"Who brought the batphone on the roam?" asked the FC.
We ignored him and answered. "Hullo?"
"R1FTA has a Naglfar shooting a CONCORD POCO."
"We are down in geminate. Hold on," the fleet was updated. "R1FTA has a Naggy shooting a POCO."
"Lets go!" came the cheerful response.
"Its a bit far out..."
"Were not you complaining about the lack of capital kills in Molden Heath of late?" I asked.
"It's been a dry roam..." came another comment.
"Okay. Best speed to the titan!" came the fleet orders.
To R1FTA on the phone, "We're on the way."
Let me go back to the start of our night, three hours before.
I started out grumpy that night. I was in a mood and such things happened. The goal was a ratting roam through null sec. The Bot Execution from yesterday had sent many members of TEXN deep into the red. While THC2 is not so cautious of sec status, those of us who keep in the yellow were game.
What happened is right as the fleet was forming, another corporation came strolling through the system about 14 strong. They had passed through a little bit before. Falcon, Rook, Blackbird, Curse, and lots of cruisers and battle cruisers. At the time we only had five or six people on. While we are not lothe to throw five or six people into 14, with that much ECM on the field its a bit more iffy.
However, when they came back TEXN was almost fully together for their roam. A few words across alliance channels and they were making the hops towards us and we were chasing the fleet.
Did I mention I missed the fight? My entire coms sound went down and I had to reboot. When I got back, a few minutes later, the fight was over and everyone was going , "What just happened?"
What happened is that we engaged and the other fleet started to explode left and right while the rest bailed. The entire fight lasted a 1.5 minutes. They lost a Deimos, Curse, Falcon, Harbinger x2, Talos, Blackbird, Omen, Anathema, and a Hawk.
What the hell? I made it in as they were cleaning up the field and debaing what had happened and how it had happened so fast.
Then the Omen pilot started a conversation with Razor. It seems that the FC was new. Okay... perhaps I am strange but I'd think that if someone is learning to FC someone experienced would also be around.
Then they tried to get us to not post the Omen loss mail.
"heya, if you want to give the copies I forgot in my hold back that would be nice lol."The copies in question were the 1 Amarr Control Tower Small BPC and the 4 Moon Harvesting Array BPCs that had dropped. 3 more small tower BPCs were destroyed and 1 moon harvesting array bpc was destroyed.
"p.s. if you post it on the killboard it will bug out and price them as originals, which means your board willb e permanently bugged out. it's only an omen, but if you post a bug you risk losing credibility"A backhanded threat/suggestion. How amusing. The killboards have been posting the BPC values at 0 because of these problems. They where well known problems. I doubt anyone was going to look at our Omen kill and think that we had fudged the kill mail even if it had been bugged.
Here is our killboards valuation of the BPCs. I use our eve kill board since it is a public board.
Look at us being all shifty and losing all credibility with our 0 valuation on the kill mail....
At which time Razor told them that there was no way the kill would not be posted to the killboard. However, they still wanted the BPCs back.
Razor said, "I didnt pick them up. So theres nothing i can do about giving them back."
"sure there is, you can say how much I need to pay you :)"
"make an offer"
"1 mill each? I own the originals, it's just annoying as hell to go all the way across the universe to get more copies"
He dropped the offer into fleet where it was mulled for a moment. "1mil each is acceptable. they will be contracted"
They were dropped off at a random system we passed and contracted back. We have zero use for small amarr towers and a stack of stolen ones back in the corps hanger. Piracy.
With that done, everyone rolled back and reshipped. For our trip to null we were switching into something a bit more flexable. Assault frigs, dictors, Intys, cruisers, and some battle cruisers for DPS.
A ratting roam is just that. We hop system to system, scatter through the belts, pick the highest valued battleship, kill it, improve our sec status and hope we find ships to kill along the way. Our nonratting fleet members did the scouting and shook their flashy pirate booties as bait.
It was a quiet night. We killed a hawk and a harby during the course of the evening. We missed a few things as well. The fleet is kinda scattered and we tried but it was not busy. The sec gains were not to bad. I went from -3.9 to -3.0. A lot of people lost their flashy status and in general it was a good and productive evening if a bit boring.
Then the batphone rang.
And we bolted for that dreadnought.
When we reached our home system, which was on the way to the titan, I reshipped from my Jag into my hurricane without missing a beat. We ran full tilt for the titan. The POCO was not dead. The guy had friends in the system but he was alone. We had a cyno burning for them and the R1FTA pilot was ready to hero point if it came to that.
As we are running we're hurriedly throwing information at our newest member. He has never seen the titan or done a hot drop before. He's been with us in a shield vexor, ratting and getting to know how to move with a fleet.
I think my first hot drop was in a rifter so he is doing better then I am. We got into system and figured out who we wanted him to warp to. The titan pilot is screaming, "DONT BUMP THE TITAN" and then BAM. Someone slams into the titan at full speed. This is what happens when you have drunk fleet members.
The titan spun around but its fine. It is such a stupid mechanic that a battle cruiser can cause that much movement to a titan. We're getting our newbie in place and explaining to him that he is going to "click and select the system name" when the titan pilot announces "bridge is up".
Everything got fast. The cyno landed on the dreadnought, the R1FTA pilot tried to point the dread but the dread is in siege. Fantastic! The cyno go up...
...and it's hot drop o'clock.
We landed and started shooting and neuting the dread. In chat, we are telling our noob to jump and he finally goes, "click what?" and I blinked. "Sorry! Click the titan!" Because the entire time no one had ever said click the titan, we just told him to right click for the jump.
Pewpew...
No one else in system undocked...
Boom...
What goodies are inside?
Then, because we where there we finished off the POCO. It was in half structure anyway.
It was a cute ending. R1FTA got the final blow. :) Then the fit got posted and a course of WTF went up in fleet chat.
Fitting is a complex thing and something that may not be easy to convey. But, on the simple side of things, many items scale up in size. Bigger ships need bigger items. You often try to shoe horn bigger items onto smaller ships for extra bonuses. What rarely (ever?) works when it comes to defensive modules is fitting smaller things onto bigger ships.
I avoid fit discussions like the plague. It is not an area that I am strong in or one where I feel I have any interesting or deep input. I do know however that when you have a capital ship you use a capital shield booster. A large and an X large a capital do not make. But his ship, his fit, his call. He decided to bash a POCO all by his lonesome.
We headed home, full and happy from the roam. My corps newest member now had his first hot drop and his first capital kill. Not bad for his first week in the Land of Yarr.
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