RvB Ganked 11! Finally, it is time for Tier 3 Battlecruisers (and some other ships too)

Heading out to Rens early, I slapped a fit on my Oracle (beams ftw) and then debated with others how they should also be fitting. A large majority wanted to go full gank (looking at you Tornado pilots) untill I pointed out that was usually get bombed on these roams, and 6-7k EHP was just not going to cut it. Cue people starting to worry.

LizzVicious > tgl has me paranoid… about damn bombs… i dont konw if i want that dcu or not

Finally, Mangala appears online and we start getting the fleet together.

By 2100 EVE, we have about 68 pilots in fleet, most of them in Tier 3 BCs – a majority are fielding Tornados, a fair few Oracles and we have one Naga and Talos. Oh, and we have a Hull-tanked Navy Megathron. Who is our scout. Oh, and Kaeda is also scouting with a Brick Drake.

But apparently we are! Mang assures us that, since these BCs require skill and good co-ordination to use effectively, we will at least pretend that we’re trying to not fail horribly. Works for me.

We head out from Rens, meeting some of our flashy members in the nearby lowsec and then proceed to our nullsec entry point. We’re going to Providence space!

Except, we’re not. There’s a lot of Pandemic Legion in the last lowsec system on our route and we’d at least like to make it to nullsec before welping. A new plan is needed, so Mangala turns us round and it’s off to Curse we go!

We jump into nullsec and are greeted by swarms of frigs nothing at all, so off into null we head. Azual from Agony Unleashed joins us as well, and scouts ahead with the others.

We go a few jumps before our scout(s) report a small gang camping ahead of us. Kaeda goes for bait-tackle and the rest of us jump in and open fire on a Drake and Cynabal who get caught. They both melt fast.

We continue on, and lose a couple of BCs behind us to an interceptor gang. Ouch. Sadly, we cant get them to engage the main fleet, so we keep going. Our scout eventually reports a Brutix off gate who keeps warping to the same tactical. The scout bookmarks the spot, gets tackle on the Brutix and calls the fleet in.

And then bombers decloak.

Fortunately, a couple seem to miss and we only lose 2 ships (I think), so we post the Brutix kill and move on again!

Next, our Drake scout runs into a Snigg Drake gang, with Basilisk and Claymore support. Sadly, he explodes but gets his pod out to reship.

Snigg are in the next system, sat on the gate. We have no intention of jumping our paper thin BCs in at 0 to that gang, and they seem to have no intention of jumping to us. A Dramiel keeps jumping in, taunting us in local then MWD’ing back to the gate and jumping out. On the third try, he explodes. That’ll teach him.

Our Navy Mega pilot decides to leeroy into their gang, and dies as a result. We get bored and decide to go in the opposite direction.

Finally, we jump into a system called “GE8JV” and there’s some Pandemic Legion in system – only about 5, and there’s also a cyno up.

People are calling to warp to the cyno, and I check my D-Scan. 2 Nyxes and a Erebus.

“Hey Mang, I see some bad things on scan, I don’t think we should go ther-” [ 2012.01.07 23:29:33 ] (notify) Following Mangala Solaris in warp

And we land on a PL Erebus on the station.

Oh, we have an Onyx. Engage we will then.

We engage the Erebus with the fleet, losing several BCs to the Titan’s guns. Those hurt.

A Thanotos undocks, but is practically volleyed into half armour and redocks instantly. Another one tries the same – evidently trying to get reps onto the Titan which is actually melting fairly quick – I don’t see hardeners active on it.

The Titan’s armour is being whittled down – he’s at almost 70%! We’re losing ships but there’s no local spike and we’re getting somewhere! We start considering trying to batphone another alliance in, but we haven’t got our own Cyno so this goes nowhere.

Then a Nyx lands.

Fighters are out, and it’s also likely the Titan is now refitting for some better tank. We could be in trouble here. We throw everything onto the Titan in some desperate hope we could somehow kill it while still volleying the normal carriers back into station.

A second Nyx lands. Ships are starting to die pretty quick now but our Onyx remains alive.

A Carrier aggresses me with sentries (lol) and I note this as I warp off to a planet – apparently there’s a pod to kill.

Khas Dran > Elise Randolph 6k away from me in a pod and i have no guns argh

I land but Elise warps the pod out, and I warp back to station to see a PL Avatar also on field. Our Onyx has died, so Mang calls a GTFO. The aggressed carrier is in 1/3 armour but we’re losing ships too rapidly to do anything about it. Shame.

We bug the hell out, regrouping in a nearby Stain market hub. We lost a good 2/3 of our own fleet, but still damn good fun all round!

We head to a nearby dead end cluster to try and kill some ratters. A Drake is greeted via the customary method of shooting him in the face, but there’s nothing else that isn’t POS’d/cloaked/hiding, so we decide to head back to HED-GP.

On the way, we pass through the PL system and wave at them. They didn’t seem to wave back 😦

A scout notes an Arazu and another ship sat off a gate ahead – 250km or so. 2 Interceptors burn up and whilst the other ship warps off (hence me forgetting what it was), the Arazu doesn’t move and promptly dies.

The trip to HED is uneventful but when we get there there’s a surprise! A PL cyno at a safe has dropped an Erebus and Leviathan in – the Erebus is the same one from earlier!

[00:49:58] Wasp O’Ryan > COME AT ME

OK!

We warp to the cyno and pop the cyno frig, but there’s nothing else here. We decide to shoot Mangala’s Abaddon instead. *Then* the two titans warp in.

A bunch of us scatter but some stay and shoot anyway, because it’s hilarious. They finish off Mangala’s ship and Mangala taunts our interceptors for failing to catch his pod (he told us we can pod him) and then lands his pod on the gate I’m at.

And doesn’t jump.

Yoink.

The roam’s well and truly over now. Some people are still suiciding at the Titans, but I choose to log out in highsec.

Not many kills, but a very fun roam nontheless!

Skip to 3 minutes on this video for the actual titan engagement

The next Ganked roam is Rifter Hulls, with us potentially engaging an Agony gang! Next Saturday in Stacmon, I hear.