Tengu Down

I logged on this Monday, planning on heading up to Old Man Star and then through to Tama on the lookout for combat in my Crusader. However, my plans were cut short as I logged onto Ventrilo. It was obvious that something  was going down, but I could not make out the details. Querying in corpchat quickly brought me up to speed: there was a Tengu running Combat Sites in a wormhole directly connected to Hevrice. 

A Tengu is one of the 4 Strategic Cruisers, combat vessels which are incredibly flexible and can be configured in innumerable ways, for both direct combat needs and support through the use of the appropriate subsystems.

If setup correctly for running Combat Sites, a Tengu is able to do high DPS (More than 600) at great range (more than 100km) whilst still boasting a strong shield tank (More than 1000). However, to get this performance out of a Tengu, you must be willing to spend major ISK on it, purchasing faction items.

Therefore, they are perfect for running Combat Sites and are typically choke full of faction goodies, ready to be liberated. In my mind, a Tengu in a wormhole can be likened to a loot-piñata, although armed to the teeth with the latest state of the art technology.

Therefore, although it is possible to solo one of these fearsome ships, it is more satisfying and more successful to bring a small gang of ships which, working together can easily make mince-meat of it.

As reports trickled in, I got a clearer understanding of the situation. Our gang was sitting on the entrance to the wormhole in Hevrice whilst we had 2 cloaky alts inside the wormhole attempting to pinpoint the exact location of the Strategic Cruiser.

After joining the fleet, I warped my main to the entrance of the wormhole in a Harbinger whilst simultaneously moving my own probing alt into the wormhole to lend a hand. Quickly, through the use of the onboard scanner as well as directional, we were able to pinpoint the combat site the Tengu was running. 

A Stiletto, piloted by Kishin Hattori (his blog can be found here) was dispatched into the wormhole and was promptly fleet warped ontop of the Tengu. Alas, as the Stiletto dropped out of warp, Kishin reported that the Tengu had already moved from the Combat Site. Another cloaky alt reported that the Tengu was back in his POS and thus safe. At this point, I was sure we had lost our chance as the Tengu must have seen Kishin on directional.

However, when we started moving our alts out of the wormhole, the scout watching the Tengu reported that he had warped out of the POS. Kishin reported that the Tengu was on scan near the exit wormhole leading back to Hevrice. He immediately warped to the closest planet but the Tengu was not there, but he was still on scan along with a Thrasher. Strangely, a Cargo Container also appeared on scan in the same area as the two. I managed to probe them down, and warped Kishin ontop of them, but again they already moved on. However, their Cargo Container was still in space and Kishin reported that inside was a number of Sleeper Salvage. 

It seemed that the Thrasher was salvaging the wrecks of the Sleepers that the Tengu had killed and was placing them inside the Cargo Container. The Tengu was reported as being on scan around their POS but not actually inside it. At this point, we came up a plan: we would chase the Tengu around the system with our probes and try to scare him into going back to the Cargo Container.

With the plan in motion, all three Covert Ops vessels operating in the wormhole decloaked and dropped Combat Scanner Probes and began trying to flush the Tengu out. He was reported near another Planet, but he moved before we could get a definite hit. For the next few minutes, we kept him moving around the system, until eventually Kishin reported him back on scan near the Cargo Container. Each second seemed to last hours, until Kishin reported point on Tengu over comms. As one, the fleet in Hevrice jumped into the wormhole and warped to Kishin. He reported that he was getting hit by the Missile bombardment from the Tengu and was hurting, hurting real bad. The advice from the fleet: suck it up and overheat your MWD.

The fleet finally dropped out of warp ontop of Kishin, and just 20km from the Tengu. Calling out points over comms, Kishin warped off, his job done.

We started working into the Tengu, but his tank was formidable and he was tanking us with ease. That is, until the Hurricanes glided into range followed by the Pilgrim. As one, they activated their energy neutralizers and the Tengu went from 90% shields to 10% shields in an instant, and then disintegrated with no capacitor left to turn on Hardeners. The pod escaped, fleeing back to the POS.

Scooping the loot and emptying the Cargo Container, we filed out of the wormhole as we awaited the Killmail. Once it was posted into fleet chat, reactions on comms ranged from "Daaaamn, that's one expensive fit" to "Oh man, we got robbed".

In the end however, we made out with nearly 770M in loot, after the Sleeper Loot was sold. Even split 10 ways, still very respectable for each pilot.

Reflections

In my last post, I told the story of an interesting engagement with Advocated Destruction. In case you missed it, the post can be found here.

As I mentioned at the end of the post, Advocated Destruction made some mistakes which led to them losing this particular engagement. These can be broken down into two types of mistakes: 

1) Mistakes they made before the fight

and

2) Mistakes they made during the fight

Now, the specific examples.

Mistakes they made before the fight

1) They were using the wrong bait ship. Their Muninn turned out to be Artillery fit with no tank fitted, along with no form of warp disruption module. The ideal bait ship to use in their gang was their Harbinger: it had the biggest tank and it is suited for fighting in 0-20km (Warp Disruption range) whilst their Muninn is suited to fighting at long range (50-70km), well outside point range.

2) Their bait was not properly setup. Their Falcon should have been 70km from the Muninn so that it would take longer to burn towards it.

3) Their backup (Curse and Harbinger) was not aligned to the asteroid belt: if they were they should have arrived before my gang (0.1AU warp vs 20-25AU warp)

4) They did not use Intel they had gathered during the initial fight. Their Falcon had the wrong jammers fitted, if he had gone with all Minmatar Jammers we would have been in serious trouble. Instead he went with a Multispectral Jammer.

Mistakes they made during the fight

1) They called me primary (rightly so) but did not point me. Therefore, I was able to warp off and come back into the fight.

2) Their Harbinger did not attempt to tackle our Cyclone, preferring to move away from the action. If they had held our Cyclone in place, most of the DPS that went onto their Falcon would have been averted.

3) They primaried a Rifter after I left the field. They should have primaried our Shield Rupture, against a Curse and Harbinger he would not have lasted long and we would lose a considerable amount of DPS (~400)

4) They jammed the wrong targets. Even using off-racial jammers, a Falcon can easily jam my Jaguar, Borreau's Wolf and our Rifter at the same time. With the Cyclone being held in place by the Harbinger and our Rupture being torn a new one, we would have major difficulties applying enough DPS to threaten their ships in time.

5) Their Falcon never used his MWD once we were moving towards him, nor did he attempt to warp off.

6) Their Harbinger never pursued us after we gave chase to their Falcon, in the end he ended up 70km away from the Curse. Therefore, bad piloting.

In order to balance this engagement, I shall list the mistakes we made during the course of this engagement.

1) I should not have tackled alone knowing they had a Falcon. I should have brought the Rifter with me at the least.

2) My gang should have been in a safe spot closer to the Asteroid Belt, preferably within 4 AU.

3) Comically, I found out afterwards that my Medium Shield Extender II was offlined during the fight, therefore accounting for the beating I took from drones etc. The reason it was offlined: I had fully repaired all my modules in a station, but the heat damage to my scrambler and web was considerable (80% and 90%) therefore my Medium Shield Extender II was offlined.

My next post will be about an interesting (& expensive) gank in a wormhole the Tuskers recently did.

Point!

Finally, after numerous requests from corpmates, I have decided to start my own blog to chronicle my existence within Eve Online. 

I was debating on how to start this blog off and came up with two ways to proceed.

1) Start off with a long winded introduction post explaining who I am, what I do and what I hope you will come away with by reading my blog.

or

2) Start off with an action packed post, describing a recent engagement I have participated in.

In the end, I decided to combine the two, and (hopefully) get the best of both worlds. So, without further ado

Introduction:

Hi, I am Suleiman Shouaa. I am a member of the Tuskers, an all-pirate corporation based in Hevrice, near Aeschee and Old Man Star. 

We have several prominent neighbors living nearby who have a strong presence, examples being Devious Decorum, Advocated Destruction/Invicta as well as the Roughneck/Hellfleet "super alliance" which means interesting fights are typically only a few jumps away.

Therefore, this blog will contain the more interesting fights we get into, as well as fitting tips & tricks, with examples of ships I fly with advantages and disadvantages stated. 

Now with that over and done with, time for the action!

Action Report:

Tuskers prefer small gang PvP, and by small gang PvP I do not mean 7-10 Battleships with 3-6 Support tagging along. By small gang PvP I mean a gang of no more than 7 (though even that is pushing it) engaging with a gang of roughly equal size or equal "strength", taking into account the effects of EWar. So it is appropriate for my first post that it will feature small gang PvP where unlike most blog reports, we are the underdogs.

As with most fights in Eve, this tale starts with a single fight escalating to a larger engagement. In this case, an Advocated Destruction Jaguar was killed and was found to be faction-fit after it claimed the life of a fleeted Rifter on his trial account. Gleefully, my companions looted the wreck and moved to a safe spot along with the loot which was easily enough to cover the cost of the Rifter and still leave a sizable amount left for an appropriate loot split. At the time they thought it was all over, they certainly do not think so now!

As the fight occurred in Melmaniel, next door to Murethand (home of Advocated Destruction) the Jaguar pilot was able to re-ship quickly to a Curse, and rally some of his companions for revenge!

At this time, yours truly logged on and proceeded to make his way over to Melmaniel. Thanks to our handy scouts, we were able to see the enemy force as they jumped into Melmaniel. The lineup was:

Their gang: Curse, Falcon, Harbinger and Muninn

Our gang: Blackbird, Cyclone, Jaguar, Rifter (trial account, reshipped), Rupture and Wolf.

As reports trickled in with their composition, several pilots in the Tusker fleet decided that engaging them was suicide: they out gunned us (Roughly 1500DPS vs 1200DPS), had superior Electronic Warfare Measures (Falcon + Curse > Blackbird) as well as superior tanks (Our Cyclone was active tanked, therefore would have been an easy kill with the Curse on the field). As we Tuskers are a poor bunch of pirates (it is rare to see a Tech 2 Cruiser in our fleets, and to my knowledge we have never used a Command Ship in any fleet), we are not able to throw away ships like other corporations that rely on revenue generated from care-bear activities. 

However, I was having a great day so far ISK-wise (ransomed a Megathron for 200M, split two ways and then immediately afterwards running a 4/10 complex whilst trying to kill the Tengu running it which dropped 250M worth of faction again split two ways with the same pilot) so was willing to risk my Jaguar and therefore by extension everyone else's ships. I took over Fleet Command, and prepared the fleet for battle by instructing them to drop the faction loot that they had got earlier safely into a station and then fully repairing any heat damage.

At this point, the Muninn of the enemy fleet was baiting in a belt, with their Curse and Harbinger sitting on the Murethand stargate. The Falcon was undoubtedly cloaked somewhere.This left us with one target: the Muninn. The reasons being:

1) If we went for the Curse and Harbinger, we would be taking gate gun fire. Without any logistics of our own, our frigates would fall in rapid succession (gate guns have marvelous tracking and do a steady 350 DPS, easily enough to chew through an Jaguar in 30 seconds single handily). At that point, we would have 1 weakly tanked Cruiser (Blackbird), 1 neutted active tanked Cyclone (abysmal tank) and a shield Rupture (even worse than the Cyclone)

2) The engagement would be on the stargate leading to their home system, allowing them easy access to reinforcements.

3) Their Falcon would have the luxury of setting up at its optimal range and we would waste valuable time trying to chase it whilst gate guns would be firing on us.

After quick consideration, I decided to go for their Muninn in the belt near to the Murethand gate. I warped in at 0km, with everyone staying in a safe spot off scan from the belt, aligned to the asteroid belt. The Muninn was 50km off, and burning away towards the Murethand gate (staying aligned). At this point, rather than warping off and trying again I stayed in the belt to try and gather important intelligence, which proved fruitful as I found out that the Muninn was fit with 720mm Howitzer Artillery and would therefore have little to no tank and would not be able to track me if I managed to close range. At the same time, the Muninn hit me for a "barely hit" blow, reducing my shields to 50%.

I promptly warped off before he could fire another volley and spent the next few minutes attempting to land on top of the Muninn, both by warping to range at bookmarks I made or with probed fleet warps, neither of which landed me close enough as the Muninn kept MWDing away, thus making me land outside tackling range (I was fit with AB/Scramble/Web, giving me an effective tackling range of ~12km).

Finally, the Muninn stopped MWDing and I was able to land within 11km of him. Overheating my entire mid rack I called out the word that pirates all over New Eden love to hear, POINT!

With the order given, my fleet warped as one to me. At this point, I had to concentrate on staying alive. Preparing for energy neutralizers, my mouse hovered over the Warp Scrambler button, in order to keep point so that even if I was neutted I could still hold the Muninn down until someone else in my gang landed in order to relieve point. Swapping over to my drone overview, I started firing on the Muninn, hoping to weaken him by the time my gang landed with the serious DPS whilst waiting for the inevitable group of Warrior IIs to emerge. However, to my surprise, they did not. 

At the same time, I was applying serious hurt to the Muninn, with him suffering deep armor damage as both gang lands landed ontop of me, with the Falcon decloaking 50km off. As soon as my gang achieved locks, the Muninn was vaporised. We attempted to catch the Curse, however due to the Falcon's ECM we were unable to put a scrambler on it in time before it nipped off. At this point, under heavy fire and neutralizers, I was forced to warp off in 20% shields, but not before calling the Falcon primary. As I was in warp, the fleet started calling out if they were jammed:

"Rifter jammed"

"Wolf jammed"

"Blackbird jammed"

As I landed in my safe, I called out asking if anyone was ontop of the Falcon. After a few tense seconds, Commoner in the Cyclone called out "Scram on Falcon, warp to Commoner!"

As I entered warp again, I heard over Comms that we had lost our Rifter to the Curse's drones. As I landed, I applied my DPS to the Falcon, who succumbed to our onslaught. Finally, with most of the EWar cleared from the field, it was just time to catch the Curse. Overheating my Afterburner once again, I managed to get a scrambler and web on him for long enough, as our Cyclone burnt into range. Once he was firmly tackled, he went down in a glorious explosion, and then was subsequently podded as the Harbinger, 50km away from the Curse finally warped off, no doubt heading back to Murethand.

As my fleet members celebrated over Ventrilo and exchanged good fights (gf) in local, I took a step back to think about this engagement. We should have lost badly, instead we won an overwhelming victory, destroying nearly 500M and only losing 500,000 ISK in the process.

So why did we win? 

The hour is late, and I will leave it to the reader to answer my question. There are several answers, and all the information you need has been carefully included in this post or has been linked.