Rest and Making ISK

Well, it's been a while since my last post. In that time, we've finished our successful deployment in Oasa against Shadow of xXDeathXx and friends, doing 1.6 Billion damage and having 85% efficiency. For our first contract ever, that's not too bad.

Immediately after, we had an interested party contact us about deploying to Branch to take on Circle-Of-Two, which we did 2 days after leaving Oasa. In fact, a lot of our pilots were still in Oasa when our forces were in Branch. I thought this would be the easiest contract ever; CO2 are well known for being an "ISK Farmer" alliance and just more carebears. However, they gave us a very (un)pleasant surprise.

We were used to fighting Shadow of xXDeathXx, who are renters and, with a few exceptions, don't really form up to help a buddy who's being shot at by "stupid AFK cloakers." CO2 were a real alliance and thus, if we didn't kill a target fast enough, they'd come and kill us. They also tried baiting us, which worked a few times.

We had deployed to their home system of AH- on the first day, and it seemed a good start. In short order we had killed a Drake and a Myrmidon, with the help of our friends (now alliance-mates) Ammo Inc. However, shortly they started learning how we worked and would form up large gangs (sometimes 20+ with carrier support) and gatecamp us into systems. This, of course, was exactly what we wanted to a certain degree, as it furfilled the contract's intent of making them chase after us instead of ratting and mining.

The next day, I found a Hulk burning off station, pointed it, and quickly killed it. His buddies didn't come and the faction shield booster he dropped paid for about half of all of our losses in the entire campaign.

Over the next couple days, we got more kills, although we were deployed for disruption and the kills were just a bonus. However, I was impressed with CO2's ability to counter us, which proved very effective in some circumstances. They gave us some very good fights, although they did like to smacktalk a LOT. The contract finally ended nicely with a Navy Raven kill, which was done when I was offline.

After we finally returned home from Branch, tired but 400 million ISK richer, we eased into making some ISK to get ready for the next contract, which is still coming up. In the meanwhile, I lead "Secs Fleets" of cheap but effective T1 Cruisers around 0.0. For example, 2 days ago I led a roam into C-J6MT, the Red Alliance "holy land." We killed a Brutix on the way in, engaged on station against a Rokh, 2 Drakes, a Rifter, a Hound, and a Crow (we had maybe 6 T1 cruisers), and killed the Hound. Combined, these 2 kills brought us way above the amount of ISK lost and it was a lot of fun. I thought it couldn't get any better. It did.

Yesterday, we took the same route, although I took a Thrasher instead of an Arbitrator and it was a scheduled roam, so we had maybe 15 in fleet. However, for various reasons only 8 of them ended up in the actual roam. Upon finding C-J boring, we headed down to Curse. In Scalding Pass we almost killed a red hurricane on a gate, but he managed to burn back. Excited, we headed on until we got to HLW-. We all jumped...

...straight into a gatecamp. I saw the ticker "-10.0" and almost freaked out. We were in a Pandemic Legion gatecamp! The masters of PVP in EVE! With that excitement over, I ordered the fleet to primary the Flycatcher who's bubble we were all stuck in. The Flycatcher managed to get out, and we lost 3 ships, leaving about 5 of us in T1 cruisers against 6 Pandemic Legion in Tech II ships. However, I ordered the fleet to get out to a safespot, which they did.

Finally, we warped back to the gate out of HLW- to KLMT-, and...landed in a sling bubble. Then the Flycatcher warped in along with the rest of the Pandemic Legion fleet. We quickly killed the Flycatcher and his pod, followed by the Cerberus and his pod, before mostly dying horribly to the rest of the ships. Still, we were all hooting and backslapping in vent. Not only had we killed 10x more than we had lost, but we had done it against Pandemic Legion, in equal numbers, in Tech I cruisers. I was very proud of my guys. The Battle.

The End. :)