Fountain ratting setup

Although we're still intensely fighting it's starting to look as though there's a better than 50% chance of TEST keeping Fountain so I've been thinking about how I want to rat.

Here's the armada of ships I intend to use, all of them cheap and non-faction. The relative lack of bling is a big safety factor as blinged out ships, particularly carriers, attract gankers.

2 Dominix:

The basic idea is just to drop sentries and run a remote armour repper. The new NPC rat AI is such that they particularly hate "healers" so this should keep all the aggro focused on the Domis. The offline cloak is for when I want to go plexing rather than run anomalies.

The Garde IIs have an optimal of 68.4 km and tracking of 0.082 both of which are really good for a battleship ratter. By keeping them 20km apart it should mean one can easily pick off frigates attacking the other one.

If one ship is getting hit hard then the other Domi(s) can rep it.

I'm considering dropping one of the reppers for a heavy nos. One of these Domi pilots is also my main pvp character so he won't always be there as I'm prioritising pvp.

My third ship is going to be a Typhoon:

This demands a much more active playstyle than the Domis but is very high dps and can merrily chase down the battleships, letting the Domis wipe out the smaller stuff. Its painter helps the whole fleet do more damage.

This guy is also my explorer so instead of ratting with him I can have him in a cov ops scanning for sites while the Domis rat.

Damnation:

This guy's only job is to sit afk in a POS running gang links. It's armour tanked just in case it somehow finds itself in pvp. It adds armour resists, reduces sig radius, reduces armour repper cap cost and duration for the whole gang.

No ratting gang would be complete without one of these:

It's based around the new salvage drones. They can be a bit finnicky - you have to launch them with no targets selected and tell them to salvage to get them to work properly. Still it's pretty awesome to drop your noctis in a sea of wrecks, set the drones off, alt tab for half an hour and come back to see just cans.

This pilot also flies a pretty mean Heron for those minigame sites.

Our well-drilled war machine in action

Nullsec is famous for large fleets of skilled veteran pvp pilots coordinating together in machine-like precision.

BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA

Actually flying with us is more like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uo-pRnDMH2E

Amazingly we're actually beating the goons despite managing later in the op to let them kill undefended haulers when we had 500 in system and noone to shoot.

The Great War: the plan emerges

How much is planning manipulation and forethought and how much is happenstance luck or impulse we'll never know but the war for Fountain has mushroomed into a well balanced war which will last for months rather than the rofflestomp that it seemed at first.

Pandemic Legion, NC., Nulli, SCRAP have all weighed in on Test's side creating a conflict that is actually more heavily weighted against the CFC than Montolio's plan for a HBC-CFC was 5 months ago.

The conflict also rather elegantly matches the personalities of the principle characters involved - DaBigRedBoat, who famously loves to grind structures, gets to grind structures which will generate the reinforcement timers for the good fights that the rest of Eve's leading FCs prefer.

The conflict is poised on a knife edge where small and unpredictable events in real life could prove cataclysmic. Imagine if DBRB were to get married and stop playing...

The initiative is firmly with the CFC who are winning most of the fights and grinding many structures unopposed. However the forces against them are slowly wielding themselves into an effective fighting force although with considerable problems along the way.

For TEST it's taken us some time to react and get deployed. The alliance that regularly put 1000+ in fleets to defend its Delve heartlands is struggling to get half into ops on the far edge of its empire.

Coordination has been a problem. Pandemic Legion got bombed by TEST bombers, a mistake by the FC (and incidentally just about the first time he's landed a perfect bombing run).

TEST leadership continues to tease

Further details have emerged from management about the new "Fourth Age of Diplomacy."

It's official. It's happening.

IT'S HAPPENING!

Meanwhile here in TEST we're being informed something is going down. What is going down we don't know down at the grunt level but it's definitely going down.

A few confused newbros have been asking "what's happening?" The rest of us have been confidently replying "IT'S HAPPENING!"

...without knowing what.

A source in senior management had this to say:

*ahem*

I KNOW SOMETHING YOU DON'T KNOW.  I KNOW SOMETHING YOU DON'T KNOW.

NYAAAAAAH

Test Alliance Please Ignore, business as usual.

The battle to save Delve

It's been a tough week for the Rebellion. TEST's decision to isolate itself politically has spilled blood in the water and the sharks have turned up in numbers.

The vital system of 1-SMEB connects Delve with low sec. If lost it will allow the invading NC./PL forces to stage from there and to bridge more or less anywhere in Delve. Hence a huge push by the alliance to draw overwhelming numbers for tonight's big fight.

It's been a wonderful week to be a TEST pvper as you cannot go two jumps without finding a fight. Last night I formed up a fleet to kill an Initiative roam, got another option to kill a gate camp in Fountain - I think by Godfathers/Gang Bang Team - bumped into a cloaky Goon camp on the way who cloaked up and hid before seeing us (hello spies on our Mumble server!) then got convoed by a PL fc for a fight. And found out someone else had killed the INIT. roam.

I took the PL guy up on his offer and really enjoyed a talwar v talwar brawl. We killed 2 and lost 15 but we made a lot of mistakes, both me as FC and some pilots as individuals and while we had a few more ships than they did we had quite a few very new players who were outside shooting range for a lot of the fight. So I was pretty happy with that. 15-2 might sound like a bad scoreline but if you were a park football team playing Manchester United you'd be really happy with that score. (Not that TEST is a park football team per se, but the kind of player who comes to a destroyer roam run by a new FC tends to be new and inexperienced even relative to the rest of our comparatively new and inexperienced alliance).

I've been writing up some of my after action reports in an attempt to rehabilitate the Eve Official Corporation and Alliance Discussion forum which is sadly lacking in content these days.

TEST at war

It's been a weekend of momentous battles for TEST Alliance Please Ignore.

On Saturday night (very late for me) we had a tremendous battle in 1-SMEB, the gateway to Delve from low sec. Test was trying to replace a crucial tower with a larger version that could be better defended. Northern Coalition. and Pandemic Legion are trying hard to capture this system and set up POSes.

TEST formed in our new ahac doctrine. I had rushed back from Rahadallon in Devoid having spent a merry hour blowing up people there before the start op (including some PL dude who was streaming his Vigilant on twitch tv). I grabbed ammo and came to the strat op in my sniper Harpy.

After a superb fight in Radahallon our FC there had persuaded Brave Newbies to send a contingent of frigates to support Test in the battle and they flew superbly. Big thanks guys!

We formed up at the pos and surrounded ourselves with dictor bubbles to try to prevent bombers getting good warp ins. A cyno went up and I flew over and shot at it but sadly not in time to stop PL and NC. titan bridging in.

A big close range brawl ensued which initially went quite well for TEST. We were trading ships fairly evenly, destroying a Loki and several logistics ships from NC. and a big chunk of PL's foxcat fleet including a few of the ultimate nullsec subcap powerhouse - the billion isk faction-fit Navy Apocalyse.

The CFC brought an assault frigate fleet but stayed away for the first part of the engagement.

After a while though we were unable to sustain repairs or damage. Our FC squeezed out a last couple of kills with some tricksy target calling then we stayed for a short while taking a beating. Meanwhile bombers from pizza, test, goons, even a maverick from the Retirement Club were cheerfully bombing all sides.

Comic relief was provided by the Dinner Plate coalition who brought some Nagas all the way from Esoteria only to get cheerfully shot by all sides, even the Goon Hawks, and sent home quickly.

We regrouped and came back to the grid seeing NC. putting the POS into reinforced with Dreads while PL hovered watchfully. We didn't have enough to challenge at this point - one pilot admitted he'd reshipped seven times in the battle.

A battered TEST took refuge in the POS shields, enough stront having been placed in the tower to give us 10 hours of respite.

Somewhat amazingly my little Harpy had survived both a frigate roam and the entire battle.

Battle report 1-SMEB

I wasn't at the next battle but we managed to again save the tower but again it got reinforced. This time for 1d 10h. The battle for 1-S continues.

And then yesterday afternoon in Esoteria an amazing bomber run by TEST wiped out a Dinner Plate Coalition battleship fleet and sparked an hour of raging in Local and via convo. It's believed that the disaster was caused by a mistake by Sort Dragon which can't help the morale of the nascent coalition.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpjliBxS3FA&feature=player_embedded

Battle report VL7-60

Battle report