Susan Black is a Minmatar Militia pilot, game developer, and blogger. Her blog can be found
“This is a super bad idea.” I was not the only one to voice this when TeaEarlyGray HOT suggested we go into the plex where Fweddit waited with at least 15+ destroyers and frigs. We had 5 in fast cruisers and frigs.
“We’re kitey so we’ll just burn away.”
“Someone is going to get caught and die in a fire.”
“Maybe.”
“They have a Griffin.” I was particularly wary of griffins as not a half hour early, Killer420 and I had experienced the full effect of what it was like to be permajammed by one. We had spied three Amarr in a novice plex in frigs, and taken our two frigs to go kill them. It should have been a fun fight, but instead they uncloaked a Griffin and permajammed both of us.
Needless to say we went into the novice plex.
“I’m caught!” It was Tea.
“I’m not caught.”
“I’m caught again!”
“I’m away…”
For thirty seconds we all scattered, trying to gain range on the Fwedditers. As we were doing so, a conversation popped up from Predator Elite, one of the Amarrian FCs. I flew with Pred in nullsec long before I ever joined Faction War, and was one of the people that convinced him to join the Amarr, back when I joined the Amarr myself. I accepted the conversation, but minimized it so I could focus on the fight.
Tea started calling primaries, but Fweddit started to run away.
“What on earth?”
“Did that really happen?”
The guys were a little incredulous, but I didn’t really blame Fweddit for bailing. It’s not like their tech 1 fit Thrashers can do much against us once we’re set up to kite.
I noticed that Predator had now convoed my alt, on my other screen. He must be excited about something.
I opened the window back up. “What’s up Pred?”
“Do you guys want to go kill that PL gang?”
First, I laughed. We had seen the PL gang a while earlier over near Amamake, after attempting to gank their obvious bait Dominix on a gate. They had at least 30+ with Oneiroses, Prophecies, Tech 3 cruisers, faction battleships, and etc. The Minmatar didn’t really even have a main fleet up. I was in Tea’s group that had 5-7 or so, Anz had a little gang up of 4-5, and then there were other corps roaming around doing their own thing.
I mentioned on coms, “guys, the Amarr want to know if we want to go kill PL.”
We talked a minute or two about whether it was even remotely possible. It was decided that it was probably not remotely possible.
“Susan, this isn’t Fweddit asking is it? Because there’s no way I’m getting into a fleet with Fweddit.”
“Nope, it’s Pred.”
What followed was some very strong adjectives and descriptions of where Pred could go, and what he could do once he got there, which I will not repeat here.
“You do realize, that Predator Elite was the one that lit the cyno when PL dropped on us last time, where we lost three dreads, right?” One of my, now Dreadless, alliance mates pointed out.
The probability of the fight happening dropped. I mean, lower than it already was.
“In all the time I’ve known Pred, he’s never back-stabbed someone he’s called a truce with.” I cringed as I said this, hoping that Predator was not about to make a liar out of me.
What followed was at least twenty minutes of people chattering back and forth what would need to be done for it to even remotely happen. This seemed to distract them from who we would be doing it with. We would need to get into a single fleet. But, no one made a move to decide who’s fleet we would move to. Then we’d have to get on joint coms. Eve Voice? Or invite the Amarr to our Minmatar coms? What would we bring? How many could the Amarr bring?
At first they could bring 15. Then 5. Then maybe more. We could bring 6. But then 5 from somewhere else, and maybe this other group would bring some Tornadoes.
It was not going to happen.
“Tea, make a new Wing and invite Pred to it.” I told Pred we were inviting him to a Wing position so he could invite any Amarr he wanted. We had to start somewhere, and we might as well see how much we could pull together.
We continued talking about what we would need. Should we bring battleships? If we brought something too shiny they would drop supers. They might drop supers anyway….
Predator Elite accepted the fleet invite and started inviting his guys into fleet. We managed to merge some of the smaller Minmatar groups into our fleet, with the Periphery alliance promising to bring a significant number of Tier 3 BCs. The Tier 3 BCs changed things considerably, bringing some much needed DPS to the field.
LNA split into brawling battlecruisers and Augorors. Pred’s guys brought a mix of Augorors and battlecruisers as well.
“They have a Damnation on the Huola gate in Kourm.” Someone mentioned.
“Amarr in Kamela, warp to Kourm. Minmatar in Huola, undock and warp to Kourm. Guys in Kourm, warp to the Huola gate. Let’s do this.” Predator took the reigns.
We jumped onto the Damnation and began to let loose, as the rest of our fleet, and Pandemic Legion’s landed.
We did okay at first, but then started losing logi. With the trust between the Amarr and Minmatar still a bit shaky, we only had tech 1 logistics on field, not to mention nothing much bigger, or more expensive than a general battlecruiser.
Predator continued calling targets, rapidly switching in order to attempt to break through their logi, until we lost four logistics. And then, the call was made to bail.
“We did pretty good, considering.”
“That was still super fun.”
A few BCs were lost, as well as at least five Augorors. But everyone on coms, both Amarr and Minmatar were pretty ‘awake’ at that point. The fleet was finally together in one place, we had everyone on the same page, in coms, and felt more or less organized.
“Can we try that again? We’re going to need to ship up a bit.”
“Yeah, those augorors evaporated once they got primaried. We will need tech 2 logistics for sure.”
There was a moment’s hesitation. And then, several LNA members offered to bring Guardians.
“I can bring a Guardian.”
“I have one too.”
“I can bring a battleship…”
“I can bring a Bhaalgorn?”
“NO!” There were several resounding negative reactions to that suggestion.
“Nothing shiny. No faction BSes. Or they will more than likely drop supers.” Predator said. We already knew there was still a chance they would drop triage, if we posed a problem.
The fleet reshipped, several people shipping up to BSes, and the logistics switching out for Guardians. People also started swapping out for ECM drones, sensor dampeners, and neuts.
“In a fight like this, you can never have too many neuts.”
We were almost ready to go, when our scout told us PL was leaving back through Auga.
We pursued.
To Amamake. And then to Gulm. PL was on the move, and they seemed oblivious that they had a huge militia fleet trailing behind them.
Predator cursed a bit, crankily. “Someone scout ahead and go tell them to stop already so we can fight them.”
The scout did as he was asked. Conversations were opened. And rather quickly, PL turned around and came straight back for us.
They wanted this fight as much as we did, and were probably intrigued and bemused by the joint militia fleet coming at them.
We set up on the Egmar gate, our logistics burning off a ways. PL dropped a BS on us first, and it was quickly called primary.
Predator started barking orders. “All DPS on this battleship. Get those damps on those logistics. Spread your ECM drones around. Come on people, more DPS.”
We switched to a SFI, killing it. And then, the first Oneiros. And then, the second Oneiros. Our own logistics were holding. “But it’s tight.” One of the Guardian pilots admitted. We were obviously winning this, with two of PL’s logi already down.
“Cyno up.”
Well, of course there’s a cyno up. It IS Pandemic Legion after all.
Nothing came through at first, so Predator Elite continued calling primaries.
A single Thanatos dropped into the mess.
“Someone tell me when he triages.”
“He’s triaging!”
“Hell, let’s primary the Thanatos.”
We cut through his shields like stiff butter, and then started pounding at his armor.
“Second Thanatos in!”
“He’s in triage, so there’s nothing he can do. We have maybe two minute. Come on guys, all DPS possible on that Thanatos!”
The Thanatos still had quite a bit of armor left.
“This is going to be close.”
His armor crept down, and you could practically hear people’s hearts beating loudly when they spoke on coms, and imagine their palms sweating.
“This is soo close. He’s going into structure! We probably only have a few seconds left guys. Overheat everything! Don’t burn anything out but overheat as much as you can!”
“Half structure! Come on guys. OVERHEAT. OVERHEAT!!!” Predator Elite was pretty much shouting at this point.
“He’s almost down. Come on, more DPS. Come on!!”
The Thanatos exploded.
And chaos erupted on coms. –a cacophony of Amarr and Minmatar excitedly talking about how they had just killed a Pandemic Legion carrier.
“Guys, we did it!”
“Oh my god….”
“You’ve got to be kidding me!!!”
“Second cyno!” PL dropped several more triage in, including at least two archons.
“Okay, let’s primary this one last faction BS, and if it’s obvious they’re saving him we’ll deagress.”
The battleship got reps and everyone started deagressing. There was no way we could burn through 3-4 triage carriers, especially with archons on field.
“Oh, they are SO mad.”
The guardians kept up their cap chain, and logistics, keeping everyone alive as we prepared to get out.
“Aggression down in 3…..2…..1…Everyone JUMP.”
We were through.
“Good job guys.”
“Yeah, that was awesome.”
“Awesome logistics there Guardian pilots!”
“Great FCing Pred.”
“That was great.”
Things calmed down a bit. The Minmatar and Amarr split, the Minmatar being able to dock up, where the Amarr could not.
“Well, see you guys in Kamela tomorrow.” Someone said cheekily, as Pred’s group prepared to log out of Minmatar coms and leave fleet.
“Yep. Tomorrow, it’s back to killing each other. Fly safe guys.”
“See ya.”
Just another day in the Amarr-Minmatar warzone.
heh, nothing brings two enemies together like the chance to kill a more hated third
Sounds like it was fun!
Nice article well written, its a nice change to read about these small fights.
Outfriggingstanding, and a good story as well.
GJ.
Best read in a while, especially because PL lost something shiney
Heheh i agree,
Now lets wait for the Elise Randolph's 3 page PL battle report where in it will show that PL while being outgunned and outnumbered, still saved the day and their allies and won EvE because of leet PvP.
In what universe is a 2bn thanatos shiney? Most ratting marauders are worth twice that.
GJ guys, would say half if the PL fleet were blackwater scrubs so does explain to an extent lol.
I blame major j silva for being late.
great story, nicely written and good fight. when talking about how close it was to killing the thanatos I just expected him to survive and when he popped i literally "OOOOOOHHH"ed like i was there haha goodjob
Why does blackwater seem to always die….
BUSA took on a bunch of carebears from Majesta Empire when it crumbled awhile back. The effects still show…
Because people like you only point out their losses. Trying looking at the stuff they kill before you get all serious and mad
Fail triage thanny is fail
everything is better than the retarded goblin shitfuck, actually was nice to read, gj
Shh! If you say his name three times, he will appear!
“Oh, they are SO mad."
No, we actually like fighting people with risk involved and love some actual challenge.
Also having capitals available and not using them is like fighting with one hand behind your back, we don't want to fight like everyone else and you gave us a a fight.
GF!
You do realize these are pixels right? Guessing you are also the guy that buys a new game and strategy guide at the same time, then opens up the web browser and searches for any and every way to beat the game without thinking on your own.
No you don't, if it looks like the other side is going to bring something that even remotely threatens your pimped-out fleet you escalate, knowing full well that if push comes to shove nobody can bring more supers than you. And even if you did somehow lose, the tech swimming pool would replace everything. So in actual fact you never risk anything significant ever, and are little better than a highsec carebear. So yeah, tell me more about how you love fighting people with risk involved.
Moonbears
Moonbears: The new mining fleet doctrine
Tell that to shadoo, ohh we don't want to grind structures to slaughter cfc… Oh we are grinding structures in geminate, blah blah risk averse faggots. Get some balls and kill cfc, until you do something to prove you have balls the more of a shell of the old PL you look.
Erm how many times have you over shipped and dropped carries on a 'Ganked' roam?
What shrooms have you been smoking?
I seriously had to reread this comment a few times over. Gave me such a good laugh!
I have fought you guys plenty of times and every time shit doesnt go your way your fail pilots hit their panic button (imagine looks something like this i.imgur.com/581ZF.gif ) and cry wolf in local. PL may have been a decent pvp corp once but that is a long time ago. Anyway since eveyone knows that the way it is there is no more good fights for you guys.
Sorry but we have allot of caps and we can all PVP in them and lots of other expensive ships that you are welcome to come kill?..
'Waaa PL is risk averse so they always drop caps' ….that you can (and do) kill if you have the balls? '
Basicly you don't like fun challenging 0.0 PVP game content? EVE has a horribly screwed perception of 'good fights' and most 'elite PVP' alliances are so risk averse they never play to their full potential, unlike PL.
So this is interesting should every 0.0 alliance just fly T1 cruisers from now on then with the gay 20 vs 20 pre arranged fights happening today? Would that then be 'fair' would that be fun? Really fun, month after month, This is just as mittens intended?
If you really don't like fighting caps the options are you can quit or you can go live in highsec and wardec miner corps for your 'good fights'.
If you learn to fight caps you can kill em like these guys.. a subcap fight is ok if boring after a while … a triage/seiged cap dying well in battle is glorious!
LOL
I remember a time when you guys would actually fight in sub caps, not bring them to save your supers, but bring them as the main fighting force. Then you realized that if you bring as many supers as you used to bring sub caps to a fight no one else can match those numbers.
Think about it, your a small group of corps/alliances that wants to fight PL but you are not PL and do not have the ability to replace everything you have ever lost, ("One of my, now Dreadless, alliance mates pointed out.") you see a PL carrier and want to drop it, but you know it has a cyno and that there is any where from 4 carriers to a few dozens super carriers waiting to jump on the hand full of caps you can bring to a fight. Why would you bother?Aall you're doing is help the good 'ol PL kill board stay green.
You act like you can't figure out why people won't fight you, do you really not know? You have spent the last 2 + years dropping BS's with more carriers than any gang could ever kill or out DPS and then call that winning, its not winning when you can guarantee by weight of sheer numbers. The above story is the first time I have seen you get the bad end of a small scale fight and its because you didn't use the overkill fast enough to prevent the losses. If you act like the typical PL you would have dropped all the carriers together and nothing would have died.
TL:DR don't act like a super cap bully for two years straight and then complain no one will fight your sub caps, they all know those are just bait so you can cyno in the supers as soon as they are tackled.
"pre arranged fights" I believe Shadoo help brokered the thunderdome policy that you are so against. GG
"No, we actually like fighting people with risk involved and love some actual challenge. "
Say the guy from the corp dropping 20 caps/supers on a same scale subcap fleet…
YOU'RE AWESOME
PL is just a bunch of faggots
What i hate about PL is that they can't just accept when a fun fight goes the other way for them. They always need to escalate more and more. Until their opponent bails.
So props to the militias for their joined efforts!
To be fair, that's pretty much every alliance ever. Its just that PL can always escalate further. Its kind of like having a fist-fight with a guy with a loaded gun in his pocket; doesn't matter how good of a boxer you are, he can end the fight whenever he likes.
Which makes him a coward imo
Na. PL is special. The fact that everyone in eve know exactly what the author is getting at when reading:
“Cyno up.”
Well, of course there’s a cyno up. It IS Pandemic Legion after all.
This shows how predictable and stale PL is. Like a bunch of 7 year old kids that start crying for their dad to come help in a fight, before the 1st punch is thrown.
What's with your balls then .. where is your counter drop .. ? if you want to win this fight just drop also shit on PL
And yes PL has always triage ready .. because they plan not just one round fight …
It was a good fight props – I salvaged a couple of your corpses. I would trade them back but enjoying them far to much
Lol PL is shit, SMA>PL.
Oh come on, if you're going to troll at least put some effort into it. I down-voted you not for the troll, but for the lack of effort put into it.
Well good luck on your expedition to delve then, if you are that great:D
I learned a valuable lesson. Do not carry ECM drones in your guardian if you want to whore – triage carrier prevents it =(
*great* read!
Good job. EvE salutes you.
Congrats to the FW corps. Well done. We are not mad at all, but appreciate you because you are more willing to fight us than almost anyone else. That's why we came back yesterday. Mistakes were made on our side, but that is like being Captain Obvious. We went through our post-mortem, identified what we did wrong and how to do it better next time.
Is it "we didn't drop supers as soon as we saw more than 1 ship in local"? Because I don't think you guys drop supers enough. You should do it more!
"We went through our post-mortem, identified what we did wrong and how to do it better next time."
Just escalate over what your enemy can field, and make them run away. Pretending you can compete in a subcap fight without over escalating the enemy is somewhat ridiculous.
Maybe if you didn't have such a reputation for dropping supers all over everything, people would actually bother to fight you.
Good luck getting that years old stain off your alliance though, and all the laughter and sarcasm it induces in people.
lol… next time we'll drop more supers faster! brilliant!
Well written, good story telling
Great read! Loved every line of it!
fight was amazing, kinda hard to keep a line of tornadoes outta range of the far hitting bs they had. but when that thanny died i litterally yelled on comms, was an amazing fight.
"I was there"
That was an exciting fight. My first big one.
Fun in eve…nice.
gj to the militia's joining together against PL, if only various null alliances had that same logic we wouldn't be experienceing this blue donut shit. GJ on the fight.
An Amarrian, Minmatar, and Pandemic Legion Walk into a Bar – PL gets raped until they start logging in super pilots and deploy 4 carriers in a subcap fight after the first carrier and their subcap logistics that jumped in got bent all the way over and… well you saw how that one ended.
I was in that fight. Our biggest mistake was we used triage thannies. The guys that brought those in got trolled for it. Also they might have survived anyway but the first carrier bumped on cyno in off the gate and wasn't in fitting range of the second thanny that dropped. Bad cyno placement. We were dissapointed we lost a carrier but gj to FW to fight us and do well
Not sure what this guy would have refitted to, if his cap was good he could have fitted the second capital repper but otherwise that was all the tank he could give it. No bulk heads in cargo either. And yes Triage Thanny = Fail
so u dont know how to lit proper cyno?… holly shit now u look really terrible
:P
Yeah even the great PL makes mistakes. no one is an EVE god here
This is battle report!! Thanks for smoothy friday morning… its much easier for PL when Curator and Blanko are on the grid otherwise they are so lost… good job Pandas <trollface>
Its a story of five CRUISERs who warp in a NOVICE plex to fight dessies .. aha
Pandemic Legion is turning famous pilots into "another brick in the wall". The guys that were leaders in their alliances or corps, who were noticeable names in EVE are nothing special after joining PL. How often can you hear now about MukkBarovian, Lee ChanKa, Makalu Zarya and other noticeable names in game? EVeryone who joins PL just becomes anonymous killmailwhore. I really don't understand how anyone can accept trading his personality for easy killmails. PL is losing its reputation and becoming just laghable bunch of fags. Everyone hates them, not because of fear, but because their risk adverse faggy approach to fights.
I don’t quite think you get it. They don’t join PL for killmails, they join PL to sit back and let someone else shoulder the responsibility and workload for a while – in an environment where that responsibility is better shared and supported.
CCP have botched the economy of their game, financial resources (ISK) has lost it’s value balanced to human resources (pilots). That encourages us slowly congregating into a kitchensink cold-war between Soviet Goonia and the United Capital-ists of Badgerica.
Leaders around the galaxy are simply giving up fighting against the stream. They are either clogging up in the sandbox or switching themeparks to play a different game within the game.
This is what people refer to when they exclaim that “the game is dying” despite it growing in subscription numbers. Content is dying since it’s both more scarce and less meaningful when it occurs, even though it occurs in ever larger climax. The problem is that CCP decided to focus entirely on said climax as their brand: “EVE is cool because of it’s massive scale – the only truely MASSIVE multiplayer online game”. With that, they have forgotten everything else this game was built on: sandbox, hardcore-PvP, engaging-market, etc. It’s all remnants of the pre-Incarna era hype and buzz.
If this game thrives on story-telling, and we remember the good stories of old: then it’s interesting that the stories we will remember from this era is the stories of RnK, not the stories of how AAA or SOLAR were assimilated by the cold-war. There have even been some pretty interesting fights lately, but despite attempts to preserve them, i doubt bards will write tales of their feats. People will remember RnK, because that is a story with attention to detail worth being told; more so than of whoever amassed the most free ships. The stories of old provided similar detail. It’s far more interesting hearing the story of CA’s TPAR than the button-click implosion of BoB.
Think about it, in the annals of history there have been quite many years now that can be summed up as: alliances began congregating into coalitions and powerblocks to fight a the greater evil, sovereign groups that wouldn't take the bill were sent to other places to create stories. The game aligned, an evil was vanquished by a button, it returned and sent sent a smaller group marauding again in a hail of broken servers, later shedding and reforming like an amoeba while ideals clashed on newssites and a mixmatch of players stared angrily at each other from afar. Meanwhile the smaller groups turned to fighting each other for righteous honour in gladiatorial arenas – without their life, livelyhood or even their mood at stake! Instead, everyone cackle "GF" and "you are blobbers/bears/pubbies – nu huh!" with glee.
That's the great story of the forever-war 2007-2013.
Okay, i'm being cynical … but it's not completely untrue, is it?
Let us not forget this: latenightalliance.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_det… The best wtf kill of the fight. Forget the trimarked triage thanny… this is the gold.
Good Fights all round I'd say. Grats to the Militia guys,
PL usomad
A good read and nice to see FW getting down and dirty with the power blocs.
This is a classic example of the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
we need more articles like this!!! eve is not all about blobs, small fights shood have there place
Finally a well written interesting article… Well done you, that was 6 minutes of my life that was genuinely worth it. Now if you could just arrange for that Goblin tard to get aids, EN24 would be worth the effort.
Great read. Sounds like fun was had by all.
We didn't want dat thanny….
btw, "Predator Elite was the one that lit the cyno when PL dropped on us last time" ??
Round 2 went to the Amarr as well.
www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embed…
eve-kill.net/?a=kill_related&kll_id=16…
We were only able to break a few sub-caps with all those reps on field, but we also killed more ISK in fighters and bombers than our fleet was worth.
Poor FW people, they fap when they kill a T2 fit Thanny . Why would you even drop a triage thanny instead of an Archon. Triage Archon is superior in every aspect.
Nice article. I really like when people write from their perspective in such a way as to transport the reader into their experience.
I would like to say that PL is open to fight anyone if they want to pre-arrange it. If you see a PL gang in local and you want to fight them, just say, "FC convo me for a fight" in local. You will get a response quickly. Kudos to all to the FW who maned up. You got a nice BUSA kill (lol).
Never not believe in fights with PL.