My Saturday night (crossposted from FHC and our AAR board):
It was 'beer fuelled BS gang night' for our North Americans. We formed up a small BS gang at around 0330 with the express intent of finding a GF wherever it may hide.
We ended up with a bit of kitchen sink and 5 armour BS with some logi (3 Guards), jams (scorp and falcon), tackle (light stuff, bonused webs and a HIC). Enough to go find some trouble anyhow.
Our scouts reported that Bipolar was bumping around their home system (F67E-Q) with similarish numbers so rather than continuing the roam, I made a call to sit in their system and see what would happen. After consulting with a couple of our
carePIbears, they told me that lava was a pretty decent planet to do whatever it is that you do with PI. That said, I warped us onto the interbus customs office and we started pewing it down, putting the ball in Bipolars court. We watched the shield slowly, slowly creep down for a while, recharged our beers, and got a report that GROON had a nice gang bumping around.
(Aside: I think the player custom offices might work out for 'good fites' but CCP might want to adjust the EHP downwards a touch. Or maybe we were quite a bit smaller then the 'intended' balance mechanic is meant to promote - time will tell I guess, but you won't find me trying to shoot one again with only 5 heavy DPS.)
We decided to wait it out with our bubble up. They got a feel for our numbers and composition and then the fight was on! At 04:22 Brocks Samson paid
the ultimate price for providing intel when his cheetah warped into the HIC bubble and was instantly decloaked. A HAC gang with a Bhaalgorn of doom, and bonus / jam / logi support leroyed in right behind them. Mad props to clockwork for bringing a really nice fight!
Bhaalgorn's suck. I am going to say that quite a few times in the next paragraph or two.
The next 7 minutes were pure fucking torture for the poor belaboured FC. <_< Reps were holding, but barely. We were being jammed, neuted and pounded. Hero logis were barely keeping up with the pain, our jammers were jamming their hearts out to try and give us electronic superiority, and DPS were locking and unlocking like champs trying to follow my retarded target calling as I tried to find something, anything that would move past 95% armour. Nothing was. Clockwork was doing a great job repping up our damage instantly.
7 minutes. Longest time in my FCing experience to date. After the initial panic, and with the onset of depression when nothing would break, I was spending a lot of time trying to think of a magic plan to disengage the remnants when the welping was realised. (Almost forgot to throw Bhaal's suck in here!) While I was wasting that time, a true hero was winning the fight for us!
Xikorita the hero Ares pilot was teaching the Falcon a thing or two about the new power of buffed froggy. Look at this mail:
honestly click here it is worth it. Ares top damage. All our support was taking this down while I was fruitlessly wasting effort on other targets. This won us the fight in my opinion. I am petitioning Agony leadership to create some sort of memorial for poor Xik's ares.
A blackbird bounced back to the fight around the same time and, unable to avoid the bubble, we were able to get it down. The EWAR battle was won. (Well unless you consider stupid Bhaalgorns EWAR because that thing was raping us over the coals). But I still had lots of opportunities to lose it for us, so I set out to accomplish that (at least you would think so if you were on our comms).
5 more minutes of painful decisions, 5 more minutes of GROON reps holding. One of our Guards hit as low as 40% structure. It was still insanely close and I wasn't capitalizing on the awesome advantage our support had given me! Finally on TS the sweetest thing I have heard in my FCing life, "jam on two guards". Number 3 became primary, I started babbling something about overheating everything and Mr. Molester's Guardian
disintegrated into space dust. Badger (if I can be so bold) you fought an amazing fight, and I am sorry that CCP's terrible ECM mechanic was the death of you (not saying I didn't gloat in the rage of battle).
Finally the back was broken, the knife edge balance was tilted grossly in our favour and our exhausted, hard working pilots managed to hold down a few ships for us to finish off (if they had followed my actual directions I am pretty sure points and tackle would have been broken on everyone - thank god they never listen to me anyways). kulthu mahdhrien I realise there is a real human being behind
your machine of terror but I was never so glad to kick someone on the way down before - I apologise for the seething, adrenaline-fuelled hate I felt for you, I bet you are really really swell IRL. I was spacemad, bro.
It was beer time and never has it felt more deserved.
Battle report here.Luckily the planets realigned and not too much later my terrible leadership led us into a good welping at
the hands of Sedition. I didn't get a chance to 'gf' in local because I was hoping to deagress in time to get my ship out (rest of my fleet could take care of themselves at that point, right?), but it was indeed that. I was REALLY hoping that FA gang would distract you for longer, but c'est la vie. It was still a good note to head home on with the knowledge that a small BS gang could find the kind of action that keeps me logging in!
On behalf of Agony Unleashed, I want to thank all our Syndicate friends for helping keep the ship market healthy, and for making sure that fights are found and Syndicate stays where it belongs as the killingest region of them all!
<3 Diagoras
2011.12.01 23:51 
