Tag Archives: Ranger Gama

Reavers Gnosis Racing

As happens, every so often Ranger Gama sets up another race event for Reavers. The last one had us flying around in Drakes back at the end of December. This time around the Gnosis, the Society of Conscious Thought battlecruiser, was the hull of choice. We gathered together at 02:00 EVE Online time and Ranger Gama handed us the ships for the race.

Gnosis with the Icecloud Investigator SKIN

The Gnosis is a bit of an odd bird, one of the rare faction battlecruisers… I think it was the sole such example until we got the Triglavian Drekavac recently… along with having very low skill requirements to fly as well as bonuses to which ever weapon system you prefer to mount. Rails, projectiles, beams, missiles, and drones all get a boost on this hull.

Of course, for a Reavers race the fit is always part of the equation, though weapon systems rarely come into play. We got our ships and found the usual odd set of modules.

Mix of all sorts of modules

For those who want the details, here is the EFT block:

[Gnosis, Reavers Race]
Damage Control I
Reinforced Bulkheads I
Nanofiber Internal Structure I
Inertial Stabilizers I
Overdrive Injector System I
Warp Core Stabilizer I

Medium Micro Jump Drive
10MN Afterburner I
50MN Microwarpdrive I
Cargo Scanner I
Ship Scanner I
Survey Scanner I

Miner I
Salvager I
Small Tractor Beam I
Festival Launcher
Cynosural Field Generator I
Core Probe Launcher I

Medium Hyperspatial Velocity Optimizer I
Medium Hyperspatial Velocity Optimizer I
Medium Hyperspatial Velocity Optimizer I

Mining Drone I x1
Light Armor Maintenance Bot I x1
Light Shield Maintenance Bot I x1
Salvage Drone I x1
Light Hull Maintenance Bot I x1

Liquid Ozone x249
Core Scanner Probe I x8
Sodium Firework x100
Barium Firework x100
Copper Firework x100
Mobile Medium Warp Disruptor I

There was also an Ironblood SKIN in each so people could spiff up their ship. I already had that SKIN. In fact, I was a bit surprised to find I had four SKINs for the Gnosis already. I am not sure I’ve ever bothered to fly one, other than to undock one back in the day just to see it in space.

Fireworks are the usual fit. A miner, a tractor beam, and a salvager are not unheard of. The cyno was an interesting touch, though in the cargo we found ourselves one unit of Liquid Ozone shy of being able to light it off, so nobody would be coming to our rescue that way. And we had probes. I guess we could wormhole our way home if we survived. The Gnosis gets a bonus to probe strength as well.

There was also a medium warp bubble in the cargo. Those are fun at parties, though I wasn’t sure how one would fit into the race. Theoretically, if you could get far enough ahead, you could drop one to annoy the people behind you. But they take 240 seconds to deploy and if you’re that far ahead you might as well just carry on flying.

Otherwise the ship was at least fit for speed. The hyperspatial rigs meant we would be warping fast for a battlecruiser.

The rules for the event were the usual; only standard star gates allowed. No Ansiblex jumps, no titan bridges, and no wormholes. The payout for the winners was set as:

1st Place: 50% of the pool
2nd Place: 30% of the pool
3rd Place: 15% of the pool
POD: 5% of the pool
Harlyq Prize: Something special

The Harlyq prize, named after a Reaver for reasons I’ve no forgotten, required you to stop and mine 500 units of Scordite along the way and have that in your hold at the finish line.

Unfortunately, the timing for the race was not optimal. It was Saturday night before Easter, the second day of Passover, and a Liberty Squad op had just formed up minutes before the race ping… and there is a lot of overlap between Liberty Squad and Reavers, so much so that the two groups pretty much cannot run fleets at the same time… so that turn out for the race was pretty low. There were just five of us.

Still, we were game. We all had our ships in 1DQ1-A in Delve and were ready to go. Ranger Gama had us undock then warped us to a celestial while updating the message of the day with the route. When we landed, we were off and running.

Gnosis Race is On

The route was essentially the same as the last one, landing us in HED-GP, a location which usually has somebody camping it.

Race Route

As tends to happen, with all things being equal, the person with the best connection to the data center starts to pull ahead as they transition through gates faster. As it so happened Zarakik is close to the London data center and, when we all announced our client latency, was showing an easy 10ms advantage over the next person on the list, hitting 6ms to 16ms or more for those of us in the US.

Somebody did a long post at one point about the dynamics of EVE Online and specifically how to be that person who always gets the kill at a gate camp, the summary of which was “be close to the London data center.” Same thing here.

We could see Zarakik gaining a lead with every gate. Our only real hope was for him to go AFK for a bit or to run into a gate camp ahead of us. And the former wasn’t going to help me much. Being on the west coast of the US I was the furthest from the data center and was falling behind everybody ever so slightly, so I would still be in last place if I just did gated and warped with the rest of them.

Destined for last place if nothing got in our way, I decided to stop and mine so at least to get the Harlyq prize. The problem was just finding some Scordite out in null sec. That doesn’t spawn in mining anomalies, or so I observed, so I had to start warping to belts to find some. Eventually I spotted an asteroid in a belt without rats and ran a cycle that got me what I needed.

Gnosis mining

That accomplished, I was way behind the pack. My main hope was that they would hit a gate camp. They were far enough ahead of me that I would hear about it long before I got there. But I decided to hedge my bet and pick a route to get to HED-GP via another route. So I looked for a waypoint on DOTLAN that would get me around the straight path. It would take me longer, but last race the winner was the person who did not run the shortest path.

My proposed alternate route

So I set 4-07MU as my destination and started taking gates.

After a bit I started to suspect I might have made an error as I noted along the way some of the things the people ahead of me had mentioned. I then realized that I had simply made 4-07MU my destination and that the shortest path there was to go through HED-GP and back around through Querious. Navigational error on my part.

But it did not matter. As it turned out nobody was camping anything along the route. TEST and its allies have a campaign of their own going on in the east and were probably all deployed out there. So the five of us just flew through their space, all arriving in HED-GP unscathed, without much of a scare. I think somebody saw an Onyx along the way, but it didn’t come after us or anything.

Throwing fireworks at Ranger Gama

The results were:

1st Place: Zarakik
2nd Place: Ranger Gama
3rd Place: Hoff Talvanen
Harlyq Prize: Wilhelm Arcturus

Then there was the question of what to do when you don’t lose any ships. Ranger Gama did not want them back. I flew mine back to 1DQ1-A through Querious, half hoping to get caught along the way.

Gnosis on the way home

The main highlight on that trip was discovering that SpaceMonkeys Alliance was a thing again and part of the Querious Fight Club. I had not heard much about them since they collapsed from exhaustion during the Casino War. (They helped start the whole thing, or so the story goes, and were fighting for months before it became the big conflict it ended up as.)

The SMA logo above a gate

I arrived back in Delve intact, missing only the mobile war disruptor, which I dropped along the way during the race. I aligned for a gate at one point, triggered my micro jump drive to put me 100km off the gate, and set it to deploy. I figured that would annoy somebody. And somebody did take the time to kill it. Ranger Gama also dropped his and it was popped by a couple of the same people. Zarakik dropped his in TEST space where it got solo’d. EVEBruceL and Hoff Talvanen either didn’t drop theirs or dropped them some place where they simply expired before anybody felt like shooting them.

The final aspect of the race was to find out what the Harlyq prize would be. “Something special” covers a lot of ground. But later that evening a contract popped up from Ranger Gama. I figured out what he did with the spare Gnosis hulls he had.

Some Gnosis hulls for me

They were all set up as mining ships, with cargo expanders in the low slots and mining lasers in the high slots.

Mine my own business

I doubt I am going to mining in them. I’ll have to find a decent PvP fit and take them out to get blown up… once I’ve insured them.

Of course, we’re back to what to fit. The Gnosis works with so many weapon systems. Maybe lasers. At least those are pretty.

The Reavers Drake Race

The comedy race event returned last night, with Ranger Gama setting up another run for the SIG. It was the fourth such race for Reavers this year, and the third one I was able to make.

The first one was actually almost exactly a year ago, in 2017, so not really this year I suppose. That was the first one. We flew Daredevils around the north, hanging out on the Pandemic Horde Keepstar as one of the way points.

I missed the second one, which also flew through the north, while the third one was out of Delve and had us flying Ventures.

This time around Ranger had a bigger ship in mind. This time he set us up with Drakes. As usual, the fit was more for comedy than anything else, with four festival launchers as the main armament. They were also fit with hyperspatial rigs for faster warp speed, but the prop mod choices were frigate sized. The one saving grace was that he fit a micro jump drive.

Nine of us were there for the race. Ranger handed out the Drakes and I immediately insured mine, figuring that such a big target was likely to be blown up flying through the hostile space that we would likely be traversing.

It also gave me a chance to use the Drake SKIN that came with the holiday event in EVE Online, the Chromodynamic Candy SKIN.

At the Keepstar with the fresh Drake SKIN

I also grabbed some mining drones. Ranger was offering a bonus prize for the first person to show up with a cargo filled with Veldspar. He also wisely bought all of the Veldspar off the market in 1DQ1-A to keep us from simply buying it before we started. We would have to mine it ourselves, or buy it along the way.

Then he gave us the route and we were off.

Candy Drakes on the way

We had to travel first to ZWV-GD, then to 0-MX34, then to C9N-CC, and finally to HED-GP where we needed to warp to Ranger’s alt to finish the race. The total distance was 67 gates. That route would put us through some fairly active systems. But first we were off toward Period Basis and our neighbors to the south.

Hitting a RED Alliance gate

We started out with most of us neck and neck gating our way to the first way point. It didn’t seem like we would face much trouble until we hit TEST space.

Middle Management Dino on the Gate

And, sure enough, just a couple of gates into the Paragon Soul region and TEST space we came through into a gate camp. At the time Ranger was first through the gate, followed by Losmortos Nolm and then myself, with most of the rest close behind.

A bubble was up on the gate as we came through. Ranger was the first to break cloak and managed to pull all the aggro immediately. Losmortos Nolm managed to slip past while I tried to activate my micro jump drive before breaking cloak. That led me to fumbling about a bit, which let those behind me break cloak as well. That probably saved me as I was able to MJD out of the bubble and warp off while the camp was busy with other Drakes. In all more than half of those in the race, five Drakes, were blown up and the pods destroyed as well. Ranger Gama, Arianhrod Begin, Shokalokaboom, Buer Argarves, and Roy Garfield, were all done in 0SUF-3.

Meanwhile, Hoff Talvanen, who was running behind, managed to get picked off back in Period Basis in VYO-68.

That left only myself, Losmortos Nolm, and Grodd Gandar still in the running. Losmortos Nolm and I were already past the camp so kept on the most direct route while Grodd Gandar, who was also a bit behind, decided to take an alternate path to the first marker. That put him many jumps behind us.

Losmortos Nolm and myself had a fairly smooth run after that.

Into the Minmatar part of null sec

It wasn’t until we had hit C9N-CC and had turned around for HED-GP that the first bit of trouble came up. We ended up with an Ares flying along with us.

The Ares decided to take a run at me, getting ahead of me through a gate and pointing me. However I was able to light the MJD again and jump away from him and then warp off, jumping through the next gate while he was still waiting on his aggro timer. But he was quick and tried to grab me two gates down the line. At this point Losmortos Nolm was maybe half a system ahead of me. I took the next gate and, instead of following along, I warped off to an asteroid belt hoping to maybe mind a bit for the Veldspar prize and ditch the persistent Ares.

The Ares kept on going, following after Lormortos Nolm, so I was alone in the system. However, the rats in the asteroid belt were not happy to see me and I had nothing with me to take them out. Also, I had forgotten how slow mining drones are. I recalled them, then had to fly towards them before warping out, my shield down below the 10% mark.

That delay put Losmortos Nolm about eight gates ahead of me. He was good about mentioning what he was facing, giving me some heads up as to what was coming. It wasn’t until GE-8JV that he ran into significant numbers in space. There a battle seemed to be in progress between the locals and some Imperium pilots with about 100 people in local. The conflict seemed to be centered on the gate to V-3YG7, with forces on both sides of that gate. Losmortos Nolm managed to slip past. But by the time I got there a camp of Brave pilots were on the far side of the gate. When I came through there was a bubble up. There was enough firepower to take me down before my MJD could spin up. My ship exploded. I was out of the race.

Candy Drake coming apart

Losmortos Nolm managed to get through into HED-GP and was the winner of the race.

Meanwhile, Grodd Gandar, who had taken the long route around, was still something like 40 jumps from the finish line. However, being that far behind worked out for him. He had been watching the Gate Camp Check site, but by the time he arrived in the vicinity of GE-8JV the battle had subsided and the gates were clear. He was able to slip through and get to HED-GP and Ranger Gamma’s alt.

He also said that he had collected a cargo hold full of Veldspar along the way. However, it wasn’t clear how to verify that, so his Drake got blow up so people could examine the kill mail and see what he had on him. Sure enough, a bunch of Veldspar was in his cargo hold.

And so another race ended. First place went to Losmortos Nolm and second to Grodd Gandar, with the third place prize being rolled over for next time. The route most of us ended up flying looked like this:

The route with death locations noted

Grodd Gandar went through Stain, which added a lot of jumps to his path.

It is always interesting to see who is out and about in space when we are flying. There is very much a randomness to it. You can fly through a dozen systems and see just one or two names in local, then stumble upon a gate camp or a battle with dozens or even a hundred people around. They will be for a bit, then gone a little while later. The same route can be safe for one person and a death trap for somebody else ten minutes later. But that is the way of null sec.

A Venture to HED-GP

Ranger Gama was back again with another frigate race for Reavers. You may (but most likely do not) recall the race I wrote about back in December that had us racing Daredevils about the north. That was enough fun that Ranger has made it a semi-regular thing in Reavers. There was a second race a few months back that I missed, but I was around this weekend for the third one.

As has been the case in the past, Ranger Gama wouldn’t tell us where we would be headed in advance, nor what we would be flying, aside from the fact that he figured some of us might need to train up the skill.

That prompted me to see if there was any frigate that I could not fly. Aside from the new Triglavian frigate, the Damavik, I seemed to be covered. But if I had had to guess, I would have said the Venture was a likely candidate, being a mining frigate. And, sure enough, when the time came Ranger Gama had some specially fit Ventures for us.

A Venture waiting to race

Ranger only had a few to hand out, so only the first 9 people who joined fleet were going to get one, which led to me hitting refresh on the fleet finder until his fleet advert popped up, at which point I joined (followed shortly by a couple other people) before the ping for the fleet was even sent out. The fleet had to be disbanded until the ping, at which point people piled back in.

There were more people than frigates, but the fit was simple and cheap, so a couple people were allowed to buy their own in order to join. As you can see from my eventual kill mail (we’ll get to that) it just fit a pair of mining lasers, a festival launcher, an MWD, an AB, a survey scanner, and a Nanofiber in the low slot. We did get rigs to let us warp faster, so at least we had some speed.

There were questions about what we were allowed to do. Not allowed was changing the fit. Everybody had to race with the fit provided, though a couple of people felt that meant they could add some drones. But otherwise people were allowed to run with implants if they so desired and take any route or mode or transportation they wished, so long as they stayed in their Venture. We were then given the route and were sent on our way.

The race route

We started in 1DQ1-A, the capital of the Imperium, and our first waypoint was HY-RWO in Catch. Most people headed straight down the most direct path, but four of us, myself included, got out GARPA to check the local jump bridge network, and turned the other direction to catch a jump bridge that shaved nearly a dozen gates off the route. That put the four of us, Sicarius Bile, Grodd Gandar, Zarakik, and myself, way out in front of the pack. In that group of four I was the second through the jump bridge.

The gate route, all 52 jumps

Part of the idea of the race is that hostiles along the way will cause trouble for the leaders who may (or may not) choose to share intel on what is happening. However, Saturday night in Catch seemed to be pretty quiet. TEST and their allies in the Legacy Coalition were not out roaming their space along our route, so the four of use made it to U-QVWD without incident.

Sicarius Bile got there first, and I jumped into the system just after. I waited until he said he was on the TEST Keepstar in the system before warping to him and then moving off to pull distance while staying on grid. Since grids… what is essentially the local bit of space where you can see other players and structures… are pretty huge now thanks to citadels, there is a lot of room to work with.

Nobody came out to molest us however. I did see that there were a couple of player corpses on the undock of the Keepstar, which I suggested ought to fetch a prize bonus if collected (which somebody then did, because of course they would) but otherwise not much happened.

On grid with the Keepstar in my Venture

As we were winding down our five minutes on the Keepstar those who did not take the jump bridge began to arrive. Asher seemed to be at the back of the pack, but unperturbed, with a calm in his voice, which made people suspect that he had a plan.

Then the early four headed out for the loop around TEST space. During that run the lineup of the first four changed as Zarakik passed me. I suspect that he might have opted for the warp speed implants. But later he said that he was physically close to the London data center where the EVE Online servers are, giving him a consistent 7ms ping, which basically allowed him to load system faster than I could, eight time zones away from London, allowing him a small but tangible head start through each gate.

We started arriving back at the Keepstar for our second five minute stay on grid just as the last of the second group was leaving after their first. Somebody in the second group tried to use the drones they packed to thin out the pack, but that did not work out.

I made a bookmark on the first stay so was able to warp straight in and start my five minute timer. Again, there was little to remark on during our stay. An interceptor undocked, but didn’t seem to have any use for us. We speculated what they might be saying on their intel channel about a small gang of mining frigates hanging out around their Keepstar, but whatever it was, nobody came to get us.

So after our five minutes elapsed, we headed out for the final waypoint, Sicarius Bile in the lead, Zarakik next, and myself and Grodd Gandar close behind, smug with the distance of our lead.

And then we all died in SV5-8N, just one gate shy of the finish line. Brave had a gate camp with drag bubbles up on the HED-GP gate. Sicarius Bile died first and told us about the gate camp. Then we proceeded to pile on and die, one by one, until eight of us were down.

Who is missing a jacket?

We didn’t all just bumble in with a direct warp. I, like most of the later group, tried to find a bounce point which might bring me in behind the camp and let me get to the gate without getting caught. But they had four drag bubbles up arrayed about the gate so that there was no joy on that front.

That left Asher Elias, Locke Erasmus, Elisha Okaski, and Boris Agnon (who got away in his pod) still in the race. Back in 1DQ1-A I asked if I refit a Venture if I could just race to HED-GP, but the ruling came back that I would need run the whole route again for it to count. Given that the alternate route to HED-GP was another 34 gates, I didn’t think it was worth the effort.

It got quiet on coms as those left considered their options. A long diversion from the easy path seemed to be the choice. And then Asher called out that he had made it, long before he could have run the full way around.

He told us that he looked at the killmails that we had linked and started convo’ing the FC of the gate camp to bribe him to be let through. As it turned out the FC just wanted Asher to bring a fight, and since Saturday Night Swarm was starting in HED-GP in just a bit… that was why it was the end point of the race… he was able to offer that up. So they let him through and he won.

We asked what other plans he might of had, since he seemed to linger behind as the race started, so there was speculation that he might have been looking for an opportune wormhole to get an edge. However, it came out that he convo’d TEST (and former GSF) FC Vily to ask him to set Asher blue to TEST so he could use TEST jump bridges. Vily told him he couldn’t do that himself, but would try to find somebody who could. It looked like Vily was good to his word and actually did get Asher set blue, but nobody got back to Asher so he ended up not using the jump bridge network.

Then after a time, Locke and Elisha made it to HED-GP via the long route and we had out winner. The prize pool of 1.5 billion ISK was divided up, with 50% slated for the winner, 30% for second place, 15% for third, and 5% set aside for the first person to arrive in a pod. Those finishing the race were:

Asher Elias
Locke Erasmus
Elisha Okaski

Boris Agnon opted not to take the long way around in his pod, so the 5% for that was rolled over into the prize pool for the next race, along with Elisha’s prize money at his insistence.

And so the third Reavers frigate race ended, with most of us dying quickly at the gate camp in SV5-8N. Brave popped me so fast I did not have a chance to launch fireworks at them. Somebody had enough time to grab a direction scan of the camp, but that was about it.

What was waiting on the gate?

Despite not getting a prize I ended up 103,545.20 ISK ahead for the evening, that being the payout for losing an uninsured Venture. I went with a clean pod, so losing that cost me nothing.

There was some talk as to what else we could have done with the race. Since we were in mining frigates it was suggested that filling our ore holds ought to be a requirement… something Locke said he did anyway… but as not everybody had mining skills (the advent of skill extractors meant a lot of combat pilots ripped out the mining skills they trained as newbies back in the day) that was set aside.

Ranger Gama has promised to hold another race in the future. We will have to see how that plays out and what surprises he comes up with.

Daredevil Race

Ranger Gama drew Asher in the Theta Squad Secret Santa gift exchange, so his problem immediately became, “What do you get the 23rd best FC in the Imperium?”

He decided to get Asher a Reavers event since Theta just krabs in Delve day and night I suppose.

The event was to be a frigate race. The route and frigate type were to be announced at the time of the race when Ranger Gama would hand them out. He imported ten frigates, one for himself, one for Asher, and eight more for whoever showed up in time to claim one.

The planned time for the race was delayed on a couple of occasions, which worked out for me as I happened to sit down at my desk just after Asher pinged Reavers to let them know it was on. I was in soon enough to claim one of the frigates, which turned out to be a Daredevil, a Serpentis faction frigate.

Me being me, I quickly logged an alt into Jita to buy a SKIN because I just can’t undock anymore without one. The Glacial Drift SKIN was available and cheap, but then I saw some of the Serpentis Victory SKINs listed as well. Those were given away as part of Alliance Tournament XV. They were much more pricey, going for over 300 million ISK, but also more rare. So I picked up one of those and contracted it to myself and activated it.

Daredevil in the hangar with a new SKIN

The race was originally going to be a point-to-point run, but Asher suggested something to make it more interesting… or dangerous… or both… so the instructions were updated in the fleet MOTD.

The route, with one five minute stop

Each of the ships had a name for the occasion. I ended up with the ship named “In.”

We undocked our frigates and met up on a citadel in ROIR. From there the race began.

The frigates themselves were setup for speed, capable of well over 5km/sec with the included faction MWD burning. Otherwise, as you can see from one of the Daredevils that got caught, there was a bit of shielding and some festival launchers armed with fireworks to use along the way.

Festival Launchers on the ship

As we flew off Apple Pear showed up and was given a ship. Only seven had been handed out so he started off a few gates behind us. Given that the route was static and everybody was warping at the same speed he needed some hostile intervention to help his cause.

The rest of us warped along towards the first destination.

Daredevil in warp

This was where I started to have problems. I was up with the leaders when one of our cats managed to get himself caught in the handle of a shopping bag which was hooked over the door across the hall from me and began to thrash wildly, seeming more likely to harm himself via that than anything the bag would do. I dropped my headset, grabbed him, lifted him up to take off any strain, then calmed him for a bit before slipping his head out and letting him run off. He was okay and I had my daughter dispose of the bag, but now I was behind the pack, though still out in front of Apple Pear. At least I was still alive, having sat uncloaked on a gate for a bit.

Then I ran into another issue. When we arrived in JU-OWQ in Deklein, my auto-pilot route sent me back the way we came to get to C4C-Z4. I still do not understand why, as I checked later and did not see any systems anywhere close by on my avoid list. So I passed by Apple Pear going the other way, made it through CCP-US, where he had reported a gate camp on both gates, and on towards Fade.

Fortunately there was nothing in the rules about the route, just the requirement to hit the specified waypoints, so that my route differed from the route everybody else took didn’t matter.

Some space maps with routes

Well, it did matter a bit. My route was two jumps longer, but it turned out to be a bit safe as Asher and the rest of the pack ran into some trouble, with two Daredevils getting popped in K4YZ-Y. I made it to C4C without incident, but was easily 3 minutes behind Asher, Ranger Gama, and Norgraad. I warped on grid with the Keepstar and started burning away from it and the few carriers that had fighters out to try and nab us.

On grid with the PH Keepstar

Asher and Ranger Gama seemed to do okay, but Norgraad managed to get popped by the locals, though gamely carried on in his pod. They warped off, heading to the next waypoint while I lingered on grid watching the stopwatch on my iPhone slowly count off the minutes. The leaders were reporting some people waiting for them ahead, but by the time I was able to warp off towards the next destination they seemed to have given up. I left Apple Pear behind on the Keepstar grid and went in chase of the leaders.

While there was mutterings on coms about the dangers ahead, they were often vague, like the leaders did not want to help those chasing them catch up. But it didn’t really matter. The only hope I had of catching up was to warp straight from gate to gate and just hope to crash or burn past any gate camp. So off I went.

Fortunately for myself an Apple Pear, the path through was pretty sparsely populated. At least that was fortunate for us as far as staying alive went. It also meant that there wasn’t much to slow down Asher or Ranger Gama or even Norgraad in his pod. Norgraad’s slow warps mean I was able to pass him at least. He got caught in Cloud Ring while I burned on.

The Cloud Ring nebula

The only real peril for me was at the Alsavoinon gate in F7C-H0. There, on the boarder between null sec and low was the expected camp with a bubble setup. I landed straight in it and the campers were slow enough to react to my arrival that I thought I might make it through to the gate unscathed. However, burning in as fast as I did I hit the gate and bounced off it so far that I had to burn in again. I took some damage, dropping to half shields, as I made my way back to the gate again, but got through and was on my way.

Low sec space posed no threat and it wasn’t until the path brought me back into null sec that I ran into some additional trouble. There was a drag bubble in EWOK-K on the O-N8XZ gate that pulled me out of warp shy of the gate.

Burning to the gate again

However, no hostiles were minding the store and a lone TNT pilot was plinking away at the bubble to take it down. I would have joined in to help… Asher and Ranger Gama were already over the finish line… but fireworks don’t do much. After that it was just a few more empty gates and I was over the finish line myself. There I burned over to Asher and Ranger Gama and joined in the shooting of fireworks.

Apple Pear showed up after a bit, followed by Elisha Okaski, who made it all the way from K4YZ-Y in his pod, earning him a special commendation.

For my third place finish I won a free ship of the line for whatever Asher’s next Reavers doctrine ends up being, mostly because Ranger Gama was the organizer so counted himself and Asher out of the contest. Elisha Okaski will get a ship as well for persevering through most of the race in a pod.

I handed Ranger Gama back my ship so he could use them for some future event and thanked him for setting this up and, of course, declaring me one of the prize winners. We’ll have to see what the next doctrine ends up being.

That was probably my last op of the year. Below some screen shots of us shooting fireworks. We had to turn the MWDs off as the ships were otherwise outrunning the launchers.