PG12-ish or so comms!
Deep behind enemy lines, I was running my infamous ShrinkWrapped fleet and we were out in The Kalevala Expanse heading from the North East corner to the Home Staging system of R10, or Rio as it is commonly known as.By entering Rio through the pipe from 74D, the standing fleet has the time to get active and rally the troops to intercept any hostile threat. We were that hostile threat.
The beauty of Rio is there are so many exit points - you can go to RQ, I2, BG, GQ, and then onward - effectively it's a 1 in, 4 out system, and you can really lose a hostile fleet if you play your hand right - ie. playing gate games, and use your aggression timers to your strategic advantage.
The worst thing about running through this area is the gate interface from QG to Rio - the Keepstar is on grid 1K km away, and a response fleet can readily drop down to engage within a blink of an eye. This night was no different.
The standing fleet had obviously had a quiet night, and this meant that snacking on some Raptors was obviously on the menu!
As with every roam that I run, these are public fleets, and knowledge of the fleet commander often gets leaked and fleet movement can sometimes be disrupted should the FC ever get caught - or headshotted.
In this instance, I got well and truly caught and pinned down by the enemy forces, so I handed command over to my second in command to lead the fleet to safety as the whole of my fleet managed to get out!
I was left stuck on a gate ping ponging back and forth waiting my timers.
Now this is where big-brain thinking comes in - i was delaying trying to catch up through choice, by design if you will - and was I specifically doing this to allow my friendly fleet to extract to safety.
Somewhat hilariously though, rather than the hostile fleet give chase for a fleet of 20 or more, which they could have easily caught, engaged and killed, the opposing force opted to try to catch a lone straggler - ie. me - which bought us all sufficient time for our fleet to get 3 or 4 systems away and into the relative safety of Etherium Reach.
Every time i crashed gate, they aggressed me, meaning that they could not take the chase to the larger target (the fleet), meaning that they were effectively stuck in system. Each time I crashed gate, I held my cloak each time for the full period, to allow any damage that I had taken as I crashed gate to regenerate, buying even more time for my fleet to get safe.
This last time, I managed to spawn on the correct side of the dictor bubble to power out of the warp disruption bubble, and miniwarp up to a mobile depot that was on grid (400k above ping).
The beauty of the mighty Raptor is it is quick - and has the ability to overheat to 7K. In this instance, I didnt even need it. Their light tackle did not manage to catch me - i was only long pointed and jammed (lolz) and I managed to power out of the bubble, break my point, and get safe, eventually catching up with my fleet to resume fleet command and lead us all home to safety!
More experiences like this can be had on any of our public roams! - head to npsi.rocks for more fleets from me, and other totally awesome NPSI groups!
My fave ship! The raptor! + all its beautiful skins!