String of pearls

Some days in EVE you just have one of those days. In a good way. You log on, find a bunch of cool shit, asplode some people, and maybe not even die. On this particular day I found a pinata, killed two carriers, some BSs, and a marauder, and I survived everything. Maybe for you that's not a big deal, but I was quite tickled about it.

We were called out of the chain and into Branch when some of our roamers discovered three battleships on a gate. BS campers aren't particularly common in deep null; you might see them more commonly on a shallow null gate or perhaps ratting. Battleships have felt a tad neglected in recent years and the meta has moved away from them and towards cruisers, which are far cheaper and more agile while still offering decent dps. These three were a Fidelas Constans (FCON) gang consisting of a rattlesnake, armageddon, and hyperion. FCON is part of the CFC and has sov over large swathes of Branch.

We got involved on the gate with the BSs when we noticed them being harassed by a small Northern Coalition. gang. NC. didn't have enough to make the asplosions, but they could hold them in place long enough for us to whittle them down. First to go was an armageddon, who de-aggressed and jumped through the gate but was quickly met by those of us who had not yet aggressed for precisely that reason. He was already deep into structure at this point which is why my measly 342 damage accounts for 11% of his hit points. We got his shiny golden pod too without a bubble. Next up was the snake, who also jumped and promptly died. He was pretty tough, what with his triple-rep fit shield boosting fit and crystal set, omega and all. And lastly was their hyperion bro who had been pinned down in the original system.

Our null exits were slow after the BSs so I dropped back into the chain and began quietly scanning for content. After a while I noticed a tower on dscan with arrays but no force field. Excited, I zipped over to the moon and discovered a small pinata for the taking. These are relatively uncommon in w-space, my last having been this summer, and the one before that was three years ago. I called in some other HRDKX guys in case there were ships I couldn't sit in and we started to blow up everything. It was a gas reaction POS with only one SMA and CHA, but the SMA dropped a few bil in ships. We whored on the rest of the arrays and absconded with our treasure. I periodically checked the system in case the other tower also dropped its force field, but it wouldn't do so until the next day, where it was promptly discovered by this guy and asploded for a smaller payout.

I took a nap and later awoke to a ping that we had rolled into an Odin's Call wormhole. Apparently we love rolling into Odin wormholes because they have a habit of running sites in their static in marauders. Sure enough, they were doing just that. We formed up and started stalking a vargur and golem, and then we noticed that they had just lost a paladin to DARKNESS. DARKNESS. is a null alliance and it is unusual that they had entered a wormhole, much less caught anything. We thought perhaps this would spook the remaining marauder, but he tried to come home and landed right in our trap. We got his vargur and modestly shiny pod. We waited around a bit in case the golem did something foolish, but he must have logged at a safe because we were unable to find him.

My last excursion for the day was yet another carrier tackled out in null. Like my last post about catching a carrier, this one was much less tame than usual. Homeboy had some really nasty drones chasing tackle off the field, plus assigned fighters from a local nyx that was hovering just out of pos shields. We lost a few ships before the dictors got into their groove and permabubbled him (his name is Bubble Lord btw), and then we began the process of de-hitpointing. This took quite awhile, as he was fit with a massive amount of hull tank. We all figured this was a troll fit that would lead to a cyno and a horrible flock of reinforcements, but the dude never lit one. After twenty minutes of pounding we took him down, long enough for Ixtab to show up and whore on the kills.