Shadow of Cerberus
Public => EVE World News => Thema gestartet von: Aura am Mai 13, 2013, 07:45:02 Vormittag
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Night of the Gnosis
Good news! CSM duties haven't prevented me from flying in space(tm) yet. And when Rote's premiere FC called for a Gnosis fleet, I knew I wasn't going to miss it. The call was for armor Gnosis with four slot tank and trimarks. Looking at the anemic speed of these things, I fit mine with HAMs and e-war, figuring Javelins would give me some much-needed projection. An alt with a carrier delivered it to TXW-EI and I undocked to move mods around and get a feel for the thing... incredibly slow was my initial impression.
As I'm playing around with it, a two-person CAS group lands on our station, 41km from the undock: Arbitrator and Prophecy. I duly report 'em on intel and head for the Arbitrator. The Gnosis is not only slow, it accelerates like a dreadnought. It takes me almost 40 seconds to cross the 16km that I need to engage him. He TDs me and I decide he has no tackle. Local starts filling up with more CAS but I figure I can blap the Arbitrator, keep distance from the Prophecy, and warp off before the gang arrives. That was the plan, anyway.
Nope. The Prophecy outruns(!) and tackles me. Did I mention the Gnosis is slow? Turns like a dreadnought, too. I have about 35 seconds of aggression and I'm still on station, so just for fun I undock the carrier that just delivered my Gnosis and start applying capital reps... which the CAS fleet is able to overwhelm with no problem, and my first Gnosis dies with 10 seconds left on the PvP clock. So they're slow, can't accelerate, can't turn, and can't take reps worth a damn. Total time of ownership of my first Gnosis? Literally 60 seconds. Sigh. At least I hadn't fit my expensive ANP to the thing yet.
Just as the FC arrives for the evening, a small Sadistica gang arrives in system. "Undock in T1 armor cruisers," we're told, "or get in your Gnosis if you don't have a T1 armor cruiser." We do this but despite being about equal size and offering them expensive toys to blow up, Sadistica doesn't want to engage. They flee this way and that trying to avoid the fight and we catch some stragglers: two Thoraxes, a Rupture, a Maller, and a Flycatcher. First blood for the Rote Gnosises, but not for me since I'm in an Omen for that fight.
We turn around to form up but the Sadistica survivors tell us there's an EVE University shield cruiser fleet one more jump further out. Guess the Sadistica guys felt like they'd get caught between us and that's why they didn't want to fight. So the Gnosises go in to try to bait the E-UNI group but the Unistas won't be baited. The Gnosises catch a few of them; the rest run away. Three more T1 cruisers down.
Back to TXW we go and get formed up. I borrow a second Gnosis. We get word from an outlying scout that there's a Gents fleet near Oulley but we can't pin that down. However there's also a Mega/Navy Mega/Cane group camping the station undock in Oulley itself so we decide to bait them with a cyno Orca. Get our Gnosis fleet set up on a titan, the baiting goes off without a hitch, and we do for the Navy Mega before he can de-aggress and for the Hurricane who burns off the undock. The Mega gets docked in time. The tears from the Navy Mega pilot at getting dropped and blobbed are entertaining.
Since our fleet is now in Oulley that means we don't have to come into Placid through our normal doorway via Alperaute and we have the option of going into Ostingele by the back door and have a go at the gate-campers there. We only get a couple of jumps in that direction though before we cross paths again withe CAS fleet that popped my first Gnosis. They outnumber us a bit and they're very hip to get more nifty Gnosis kills. What they're not hip to do is concentrate DPS. We have a couple of logi and also jump in one triage carrier; he has no problem keeping our ships up against the fragmented CAS DPS. We inflict sweet sweet revenge for my first poor Gnosis, taking down 15 of them for no losses.
Gnosises are slow, can't accelerate, can't turn, and have a hard time tackling... but people can't resist trying to shoot at them. Good to know!
Scout reports nothing doing in Ostingele so we turn left into Black Rise where we get word of a GalFed T1 cruiser fleet. We eventually track them down to find that they outnumber us slightly and are heavily green and blaster-fit. The GalFed guys are much more satisfactory about concentrating their heavier DPS on targets. We start by killing or using damps to isolate about half their logi, then start working on Thoraxes and Vexors. Meanwhile, they kill two of our Gnosises. Two slots for resists just aren't cutting it, and these things have no buffer. Oh well. We eventually knock down ten of them and they deaggress. Overall, a fun, ISK-even engagement!
Again, the Gnosises are definitely quite good at one thing: getting people to start shooting at them. After GalFed scatters, we pick up three more kills popping their stragglers.
From there, over to Old Man Star and a group of Soul Takers Redeemers on the 8-1 station undock. We send in the Gnosises alone and aggress to let them know we'll be happy to fight. The Redeemers dock up and are replaced by a small battleship group, who aggress under reps from a pair of Augurors. Our Gnosises are damp-fit and we hit one of the Augurors with about 15 or so damps lowering his lock range to a few dozen meters. ;-) Then we crush the other Augoror while the rest of our fleet jumps in. The local spike causes the Soul Takers battleships to deaggress and dock back up. We tease them about at least staying aggressed long enough to get a sweet Gnosis kill next time, then head for home without further incident.
Ripard Plays This Game(tm). No doubt I am slacking in my CSM duties. ;-) But quite a fun evening! gf to everyone who gave us a fight last night!
Source: Night of the Gnosis (http://jestertrek.blogspot.com/2013/05/night-of-gnosis.html)