You want epic? I'll give you epic

Yesterday morning in Eve I was involved in the most epic battle of my gaming experience. Let me share the story with you….

The fight started with about 10 of us in cruisers and frigates, camping a bubble and gate in nullsec. Our fleet consisted of the Art of War Alliance, and some guys we were newly blue with. We attacked a small fleet of ships that came through the gate, killling probably 5 of their cruisers. Then another of their fleet jumped in, a Dominix battleship that quickly dropped a cynosaural field, which opened a jump bridge with a system far away. Suddenly two supercarriers appeared!

Yes, our frigates and cruisers killed some cruisers, so they use a cyno-battleship to hot-drop supercarriers against us. Firstly - what a bunch of losers! Secondly - we fled the battlefield, withdrawing to tactical bookmarks.

But then another alliance (Bat Phone) very quickly heard about the supercarriers nearby their own roaming fleet and jumped in and started tackling the Dominix and supercarriers so they couldn’t get away. The Dominix was primaried and warp bubbles went up, but the supercarriers were repairing the Dominix (maybe 'cause it was their way home?). The call went out in local for people to bring battleships or capital ships, and soon enough the Dominix was destroyed. Then the supercarriers became the target of this small-ish fleet that thought we would 'give it a go'.

We rejoined the fight ourselves, offering our assistance as best we could. I was flying a Pilgrim, which is a combat recon ship and good at sucking a target’s capacitor dry, so I was one of the ships doing that against the supercarriers.

Initially there were probably 30 of us, but within 10 minutes there were ships and fleets and alliances coming from all corners of the region. There were phone calls made to people to get them to get in the game ASAP! The supercarriers were repairing each other so that the combined fleet against them was hardly scratching their shields.

A Rapier appeared and dropped another cyno, and a carrier appeared before the cyno and Rapier were destroyed. The carrier immediately added its repair capabilities to the supercarrier that was taking the most damage, but within a minute it was destroyed by our fleet.

Then the pilot of the most damaged supercarrier logged off but the ship was stuck in the bubble for 15 minutes. The other one managed to slowly crawl out of his bubble and warped off, but then came back again to continue repairing his buddy, who disappeared once his 15-minute log off timer was up (your ship stays there for 15 minutes even if you logged off, IF your ship is being attacked and can’t warp off).

So now all attention was given to the supercarrier that had come back, and more warp bubbles went up around it. Someone called out for Titan pilots, and soon enough a Titan appeared on the field to add its firepower against the remaining supercarrier. By this time there was almost 100 pilots in this system in NPC nullsec – a system that rarely gets more than 20 or so. Neutrals passing through were stopping to watch the awesome sight, and we were all too busy to worry about targeting them.

Meanwhile, in the middle of this huge capital-ship battle, there’s me in my little Pilgrim, sitting off the supercarrier at about 7km, doing my bit to neut the hell out of it. The artillery fire, autocannons, lasers, missiles, torpedoes and huge explosions from almost a hundred combatants were lighting up space all around me. It was truly awesome.

Eventually the supercarrier was killed, unable to survive the combined forces of around 85+ ships against it, ranging from frigates, many battleships, capital ships and a Titan.

In the aftermath, everyone agreed in local that the system was now blue, and no one would attack each other. The supercarrier wrecks were looted, and over the next 20 minutes everyone started drifting off, back to whatever it was they were doing before the supercarriers arrived. The watching neutrals moved on.

I was sitting there probably for an hour afterwards, cloaked, watching pilots moving around, looting the wreck, taking photos, salvaging.... Blues, oranges, reds and neutrals – today, for a short while, everyone was blue.

It was awesome.

Black Claw's update

Hello there, I bet you forgot about me, right? Well don't worry, I hadn't forgotten about you. I've just been busy, and haven't really felt that there's been anything really interesting to write about.

OUCH is still recruiting (when we're not at war, that is), and we have training happening on a daily basis, including roaming through nullsec to put into practice the things that the members are learning during training.

Speaking of wars, we've been involved in two wardecs this week, both due to coalition support.

Oh yeh, I should tell you about the coalition. The Art of War Alliance made some new friends over the past few weeks, and we've somewhat formalised our relationship into a 'coalition of alliances'. Since there are 3 of us, and all our names start with "A", we've called it the A3 Coalition. As good a name as any, I think....

First order of business was attempting to support each other with wardecs - if one is wardec'd, the others wardec the aggressor, so that we're all involved. Unfortunately, this had a cascade effect that made it prohibitively expensive, so we quickly learnt that won't work! We're now changing that policy to something more suitable, but I'm not going to tell you what that is. Security measures, and all. I know you understand.

I'm really proud of the fact that we're doing so well against war targets. I don't mean we're killing them repeatedly, I mean they're not killing US repeatedly. This is because of the wartime operations policies I implement within the alliance. As soon as a war starts, I initiate the policies and everything changes. We've pretty much won most of the wars we've been involved in since these polies were created.

However, I'm not going to say any more on that. If you're interested in finding out how to win your own wars that you're the victim of, then contact Black Claw in-game to discuss how the Art of War Alliance can help you.

Along the way I've been doing the occasional PVP myself, and I've learned a few new things of my own. While the Cynabal is a tough ship, it's also a shit magnet like you wouldn't believe. I've had fleets chasing me through nullsec in an attempt to kill me. I'm sure they're phoning up their friends and telling them to log on to help catch the Cynabal, 'cause people have logged in and joined in the chase. I've had fleets of stealth bombers appear out of nowhere in an attempt to blow me out of the sky. All of them failed, luckily for me.

But it made me realise that the ship gathers too much attention, and because I'm more of a solo pilot without any fleet support, I've decided to park it away at the back of the hangar. Instead, I'll use the other ships that don't get so much attention. Like the Hurricane. I've got a setup that I want to test in battle that I think is pretty cool. But I have to find the time first!

It's amazing how much time is spent in-game on corporation management, alliance diplomacy, and coalition setups. While I enjoy it all, don't get me wrong, it doesn't leave that much room for PVP'ing. Thank the Gods that at least training is sorting itself out, so I don't have to do that too.

Until next time, fly however the hell you want.