Fweddit came to Hikkoken tonight.
Word came in that the Amarr Militia wanted to come over and fight. I guess they needed a break from getting shoved around by the Minmatar? However you look at it, they made it known when they wanted a fight, and we started preparing. But not well enough.
We got about 30 pilots together, and sent out scouts. Much bouncing through systems and plexes ensued. As the Golden Glob was approaching one jump out, we learned they had significantly more numbers and organizations that we did. 10 logis, and another 50 or so cruisers. We had about 5 logi and 20 cruisers with some frigates for fun. A frantic align and warp got us out of Pyn and back into Nennemaila, and reshipping began. ECM was added, the call was sent out, and we eventually got up to around 60 people. Fweddit was nice enough to wait next door while we tried to make the fight more interesting.
After a bit too long a wait for some tastes, we undocked and flew to Hikkoken. The dirty slavers had taken up residency in the Medium plex of the Cadlari pig-dogs, and we warped on in to have at them! It started out nicely, but over time the greater logi support of Fweddit and their tighter organization began to win out. Our target calling started well but broke down part way through the fight. A few mistakes left our fleet a bit scattered on the field, and we reached the point where our DPS could not break the Fweddit reps. Even though we could reship next door, the visiting team won the day. To make matters worse, someone had the bright idea to put an fast locking Thrasher on the Nenn staition, and a few of us got podded while trying to reship. Fweddit also had some ships that seemed to be dedicated to podding us out of the fight. After my second cruiser went, I found myself in Athinard instead of Nenn, and that was it for the night.
A few lessons:
- Fweddit was nice enough to let us even up the odds, but that’s not the norm.
- Signal calling is very important. Both in this fight and a previous spat today, slow and/or confused target calling had an impact on the fight as a whole.
- Keeping your fleet in a decent place for reps and targets is also key. Getting ships strung out over 80km of space makes reps hard to manage.
- Fleet doctrines and organization can make a huge difference.
Thanks to Fweddit for being good sports! It was a fun fight, regardless of the outcome. And double thanks to the Gallente logi pilots who kept my Thorax going far longer than it had any reason to. That was awesome!
There’s been a noticable upswing in Fweddit running with a couple pod-catching frigs lately — with the guys they normally fight, they can break even on a fight where they get stomped simply by blowing up one ship and podding a pilot with good implants, as a typical member of Late Night Alliance will have more wires in their head than the value of a cheap-fit 20-man Talwar fleet.
Well if they come after me the joke is on them. I fly without implants at the moment, or cheap ones that barely top a few mil. Learned that one the hard way in my first FW death!
That was the first fight I have seen you in with me even though we are in the same alliance. I was in the fleet for a total of 2 minutes. Logged on and people were undocking from Nenn. I jumped into an Omen and warped with the fleet. Got podded seconds later. By the time I updated my clone and reshipped the retreat call was sounded. We were beaten quite soundly. I hope fweddit comes back.
I’ve only been in GMVA for a bit over a week, so that might explain that! I’ve also been working on some other projects that have taken a bit of time away from the pew pew. Thanks for reading!