While the Imperium is known for weaponizing boredom, they do provide content for their members. They do this by having squads, special interest groups, and other regular events. A recent addition is Friday Night Fights. This is a USTZ fleet that is being lead by FC Thomas Lear. It’s his goal that it will get ‘good fights’ and help teach pilots how to fly in a chill environment. With that in mind, every Friday between 01:00 and 02:00, Thomas will be taking out a fleet that is just looking for a good brawl. He hopes that it starts a trend and provides fun content for all.
The Setup
The FC, Thomas Lear, tried to find a route to the south, but Bob decided to direct the wormholes northward. The Imperium jumped their Hurricane fleet into their old stomping grounds of Fade,Venal, Pure Blind etc. The Guardians of the Galaxy obliged them and decided to form up a fleet of Ferox to fight. Since that was the point of the Goon fleet, they helped things along by heading towards the GotG staging system of MTO2-2 and encountered the them a few jumps out.
The Brawl
The fight started with some posturing on the XW-6TC gate in PF-QHK. Goons sat at a perch while GotG jumped into the system, but crashed back to XW-6TC as the Goons warped down. Giving chase, the Imperium fleet jumped through to find GotG at range. At this point both sides began to cycle their guns while dictors raced around the field spreading bubbles and logi did their best to keep ships alive. While both sides began losing ships, Goons began taking the lead as they began alpha-ing through the GotG logi. This became the deciding factor and forced GotG to warp off and regroup. The Goons were not going to let things go so easily and pursued them and continued to pick off targets. Under the pressure of the Imperium canes, the GotG fleet decided to retreat back home to their staging system. In the end it was a good and bloody fight with losses on both sides and killmails for all (Battle Report).
The Chase
Normally this would be the conclusion with both sides going home and docking up. Instead though, the Imperium fleet decided to follow the GotG fleet back into MTO2-2 trying to get a few more kills. As I mentioned before, MTO2-2 is the staging system for GotG which means they had access to the bigger toys. Sure enough, when the Goons jumped in, they saw an Erebus on the Keepstar aligning towards them, but Lear was not afraid. The remains of the Ferox fleet warped in to engage the Goon fleet as the Titan came in after them. Just before the BFG was going to go off though, the cane fleet warped off and out of harms way. The only victims were two unfortunate Darkness interceptors Thing One and Thing Two. When the Imperium fleet warped back onto the field, the GotG warped off to their Keepstar to safe up.
The Final Blow
Now this was kind of frustrating to the Imperium fleet. They had come all the way up north, to the GotG staging system even, and refused to jump out when confronted by a Titan. In response, GotG decided to call it quits earlier than what the Goons wanted. Noticing that the Erebus wasn’t tethered yet, Thomas Lear decided to do the ballsiest move yet and warp the fleet 50km off the Keepstar and open fire on the Titan. It was extremely unlikely that they could actually kill the Erebus, but it did send the message as the Titan touched into armor. After checking to make sure everyone else was tethered, some were not (The Sacrifice), the Goon fleet said their goodbyes and headed home for the night.
Zaphod Beedlebrox posted this video of the fight to the Goonfleet.com forums.
