Wraith
Active Member
[desc]Sit down young un's and let me tell you a story from the days when space was still a frontier land and not the namby-pamby risk free playground you have today.
I'd just got myself my first cruiser, an ugly ship made by the Caldari called a Caracal. It was ugly, but it sure did pack a heavy punch for it's size. I mean hell, if I went for pretty over deadly when choosing my ships I'd have been dead many times over and many years ago to boot. Take that advice to heart young un's.
Anyway, back to the story. I'd just taken her out for her first shakedown cruise on a minor mission for one of the agents from the Kaalakiota corporation located in the same station as our Caldari office, and she performed so well that I decided I wanted something more of a challenge. It was at that point that I got a call from my old fleet boss Roninstorm. You've probably heard of him. He's the one who got promoted to admiral in the Caldari navy in less than a month but then went AWOL because the uniform was so unflattering that it got him less action from the ladies than he had had before. I gave him the situation and he told me that another agent from the same corp a couple of jumps away could usually be relied on for some heavier hitting action, so we decided to give it a go. Ronin had just kitted his new ship out with a whole bunch of fancy ECM gear and was wanting to give it try on some lawless scum. A couple of short jumps later we docked at a station in the Waskisen system. The agent took an instant dislike to my cocky attitude and refused to talk to me, so I went back to studying up on drone warfare while Ronin discussed our mission and bartered up a hefty mission fee whith an even sweeter bonus for quick completion. Undocking from the station, Ronin told me that we had a warp jump direct to the location of the targets so we could ambush them. He pulled us into warp, and I spent the last couple of minutes before the battle double checking all of my systems and making sure that my four heavy missile launchers were fully loaded with as many of the 5,000 Havok heavy missiles I'd bought earlier as they could carry.
The reward that the agent agreed to was a high one, even before taking Ronin's negotiating skills into account, so we were expecting a tough fight. Neither of us expected what we got though. We dropped out of warp in a location that was meant to let us ambush the bad guys, but they were waiting for us. Less than 5km from where I emerged back into realspace were 2 cruisers and several destroyers, with more battle groups arranged at varying distances scattered throughout the area. A preliminary scan showed a total of approximately thirty ships all heading towards us with the sole intention of reducing our ships to scrap and us into free-floating atoms. They had us locked and were firing before our sensors had cleared from the warp interference, but as soon as we were able we returned fire. I put what I had learned earlier to use by launching the 2 Acolyte light drones I was carrying and ordered them into the fray, targetting one of the destroyers with the drones and all of my launchers. Through either luck or just the intuition that comes from flying together so often, Ronin had picked the same ship as his target. With a withering barrage of missiles from both our ships we knocked his shields down and seconds later his armour and structure fell the same way. First blood was ours! Continuing to concentrate our fire we took down one ship after another, with Ronin making good use of his new ECM kit to hamper the fire of the heavier hitters in the enemy fleet. Eventually we finished off all of the ships in the system and were just maneouvering to start salvaging all the wrecks when a second wave jumped in. The fight was back on.
Following the same pattern as before, Ronin and I started plowing through the new arrivals, with Ronin's ECM kit proving even more effective than before. Unfortunately, the commanders of these ships were smarter than their brethren and they soon realised where the jamming was coming from. Taking a leaf out of our book they began to concentrate their own fire and jamming systems on Ronin. This briefly gave me some breathing room to recharge my shields, but Ronin was taking a pounding. The enemy stripped his shields and were rapidly chewing through his armour, so I called for him to evac. He hit the warp and was gone. With the odds now stacked even further against me, I decided discretion was the better part of valour and turned to fly away from them as fast as my afterburner could take me. Fortunately, I had the range to keep the destroyers at bay and enough speed to keep the cruisers out of range so I wasn't in too much danger just yet. Then the jamming started. Four Pithi Despoilers all working to break my target locks meant my missile batteries were silent more often than not. With the threat of my missiles mostly gone, the destroyers moved in for the kill. I managed to get off a few shots every now and then, but the destroyers were in range and starting to make their shots count. Just as I was starting to worry, Ronin jumped back into the fray like a Deus Ex Machina avenging angel. Having only warped as far as the nearest station with a repair bay, he'd got his ship fully repaired and was itching for payback. Within quick succession the despoilers fell to his fire, and the jamming was gone from my ship. Making the most of the opportunity, I opened up on the nearest ships and we were soon making holes in the enemy fleet. I was still in range of numerous ships though, and my armour started taking damage. It was my turn to run. Having seen what happened to me when the whole fleet was aimed at the lone ship in system, Ronin decided it would be better to regroup and head back in as a combined force. He called for a rendezvous at a local station. Once we had met up, we took a brief moment to check over our ships, making sure our hulls were repaired, our weapons fully reloaded and our capacitors charged and then, in the words of Shakespeare's Henry V it was "Once more unto the breach dear friends, once more".
Arriving back into the system, this time at a comfortable 50km from the enemy ships, we were able to finish off the remainder of the destroyer wolfpack with ease and turned our missiles to the 3 cruisers. They were flying together in a parade ground V-formation. Looked very pretty but it was a stupid move as it just made it all the easier to hit them. If a stray shot missed its intended target, half the time it impacted on one of the others. We didn't give them any time to realise their mistake, and vapourised them, one after the other. Wave 2 was finished.
This time we were prepared for more reinforcements, and we were not disppointed. More cruisers and destroyers dropped in, but misjudged their entry and reverted to realspace over 100km from where we were. With the exception of one of the enemy cruisers that was specially equipped, Ronin and I had a range advantage over all of them. The long range cruiser was packing some heavy weaponry, so Ronin called it as a priority target. He had his hands full just using his defender missiles to take down the heavy explosives heading at him, so it was left to me to make a lightning strike and kill the cruiser. Once that was down, there was no real threat, and we maintained a safe distance from the persuing ships, all the while thinning their numbers with relative ease.
Like I said, there was no real threat at that point. No real threat that is, until a fourth wave jumped in right in front of us. We finished the remainder of the third fleet before turning our attention to the fourth. This was a much smaller wave, with only one cruiser and five or six destroyers, but the destroyers were the upgraded Pithi Dire Despoilers. Fitted with improved ECM modules and much better resistances than their standard counterparts, the Dire Despoilers could suck up a lot of firepower before going down. After some initial confusion as to which ship we were targetting, we managed to combine our firepower on one of the despoilers and were able to take him out of the fight. We finished off the remainder of the despoilers in the same slow fashion and turned on the sole remaining ship - a Pithi Silencer cruiser. With all of Ronins ECM modules focused on him, and all of our combined firepower, the cruiser was no more threat than a civilian passenger shuttle and soon fell to our fire.
The battle had taken over an hour but was finally over. After spending another hour salvaging all of the wrecks we headed back to base to tally the results. The battle computer logged well over a hundred confirmed kills between the two of us. In the process, we had each racked up over 440 thousand ISK in bounties alone, and I had fired nearly a third of the 5,000 heavy missiles I had bought earlier. With the mission reward, ship loot and salvage bringing my total rewards to well over a million ISK, I considered it a very successful night. Wouldn't you agree young un's?[/desc]
This is basically a report of a mission Ronin and I ran last night. To give you an idea of the number of ships we took down take a look at this screenshot and this one too. They are both taken from different points in the middle of the debris field looking at about a 90 degree angle from each other. I would have taken more but Ronin had already started looting and I didn't want to lose out.
Feel free to add your own stories.
I'd just got myself my first cruiser, an ugly ship made by the Caldari called a Caracal. It was ugly, but it sure did pack a heavy punch for it's size. I mean hell, if I went for pretty over deadly when choosing my ships I'd have been dead many times over and many years ago to boot. Take that advice to heart young un's.
Anyway, back to the story. I'd just taken her out for her first shakedown cruise on a minor mission for one of the agents from the Kaalakiota corporation located in the same station as our Caldari office, and she performed so well that I decided I wanted something more of a challenge. It was at that point that I got a call from my old fleet boss Roninstorm. You've probably heard of him. He's the one who got promoted to admiral in the Caldari navy in less than a month but then went AWOL because the uniform was so unflattering that it got him less action from the ladies than he had had before. I gave him the situation and he told me that another agent from the same corp a couple of jumps away could usually be relied on for some heavier hitting action, so we decided to give it a go. Ronin had just kitted his new ship out with a whole bunch of fancy ECM gear and was wanting to give it try on some lawless scum. A couple of short jumps later we docked at a station in the Waskisen system. The agent took an instant dislike to my cocky attitude and refused to talk to me, so I went back to studying up on drone warfare while Ronin discussed our mission and bartered up a hefty mission fee whith an even sweeter bonus for quick completion. Undocking from the station, Ronin told me that we had a warp jump direct to the location of the targets so we could ambush them. He pulled us into warp, and I spent the last couple of minutes before the battle double checking all of my systems and making sure that my four heavy missile launchers were fully loaded with as many of the 5,000 Havok heavy missiles I'd bought earlier as they could carry.
The reward that the agent agreed to was a high one, even before taking Ronin's negotiating skills into account, so we were expecting a tough fight. Neither of us expected what we got though. We dropped out of warp in a location that was meant to let us ambush the bad guys, but they were waiting for us. Less than 5km from where I emerged back into realspace were 2 cruisers and several destroyers, with more battle groups arranged at varying distances scattered throughout the area. A preliminary scan showed a total of approximately thirty ships all heading towards us with the sole intention of reducing our ships to scrap and us into free-floating atoms. They had us locked and were firing before our sensors had cleared from the warp interference, but as soon as we were able we returned fire. I put what I had learned earlier to use by launching the 2 Acolyte light drones I was carrying and ordered them into the fray, targetting one of the destroyers with the drones and all of my launchers. Through either luck or just the intuition that comes from flying together so often, Ronin had picked the same ship as his target. With a withering barrage of missiles from both our ships we knocked his shields down and seconds later his armour and structure fell the same way. First blood was ours! Continuing to concentrate our fire we took down one ship after another, with Ronin making good use of his new ECM kit to hamper the fire of the heavier hitters in the enemy fleet. Eventually we finished off all of the ships in the system and were just maneouvering to start salvaging all the wrecks when a second wave jumped in. The fight was back on.
Following the same pattern as before, Ronin and I started plowing through the new arrivals, with Ronin's ECM kit proving even more effective than before. Unfortunately, the commanders of these ships were smarter than their brethren and they soon realised where the jamming was coming from. Taking a leaf out of our book they began to concentrate their own fire and jamming systems on Ronin. This briefly gave me some breathing room to recharge my shields, but Ronin was taking a pounding. The enemy stripped his shields and were rapidly chewing through his armour, so I called for him to evac. He hit the warp and was gone. With the odds now stacked even further against me, I decided discretion was the better part of valour and turned to fly away from them as fast as my afterburner could take me. Fortunately, I had the range to keep the destroyers at bay and enough speed to keep the cruisers out of range so I wasn't in too much danger just yet. Then the jamming started. Four Pithi Despoilers all working to break my target locks meant my missile batteries were silent more often than not. With the threat of my missiles mostly gone, the destroyers moved in for the kill. I managed to get off a few shots every now and then, but the destroyers were in range and starting to make their shots count. Just as I was starting to worry, Ronin jumped back into the fray like a Deus Ex Machina avenging angel. Having only warped as far as the nearest station with a repair bay, he'd got his ship fully repaired and was itching for payback. Within quick succession the despoilers fell to his fire, and the jamming was gone from my ship. Making the most of the opportunity, I opened up on the nearest ships and we were soon making holes in the enemy fleet. I was still in range of numerous ships though, and my armour started taking damage. It was my turn to run. Having seen what happened to me when the whole fleet was aimed at the lone ship in system, Ronin decided it would be better to regroup and head back in as a combined force. He called for a rendezvous at a local station. Once we had met up, we took a brief moment to check over our ships, making sure our hulls were repaired, our weapons fully reloaded and our capacitors charged and then, in the words of Shakespeare's Henry V it was "Once more unto the breach dear friends, once more".
Arriving back into the system, this time at a comfortable 50km from the enemy ships, we were able to finish off the remainder of the destroyer wolfpack with ease and turned our missiles to the 3 cruisers. They were flying together in a parade ground V-formation. Looked very pretty but it was a stupid move as it just made it all the easier to hit them. If a stray shot missed its intended target, half the time it impacted on one of the others. We didn't give them any time to realise their mistake, and vapourised them, one after the other. Wave 2 was finished.
This time we were prepared for more reinforcements, and we were not disppointed. More cruisers and destroyers dropped in, but misjudged their entry and reverted to realspace over 100km from where we were. With the exception of one of the enemy cruisers that was specially equipped, Ronin and I had a range advantage over all of them. The long range cruiser was packing some heavy weaponry, so Ronin called it as a priority target. He had his hands full just using his defender missiles to take down the heavy explosives heading at him, so it was left to me to make a lightning strike and kill the cruiser. Once that was down, there was no real threat, and we maintained a safe distance from the persuing ships, all the while thinning their numbers with relative ease.
Like I said, there was no real threat at that point. No real threat that is, until a fourth wave jumped in right in front of us. We finished the remainder of the third fleet before turning our attention to the fourth. This was a much smaller wave, with only one cruiser and five or six destroyers, but the destroyers were the upgraded Pithi Dire Despoilers. Fitted with improved ECM modules and much better resistances than their standard counterparts, the Dire Despoilers could suck up a lot of firepower before going down. After some initial confusion as to which ship we were targetting, we managed to combine our firepower on one of the despoilers and were able to take him out of the fight. We finished off the remainder of the despoilers in the same slow fashion and turned on the sole remaining ship - a Pithi Silencer cruiser. With all of Ronins ECM modules focused on him, and all of our combined firepower, the cruiser was no more threat than a civilian passenger shuttle and soon fell to our fire.
The battle had taken over an hour but was finally over. After spending another hour salvaging all of the wrecks we headed back to base to tally the results. The battle computer logged well over a hundred confirmed kills between the two of us. In the process, we had each racked up over 440 thousand ISK in bounties alone, and I had fired nearly a third of the 5,000 heavy missiles I had bought earlier. With the mission reward, ship loot and salvage bringing my total rewards to well over a million ISK, I considered it a very successful night. Wouldn't you agree young un's?[/desc]
This is basically a report of a mission Ronin and I ran last night. To give you an idea of the number of ships we took down take a look at this screenshot and this one too. They are both taken from different points in the middle of the debris field looking at about a 90 degree angle from each other. I would have taken more but Ronin had already started looting and I didn't want to lose out.
Feel free to add your own stories.
