AAR Evac Fleets

Kira Tsukimoto is a machine. Fleet after fleet, saving newbro after newbro, the hero we probably don't deserve but let's not let her know that.

However even she was beginning to flag earlier today after running fleets all evening and way into the small hours.

I suggested she could rest for a bit and I could run a few fleets. She somewhat reluctantly assented, a mother hen handing over her chicks to some random prospect FC.

Still - it's just flying some industrials a few jumps - what could possibly go wrong?

Pretty much everything.

Murphy first struck in the form of 4 bombers who decloaked on our undock and bombed us while we were aligning. We lost a badger full of shinies, rip.

Not wanting to stay there I warped to the safe pos. I mean, that should be safe, it's got the word "safe" in it, what could go wrong with that?

Well it turns out that the "safety" advertised does not apply to neutral frieghters, one of which was in the fleet. He was on the pos shields being shot by guns and wasnt too happy about it. I didn't want to send him to Kebz gate as I didn't have intel yet so I told him to warp to station. He made it out in structure amidst a clamour of space important people yelling at each other to turn the pos guns off.

I put my combat ships there on the undock,  left my industrials in the pos and had him dock up and repair.

OK we're set, should be good now. I had him undock.

At this point some random enthusiast in a frigate not in my fleet spotted a large fat neut on the undock and promptly pointed it and started shooting. I told my fleet to lock him up. This lit a massive drama cyno and loads of people shouted don't lock him up other people shouted them down for shouting down the fc and got shouted back at. Kira resolved it by convo and no blues were awoxed.

"Hey, sis, don't worry I got this."

(3 disasters so far and we still hadn't left the undock).

Still things had to start running smoothly sometime and we managed to get underway. PIRAT had some small stuff in Lansez but we shot them up a bit and they bugged out. We got the first convoy through to Agil.

We went back without much trouble and picked up a new group of evaccers and hero bodyguards for round 2.

This time we got to Lansez and PIRAT had a 15 man T3 strat cruiser fleet. 8 Proteuses 7 legions. I jumped us in, we had about 30 kitchen sink dps, and we had a go at one of the legions. It's armour didn't even budge - some of them were logi T3s. Still the main purpose of engaging was not for the kills but to get them to start calling primaries and focusing us and then surprise warping off the industrials after they had engaged. That worked but the price our hero bodyguards paid was high.

We got everyone surviving docked and unloaded and reshipped (amidst a couple of protests) to shuttles. We yoloed the shuttles through the bad guys and got people back to HED.

I was feeling a bit drained so I watched the 07 show. Featuring Kira ... way to guilt trip me as I slacked off.

So I get back on comms after the show and get busy. HED is looking super nasty but Ruutark smooth talks a cerberus fleet into simply going away creating a window for me to get another fleet out.

I run them up to Parses in an incident-free evac. How novel.

Meanwhile I've been contacted by a pilot stuck in Agil. She has a critical delivery to make to help our alliance - the market is dry of cynos and she wants to bring in a wagonload. So I ask the guys to mostly ship into combat ships with a few exceptions for important evacs. We leave with a small handful of industrials and about 20 frigs dessies and about 8 cruisers.

My scouts have been doing amazing work checking both pipes, watching the main threat in Agil etc.

Agil station is camped. Nastily camped with instalockers and Nestors, a Bhaalgon, an Ashimmu - just nasty. We docked easy enough, but how the hell was I going to get them back out? So I split the fleet, one of my scouts gets to an insta, I warp the frigs and dessies out and we bounce round the system looking engagable. Doesn't work the camp aint moving. I bounce back to a tac and assess from range. That griffin looks a bit lonely. Yup definitely too far away from his friends. And conveniently near that anchored depot. Warp, blap, warp out quick.


I want them to think they're in a fight so they won't notice a large crew of cruisers and industrials undocking into their instalock station camp and moonwalking out. So I coordinate the frigs warping in, blowing up a pod, the cruisers undocking and instawarping, the vital industrial undocking and instawarping a few staggered seconds later.

So that highly precision manouvre goes like clockwork - we even got the pod, no losses taken. Must have been because no one important was watching. Because naturally when the important people are looking I couldn't even get us from HED station to Kebz gate. I think at that point Blue Ice even dropped fleet because he was laughing too much. Sigh. #suckstobeaprospect.

We head back without further incident, more contracts and vital supplies safely out, vital cynos stocked on the HED market.

Big thanks to everyone who came and was very patient during some quite tricky moments.

Sorry to everyone who lost a ship over the course of the runs, at least we saved more than we lost.