Tuesday, December 4, 2007

The Chaos of Battle

It has been a while since I have reported in. There hasn’t been a ton of action. We’ve had holiday and I’ve been spending a lot of time hanging around the station. A few weeks back I did go out with an alliance gang. Not much of a story to that one. Tonight, we had a nice battle in KFR, our home system.

I’ll start with a brief on the alliance gang. We had a seven man gang. We did some roaming and found a group several jumps from home. Some scanning indicated that they were a bit more than we could handle as they had a few battleships. On the way home we did manage to catch a Crescent and Hammer battlecruiser. It tried to run away, but the attempt was fruitless.

http://www.red-skull.co.uk/killboard/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=1962

Let’s move on to the more exciting story, what happened earlier tonight. I was lounging around in the bar having a few drinks chatting it up on the subspace with a new Hull Miner. The alliance was watching a group of 5 in Y-W, but had been unable to snag them as of yet.

A couple of targets were reported in D85, no good intel. Then all hell broke loose. Frantic reports were coming over alliance subspace. An engagement had broken out at the D85 gate in KFR and the request for reinforcements had been made. Reports were from two to five attackers, Skulls engaged. It’s Rule of Three. I’ve fought these guys before, and won. Against my better judgment, without decent comms, a plan, or even a fleet commander I undocked my Drake and fired up the warp drives with a target of 50k off the gate. The engines roared and I was flung across the system with the gate rapidly approaching.

My warp tunnel collapsed and I began scanning to see what the tactical situation was. Four or five hostile targets. I started locking up ships, the situation was chaotic. Tactically speaking I was in good shape, no closer than 40k to anyone. Without a fleet commander I assessed damage and fired missiles at the most damaged ship. It was a cruiser and it fell quickly. Looking around I saw 3 or 4 friendly ships with me. More hostiles were warping in, some warping out.

While all this was happening. An enemy Eris kicked in its micro-warpdrive and closed in on me, dropped a bubble. I was just on the edge of it so I aligned my ship at a belt that put me on a course out of the bubble. As the cruiser exploded I scanned my targets. A battlecruiser, Hurricane, was the next most damaged ship. I launched a salvo of missiles at it. The Gurista modified missiles screamed at the enemy battlecruiser menacingly. Checking enemy locations the only think close to me is the harmless Eris. All it can do is try to keep me from warping. Its feeble attack systems have no hope of breaching my shield. I stay focused on the hurricane and launch another salvo of Gurista missiles at it. Its shields are quickly giving up.

I look around again, looking for friendly ships. Do I count two, three. Also, a new enemy contact, a Scorpion. My friends are complaining that he has them jammed. I have no hope of breaking his shield myself, so I stay focused on my target. The heat of the battle has me overloaded with information. A group of drones is on me. I check my shield. I laugh to myself as the drones are unable to present enough danger to even register on the shield levels. A final brutal salvo of missiles lands on the Hurricane and its hull explodes. I think to myself that it’s a shame I’m missing sending these pilots home in their clones, I watch helpessly as their pods warp away. Somewhere in all of this mess it’s reported that the group from Y-W has come into KFR and are joining the fight. Are they friends of these Rule of Three guys, or just looking for some action?

I scan the remaining targets. Scorpion, Huginn, the Eris. There may be something else too. It seems like the Huginn is taking damage, so I unleash some missiles on it. Check the shield, the drones that were on me have now gone idle. They must have belonged to the Hurricane, or another target. The Huginn’s shields are gone, we get into armor it will be down in no time. I’m 50k from it, no way to warp jam it. Then the enemy forces decide to disengage. They warp away one by one. My slow Drake helpless to keep them locked down at this range. Over comms the call to regroup at the station is made. I engage the warp and blast across the system back to the station.

We’ve taken three losses at this point. A Manticore, a Typhoon and a Crow. Moridin is on comms furious that he was captured by a bubble. There is some confusion as to whether it was a friendly bubble or a present left by the fleeing Eris. I wonder if I made the wrong decision, maybe I should have taken out the Eris. Moridin had gotten trapped at the gate in his Typhoon, and while the rest of us were enjoying relatively high shield strengths he was taking one for the team.

At the station we gathered. There were eight or so of us. A manticore from the enemy gang was cockily decloaking and recloaking around the station. Taunting us. Laughter and cheers broke out on comms when one of our dictor pilots was able to microwarp up onto him. The foolish Manticore pilot thought his cruise missiles would drop the speeding Flycatcher. Instead Pavel the Flycatcher pilot crushed the Manticore and podded him just to send the message home: This is our space.

We took a larger loss with the Typhoon down, but we held the field of battle. Moridin may not agree, but I call this battle a win on our part. We defended our space. We drove the enemy off. There were three losses on our side, three on theirs (four if you include the pod). They were formed up in a gang looking for ganks. We were unorganized pirates shooting at anything that moved.

The lesson of this battle is clear. We need to work on our organization. We need to get alliance members in gang. We need them on comms, and we need fleet commanders giving orders. If we had all these, we could have taken out the Scorpion and saved the Typhoon.

On the good side, this is exactly the type of action I have been yearning for. It was a great battle. We held the field, therefore we won.

Here is the battle killboard link:

http://www.red-skull.co.uk/killboard/?a=kill_related&kll_id=2329

Ammendment:
Let it be known that Icas Otame from An Eye for an Eye, Rule of Three is a coward who pads his killboard stats by not posting his loss mails. Notice that he was able to post his kill on Moridin, but failed to post a loss. EVER.

http://killboard.rulealliance.com/?a=pilot_detail&plt_id=7729

Apparently the Rule of Three is to lie about your capabilities.

I was unable to find a killboard for the other kill Ann Rand. The Nintendo Generation doesn't appear to have anything online.

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