jump.  Given that he doesn’t want to give away who is aobut to jump in he has hired a non-cfc member to light the cyno for us to jump to.  We all trust that the FC knows this unaligned capsuleer and that he isn’t about to lead us into an ambush.

The cyno goes up and 20 carriers and dreadnaughts jump in.  At the same time that we are jumping in a coalition squad member undocks his ship and see a neutral cyno on the undock and locks him up.  The neutral cyno is calling for help that he is going to die if he is fired on.  The FC orders any carrier that hasn’t already docked to get ready to help the cyno if he is actually attacked.  The FC also spams out in local and in our squad specific comm channels to stand down and not engage that cyno ship but the other capsuleer either doesn’t see or ignores him and opens fire on the cyno ship.

With his act of aggression the station will not allow him to dock for one minutes, as it does to us all, to prevent someone from doing exactly what he just did and docking back up to be safe from retribution.

Our comm channels go nuts with people asking what had happened and if the cyno ship is down.  

Fortunately, the whole fleet managed to jump in before the cyno was killed and thus was not a huge issue of capitals jumping into random locations in the system when the targeting beacon went down.

We finally get a hold of the pilot who killed our cyno ship and explain to him that maybe he should think about not shooting a cyno when it is lite on a station and 20 allied capitals jump in.  That maybe that cyno was hired to help give cover to our capital operation.

In the end the cyno generator survived the explosion of the ship and we were able to salvage it so nothing was really lost.  Except of course for the neutral capsuleer who got shot….he was not happy at all.  In fact he was so mad that FC promised him we would shoot the guy if he cam back and tried it again.

Thus ended my first official capital operation as a member of the CFC capital group.

Ranger Gama

TPOG

0-W778

The hell camp of 0-W778

I connect my pod to my ship and prepare to jump out of the system.  The whole coalition has been given orders to attack the N3 staging system of 0-W and hell camp it.  We are going to be in the system attacking every starbase and putting fleets on the outposts undock around the clock for the next week.  The hell camp is something that I have been involved with before and it is never a fun thing.  You basically sit in your ship on the undock and wait for the enemy to undock something so you can attack them, but of course they pretty much never do in anything of substance.

The cyno’s go up and carriers and dreads jump in along with sub-caps being thrown across space by the titan bridges.  As we all land in the system the capitals head immediately off to incap (defang) the poses so that the subcaps can bring in the warp disruptors to trap any enemy ships inside them.

On the undock of the station are over 500 allied ships waiting for the enemy to come out were our weapons can get at them.

We are now in a holding pattern just waiting to see what the enemy will do.  Our spies confirm that they know we are here and are talking among their leadership on what action to take in dealing with us.

We all settle in for a long siege….

Three Days Later….

I warp from the staging starbase that has been put up for all the allied ships to use toward the outpost and prepare for combat.  So far it has been very quiet the enemy has not attempted a big break out of the assets that we have trapped in the outpost.

While my logistics cruiser isn’t going to be helpful in such a battle my job is to help repair the battleships that are the primary component of the sieging fleet.

Last report has the coalition fleets in the system at two full domi fleets (over 500 battleships with their logistic support) and a 170 man interceptor gang running around making trouble on the gates and starbases at will.  Additionally, we have carrier support at the main pos to help deal with anything that comes up and the rest of the capital fleet is on standby should the enemy try something that our domi and interceptor fleets cannot handle.

So far the enemy is only undocking interceptors or other small ships.  Every once in a while a battleship or carrier will undock and dock back up as soon as he is able to.  We are not sure why they are even bothering to undock those ships but it is very likely they are just as bored as we are and looking for some brief excitement.  For the most part they manage to dock back up and get safe before the fleet can engage them but every now and then one makes a mistake and is killed.

For now we are all just sitting and waiting for something to happen.  The fleet commanders know how dull this is and are doing everything they can to keep the fleet entertained, story time and recounting of old battles is a favorite past time of one FC.

We are expecting to take over the system within the next two days and once that happens the leadership has said this will be a deaded system, with no one allowed docking rights to prevent spies from evacuating assets that are still trapped inside.

Ranger Gama

TPOG

Enemy Nyx Down

I am sitting in my quarters in G-0 going over the routine paperwork that even for a capsuleer never seems to end.  Ammo expended, drones lost, modules damaged, ships repair lists, crew rotations….on and one with this shit that takes so much of my time.  I swear sometimes I should just gather all my executive officers together and shoot one or two of them….I bet I wouldn’t have nearly as much paperwork requests from the rest of them if I did….note to self call a meeting of all the executive officers stationed here in G-0.

As I reach for the comm unit to call them and have them meet me in the hanger bay an emergency signal comes up on my screen from one of the coalitions primary fleet commanders.  He is calling for domi’s to get into a fleet and get undocked for action without delay.

I run down my quarters toward my pod to prepare for battle.  As I get into my pod and connect my neural interface I send the order to prep my exequror class logistic ship for the fleet, while at the same time I begin the connection sequence to the communications systems to find out what exactly is happening.  As my pod docks and I prepare to undock the word comes over our communications systems that a hostile Nyx has been tackled and our coalition mates are dying trying to hold it in place for us to arrive to relieve them.  I quickly switch out the EC-300 drones in the bay for Hobgoblin 2’s and give the launch command on the ship.

Once in space I form up on the G-0 undock with the rest of the fleet and within a few moments we are warping to a coalition starbase that has been deployed in the system and preparing for a titan bridge.  The fleet lands on the titan and we get the order to make sure we are in range of the bridging field.  The bridge goes up and the fleet jumps through to the target system where we find another allied titan and another Starbase.  Again we get into bridging range and the bridging field goes active and we are thrown light years across space….to yet another titan and another starbase.

Three bridges so far….how far out is this damn Nyx?

We get into position on the titan and the bridge goes up and we are tossed more light years to a new system.  As we enter the system and the distortion fields subside from our ships our sensors begin to get readings on the system and the immediate area.

Finally the enemy Nyx is within visual range.  Our fleet warps down to it as our interdictors land and drop bubbles to hold the enemy ship in place while our domi fleet kills it.  I lock up the FC and other critical ships to keep my eye on them while we begin to spread out from the Nyx.  The domi’s have dropped their sentry drones and go to work clearing off hostile sub-caps that have come to try and save their super-carrier.  I deploy my hobgoblins and set them to attack the Nyx, who is just 5 or 6,000 meters from us.  My drones will provide very little in terms of damage but at least they are hitting the nyx and causing some damage to it.

None of our domi’s are taking any real damage from the enemy fleet….the dedicated channel that all capsuleers have to request shield or armor repair is virtually silent.  Enemy sub-caps are exploding one after another and the FC gives the order to engage the Nyx.  The entire fleet turns all of its combat drones against the nyx, who has been under capacitor neutralization pressure from all the domi’s the whole time the sub-cap engagement was going on, is unable to run any defensive modules.

Once the fleet turns its full attention to him the Nyx bleeds armor very rapidly and is soon in structure.  He explodes with a very satisfying flash and wreckage flies all over the area.  With our disruption bubbles still in place his pod soon follows his Nyx.

We loot the field of anything that has survived and head back home to G-0.  The remnants of the coalition fleet that first engaged the nyx come with us to get a titan bridge back to their staging system.

The whole fleet has a good time bantering on the way back to G-0....I get back and stand down to go and have a nice drink with some of the fleets other capsuleer commanders.   Seems like I was supposed to be doing something before that call came in but can't seem to remember what it was.

Ranger Gama

TPOG

((The nyx pilot claims a bug that showed him jumping out before our sabre arrived on field and pinned him down.  The video does appear to him attempting to jump out but it remains to be for sure stated by CCP what type of bug it was.)

Anti-Piracy Operation

I give the order to prepare the ship for an anti-piracy patrol within the system, while my corpmates does the same with his ship.  We are both ready and undock at the same time.  Right outside the station, first a Tengu undocks, one of the most fearsome missile cruisers in the cluster, and right behind is a Thanatos class carrier.  With its bays full of both automated attack drones and manned fighters, it is capable of great things in the hands of a skilled pilot.  I begin a scan of the system looking for any pirate activity.  With most of alliance deployed on the far side of the cluster, the pirates have become by far bolder and we have decided to eliminate some before returning to the warzone.  Our ability to jump clone back and forth is a great advantage.

The scans come up positive for several pirate bases in the system and I select one signature that I recognize as a primary base.  I initiate the squad warp to the target location knowing that the Tengu will land well before the carrier does but I trust the Tengu’s capsuleer commander to hold his own against the pirate ships for the few moments it will take me to arrive.

I come out of warp and immediately see missiles and turret weapons fire heading toward the tengu, he has already engaged the enemy and they are firing on him with every weapon they have.  I deploy sentry drones and set them to link with the tengu’s offensive systems.  Now whatever my corpmate fires on my deployed sentry drones will attack at the same time.  This greatly increases our effective firepower, another little perk of being a capsuleer.

Most of the pirate fleet switches over to my carrier and my shields begin to drop, but I am not worried as everyone knows the Thanatos class carriers are armor heavy ships and the dozen or so battleship and cruiser class pirate ships are no match for both a carrier and tengu.  I pulse the armor repair systems when needed to handle the incoming damage.

My corpmates tengu is firing heavy missiles effectively at neatly a round a second hitting two enemy targets at the same time and along with the fire of my sentry drones makes short work of the enemy ships.  The enemy has called in reinforcements that appear and begin to engage us but they split their fire between us rather than attempting to overwhelm our defenses on either ship individually.  Clearly they have never engaged in battle against capsuleer commanded starships and don’t understand how to fight capsuleer commanded ships.  It is funny to watch their attempt to engage us and fail to cause the even the most minor of damage to our ships.

Eventually their reinforcements simply stop coming and we finish littering the field with destroyed pirate hulls.  Given that none of them are commanded by a capsuleer the escape pods of their crews don’t show up on the main tactical systems and I didn’t care enough to reconfigure the secondary systems to search for escape pods.  We were not using smart bombs so mast of the pirate crews should have survived.  Note to self to send a mail to the recruiting agents and have them check for those crewmembers, they maybe pirate scum but they do tend to have some very well trained people…..and well trained people aren’t as easy to get even with the hugely expensive salaries I have to pay.

I scan the system again and select the next target that shows the most activity and we head off again.  Over the next three hours, we attack and destroy six different pirate bases costing untold billions in damages to the pirate organization.  For each base we have attacked, nothing remains after we are finished.

Our ships have taken no significant damage and we dock up knowing that we have done our part to keep the system free from pirates.  I give all of my crews the stand down order and 72-hour liberty.  I will be at a special conference for the next four days and will not need them.

Even a capsuleer needs some down time now and again.

Ranger Gama

TPOG