Contract Type: Regional Assault/Pipe Camp
Target: Outer Ring, 4C-B7X and nearby pipes
Duration: Four Weeks
It's been a long time since we've done one of these. You could consider our assault of CFC controlled space in the NW (Cloud Ring, Branch, Fade, Deklein, and Pure Blind) in the same category, but we approached it differently utilizing BLOPs whereas with this Outer Ring contract we wanted to brawl. Good times.
We were hired by a group of PvE players. They had been tussling with the locals for quite a while and it was wearing them down. We had three objectives. I'll paraphrase from our contract announcement thread:
- If it's not blue, it doesn't get in or out. We're talking locking these pipe down with extreme prejudiced All our focus will be on a few system so put scouts down the pipe, set bubbles up, etc. and camp away. If it's too big and we need to run that's cool but also feel free to setup bomb runs to get kills off those fleets too.
- The non-blue locals in the area are aapparentlyvery annoying and need to die. They use hit + run shield with lots of tacticals so combat probing their tacs to pick off kills will be very in demand. They may also try and attack employer assets, resulting in exposed small BS and cap fleets. We're not responsible for defending the assets but we should use those opportunities to get good kills and fights.
- Open our fleets to interested employer pilots. While most of their forces are taking a break, those that stay need content and we will provide that for them, provided they observe our rules in fleets.
So off we go with those three things in mind. We arrive, set up shop and immediately begin. Within the first two days the hostiles in the surrounding area of 4C- had taken down their towers and moved out. Within two weeks we had basically shut down all traffic in the contract area. It was getting incredibly boring, frankly. That's the curse of doing a job right. You can look at
Nevertheless, we kept setting up bubbles and catching the stray person who would come through. We'd roam outside of the contract area trying to pull enemies back in to fight, but they were pretty good about stopping just outside our area of engagement.
During this first week of low activity, we began attacking POCOs and POSes in an attempt to draw fights out. This was pretty unsuccessful at first. The hostiles were just happy to let us have them. The boredom continued.
Right around two weeks in, the local hostiles began to pick up in activity but primarily focused on station games. Sitting on the other side of the undock in Tornadoes, that type of thing. We did manage to lose a few things in an attempt to draw out their carriers that we knew they had in station, but nothing expensive. This confirmed once again that we're terrible at (and hate) station games.
Three weeks in and things start to really pick up though. Hostiles began reinforcing our employer's POCOs in NM-OEA.
I FC a fleet to defend these once to pretty good success. Hostile forces in the area are calling in reinforcements from RAZOR and Fatal Ascension. That's fun.
This type of thing happens a few more times; POCOs are reinforced, we defend. Typically there are no more enemy forces showing up to try and finish the POCOs off though. They're repaired with no problems and the cycle is repeated a few days later.
Our contract is winding down by this point and while the contract is definitely a resounding success, our employer isn't happy. Not with our performance, but rather that we're leaving. They offer us a contract for another month, but we're not interested. It was fun, but there are two main reasons for this decline:
- The longer we stay, the more the content is drying up. We don't want bored pilots any more than the next guy. We can deal with short term bursts due to a good contract performance, but a long-term situation like that is not good.
- Phoebe. We don't want to be stranded that far away from most of our assets after the changes.
So we pack up, job well done, and head home. Once again I wasn't able to play as often as I would have liked. Perhaps it's time I accept the fact that I'm older and have more responsibilities, but I want to pound out 3-4 hours a night again! We'll see. Maybe again soon.
We ended the contract with
87.23% efficiency with 299 kills and 36 losses. That's not bad, but more importantly this was our first real contract as a new alliance. There were and still are some growing pains, and while I don't want to speak for Noir. officially, I can say that there is definitely a general positive feeling about the merger.
We've got our
next contract lined up and it's going to be a ton of fun! You should participate. Just follow the rules or you'll deal with us!