This year we were hired to act as bouncers for the event. Our job was to ensure that the rules were being followed by participants and keep ships out of the system that weren't allowed during certain times. I was incredibly excited about this contract - I love the unique ones - but I wasn't able to make it, unfortunately. The good news is I missed it because I was installing a new SSD and stabilizing my internet. So I've invited a fellow member of Noir. to write a short AAR of the event from his perspective. Enjoy!
The Stay Frosty FFA is an event that allows pilots from all backgrounds to come and fight with frigates in a free-for-all setting. Free frigates were given out to all pilots taking part, the rules were only to use T1 frigates until 20:00, at which time the watershed would open to all frigates and destroyers. No links were to be used in system.We loaded up a couple of carriers and lit cynos on the central station in the system. We decided that our armor doctrine with re-sebos and damps would be effective against anything larger than a T1 frigate entering system. Our drones would take care of any misbehaving frigates. We kept up three guardians at all times, we used a proteus to place our re-sebos on for instant tackle and a loki/ashimmu for webs. We noticed two link pilots, one in a tengu on one of the other stations and one astarte near a POS. We tried to kill both of these targets. The link astarte ducked back into it’s POS every time we tried to intercept it and the Tengu pilot docked.Our main three areas of interest were the one gate into system which bordered a highsec system, the top belt (most of the action was going on here) and the central station. Alekseyev Karrde commanded the fleet initially until he had to break for a hockey game and other pilots took over in his absence, he returned nearer the end of the event. The pilots that were benefiting from the links were quickly identified as cheaters and were using ventures and destroyers to try to mop up kills mostly in the top belt. The majority of our time was spent pinging from gate, to station, to top belt in response to intel from FFA participants.Here are some kills we got on the cheaters.
etcMidway through the event, two large cruiser gangs ended up coming into system. A mixture of Vexors, Hurricanes, Ruptures and quite a few other cruisers were scouted coming into the system when were were not on gate. We regrouped, added some frigate/cruiser support from the event organiser and headed back to the gate with the aim of taking out their logistics pilots first, and then holding as long as possible with our guardian pilots. We thought it was going to be a tight fight, however our opposition didn’t seem to agree. As soon as we landed on the gate, they had a little think, then decided that they were not going to aggress. They jumped out of the system with no losses. Some of our fleet members had suspect timers and we thought it best not to give chase and tank gate guns. Unfortunately one of our guardian pilots lemming’d through the gate with his criminal timer and was dispatched efficiently on the other side.Throughout the fight there were some events. The most memorable of which were an Orca in the top belt, and 4-5 dominix’s, I recall a proteus as well. The FC called to ‘whore’ on the Orca with a neut or a scram, or one volley of ungrouped guns. One of our pilots seemed to have misinterpreted the order and put 14,000 damage into the capital ship, the FC (Buddhest Princess) found it pretty funny. Two more capitals were spotted in system, a rorqual (who was tractoring wrecks and salvaging) and a phoenix. Neither of which were bumpable.
Near the end of the event two smartbombing rokhs were scouted coming in and out of system when we were busy in the belt and on the station. We forced them both back out and caught one of them jumping in. We web/scrammed him and took him down.
One last highlight was an iteron mark V that was trying to bring in some more kestrels to fight with. We killed it as it was not a T1 frigate and was not permitted in system.
Finally, we killed a ton of frigates that were either not abiding by the rules, or were dumb enough to plink away at a fleet of sacrileges with guardian support. It appeared that some people had not gotten the memo that we were there to protect them from cheaters and to keep the frigate free-for-all ‘wholesome and fun’.The clock struck 22:00, the event ended and we warped to station to murder everything, because why not? After 15-20 minutes of solid murdering, we decided to leave system, packed our stuff into carriers and travel-ceptor’d back home.This was one of the more interesting contracts I’ve experienced whilst in Noir. and I’m very glad I was available to come on the op.