From the Land Down Under

Ancient Aussie cuisine

I love the Aussie time zone. I work the graveyard shift in the eastern US time zone so, on my days off, I'm up all night and I get to hang out with all of Australians and New Zealanders and their lovely accents and eccentricities. Occasionally when I find myself in k-space in the early morning on Fridays I will join the MATE roam, an Aussie TZ roam operated in conjunction with Greygal and her Redemption Roams pubfleet program. This weekend's MATE was shield frigates with logi included.

Greygal and her bro Onslaughtor had an arranged fight waiting for us in Mifrata. Sudden Buggery brought a half-dozen drakes into a belt and slugged it out with our 20-man frig gang. I brought a harpy; the fit is as follows:

Dual Rep Harpy

Internal Force Field Array I

Magnetic Field Stabilizer II

Magnetic Field Stabilizer II

Small Ancillary Shield Booster

Small Ancillary Shield Booster

J5b Phased Prototype Warp Scrambler I

Limited 1MN Microwarpdrive

Light Ion Blaster II

Light Ion Blaster II

Light Ion Blaster II

Light Ion Blaster II

Small Nosferatu II

Small Anti-Em Screen Reinforcer II

Small Core Defence Field Extender II

This is a standard double ASB fit that you'll find anywhere. It uses Void charges exclusively, as you will be up close and personal for the duration of the fight. With good skills it can approach 275 dps and is quite tanky for a frig. I brought my own reps because although we would have bursts on field, those little guys are just too fragile and I wanted to a be strong independent harpy who don't need no logi.

We landed at a shitty distance from the drakes and they were quite patient while we repositioned. Sudden Buggery is led by Trinkets friend (TF), an Aussie wormholer, blogger, and Lieutenant Worf cosplayer who is running for the CSM this year. Well, I think he's running - the text of his candidate forum post makes me wonder. At any rate, he's a decent dude, and has been known to FC MATE roams himself. Once we were ready, TF and his drakes opened fire and started crushing our lil frigs.

I forgot to take a screen during the
fight, but here's a shot of the new ice
effects from Proteus

They had pretty good target calling and nailed two of our bursts and a maulus before the first drake went down. Each drake had one scram and no webs, so if we got into trouble, we just bounced to a nearby ping and returned. We had some assault frigs and one confessor for damage and a bunch of cheaper ships for support and harassment. We kept slowly whittling down each drake's EHP while bouncing back and forth, liberally coating the battlecruisers with "EWAR faggotry" as TF put it, until we took down his own drake. We lost 11, they lost 6. The Buggery folks reshipped, joined us, and then we headed out for the roamy part of the roam.

Before leaving Mifrata, we baited a pilgrim into engaging one of our frigs on a gate. We dogpiled through the gate and blobbed him (sadly, he did not activate that cyno) before moving on into Curse. A Brave pilot in our fleet, Kira Tsukimoto, arranged a brawl with a nearby Brave gang. Their size was similar to ours but consisted exclusively of t1 frigs, mostly piloted by supernoob pilots, some without any kills to their name. They got butchered, but had a nice time and one of their pilots was very excited to have nailed a mildly expensive Buggery pod.

Afterwards we returned home, stopping briefly to nab an astero who was sitting motionless on a gate tactical and let himself be ninjascanned. The MATE roams are quite small, 20-25 pilots and no tidi, and great fun. I had a great time and hope to join them again soon.