On Moving Slowly And Taking Notes

[caption id="attachment_813" align="alignright" width="309" caption="Sisters of the Guardian"][/caption]

We managed to scan out our static and a connecting class 5 wormhole with some nice gas and anomalies. The static was a class two, which no doubt affected the desirability of said wormhole. After some random dithering and discussion, we decided we had sufficient fleet strength and numbers to check out some of the combat opportunities. It helped to sway us that the system contained a Cataclysmic Variable spacial anomaly that works heavily in favour of our chose remote repair strategy. In fact, it means that the large remote armor repair modules mounted on our Guardian logistics ships are 85% more effective!

The Vital Core Reservoir is known to have a couple of Sleepless Keeper battleship sized drones in it and we haven’t faced this particular kind before. Our initial plan of attack involves a fleet of Mr.’s Maelstrom, Scorpion, Dominix and Rook, and finally the Sisters of the Guardian² for the first encounter. Since the person who scanned down the site had warped to it previously, the enemy was right at hand and waiting to be studied and evaluated. The Guardians quickly set up their logistics lock while Mr.’s Scorpion and Rook began to jam the two battleship class ships. Someone somewhere was writing all this down and making notes about comparable lock times, ECM resistance levels and initial alpha strikes from the ships. Once the initial observations were made, first one and then both battleships were allowed to regain locks and incoming damage assessment began. We were pleasantly surprised with our results and proceeded to just pummel the poor ships after gaining our data.

After gathering some basic intelligence reports from this Ladar, we opted to do the same with a combat site. The results were similarly enlightening and led to some nice discussions about the prospects of future class 5 wormhole colonisation. One of the things we noticed was the slight change from a higher alpha strike to a more sustained DPS. Whereas when we moved from a class 3 to the first class 4 site was the noticeable increase in the first wave of incoming damage. This was probably due in part to our slightly lower skills, unknown expectations and difficult fleet composition. The intervening months have taught us a great deal about how to operate together more efficiently. We were later joined by our Ms. Abaddon pilot and Mr. Frigate Ganking Harbinger. The increased DPS mitigated some of the ECM needs, so Mr. Rook flew off to expedite the salvage operation.

While not an overall cake walk [buy ticket, listen to music, note number, pick up cake] it was certainly an enjoyable exploration of a possible future direction. Little Mr. Harbi took one in the chin as without an explosive armor hardner, even the 8 combined, staggered, drone-assisted, Cataclysmic Variable boosted remote repairs from the Sisters of G² could help survive the incoming damage. He ping-ponged in and out of structure [full armor, then 95% structure, full armor, 80% structure, full armor, then still lower structure, full armor, 25% structure, full armor, 5% structure] until finally entertaining us with a nice puff of atmospherics and some light. It helped that it was a highly profitable evening with the combat portion of the exploration hovering around 1 billion in revenue for a couple hours work and research.

To cap off the night, a couple of ran back and harvested the 300 million isk gas cloud as there are some friends who would like those polymers. Good deeds and all.