Alternate Panic

Last night I logged in to find the militias in a bit of a panic due to CCP Fozzie's dev blog pointing out that the faction warfare zone control and loyalty point rewards overhaul is coming a bit early:

TL:DR Is that we’re accelerating some of our Factional Warfare feature changes that had been planned for Retribution and releasing those features that are ready for prime time starting with a patch on October 23.

Note that the dev blog was posted just after downtime on October 22nd.

For me, this is no big deal. For plex farmers, this is a huge deal because it means everyone who has a stockpile of LPs only had one day to drive their warzone control up to 4 or 5 (or even 3) to cash out before the changes came in and altered everything.

Needless to say, when I logged in last night there were fleets up. For the Gallente militia, there was no drive to get the warzone control up mainly due to lack of numbers I think, but we definitely wanted to frustrate the Caldari fleet nearby that was flipping systems in preparation for the new mechanics coming in.

The fleet being organized that I joined was different from any other militia fleet I've been in. For one thing it was larger, reaching 45 pilots at its peak. For a second thing, the FC was a lot more concerned with fleet composition. The request was for nano battlecruisers (preferably Drakes) and Tier 3 battlecruisers with ~50 km effective range.

Now I don't currently have a Drake in my hanger (still haven't replaced the one I lost back in April) but I do have a Tier 3 battlecruiser; in fact I have four, one of each empire. The Talos and Naga were fit with blasters and the Tornado with 650mm Repeating Artillery autocannons so they could work at the very end of their range, but why compromise when I have a pulse fit Oracle waiting to shine?

The enemy fleet flipped a system and moved off to Notoras to flip that system, a dead end which suited our needs perfectly. We moved in and engaged.

I'm not going to describe the blow by blow of every move the fleets made. Suffice to say the Caldari fleet had no interest in going against a larger and PvP fit Gallente fleet in their kitchen sink hub-shooting fleet and I don't blame them. We chased them and they led us around, both sides looking for kills where they could. I helped kill a Drake early on, and then later got one salvo off on a Sleipnir that got careless. The fleet also nailed a Caracal, Cormorant, and Hurricane that I was too slow to lock, and our fleet took some losses too including a Lachesis if I'm not mistaken.

All in all it was a good fleet if a bit frustrating as I was hoping for a big clash with the enemy, but I'll take my kills where I can get them.

Now, all that remains is to see how the warzone changes with today's patch.