The Defias Blog

¶ As you may already know, The Defias Brotherhood of New Eden was founded on piracy. However, with all of the big dogs running around in Molden Heath, we decided to back off a bit and work on establishing an infrastructure. Now that we’ve got our first POS up, and more of my pilots are able to support themselves, I decided that it was time to start looking for a fight here and there.
¶ Having not engaged in a whole lot of PvP combat since we started (maybe twice a week, we’d go out and look for some solo action, but nothing serious or organized), we’re certainly going to be spending a bit of time developing and refining tactics. I keep a close eye on blogs like i-Pirate (by flashfresh), A Pirate’s Perspective (by Kane Rizzel), and of course The Caldari Piratess (by Alia Xi) for inspiration and a bit of tactical insight, but nothing works better than actually putting yourself in the line of fire - and if there’s no line of fire to jump into, then creating one works just as well.

¶ It was a bit spur of the moment. One of my corpmates, bonobko, had recently hacked into a time capsule at an archeological site in deep space and brought back some ancient datachips containing some of the most interesting and outlandish music. While I’m no archeologist myself, that sort of thing always gets the wheels turning - whether it’s music, mythology, literature or even just lost history. One song in particular got my attention and made the bloodlust really flow. I wanted to go out hunting, and I didn’t want to ransom anyone or pick through wrecks looking for hidden treasures… I just wanted to kill.
¶ A glance at the comm showed only one of my mates online - fluxkompensator. A ran over the addressbook and found a number of contacts listed as active, but only one who might be interested in what I had in mind - a guy I’d recently harassed, by the name of Skorgan Shard. It wasn’t hard to get flux interested in a little bit of rabble rousing, especially since he was only two jumps away. Skorgan took a little convincing, but once I brought up the idea of an E-War Blackbird, he seemed much more interested and set about fitting one out as quickly as he could.
¶ While we waited for him, flux and I got started. There was only an hour left until the EVE Gate spewed forth its disruptive burst of energy that keeps us all out of commission for a bit each day, so we had to hurry if we were going to see any action. Bosena was the first stop.
¶ flux made his way to one of his safespots in the system while I went to my own and called for Aura to bring up my D-Scanner. I saw a Vigil-class frigate, which I knew was often used as a tackler and in some cases even preferred over the Rifter, but with flux in a Harbinger-class battlecruiser I hoped I’d be able to put my Stiletto to better use than tackling a Tech-1 frigate. Unfortunately, it seemed that anything worth killing had already docked up in the face of the impending radiation storms. With 5 pilots on Local, I decided to dock in Bosena’s one station to see just how many of them were there… that’s when I saw the Vigil, sitting 250km from the station - well out of range of the station’s sentry guns. I immediately undocked, hoping that he hadn’t noticed me.
¶ He hadn’t. Or if he had seen my Stiletto, he’d mistaken it for a Slasher and didn’t see me as a threat. I told my corpmate to align to the station and wait for my signal as my MicroWarpdrive kicked in and my interceptor accelerated violently toward my prey. By the time he could react, he was already tackled and flux was already in warp. Of course, I could’ve ripped the Vigil apart with just my Barrage cartridges, but I knew that the direction I’d taken the corporation in had been somewhat limiting to flux and he’d been so good about it that I couldn’t deprive him of the fun; even if this WAS just a frigate, flux deserved to get his lasers on it.
¶ By this time, Skorgan was entering Bosena in his Blackbird, set up for jamming at the longest range he could muster. We rendezvoused on another safespot and gave a last scan of the system before deciding to move on in search of a better target, hoping to utilize the Caldari E-War cruiser to its fullest potential. We didn’t find any action until we got to Aedald.
It was about 10 minutes before the first burst of electromagnetic radiation would rip through Molden Heath and apparently we weren’t the only people looking for a last-minute kill. We didn’t have time to sit on a safespot scanning around, so I just took my interceptor belt hopping. At about the same time as I arrived at the first belt, a Vagabond warped in about 4 kilometers away. I thought about it for a second and decided that with the Blackbird, we might have a chance at tearing him down if I could just outrun the drones. I called for my mates to warp in at their optimal ranges.
¶ Unfortunately, I quickly learned that I could not outrun this pilot’s drones - my Stiletto’s shield melted and the lightweight armor plates fell away in short order. My pod was warping out of the belt as the Harbinger and Blackbird were warping in.
¶ I knew that the Shard’s skill at operating electronic warfare systems wasn’t exactly ideal and that if he didn’t take the Vagabond out of the fight from the very first second, that he’d go down quickly and then my corpmate would literally be at the mercy of the Vagabond pilot. Rather than see two unnecessary losses, I gave the order to abort. Both of them were able to disengage before the Vaga could tackle them.
¶ Just as well, I suppose. It wasn’t the best idea in the world to tackle such an experienced HAC pilot - not in just a Stiletto, and not when his cruiser and his drones were just as fast as my interceptor - possibly faster. But it was a lesson learned, and I count the fact that I didn’t get the two pilots I was leading killed as a small personal victory. There was a time when I would’ve been able to do nothing but frown as all three of us got podded - living and fighting in 0.0 has sharpened my reflexes and taught me much, now we just need to work on our own way of implementing the lessons we’ve already learned while adapting to new lessons as we proceed.

-Havo out. 

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