While I haven't mentioned it yet, I play Eve online. I was on reddit today and something reminded me of an event that happened to me once. One of the most memorable moments in my eve career. One of the best and worst engagements I have ever FC'd before. Here is the story.
There was one time we were baiting an overeager new titan pilot into a fight. He had this habit of DDDing lone battleships just for fun, so we used that.
We began by forming up, as always. I picked up about 40 battleships, 30 support ships, 15 cap ships and 2 titans for bridges and possible damage. Plenty for what we were trying to accomplish. Everyone had the utmost confidence in my abilities to pull this off, for I had done this several times before in the past.
We setup the fleet about 7 jumps out from the target system and started the baiting process, and a small cap fleet ready with 2 titans as support. We were going to pwn this guy.
Attempt #1: We tossed in 3 battleships and let them rat in the belts, all with coverts watching them with cynos. About 15 mins into it, he took the bait. We lit the cyno, jumped the BS fleet in and engaged. Sadly he popped the cyno cov ops before we got points on him and we lost a few over eager carriers. In the engagement. (He did have support in the system). So we disengaged and headed back to the staging POS 7 jumps away licking our wounds and posting some battleship killmails we got in the fight.
So we get ready to jump back, and suddenly, one of the cov ops pilots says over comms: "Oops just lit a cyno off the station. Don't use to me!" Then, the Avatar suddenly jumped for no reason.
I as an FC asked, "Uh, where the hell did you just jump to <name withheld> the cyno isn't up yet."
About 30 seconds later I received a phone call, it was the titan pilot. Odd I think to myself, why the hell would he call my phone? So I answer.
"OH MY GOD OH MY GOD I JUST JUMPED TO BACK TO THE SYSTEM THEY HAVE POINTS ON ME AND I BROKE MY MIC AND KEYBOARD AHHHHH"
Begin Attempt #2.
At this point every cyno pilot was dead in the system, we had nothing there. Our entire support fleet was 7 jumps away with only 2 cynos left. This was not going to be good. I told everyone in battleships and lower to go as fast as they fucking could back to the system and start targeting support. Had the 2 cynos remaining hold back and wait for the smaller ships to engage.
We rushed back, I don't think I've ever seen a battleship fleet move so fucking fast. Our Cap pilots furiously checking to see if they could jump in and engage. Everyone's heart was racing. Our first cyno made it one jump out with the battleships. They go through, warp to the station and start engaging. It was 7 carriers, one titan and 30 battleships engaging our dumbas... I mean Titan pilot. His shields were down and armor already failing. (It was an avatar fyi). They engaged the tacklers and the cyno jumps into the system.
BOOM! Some random ass roaming fleet was there, not in anyway connected to either side. They just happen to get to that stargate on their little roam. My heart stopped, I could hear the high command yelling at me already for losing a titan. The whole time my dumbass titan pilot was on the phone with me screaming and losing his shit. All I could hear was "HELP HELP HELP HELP" on the phone and "IS the cyno up, is the cyno up, is the cyno up" on TS and "WE NEED BACKUP" from the BS fleet all at the same time. So now, half my support fleet is locked down on the gate from some random roaming fleet. I was stuck with them, unable to give commands in the fight. But I had one shot left. It had to count.
When we began the fleet, I did a quick check of fittings for the BS fleet. When I saw one of our newbros fitted a Cyno to his battleship I almost made him take it off. We had a strict fleet setup at the time and this just wasn't acceptable. He even had medium guns on his mega to fit the cyno. However being a good manager that I am, I allowed him to do it. I told him it was a bad idea and we have fittings for a reason, but to keep it. I wanted to show him why this was a bad idea. He was 8 months fresh, and he was now our only hope to save a dumbass titan from a misclick jump in a failed op that may of gotten me fired from the high command.
I cleared comms. Took a deep breath and asked, "Hey Newbro, where are you exactly?" The seconds it took him to answer me felt like an eternity. The silence was killing me, knowing I was losing numerous battleships and support, knowing the titan pilot was going to die of a heart attack. My game career flashed before my eyes.
"Oh I went the wrong way, I'm at the other gate about to jump in, sorry about that." (little info, the constellation was circular, so he ended up going around 5 jumps and ending up at another gate)]
Other gate? Are you fucking kidding me? My heart started racing. Suddenly the idea that we might actually do this entered my mind.
"Jump in, warp 100 off the station and light that cyno. GO NOW"
Then I heard it, "Hey as I was warping from the gate a huge fleet started landing on the gate". They... went the other way? "Go light that cyno newbro! The rest of the support fleet Jump in and engage anything you can! GO GO GO! Cap fleet, jump as soon as you see the cyno!
Newbro on comms: "Aww I died"
My heart sank again. Even after a high, I get another low. We're out of cynos, 6 more carriers and a dread jumped in time to their doom. I begin calling primaries but the depression of losing hundreds of billions of isk weighed on me. I sighed, started to ignore the pleas for help and begging from my fleet for commands, the cries of pain and destruction as we lose battleship after battleship, carrier after carrier. The cap fleet grew in size during this whole thing. The entire alliance was well aware of what was going on, cyno trains for cap pilots were hot. We had over 100 cap ships ready to jump and engage, ready to destroy this titan (who was still engaged). Our titan was in hull, about to die. Then I saw it.
There, on my raiper. A cyno. I had gotten into the wrong ship. I had gotten into the wrong ship. I HAD GOTTEN INTO THE WRONG SHIP! WOOHOOOOOOO!!
Comms: "I HAVE IT! I HAD A CYNO! JUMP IN 3, 2, 1 JUMP JUMP JUMP JUMP JUMP JUMP!!"
After the battle, the entire TS was a buzz with laughter, sorrow and partying like I've never seen before or since. On the way home tales of valor and awesome mini fights were abound.
We had done it. We killed our target. We saved our titan with 10% hull left. We had destroyed them. A newbro who also took the wrong ship. Those carriers he brought in kept our titan alive and my own dumbness, taking the wrong fucking rapier on the trip.
I'm still not allowed to command a cap fleet to this day.
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