First Blood

Last night was my weekly Eve night (pushed back from Sunday as my wife needed a break that night) and I logged in to a whole lot of nothing. The corp was finishing up some plexes, the alliance was quiet, hell, the whole NC seemed quiet according to comms and fleet finder.

Disappointed, I decided to rat a while in my Tengu to repair some of my sec status from back in the day of m3's low sec pirate patrols. Its nowhere near as bad as Kla'strit's status but it could use some lifting. Man, the Tengu is a dream for belt ratting: frig rats were one shot, cruisers two salvoes, battlecruisers four, only battleships and advanced rats required more than moment's thought. No special spawns and after half an hour I was done with that and thinking about starting a gate camp in order to practice FCing myself.

Then a fleet advert in the NC comms went out: 0100 NC Support. Oh, what's this? I check it out but a couple things put me off joining it such as its pretty far out west (RAGE is in the east) and its on a voice comms system I don't have setup... and its a Goon fleet. I know the new Goonswarm Federation alliance is part of the Northern Coalition and "BFF" and all that, but nearly everyone in m3 has a grudge against the Goons for past transgressions and I am no exception. Perhaps, I figured, its time to bury the hatchet.

But wait! If there is a support fleet, who is it supporting? And as that thought darted into my dusty cranium the fleet advert appeared as if on cue: 0100 NC Capitals. A quick check saw desire for "Supers" (i.e. supercapitals which are Titans and Super Carriers) above dreads and carriers. Eager to participate I joined fleet, got on comms, and logged in the parking alt. Yeeha!

I had to make two jumps just to get to the form up system, accompanied by corp mate brave Lord Shigglesworth in his Archon for capping up. Once at the rally point, the fleet formed nicely with 15 supercarriers and one titan at one point along with a host of other dreads and carriers. We then made two jumps to the operation system in... wait a sec... that can't be right.... CLOUD RING?!?! That's a long way from home...

 Once there the fleet engaged in some tower reinforcing shooting which is not the most exciting thing in the world but at least goes by pretty fast when you have 20+ super carriers and 2 titans to add to the firepower of the dreadnoughts. We put three towers in two systems into reinforced if I recall correctly, and killed a handful of POS sentry guns for killmails. I was paranoid about leaving my fighter bombers behind so I only killmailed two guns at two of the POS, one here and one here. Still, first killmails in which the Wyvern Shaitann has appeared (yes, renamed from Vendetta Arcanum... it just didn't work for me after a while).

Also, I noticed I have not added tech II sentry guns to my drone bay yet despite having the skills. For shame! I'll get that fixed this week.