Yesterday, we did both.

It feels like ages ago that I had the inspiration and a story to tell worthy of a blog post. You see, after the wormhole days, life in 0.0 was mostly about being behind blue Alliances that had more firepower than you, keeping you safe, and it was mostly a slow learning curve on stuff that you need to know about surviving in 0.0, small roaming gangs and not too many things happening on a day-by-day basis.

Sure, if you make a mistake in 0.0, typically you pay buy losing your ship, like I did two days ago when I lost my carrier. Very good executed hot-drop, melted my Thanny in about 30sec and left me wondering whether I could have survived if I was next to a station instead of a POS, but either way I don’t want to talk to you about how SuperCaps are overpowered and all… I want to talk to you about Wins and Learnings.

The moment I jumped to that cyno, I was feeling safe – that was the real reason behind my loss. What do I mean by that? Let me explain:

Split Infinity alliance has committed to help out –A- coalition in the push to control Tenerifis about a month or so ago. We were becoming complacent in our own little system and the possibility of getting into good fights and sov warfare was quite the driver for most of us – at least folks like myself who haven’t done sov warfare before.

Then, after weeks of sov structure grinds, without any opposition by White Noise we kept gaining space and expanding. At the same time we grew even more complacent. So when we decided to take it to the next step and help with the push in Detorid, we thought it would be not very much different than the Tenerifis grind.

So, when I jumped my carrier 2 nights ago into 3-L at our staging POS, after we had RFed the Station and iHUB in system already with no opposition, I was feeling safe. Then, a Falcon de-cloaked, pointed my ship, and light a cyno. Then the SuperCaps came in and although I lost my good old Thanny, I felt good after a few minutes.

Why? Because, we didn’t come to 0.0 to be glorified carebears, plexing and ratting ABC rocks. We came for the fights, the experience and the fun. This was it and we needed to get our shit together to get things done. We have come to a much more dangerous place than Tenerifis finally and this where it begins…

It took a bit more for this message to sink in with the rest of the alliance though…

With my Thanny replaced and a healthy 35+ man presence from Split Infinity, along with equal numbers from Imperial Order and a few SOB and EON allies, we logged on right after DT on the 4th of June to take the Station in 3-L and the iHUB. We had a nice bashing op going, nothing fancy, and although couple of neuts were in system at the the time we had no issues and shortly after, the Station was ours and we had the iHub dying shortly after.

Got some nice pics off that op:

Next in line was to get the TCU online, and to do that we had to kill off one of the SBUs (since WTB had already SBUed the system we didn’t bother replacing them sooner). We decided to let I0 move on to the next target system and keep sov bashing while SI would bash the SBUs, online the TCU and then go help them out.

What happened next, was that a fleet of about 15 folks with Drakes and Scimitars from DarkSide. came into system. As I learned later on, DarkSide. are quite infamous of their small gang PVP. Back then, we had no idea who they were and our FC called the support fleet to go meet them at the in-gate. We had superior intel and manpower, but we didn’t have good sync with I0 (we never called them to help, we were quite proud and felt we could handle anything) and about that moment everything started to fall apart. Out of our 100 man fleet, only SI subcaps went to that gate, and within few minutes we started losing one ship after the other…

Now remember what I told about being complacent earlier? Our Sub-Caps were ships that were mostly fitted for “safe” sov bashing, like we were used to do for more than a month, back in Tenerifis Sov grind. That meant little to no tank, max DPS and without logi they stood no chance. Once we realized that our ships were getting pwnd, our only option was to get our caps to go with them and provide reps.

If I recall correctly at that stage, we managed to get our fleet back safe, after losing some sub-caps to the DarkSide 15man gang. The fight was completely one-sided as we couldn’t get any ships pointed. GF to DarkSide there for awesome flying. Once we regrouped, DarkSide left system, intel was pretty bad on our side and we decided to go for the SBU again.

Yeah, we should have done this much sooner, killed the SBUs and put online our own. That mistake aside, we recovered the losses, our folks jumped into new ships and we engaged the SBUs. Few moments after, DarkSide returns, bubbles our cap fleet that is on the grid and a cyno pops up.

Yup, “It’s Hot-Drop o’ clock” as Cpt JR said…

Now, 3 great learnings from a situation like this are:

1. Caps take fucking long to lock up anything and by the time they are able to apply reps, ships were about to pop. Effectively, with DarkSide. really knowing what they were doing, they were switching targets and popping our sub-caps faster than we could apply any reps on them.

2. Sub-caps without dedicated ships to point the enemy fleet down will result in massive losses. We had very few tackle with us. That resulted in us not being able to kill anything but a freaking sabre from the enemy fleet. Most of the ships we called primary melted fast, up to the point where they would get off grid and warp back at a distance.

3. If you commit capitals in today’s 0.0 game, a hotdrop of Supers is bound to happen, so make sure you have the counter-hotdrop ready in advance, before you commit your own capitals.

So we learned quite a few things, the hard way and along with some other minor mistakes and a few bad calls that were made. At the end of this engagement, we had lost the field, with heavy losses, but the Station was ours. We have achieved our goal… or did we?

Yeah we still had to take down the SBU… By the time we had a bomber fleet with fighter support on the field hitting that SBU, things escalated.

What happened was that a 30man Wrecked gang with Hellcats came into system. Hellcat fleets are Abaddons with high DPS, supported by Guardians. They had also a Damnation, Loki and Proteus as well as a couple of BCs with them, all in all, a very decent setup. They started bashing our TCU, trash-talking in local and along with other shenanigans, thought they had the upper hand. Well I mean they had all the rights to brag, we pretty much gave them a bunch of free kills earlier, not to mention the hotdrop 2 days ago…

With our sub-caps decimated earlier, we didn’t have the ships ready to do any damage to them, but we had the morale to see this to the end and put up a good fight. However, we needed to ensure that our Caps won’t be risked again without proper support. That meant picking up the Bat-phone and call in the big boys!

PK of Aggressive Tendancies fame, was quick and eager to respond. AAA’s rally time was amazing and they grouped a fleet ready in just a few minutes, to not only take on the 30man gang we had in system, but also to counter-hot drop them once they brought in their Super-Caps.

Only thing we had to do, was to bait them to hot-drop us. Simple, right?

Not really… We did our best, but time went buy and they didn’t take the bait. I had a Cyno fitted on my thanny and AAA was ready to laid them all to waste, once any Supers appeared, but it was almost an hour before we decided to just cyno in the sub-caps and at least kill their sub-cap fleet.

We decided to bait them into position by attacking the SBU with our caps, and so they did. Once everyone was within 20km of my ship, I popped the cyno, waiting for a massive gang of pure pwnage to bridge-in and give these guys some payback for our losses earlier.

What I got instead, was this:

Yup, the Titan instead of bridging-in the fleet, jumped at the cyno. EPIC LOLs.

Took a few moments to regroup and ensure the second Titan was ready with a bridge this time and by then, the enemy fleet warped off grid.

Sometimes luck plays quite the games… I had a cloaky scout in system, with cyno fitted, sitting off a random planet. Guess where the enemy fleet landed. Yep, right next to me! Then of all possible things, the wierdest thing happened! The enemy Phobos in their fleet, decided to put up their bubble!!!

Yeah they were all at planet, at 0, with their own HIC keeping their fleet in a nice bubble. I was only a few clicks away and ready to light the second cyno right on top of them… I was sure that this time we would surely get them… Then local spiked… as second Titan bridged the Sub-caps to the first cyno (where the first Titan had landed) – before my second cyno near the enemy fleet was up…

EPIC LOLs again!

I was a nervous wreck at that time, shaking by adrenaline that was pumping for hrs and really didn’t follow what happened next, while AAA hunted and killed some of the enemy fleet. All I know is, that they fled the scene as fast as they could, and soon after, AAA was back to help us kill the two SBUs and rep up the TCU, before they were gone back home.

Thumbs up to AAA for showing up – even with the mistakes on their end, it was amazing to see how lightning fast they were able to muster such numbers and be able to support us. Too bad we didn’t get to lure the enemy Supers in – that would have been really sweet, but perhaps we’ll get more opportunities for that in the near future…

Wrecked and DarkSide. put up a good fight and got lots of kills with minimal losses. GF to them. Split Infinity on the other hand, got their first real 0.0 warfare experience, learned a lot of things, gained a Station system and realized that no-matter how big you are, this is a game that is so rich and complex, that anything is possible.

EPIC Wins, EPIC Fails and EPIC Lolz, we are here to stay and to have loads of fun!

Oh, and the name of the station is “Hot-Drop o’clock” in memory of yesterday’s events!

Welcome to our sandbox!

qp