The formup for Monday’s public fleet looked promising. Not only did we have quite a lot of Wolves, our mainline DPS ship of the day, and enough Deacons for reps, we also had three Command Destroyers, two Hyenas and a Keres for support. I joked that when our fleet looks this good we probably won’t find any targets to kill at all.
Indeed our roam started pretty underwhelming. Within the first hour we only caught one lone Stabber.
Desperate for a fight our FC, Captain Cean, contacted our friends at EVE University. When I say friends I mean that we like and respect what they do, and when we meet one of their fleets by chance we normally only engage them when we feel that they have at least a fighting chance. We are pirates, but we are also fully aware that EVE’s biggest problems with player retention are it’s steep learning curve and it’s sometimes pretty hostile environment. Chasing newbros away from the game by mercilessly slaughtering them time and again doesn’t help anyone.
From time to time we arrange scrimmages so that they can have a fleet fight at more or less even odds. It’s good training for them and additional content for us.
This time they had a Caracal fleet already going and were willing to meet and fight us. We turned around and headed for the rendezvous system, eagerly anticipating the fight.
After a couple jumps our scout suddenly reported a neutral gang just one system ahead of us. They had a fleet composition very similar to ours. Since some Caldari Militia pilots were among them we suspected this might be our arch enemy Chichou again. Cean didn’t hesitate for even a second, we gave chase full speed ahead.
We caught up with them at the Oicx gate in Vlillirier. Some had jumped already, about ten still sat at the gate. Cean fired his Jump Field Generator as soon as we landed in hopes of booshing at least some of them off the gate with us.
Then shit got real.
What looked like some easy kills at first turned into a serious slugfest as the overview filled with more and more hostiles quickly. Their fleet was much bigger than what we had seen, and our position 100km off the gate didn’t slow their reinforcements down much. They probably used their own Command Destroyers to jump right on top of us, I honestly wasn’t able to pay attention to everything that was going on. Chichou was indeed among them.
Despite our early kills the tide began to turn. They outnumbered us a good bit and still had six of their seven logis left on the field. We switched targets often but had a hard time breaking our primaries, each kill took quite a while. Meanwhile we lost four Wolves, one Hyena and the Keres in the course of less than three minutes.
When we also lost one of our Deacons it sure looked like we were going to get wiped out.
Suddenly another group of neutrals appeared on grid. More reinforcements for Chichou or a third party looking for easy kills?
As it turned out Cean had kept Uni’s FC in the loop. And why wouldn’t he? After all they were waiting for us to come and fight them, and were about to get robbed of that opportunity. So they decided to give us a helping hand. Cheers guys!
With their help we gained the upper hand again and made short work of the remaining enemy forces. Some managed to get away, but we made very sure their General wouldn’t be able to.
We saved him for last. Unfortunately his pod escaped, but it felt really good anyway. Cean and I were especially pleased, because he got top damage and I got the final blow.
As expected we didn’t have to go without a hefty dose of salt from him either. While we looted the field he ranted in local about us having set a trap for him and bringing the perfect counter for his doctrine. Yeah, right. Never mind the fact that we did nothing of the sort, or that he started using ‘his’ Wolf doctrine only after seeing us use it effectively, accusations like that are really grand when they come from someone who never takes a fight if he doesn’t have the clear advantage.
Besides, the Battle Report shows that even with EVE Uni’s and our fleets combined we didn’t quite match the numbers he had. Again.
Which makes us the clear winners of a relatively even fight. Thank you EVE Uni for being the cool guys you are! Thank you Chichou for…not running away quickly enough this time, I guess. Be sure we’ll hunt you down whenever we get the opportunity.
Wrapping things up here’s a screenshot of the fight with the UI turned off and zoomed in a good bit. Unfortunately it’s still hard to make out any details, but at least it looks pretty.
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