It is story time kids. Gather around and listen while I tell you of Nightmares!
About two weeks ago now, I was scouting out our static C3. Jumping in, I hit dscan (basically the first thing to do other than bookmarking the exit side of the wormhole) and was greeted with an insane sight.
http://eve-dingo.com/s/kFAQs76
It is rare for us to see a dozen ships on dscan, let alone close to sixty with forty of them being faction battleships. Not knowing what was going on in this system, I set out to investigate and quickly found that they were all massed around a specific moon. Either there was a bash in progress or something very strange was happening. After narrowing down the location, I was greeted with this
About two weeks ago now, I was scouting out our static C3. Jumping in, I hit dscan (basically the first thing to do other than bookmarking the exit side of the wormhole) and was greeted with an insane sight.
http://eve-dingo.com/s/kFAQs76
It is rare for us to see a dozen ships on dscan, let alone close to sixty with forty of them being faction battleships. Not knowing what was going on in this system, I set out to investigate and quickly found that they were all massed around a specific moon. Either there was a bash in progress or something very strange was happening. After narrowing down the location, I was greeted with this
I had never seen anything quite like that. At least 40B worth of ships idling at a tower. The pilots were all online and mix of different corporations. Something was going down. I didn't have to wait long though, within a few minutes, the entire gang aligned as one and warped to another tower in the system, this one owned by yet another corporation. Warping there and setting up a perch (I was in a simple scouting Helios), I watched as this fleet of Nightmares began to bash the neighboring tower.
Now, I'm not necessarily one to get involved in other people's business but this was just on the edge of insane. It is rare enough to see a faction battleship in a wormhole but then to see forty of them...to bash a tower? I knew that this was the type of thing that larger, more PvP oriented wormhole organizations live for. It was very late in the US TZ so none of my corpmates were online to even pretened to want to try to have some fun with this fleet, but I started to look around for others. We are not a big wormhole corporation by any means but I pay enough attention to the "metagame" to know who is who. We had run into Bronya Broga not too long ago in our C2, knew him from the podcast community which two of our members are involved with, and had a great 1v1 with him. He was also organizer of a meetup very close geographically to me that unfortunately I couldn't attend. I figured he might be interested or at the very least, know people that would. As it happened, he was logged on.
As it happens, this was basically at the same time that his corporation, Rolled Out, was disbanding and he told me that everyone was busy moving stuff, but I might want to try Hard Knocks. I knew of them but didn't really know anyone in the corp. After a little digging around, I found an HK member online and had a convo with him. It was a bit of a strange conversation as there really wasn't much, ultimately, that could be done right then. The high-sec wormhole in this C3 was mass critical with scouts on it and it wasn't long before, during the conversation still, that the entire Nightmare fleet warped off only having incapacitated a few guns. Looking at the field, it seemed that the logi, only 2 Basilisks, had not held and the attackers had lost some ships
https://zkillboard.com/kill/39774227/
https://zkillboard.com/kill/39774273/
https://zkillboard.com/kill/39774546/
I suspected they were done for the night and it was very late for me even though it was a Friday evening. I convo'ed the HK pilot and let him know that I would be able to scout out the new high-sec the next day and get them an entrance if they wanted to have some fun with this apparently mulit-boxing Nightmare fleet. Next day came and I was able to get the system entrance to them and while I was scouting out the high-sec, the owner of the besieged tower convo'ed another member of our corp that was also scouting in the C3 and we learned that she was bringing in some mercenaries to help defend her tower. I let her know of my conversation with HK, just in case she ran into them and wished her luck. Our C3 static was dying and we were about to be collapsed away from this encounter.
For the next couple days I watched the killboard, curious if my efforts had turned into anything. I did notice that the Mercs she hired, N0MEX, had some success
https://zkillboard.com/kill/39786603/ (and more)
but I never saw anything from HK. *shrug* It was a long shot and perhaps just something that they couldn't get involved with.
Fast forward to today. I see this simple tweet pop up in #tweetfleet
Now, I'm not necessarily one to get involved in other people's business but this was just on the edge of insane. It is rare enough to see a faction battleship in a wormhole but then to see forty of them...to bash a tower? I knew that this was the type of thing that larger, more PvP oriented wormhole organizations live for. It was very late in the US TZ so none of my corpmates were online to even pretened to want to try to have some fun with this fleet, but I started to look around for others. We are not a big wormhole corporation by any means but I pay enough attention to the "metagame" to know who is who. We had run into Bronya Broga not too long ago in our C2, knew him from the podcast community which two of our members are involved with, and had a great 1v1 with him. He was also organizer of a meetup very close geographically to me that unfortunately I couldn't attend. I figured he might be interested or at the very least, know people that would. As it happened, he was logged on.
As it happens, this was basically at the same time that his corporation, Rolled Out, was disbanding and he told me that everyone was busy moving stuff, but I might want to try Hard Knocks. I knew of them but didn't really know anyone in the corp. After a little digging around, I found an HK member online and had a convo with him. It was a bit of a strange conversation as there really wasn't much, ultimately, that could be done right then. The high-sec wormhole in this C3 was mass critical with scouts on it and it wasn't long before, during the conversation still, that the entire Nightmare fleet warped off only having incapacitated a few guns. Looking at the field, it seemed that the logi, only 2 Basilisks, had not held and the attackers had lost some ships
https://zkillboard.com/kill/39774227/
https://zkillboard.com/kill/39774273/
https://zkillboard.com/kill/39774546/
I suspected they were done for the night and it was very late for me even though it was a Friday evening. I convo'ed the HK pilot and let him know that I would be able to scout out the new high-sec the next day and get them an entrance if they wanted to have some fun with this apparently mulit-boxing Nightmare fleet. Next day came and I was able to get the system entrance to them and while I was scouting out the high-sec, the owner of the besieged tower convo'ed another member of our corp that was also scouting in the C3 and we learned that she was bringing in some mercenaries to help defend her tower. I let her know of my conversation with HK, just in case she ran into them and wished her luck. Our C3 static was dying and we were about to be collapsed away from this encounter.
For the next couple days I watched the killboard, curious if my efforts had turned into anything. I did notice that the Mercs she hired, N0MEX, had some success
https://zkillboard.com/kill/39786603/ (and more)
but I never saw anything from HK. *shrug* It was a long shot and perhaps just something that they couldn't get involved with.
Fast forward to today. I see this simple tweet pop up in #tweetfleet
<soldarius> http://t.co/yEcdjmIvKo <soldarius> yup #tweetfleet #ibisop #nerfibis
— TEST #general (@TEST_jabber) July 11, 2014
Seems like it might be funny so I click and find that the kill is from a Nightmare with an Ibis on the killmail with this in the comments
I look close at the Nightmare owner and start to put pieces together. This was the same 40 nightmare fleet that I had encountered in the wormhole. I had wondered if they were an incursion fleet because many of the ship names were HQ something. Some of the corporations had changed but many of the character names I recognized. It appeared that this guy may regularly change his corp to avoid wardecs and the like.
While seemingly inconsequential, the fact that these type of "connect-the-dot" moments happen in EVE is fascinating to me. This isn't part of a scripted game or even something that in any normal circumstance would mean anything in true game terms. Yet for me, in my game, it is truly the icing on the cake where I am acutely aware that the world in which I play is a fluid, dynamic environment with connections abounding through nothing more than the actions of the people who choose to play in it.
#eveissmall
While seemingly inconsequential, the fact that these type of "connect-the-dot" moments happen in EVE is fascinating to me. This isn't part of a scripted game or even something that in any normal circumstance would mean anything in true game terms. Yet for me, in my game, it is truly the icing on the cake where I am acutely aware that the world in which I play is a fluid, dynamic environment with connections abounding through nothing more than the actions of the people who choose to play in it.
#eveissmall