In The News Vol. #4

In The News
Vol. #4

• AFK

Well, I am going away for a bit, and I have left the care of the corporation in the hands of the Senate. I do not anticipate any wild debauchery or occurrences while I am away, nor any critical emergencies, but just in the rare event that something does happen, all the officers and some of the managers know how to reach me.

You know the drill, although I will not be updating the corporate/casual schedule, considering we are at a time of war, and all days are corporate anyways. Pairing up in twos or greater to achieve safety in numbers is paramount during a time of open conflict, not that I expect our WTs to do more than fit officer gear and piss their ships away in pitched 1v1 combat against crazy odds. Seriously, a gankfit Nighthawk worth 1.3bil against an Abaddon? Can we say no contest.

• Instinct; alive and well.

So last night we ganked a mission fit Cerberus. He happened to be coming our way as we went his way. Funny thing is that he nearly got away, but my instinct kicked in. Having done all the intelligence reports myself, I know this guy never flies Cerberus in combat, so I had a sneaking suspicion he was trying to earn some ISK to afford to PvP more, esp. in HAM Drakes, since he seems to like high yield missiles.

So we land on the gate two or three seconds too late to tackle him and he warps off, we pursue, our scouts making best speed to keep up with him. A jump into the pursuit, he warps off first to a gate, then off into a safe. Bingo. I know this game, it's called bait and switch. He was betting on the entire fleet running in a straight line like a hive mind. Only this mind had not one but three wholly capable FCs. So as the report is coming in that he warped off to a safe, I holler over comms that he is doubling back on us, and we should get tackle on the gate we just came through. Sure enough he lands on grid seconds later as our tackle are in route. Needless to say, he left shortly thereafter without his ship, and short 180mil that he had before, and was now relieved of.

Sorry, but bait and switch is the oldest trick in the book, and it does not work if you remain in local and are visibly seen to jump to a safe. He had no aggression, his best bet would have been to dock or log off like a chump. Thankfully for us, he had some nerves, and decided that it was more honorable to give chase and let us have our opportunity to dare and catch him. Good fight, my enemy, good fight.

• Border null, a killing ground.

I have noticed a discouraging amount of losses in the border systems of Providence along the low security pipeline. Please, do not linger in major pipelines, esp. those near capital systems. It is just no good at all. And do not travel more than 3-4 jumps without a scout or stabs if you are in a battlecruiser or larger.

• Suddenly questions...

I am usually a pretty helpful guy and pretty understanding, but there is one thing that gets in my craw every time. Nosy endless questions. Where are you guys? How many ships are you flying? What fit do you have? Who is FC? Who is scout? What belt are you mining? Are you hauling valuables? How much are they worth? Can I join? Can I come? Is there a fleet? Why can I not get into fleet? Why can I not get into your private ventrilo channel? Why can I not know every single tiny security detail about your covert operations? Can I loiter in the system you are trying to operate discretely in and blast all the intelligence reports into alliance chat or warp about and act suspicious?

Okay, so maybe I am exaggerating some but last night was pretty bad. Look, if there is something going on, and you are not immediately invited, there is always a reason, it may or may not be you, but there is a reason. So do not ask. The more you ask, the more I grow suspicious, and I am not a paranoid individual. Only a small handful of our freshest recruits do this kind of thing and I hate to be a hardliner but it needs to stop. No, we will not tell you when we are moving hundreds of mil in various materials, no we will not tell you why we have people in a private channel in ventrilo, and no it is not a fleet, we are just comparing epeens like its the locker room after a winning game and Big Bill has it hanging all out and is talking about the girl he banged last night, and no if we do not answer, it is because you are not privy to every tiny security detail of our alliance, so just chill, the more you ask private and sensitive questions about our operations, the more unsettled and frustrated I get, and I do not easily frustrate.

Capice? :)

• Advocated is back.

The alliance we love to hate, Advocated Destruction is back in low security on and off again. What makes these guys so frustrating? They are like cockroaches. They loiter about, in T2 cruisers, battlecruisers, and T1 battleships, in numbers of typically a dozen or more, and wail on people in low security. Let's face it, these guys have come into 0.0 a handful of times and gotten the holy snot pounded out of them every time within minutes, so it is obvious that they cannot cut it, and simply overcompensate. Oh yea, real tough guys, floating around in more than a dozen ships all tanked to the max, and docking up the moment real trouble arrives. It took them five minutes to gank my single Brutix, and all I had was a DC, EANM, and a single plate, no rigs. I mean seriously, five minutes? Takes the game to a whole new level of pansy ass scarebearing if you ask me. Ooh look at the scary fleet popping solo blues and neutrals here and there, shaking in their own booties because they are deathly afraid of real competition showing up. Sad shit man, sad shit.

• Lessons learned.

Let me paraphrase how our present war came to be and you tell me if this makes sense.

We declared war against a small corporation that was harboring a known scammer who we owed a debt of repayment to, by force. Said player then biomasses a 24,000,000 SP character, in order to hide his main account's identity from us. Said corporation then joins a NEUTRAL alliance. This alliance automatically enters an active war by admitting the corporation. Aggression between our own alliance members and theirs is immediately possible so long as the war was active in the first place. It was.

So, let me reiterate, this alliance executor accepted a warring corporation into his alliance in the middle of the afternoon on a week day. A few of our alliance members pop a Hulk of theirs. Logic goes to negotiate terms with these guys when he logs on to find that they have joined an alliance, because all he wants is the scammer, he is not here to aggress and combat a neutral alliance. He knows nothing of this Hulk as of yet as the first thing he does is convo the opposing executor. Everything seems to be going well, until the executor is alerted of his member's loss of a Hulk. In a nutshell, the guy goes batshit, talking about how he cannot believe that Logic is talking to him about a CEASEFIRE knowing that his guys have been popping his pilots.

First off, wild flailing accusations are pretty facetious, second off, do not accept a warring corporation whose own TZ and that of his aggressors is in the USA in the middle of the day on a weekday and expect the hostile forces to distinguish between one corporate avatar and the next. You have a red background with a white star, you are going to die. How ffs hard is that to understand? Seriously? I bet even a preschooler could understand that. You jump on a Merry-Go-Round as it is spinning real fast, and guess what, you got yourself a nice booboo, ya numbnuts. What did you think was going to happen, "Oh noz, big scary alliance took in our war targets! Cease and desist, we must huddle in the the corner and weep in fear!"

Right.


Anyways, we honored the CEASEFIRE once it was publicly declared, they did not, so who's at fault here?

• Gremlin squadron.

Gremlin squadron flew last night, with a dedicated crew of old salts in fancy ships. We snagged that Cerberus pilot real good; it was a joy. I hope to lead some of these Gremlin gangs here after I get back from vacation. One can only hope this war, and the combat experiences it has thus yielded, never ends.

• The price of war.

What is it, about inexperienced pilots, whose wallets are bloated from carebearing, that makes me cringe every time? Oh, maybe it's seeing damage control fit bombers, or solo gankfit Nighthawks worth more than five of my own, or battlecruisers half-ass fit with plates and trimarks that likely do jack for giving it good EHP, or projector rigged Falcons, or a solo gank fit CNR worth almost a bil, or people mining in an Orca who are in a time of war and are not aligned to a station in the system or warp stabbed, or just undocking an Orca period in a time of war, I mean ffs yo. These guys forced our hand on this war, and now I see them zipping about in daddy's new shoes. Better dig deep in the closet for those old loafers with the hole in the toe, because you are about to run out of shiny pairs of Doc Martins with which to roam about on the unsafe city streets, ya friggin' idiot. Who flies solo in ships worth +1bil when they know we run in gangs? Seriously? How dense do you have to be? But no, please, continue, I am looking to score a 500mil drop myself, so please fit that officer booster, I can haz shinies?