Frig Hole Fun Times 3

Batphones are an essential part of wormhole life, in my jaundiced opinion. Aside from the ability to multiply your forces via inviting along a bunch of apparently random people who only one or two of each corporation or alliance may know one another, it is often how content can be created and shared....and tactical disadvantages addressed.

In this case, a Q003 out of our C4 led to T0DT-T in the back end of a dog-leg pocket deep in Outer Passage. I jumped out in an Astero and checked the map - nextdoor showed 12 active in local and over 8,000 rats killed in the last 24 hours. The gate was not bubbled - the choke point systems of 8-AA98 and NKHO-4 were bubbled nine ways to hell and back to slow down intruders, but if you made it this far then it was plain sailing. So i jumped into 2ULC-J, as expected 10 in Local and I hit d-scan before decloaking. Nidhoggur on scan and only 2 anomalies he could be at.

In using a batphone I am always aware that quite often the engagement comes to nought. The batphonees have to often trudge dozens of jumps to attend a fluid situation or something where you don't have tackle or a fight going on but can reasonably expect to get one. In this case, even a ratting carrier can provide a rather deadly threat to a gang of dessies and assault frigates, and you cant bring effective logistics through. So I hesitated a bit in ringing around, knowing it could amount to nothing. But fuck it, I thought, I'll just see if anyone's close.

So I picked up the batphone and someone answered, 13 jumps away in nullsec, out of their C5 chain. The situation was explained - we have 15 toons in fleet in T3 dessies and assault frigs, we can't bring logi but we're willing to tackle if you can come.The guys from Haywire. dropped their socks and came, bringing 6+ T3's and 2 Guardians and burning hard.

So we formed up, jumped out into T0TD-T and went to the 2ULC-J gate. i jumped in, so they saw a familiar face, and confirmed the Nid was on scan. Drone Horde and Drone Patrol on scan, so of course I warped to the horde. Problem being, the Nid was blasting the Patrol, and he warped off as I landed on grid. So I called for everyone to jump in and spam the 12 or so Hordes hich populated the sig list. Almost immediately, Nox52 called tackle on a Chimera.

Our support was 6 jumps out, bogged down in bubbles. We had no logi, and our plan was to run a rolling tackle - whoever got yellow-boxed just warped to the nearest celestial and came back. If fighters chased, you just kept moving. We had 5 other carriers on d-scan at less than 6 AU, mostly toward a POS at planet 8. I instructed no local chit-chat in case the Chimera was AFK or we provoked a response we couldn't actually deal with.

So we shot him, he tanked as best he could, and the Haywire. guys began arriving as the Chimera dipped into hull. Not a lot of them got on the kill. In the end we wouldn't have needed them, but the Chimera didn't really have a lot of drones fit for shooting frigates and fast tackle, either. Wisely, I suppose, the other caps didn't get involved in the fight, though that would have been and interesting proposition. I guess they saw the thrashing Hard Knocks et al. gave the Brothers Of Tangra capitals some months back and wisely kept themselves hugging their POSs.

NYLA Powers Chimera

The mop-up after the kill was also noteworthy. You will note that a Crane dropped. We had no way of getting any of the capital loot back to the wormhole, or highsec without that ship. So it was duly launched from the Chimera wreck, a hauling alt toon signed on and scooted out the Q003, loaded up with the Drone Control Units and various odds and sods, and probed its way back home via a pair of C5's to Curse, 9 jumps through nullsec exiting via Doril. The Crane was escorted through, arriving in highsec an hour before downtime, but 38 jumps from the other end of the chain.

Frig hole fun times!