7 December 2006

Oh My God!!!

This is going to be a little difficult to explain but I'll try anyway.. expect a long blog entry! We had a bit of a fight in AZN-D2 tonight, ASCN's home system, and it went remarkably well considering the odds!

Now it's fairly common knowledge that BoB is predominantly Euro and that our US/Aussie TZ's are not as strong. This fight happened during our weakest timezone when ASCN are still quite active and can field rather large fleets. In fact ASCN usually pick this timezone to hit our POS's, they still fail repeatedly though as I am about to explain.

With about 130 people in local and BoB gang numbers at 40 we moved a Wyvern (thanks to our Tournament winning teams!) and Archon to the station accompanied by about 10 support (mixed frigs, inties, cruisers) and deployed two medium warp bubbles. As ASCN were hiding in their holes we thought we'd try baiting them out by camping the station.

Needless to say we got no organised response from ASCN... quite why was apparent about 20 mins later when they logged on/jumped in about 10 dreadnaughts. They were obviously waiting to get their fleet prepared to hit our POS again.

Local started spiking to 170, BoB still having 40 in gang and the rest being ASCN. Our FC went to the toilet leaving me in command just as ASCN started moving dreads in and building a larger fleet. I had the mothership and carrier warp back to our POS to get safe and people start taking down the two medium bubbles on the station. As we were preparing to leave our station camp ASCN started undocking people from the station, initially a few frigs undocked and just as we were about to engage them several battleships started undocking behind them before their whole fleet warped in to the station.

All the BoB ships around the station bailed out, arrived at our POS and realigned to the station. A covert ops ship was ordered into position so we could warp back in on ASCN (as we knew that they were undocking people into our bubbles). By the time our covert arrived in position ASCN had cleared out, we warped in and had to turn around empty handed and warp back out.

Messages were sent out across all our comms channels to get people logged on in AZN. We sat in the POS shields regrouping and filling out the gang (big thanks to Algorythm for sorting out the new gang structure!) whilst ASCN sorted themselves out. One of our coverts kept an eye on their dread fleet which was aligned towards our POS at full speed.

ASCN warped their fleet in to our POS at a loading point just as we warped our fleet out of the POS to a safe spot close to the tower. The BoB fleet reached 80 people with approximately 12 BS, 1 Wyvern and 2 Carriers, the rest being support ships. ASCN warped 10 Dreads in to our POS and commenced seiging with a fleet of about 25 BS and 75+ support sat 350-400km from the dreads at a loading spot.

The BoB fleet regrouped at our safe spot and alligned to our POS, massively outnumbered and very heavily outgunned. The general impression amongst our fleet was that as we were so heavily outnumbered we would warp in at long range, try to pop a couple of ASCN battleships and warp back out again, standard long range hit and run tactics, the intent being to whittle down the ASCN fleet and then get on the dreads to save the POS from being reinforced.

I was pretty sure ASCN expected exactly those tactics from us and would have ammo fitted accordingly. I had slightly different plans though, it was balls to the wall time! So, as our covert ops reported the first elements of ASCN's fleet warping down to their dreadnaughts I ordered our guys to warp to a covert ops right on top of the enemy fleet. To be precise our support and interdictors warped to the enemy fleet at zero kilometres and our battleships at optimal for close range high damage ammo.

I have to admit that as our battleships were outnumbered about 2:1 and our support about 3:1+ when we warped in I had the sinking feeling that this was going to be my most glorious fuckup since I started commanding BoB fleets two years ago! In fact not to put too fine a point on it I was shitting myself and the first few moments were painful until our fleet had all loaded the scene and some well ordered target calling had started. I was pretty concerned that we'd hold our nerve to be honest as we came under immediate heavy fire by a more numerous enemy.

Target calling commenced from a couple of BoB FC's who shall remain nameless but one of whom in particular stayed alive throughout and kept very clear and concise target calling going during the whole fight and was absolutely superb. First class work you miserable Aussie git!

ASCN with a massive support advantage swarmed our battleships and it was awful to watch as they were under heavy fire sat there aligned to warp out, largely warp scrambled but plugging away at the primary and secondary targets anyway. This is probably going to be one of many major ass kisses throughout this tale but our battleship pilots started that fight outnumbered 2:1, warped in at close range with a mass of enemy support ships bearing down on them and stuck to their task without a whimper. Bloody well played guys, BoB discipline at it's best.

The simple instruction for our battleship pilots was align to get out but hold your position and keep firing. The guys in battleships had to trust myself for calling an apparently suicidal move, the target callers to keep clear targets communicated over teamspeak and their support pilots to fight outnumbered 3:1 yet keep the battleships free to warp out when they needed to. That takes balls of steel. This may be a game but it's a very unforgiving one where a loss can be painful and carries some weight, not to mention the fact that if you are a BoB pilot you have to win every single time (or you feel like you do, although of course we don't!). Those battleship pilots have my respect.

The covert ops watching the enemy fleet kept calling the enemy battleship numbers for us "20..... 19.... 18....." and so on. The Fleet Commanders calling targets were getting a bit twitchy as ASCN's support swarmed all over our battleships but right or wrong I had a pretty clear vision of how this fight was going to proceed and that meant staying in until our position was utterly untenable or as I hoped, we were getting on top of things. Communicated via teamspeak to the guy calling targets and running the battleship fleet was a very simple instruction that I'll quote pretty much word for word...
Unless it looks totally fucked DO NOT warp out
So the guys stayed, our support worked their way through the enemy support and our battleships whittled down the enemy battleship numbers whilst all the while 400km below us 10 ASCN Dreads pounded away on our POS.
12..... 11....... 10 ASCN Battleships left.... 9..... 8..... 7...... 6....
As we were obviously getting well on top of the ASCN fleet at this point the BoB interceptors were ordered down to the enemy dreadnaughts to start getting scrambles on. Our battleship fleet was still swarmed with enemy support but the decision was made to move all our surviving interceptors away from our fleet to get scrambles on the enemy dreads. There was some consternation amongst our battleship pilots at this point as their only defence against the still numerous ASCN support was drones and a few close range HACs.

The remaining enemy battleships went down and our battleships started coordinating their drones to clear out the remaining enemy support whilst aligning for the POS and the enemy dreadnaughts. Once clear of enemy ships our battleships warped down to the enemy dreads and began engaging them. Approximately 10 BoB battleships and 30-40 support engaged the first dread, a Naglfaar within about 40-50km of our POS.

Somehow we managed to lose scramble on the Naglfaar when he was in structure and he warped out as did four other ASCN dreadnaughts (our support pilots were spreading their scrambling power out amongst 10 dreads and we had lost a lot of support by this point). Scramblers were assigned to the remaining dreads and a primary was called (Dash Riprock in a Revelation). Guns, launchers, drones and fighters (from the mothership and 2 other carriers) were placed on the primary. ASCN spent the next 10-15 minutes warping more and more ships in to try and defend their dreads. All guns and fighters were left upon the primary targets whilst drones and some HAC firepower was diverted onto incoming ships. No doubt a check of the kill mails from later in the fight will show that many people actually diverted firepower away from the primary onto incoming ships but the principle remained the same throughout... keep main firepower on the dreads and take out incoming support with secondary fire. Nothing that warped in to try save the dreads survived more than about 30 seconds from that point onwards.

Whilst the fight around the dreadnaughts was raging ASCN kept regrouping at a spot 350-400km away from the POS before sending in groups of ships to engage us. Whilst we were working on the second or third dread (can't remember exactly) ASCN were building quite a large gang at the loading point and preparing to warp in to engage us. Bearing in mind that the BoB fleet had taken some attrition by this point and was considerably smaller than the ASCN fleet to begin with the last thing we needed was a concerted ASCN defensive response as we were trying to kill five dreads. So we called upon 'Evil Steve' a.k.a. Shrike's Avatar!

The Avatar warped in to a covert ops to position itself on the ASCN reinforcement gang, approximately 150-200km from them and 400km from our main fleet and the fight around the dreads. Shrike was lagged out totally upon warp in and couldn't see anything, as he appeared one of our covert ops pilots and myself simply yelled "FIRE, FIRE, FIRE... FIRE THE FUCKING DOOMSDAY!!!" on teamspeak..... so he did! That was pretty much the last we saw of ASCN warping reinforcements in to help their dreads, the Avatar got about 15 kill mails, good timing Molle!

Gradually over the course of about 15 minutes five enemy dreadnaughts were destroyed along with any and all ASCN ships coming in to support. In total it took over an hour to clean up all the loot and salvage all the wrecks. That one fight has probably financed the whole campaign in AZN with loot alone. Thanks ASCN!

Hero's of the fight include BoB's battleship pilots for their nerve to stay in when the situation looked utterly FUBAR, a certain BoB FC (who if he mocks me about the ashes again is going to get sent to a fiery death every time I am in command (good job mate!)), BoB's support pilots who whilst utterly outnumbered kept a swarm of ASCN pilots off us long enough for everyone else to do their jobs and some of the ASCN pilots for not giving up and continuing to try defend the dreads despite the situation being hopeless for them.

Awesome fight, massive props to my brothers and sisters in arms!

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

R A W R !

Anonymous said...

The fight was truly epic, lasted about an hour from first shot to last shot. Blacklights well spoken words do still not do it justice. It started as more of a suicide run because well we couldnt really sit there and do nothing whilst a more numerous enemy killed our POS. But it turned into a glorious victory.

BS concentrated fire was the best i have ever seen. Support was truly awesome, i dont know how they managed to defeat enemy support that
were 3 times as many, whilst scrambling th odd BS that got out of the bubble, and changing targets to protect our own BS's.

Props to the ASCN pilots who fought hard, even after the situation was hopeless for them, and then didnt whinge about lag afterwards.

Awesome day for the aussies, awesome night for the USA guys. Bad day for the british who slept/wprked through and missed out.

Much like the last day of the last ashes test :)

Anonymous said...

Grats.

Anonymous said...

From a covert point of view 165 below the pos it was a absolute butchering for ASCN. I know I could not do much but just stay where I was ordered. When all that remained was the dreads I warped over to where a lone dread was and scrambled and damped it in my covert to make sure it did not get away.

I just sat tight till a couple more support got over to it to keep scramble on it. After 5 mins or so I had to warp out in 1/3 armor as he finally got a lock and was able to use his drones on me :to bad for him he had several more support on him by that time.(( EXCELLENT JOB TO ALL SUPPORT AND BS PILOTS)..Truely amazing!!!

In the end that was the last dread to pop. The point being is that EVERYONE no matter what role we play makes a difference. It all boiled down to SUPURB FC, nerves of steel, discipline, target fire concentration, dedication,all around kick ass attitude. I could never be more proud to be BNC (BOB) as I was last night. Excellent job to all last night....

Anonymous said...

that scrap was probabley one of the best i have EVER been in bar nothing.

I was looking forward to calling the BS like you wouldn't beleive! past 4 Am and utterly shattered, but i could not have been more awake when half way en route to them.

Lagged out, and had no choice but to drop teh ball on calling, which was picked up in no time by our resident Aussie FC, and oh boy! what a job! i'm not ashamed to admit he tore strips off me on the target calling and snap decision making.

that was a prolonged fight if ever i have seen one, and well over an hour to clean the wrecks of loot, and get them salvaged.

Every pilot from teh co-verts that got us set-up to the Battleships, to the interceptors were nothing short of absolutley on fire through out the whole engagement. Always an honour to be a cog in such a machine!

now, M O R E ........

Anonymous said...

Nice work done by our guys there :)
i hope someone got fraps :P

Anonymous said...

Myself and a Few guys had been running around in a small t1 frig gang for hours

Heard about the battle going down but got stuck in jump queue for 20mins waiting to jump into AZN

Eventually got in and proceded to kill pods and ships at Station for 10mins lol

DeathWing wins EVE for local chatter imo

Great work guys

Anonymous said...

That was awesome!

Nice calm and accurate FC'ing, as Camman said great disciplined focus fire particularily considering how few of us BS there were, and support, well you guys are just my heroes. Outnumbered, kept us safe(ish heh) and still managed to get down and lay a good scramble spread on the dreads, which as anyone who's ever flown support in a fleet op, particularily at a POS slideshow, knows is often easier said than done.

Hard not to be damn proud to be BoB after pwnage like that.

Anonymous said...

Over an hour to loot and salvage doesn't really do the time frame justice. The wreckage was so numerous, that even with skilled salvage pilots, wrecks began to disappear because the timer was expiring. I took a pic while tackling a dread... it's a snap shot of the total carnage.

www.killboard.net/gallery/Reikoku/227.jpg

As epic a battle, as any video game could ever offer. Hands down. Thx to ASCN for being targets, and thx to BoB for being.

Anonymous said...

Amazing performance as usual, shame I was asleep at the time!

GG on the battlefield & GG on the nice blog post :)

Blacklight said...

Some of the numbers seem a bit whacky in this report now that I look through the killboards etc.. I think this is most probably due to people logging in during the fight and I know that we cyno'd in a couple more carriers before the fight ended so that for example although we started the fight with 2 carriers we ended it with 5.

I believe we started the fight with about 60 people and ended it with about 80 and local peaked at around the 220-230 mark.

So please excuse any inaccuracies in the numbers.

All in all a truly amazing scrap though!