POS Gunning

Yesterday I had the opportunity to use my Starbase Defense Management skill for the first time.

Tribal Band had decided to reinforce 4TH's large tower in Ziriert causing us to raise an alliance CTA and posting a fleet op inviting the Provi bloc to join.

Tribal had reinforced the tower during a period where there were no CAIN command staff on and so the first we knew of it was when I logged on in the early morning. The tower had killed an Armageddon and Merlin on it's own but the assaulting Tribal fleet had no evidence of capitals with it.

We formed up a Hellcat fleet of around 40 people and headed to the POS. Intel we received suggested that Tribal were coming again with the same type of fleet but they might bring a couple of capitals as well.

The majority of our tower's guns were ready for use. Alongside the fleet we had 3 pos gunners ready, myself being one of them.
I took control of some large pulse laser batteries and had a simple task - shoot at the ships with the lowest transversal.

A couple of minutes before the tower came out of reinforced mode, Tribal bridged into local.
All of the enemy fleet were sub capitals and with the majority being Armageddons as we had expected.
At this point our fleet had taken place on the tower at close range and we waited for them to make their move.

Tribal's fleet warped in at about 20km away from our fleet at the tower and the battle started.
I will tell you, using pos guns is a pain. You have to use the gun on a target to make it lock and then use it again to make it shoot once it has a lock. If you want to change targets you have to tell the gun to unlock using the right click menu and then repeat this process.
The large pulse laser batteries I was commanding took about 25 seconds to lock a battleship and as I had to make sure they were shooting something with minimal transversal in order to be able to hit the target, it was a bit of a pain swapping targets at the start to find someone who was sitting still for me.

Luckily, some people were sitting still for me and my guns hit them hard. We also had our primaries being webbed and painted but usually by the time I locked them they were about to pop or had already done so.

The battle didn't last that long but was a fierce one. Tribal lost a huge number of their ships and although we lost some of ours, our Abaddons were more expensive which meant for every 1 ship we lost we needed to have killed two of their Armageddons to balance the isk war as well.
In the end we came out top, held the field and also saved the tower.

Although it was my first time pos gunning I can definitely see the benefits and will be contemplating taking the skill to V for the future.

1.3 Billion isk

1.3 Billion isk is a lot of isk to lose in one go, by anyone's standards.
Today Twisted Blaze lost that just in his pod.

During another roam I was taking point in my Cynabal and warped to a red station, Twisted was there at the undock spot in his Scorpion.
I sped towards him, aiming to get behind him and bump him out of range of the Caldari station but to my surprise, he locked and engaged me. He didn't last very long as my friends jumped in and he had no support undock behind him to help.

As usual, I went for the pod after and popped it.

Now who in 0.0 knowingly engages reds while outnumbered when you have a pod worth 1.3b (kb reports 580m isk but the Michi is worth over 700m isk) and doesn't have the experience to get your pod out safely afterwards?
No bubbles were involved and it's easy enough to spam warp your pod out when you're going down.
Poor guy, it'd be interesting to know if that was his best clone though, i'm guessing he has others which are not worth as much but most likely have +5's.

This tops my best pod value to date, my previous was around 600m isk as the person had a mining foreman mindlink.

Tonight we had some great fights including a battle against Legio in HY- where they just kept warping back onto the field time and time again with new ships. It was a fun battle which lasted a good amount of time until their 80 strong friends arrived and we decided they now had too much to fight against. Here is a link to the kills for this engagement.

Capital Kill

Finally, in EVE I have gotten my first capital kill.

Not bad for a pilot who's been playing since 2004 and spent half of his time in 0.0.
It's not for a lack of trying, I have tried many times in the past but have just not managed to get one including jumping my Moros into a hostile BOB capital fleet of 400 people and sitting watching a black screen while the FC called out target after target after target.

Recently, 4th has been doing frequent roams into Catch/Immensea using shield nano ships, often getting good results like the other day, Ladel probing out a mining party where we were able to snag Orca, Orca and a Navy Dominix. Not having a bubbler with us on our roams hurts us sometimes, missed a few hulks on that one.

Today was another roam, down into Catch. A normal procedure is to have everyone jump into a hostile ratting system at once and warp to station at 0. Any hostile ships that warp to the station are often just out of docking range and so we web them, bump them and pop them.
It often works better than trying to catch people in anomalies who are used to warping out as soon as a red enters local.
Luck shined on us - a Chimera tried to dock.
A few webs, lots of bumps, a failed attempt at a self destruct and BOOM I get my first capital kill in eve. A ratting Chimera that couldn't make it back to station in time.
There's a reason people say not to rat in carriers, they might make you easy isk but sooner or later you will lose it to reds.

I have been flying the Cynabal very often now and I like it a lot, it's very fast, very agile and locks quick with plenty of dps too. I used to enjoy the Vagabond but these days I tend to shun it as it's just not the same ship. It's expensive to lose but so far i've killed enough with it to make it worth each loss.