Monday, May 16, 2016

Mothership down!!!! The Battle of UTKS-5.

I can't believe it has been over six years since this happened. I had a post that I wanted to make ready several years ago but I never really finished it. Here it is. Please excuse any errors as this was from my poor recollection several years after the fact, and now not having played in years I suspect I have more errors...

My very favourite moment in EVE was when I was in Agony Unleashed and we hatched Caldak's insane plan to catch and kill a pair of Motherships (old name for supercarriers) that had been causing problems for us. Here is what happened:

1. Situation
We were living in Syndicate at the moment. At the time Syndicate was effectively a 'fight club' with multiple minor low-sec alliances duking it out with small gang fights nightly. Sometimes a large alliance would blow through, but by and large it was worthless space and so ignored by the big players.

One of the larger groups was a corporation called 'No Trademark' with about 50 active pilots. Importantly two of the pilots flew Motherships ... and they were willing to use them. While Agony was trying to figure out RR Battleship gangs, once those MOMs landed on grid we were dead.

2. The Plan
The plan was simple ... bait and then pounce. We had a Titan at the time so we had the ability to project a large subcap force. Taking down a MOM was hard but by using Guardians to supply cap to energy nuetralizing battleships, we could effectively wipe out the capacitor of the super withing a minute. What we needed was to get the MOM tacked first. For that we would use another RR Battleship gang as bait.

3. It Begins
I (being relatively new pilot with less than a year) was a scout from the bait gang flying a Jaguar. I guided our force down the pipe from our home in EZA-FM to our destination of Y9G-KS near the Conomette and Pertinineere gates where we knew NOTR lived. After landing on the gate with no sign of the enemy we placed a few bubbles and camped things for a bit. Not much was happening. Then we got signs that NOTR was getting tired of us using their favourite gate. After some manouvering our force entered UTKS-5 running away from a larger NOTR force. They camped the gates and chased us around the system. The plan was sort of working.. we had been planning to chase them, instead the opposite occured and our BS gang was on the run while the attack force sat on the Titan getting organized. We were waiting for thier MOM pilots to logon.

NOTR was extremely good at scanning us down. After several near misses they finally tackled one of our BS with a lucky safe-spot. As the two BS gangs engaged one of their MOMs logged on. We started loosing ships. Things were going south. But then.. the MOM appeared.. time to drop the hammer.

Cyno UP!!!!

In comes the reinforcements. Aside from nueting out the MOM the priority was support which we quickly cleared off. The MOM and a carrier were all that was left. Both were now being held onto by a couple of heavy interdictors and several bubbles were also going up. A falcon appeared but was chased off.

After a few minutes it became clear to the MOM pilot that no reinforcements were coming so he set a self-destruct, hoping to deprive us of the killmail at least. Realizing that time was short we cynoed in a couple of dreadnoughts and then it was all over.

All that was left was to loot and save killmails ... https://zkillboard.com/related/30003306/201001030000/

NOTR was lucky... only a few minutes later the other MOM pilot logged on and we came close to two mothership kills.

That was my favourite fight in EVE...