Today’s first combat patrol of the Isaz belts was entertaining.
Ironfleet scouting elements discovered AC-ME’s Wcaspar mining in, of all things, a Blackbird (Caldari EW cruiser). Now, cruiser mining is all well and good, but the Blackbird’s hardly ideal for that. Frankly, it smelled a little bit like a trap.
Observation continued.
Eventually it became clear that Acmes Protector was providing sporadic escort, in a Drake.
Time to stir this trap with a stick, and see what goes “Snap!”
Trusty Manticore stealth bomber the Iron Area Denial warps in at a nice discrete range from Blackbird and jet can. Drake is present (or arrives very shortly thereafter) but, as expected, is so far away as to be temporarily irrelevant.
Lock Blackbird, lock jet can, cruise missiles away! Blackbird immediately starts trying to close with me, but is making no great progress in closing the gap. Cruise missiles thunder away, doing good damage and lots of it. The Blackbird soaks up close to 10k damage by the time he’s lightly into armor and warping away. Chebri’s Blackbird wasn’t nearly so tough, and with a tank like that, I don’t think this Blackbird was here to mine.
Pop the can, wince at the lost salvage, cloak. Hey, the Drake is gone, some protector! Did I just clear the field?
Ah, no, here comes Murdock Jones in his Enyo. The range is good for me, not so much for him. One barrage of cruise missiles eats his shields, and he chooses discretion over valor and leaves. Now I’ve cleared the field.
No, wait, here comes some more pilgrims. Wow, it’s Corruptblitz in a Scorpion battleship, and …
{you have been disconnected}
Cuss cuss cuss. It’s no great strategic secret, my internet connection sucks. Some days, I can’t stay connected at all.
Long story short, today was one of those days. I made four or five attempts to line up suitable bombing runs, but I kept getting disconnected, causing me to warp away, causing me to warp back uncloaked on reconnect. Pretty much messed up my stealth. Seemed like every time I came back, there were more combat pilots at the mining party. By the time I gave up in disgust, it looked like this:
By my count, that’s three battleships protecting the two barges and the hauler, not counting any cloakers. Glad to see mining continuing as per usual!
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January 3rd, 2008 at 3:14 pm
Not every person in an industrial corp is a miner.. some of us love the opportunity to fire at anything, but we choose to do the honorable thing in protecting, to the best of our ability, people who desire not to do much combat.
not always, but often, we go out with a decent security force. our hauler was doing his job, the miners that were online were doing their job, and the security forces that were online were doing their job.. perfectly normal day in AC-ME.
January 3rd, 2008 at 3:28 pm
Ah, but you forget that I’ve been flying the same belts with you guys for weeks. I don’t dispute that everybody was doing their jobs, but the fleet composition of that mining op was not even remotely “normal”.
I can’t tell if you’re actually trying to convince me that my efforts are pointless, or if this is just the usual wartime propagandistic bluster designed to impress the bystanders.
Doesn’t matter, I know when you guys have increased security over normal, because I know what your normal is. And in all the time I’ve flown the same belts, you never have three battleships up on a “normal” day.
January 4th, 2008 at 4:43 pm
I would stay away from ACME from now on for these reasons. [unknown untrusted link deleted]
January 5th, 2008 at 7:13 am
Normal for us is peace time, you cant blame us for acually protecting our own, especially when its war and when we know you are in the system. Putting out normal or less security would in fact be stupid of us and the whole thing – we mining and you watching makes thursday mining just so special!
You are doing a good jub M but im afraid I had calculated more higher activity from your corporations side, but i guess its hard when you only have a semi active member that helps you out.
I’m not sure what standards are you have in Ironfleet, but preventing one can of the evenings total of seven, isn’t a mission accompished in my opinion. In fact since you started this little war at us noone else has been bothering us so were still down to the standard of loosing 1/2 a can per week. And dont claim you have blown up several cans of “ore”, three things in EVE is acually free without cost, rookie ships, jatcans and bookmarks. Which leaves you with a single kill and one unit of tritanium at the price of fifty mil.
Not a good investment mate, but i guess we have some days left on week one. Keep writing the blog, i acually love it (besides some personal attacks but im not getting in to that discussion).
Keep doing your best and we will do the same!
Sincerely
WCaspar
January 5th, 2008 at 9:16 am
No blame, Wcaspar, quite the contrary. What you’re doing with the protection is a large part of our war aims. In the long run, combat pilots don’t enjoy protecting miners, that’s why they don’t do it except when they need to. For the duration of this war, Ironfleet provides the need, as best we can.
Activity-wise, it hasn’t actually been a great week for me — holiday obligations, fighting off a minor bug, doing actual paying work, that sort of thing. Maybe next week will be better!
Jetcans may be free, but the ore in them? No so much. The rest of your tonnage and investment calculations remind me that in wartime, both sides tend to calculate victory by the measure that works best for them. If I haven’t managed to communicate by now that this war is not about ISK and that our war aims could be met without a single kill, I guess I’ll never succeed in making that point. I never expected to kill more value than we’re paying in war fees (though it would be nice) and I never expected to come out positive on the kill ratio (measured by value or tonnage) although I’m trying very hard.
Thanks for the kind words about the blog, I do have fun with it. A little puzzled about your reference to personal attacks, though — I’ve gotten plenty here (though few from AC-ME) but it’s important to me not to make any. So I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about, there. Admittedly I can get pretty rough in responding to personal attacks, but I’m not aware of having initiated any.