A very good day in Eve

Days in Eve are not equal.

Most are pretty good.  A few are depressing and some feel like work.  And then, once in a while you have an *amazing* day.

(I will note that I had a background part about Gevlon's anti-diplomacy explaining what lead to this conflict, however it was too long. It will be in a separate post.  So for now suffice to say that Gevlon worked very hard to antagonize RvB).

After several weeks of ganks and skirmishes with the Lemmings, (Gevlon's grr-goons alliance), an opportunity presented itself to strike at Gevlon directly - we found the high-sec entrance to his C1 wormhole.  We passed on this information to CFC contacts and they went in and reinforced his POS and his POCOs. On Sunday, his structures were due to come out of reinforcement.

An RvB operation to evict him out of the wormhole was put into place, involving battlecruiser fleets and a very early morning fight for me.  Normally I never would get up early for a fight on the weekend (it's just a game in the end) but for this... yeah I was ready to make an exception.  I spent some time preparing a prophecy for the occasion, equipped with probes, a mobile depot and modules for almost any opportunity... only to learn in the morning we were a bit short on logi and I was instead given a T1 logi.  Oh well, more logi practice!

The fleet is gathered and eager to go... but there is a problem.  See, No Holes Barred (No-Ho), a powerful alliance of wormhole dwellers, has learned about this situation and is camping the wormhole entrance. They have several T3 cruisers and can easily collapse the passage.  (Yes... they are barring the hole...) This is a serious impasse... until someone in fleet remembers that No-Ho is *very* fond of songs.  We have a bargaining chip!  Diplomatic channels are opened, and a deal is struck.  We will get passage if we sing, and if after the POS-bash, we will fight them.  This is a deal we gladly accept.  

Yes, there is a recording of the song out there on the internet.  Go ahead and search for it, but your ears wont thank you when you find it ;) 

Gevlon was apparently offered a similar deal earlier by No-Ho... but apparently, he he didn't want to sing. 

We go in and attack the POS.  The guns are firing, but the POS is not manned, ie no human intelligence is controlling the guns.  As a result they are shooting all over the place, forcing us logi to constantly switch targets.  I get shot at a few times but my fellow logis keep me alive.  After a bit, the POS falls to our firepower:

http://red.rvbeve.com/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=663066

Yes, that is me on the killmail - you think I wouldn't bring a few sentry drones so I could at least shoot a little bit? ;)

We started wrecking and looting, grabbing a hulk and a rokh, knowing that No-Ho would show up at any moment.

http://red.rvbeve.com/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=663064

http://red.rvbeve.com/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=663065

Aaand they did, with a few friends to boot - apparently our numbers intimidated them a bit.   My perspective of the battle was a bit "narrow" given my logi focus.  They opened fire on a myrmidon at first on which I started landing rep.  Thing seemed fine for a few seconds until I got severely neuted and fired upon.  Despite the best effort of the logi team, my ship was promptly destroyed.

http://red.rvbeve.com/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=663084

My mobile depot, noooo.  Oh well, it was a free ship anyway.

No-Ho used the neuting power of their legions to quickly shut down and crush our entire logi team.  Our FC, Professor Clio, seeing this, the fleet now bleeding battlecruisers and realizing that our firepower was not going to be sufficient to overwhelm the enemy fleet, concluded that the fight is lost. The fleet withdrew and left the wormhole.  No-Ho didn't bar the way and looted the field.

Here is the battle from their perspective:  https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=328113&find=unread

So pretty solid fight and POS down, OP success no?  But we aren't done, nooo!  

We were to regroup at 1:30 pm to head back into the wormhole so we could bash Gevlon's POCOs.  This time the order was for more agile, high DPS ships, and I was planning on bringing a Vexor Navy Issue. However, when I log back in I learn that the POCOs had come out off reinforcement earlier than expected, the fleet has already left *and* that a war with the Lemmings (Gevlon's alliance) had just gone live - a 20 jump trek alone in a VNI was risky.  It was suggested I bring something fast and high DPS and asked if I could fly a stealth bomber (no).  So the FC said "hey, why don't you bring an Enyo? In fact, here is a contract for one".  I take the Enyo and it has techII blasters, which I can't use...  BUT I have the skillbook!  I start training in, buy a ton of void ammo, bring some antimatter just in case and start burning towards the WH entrance as fast as I can to crash any potential gate camp. This plan of "fly and learn" amuses the fleet.

By the time I reach the WH I can now use the guns, and I'm startled a bit to realize that with void ammo my DPS is about 350!  At this point, 2 POCOs are already down. Our 45 man fleet keeps on destroying them quickly at a rate of about 1 per 10 minutes, and soon enough Gevlon now has 9 POCOs to add to his losses.  Here is an example:

http://red.rvbeve.com/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=663155 

We head back home.  I thought this was it for my day of space violence, but no, there was going to be a bonus round!

I keep my eyes open and gave intel to the fleet as I'm ahead of some of them.  I'm almost home when I see that about 10 Lemmings are in New Caldari.  Furthermore, they have a tackle and a prophecy on the NC gate in Josameto.  I'm able to evade this small gate camp.  This looks like a trap, with the prophecy acting as bait.  I inform the fleet, and a plan is quickly hatched.   We pick a bait of our own and send him into the trap.  The Lemmings take our bait, jump on him and we land on *them* in a battlecruiser fleet.  The Lemmings attempt to scatter, but not quickly enough - six cruisers, two battle cruisers and 2 pods are destroyed -one worth over 800 millions. Despite only the Red Fed being able to engage, no ships were lost on our side.

http://red.rvbeve.com/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=663164   

I really like the Harbinger, I really do. 

I logged out of RvB, very satisfied, only to realized that on my trader/industrialist account, 3 battleships that had been on sale forever had *finally* sold all at once, netting me a nifty 90 millions in profit.

So to recap, wormhole adventures, singing diplomacy, POS down, unknown amount of modules destroyed or looted, 9 POCOs down, minimal losses, flew Enyo for the first time, spotted enemy fleet, defeated said fleet and profit!  Yeah, Sunday was a good day. 

Edit:  Apparently No-Ho is going to reimburse RvB's losses.  You folks rock.