Mexican Standoff with Ivy League

Humm, quick catch up since last time: Got some mining done. Got some T3 shit handled. Killed some sleepers. Got in some "pseudo PvP". Had a standoff with Ivy League.

I'll give this much to eve-U, when they don't get caught with their pants down, they are pro at closing wormholes. Just a little pro tip: The guys closing the wormhole? Get them in close range BS, not snipers. Seriously.

So there we are minding our own business, aware that the class 4 next door is inhabited, but mining away contentedly when the neighbors (one of Ivy League's class 4 settled systems) send in a scout. Well after the mad scramble to a scratch response force (which went much better than the keystone cops efforts of a few days ago - alliance leader is much happier). We have a scout in system scoping out what they are up to.

Humm they are closing the wormholes they are connected too. But close examination of the weaponry involved indicates that they are doing on the wormhole operations with long ranged weapons. They also have a Chimera on call, even if it's not always occupied. Once the force is assembled at one of our POS'es we head to the connecting wormhole with the intention of getting some PvP in. It's not like they've bothered establishing diplomatic relations with us and they interrupted our mining op. We figure we may not get much in the way of kills before the carrier makes thing hot. But we'd play things by ear.

Just as our scout gets us to the hole and jumps the fleet in, the enemy Devoter arrives at our hole and pops his bubble just as a Dominix and an Apocalypse arrive . We immediately engage the Apoc as we uncloak, but lack of spreading points means the rest of Ivy League warps away (I think there was a 3rd BS as well but I got tunnel vision at that point and was concentrated on). This engagement pretty much typifies the rapid engagements we tend to get at wormholes. It's fairly evident that we surprised the enemy because the Devoter and the BS's ran and otherwise did not support their fellow pilot as we killed him.

After a quick scoop of the loot we got back to our side and setup an ambush on our side. While they got their act together and got 6 BS supported by the carrier to our wormhole. It's at this point that the Mexican standoff started up. Our scouting indicated that they had fighters out and assigned. We had 4 HACs a BC and a BS. By this time one of our HAC had switched to a Recon class ship and was scouting the enemy deployment and we had been reinforced by a tackle Tristan.

This tactical situation was now fairly static. With the carrier's fighters out and assigned, we were not going to jump into them. With our advantage in close range firepower and agility their sniper BS were not about to jump into us. Stalemate. So they proceeded to send 1 BS at a time to our side to slowly pop the hole. They made no mistakes and we were unable to bump any of their BS off the wormhole in order to force an engagement on our side. Eventually ending the engagement with all our forces back on our side and all of theirs back on their side when an Ivy League Thorax simply closed the hole behind them.

This engagement was fairly typical of wormhole entities who know what they are doing. Low loss count. Both sides know and exploit the tactical environment of the wormhole itself. I'd like to thank the Recon pilot for excellent scouting during the entire engagement. Things would have been considerably different had the BS on the other side been close ranged armed. As it is all fights right on wormholes tend to happen right on the wormhole itself. This means the engagement ranges tend to be 5-12km which is knife fighting range. Long range armed ships are at a tactical disadvantage right on the wormhole itself. Sure you can setup sniper positions to support the defending side but that gives up the tactical flexibility of being at the wormhole itself. There is also the issue of limited mass and if you push a BS sized force through to the other side, it may not be coming back.

Don't get me wrong. BS obviously have their place in wormhole combat, but the environment favors cruiser flexibility as far as the tactical options go. Intimate knowledge of the size of any wormhole a fight happens at is critical to your deployment decisions. Once their initial surprise was over with though I'd like to congratulate Ivy on not making too many more mistakes. Except they really need to re-fit their "at the wormhole" ships for closer range. Especially since they tend to fight defensively. If you're at a wormhole and the enemy is jumping through to you then you know the initial engagement will be at point blank range for ships at the wormhole itself. If you're going to operate ships AT the wormhole they then need to be close range fit.

Oh and Cozmik finaly gets in on a kill and doesn't have to gnash his teeth in frustration at having missed the pew pew.