I found myself once more in a tidi slugfest, though this one was different than most. My enemies actually thought they were winning the fight. I had decided to roll out in an Eagle fleet; there was a fight to be had, but my ping only called for normal numbers. I had no idea what we were getting ourselves into. I settled in to my memefit 50mn Eris, loaded some fireworks and got into fleet.
Pre-Battle Hijinks
We had sat around in station, docked and merry, making jokes and trying to determine whether it was appropriate to shoot blues if they kept scotch in the fridge. Some of us bads, who couldn’t be cooped up any longer, had decided to hang out on the undock. I jettisoned a can with a single defender missile in it and engaged my lock. The explosions from the fireworks and the chat kept me entertained while I waited to see if we would actually go and do anything thing. Boy did we.
Suddenly, there was a great commotion. The fleet began undocking and soon we were warped to a titan waiting to bridge us into the unknown objective. “Take this bridge,” was all that was said as I furiously, ham-handedly, mashed the right mouse button, waiting for the jump option to come. Finally it did and having the green light, I jumped my beloved Eris into M2.
Battle Under Tidi
I didn’t expect so much tidi. For about 1800 players, the unsupported node was, as politely as I can muster, not good. It instantly felt like a sudden ten percent tidi. Being hit with a brick tidi wall, we all gathered our bearings and loaded grid slowly. We finally managed to anchor up, and we took a warp down towards the bubbles and near the enemy fleets. They were trying desperately to prove that their will wasn’t broken, that they are still fighting to free their allies.
You know, it wouldn’t be something I wrote about if everything went to plan. Naturally, I wanted to do some chad shit and shit went sideways as usual. I burned out towards the enemy Cerb fleet, overheated my 50mn, and was coasting at a smooth 10k. The problem was the enemy distance and weapon type. Normally, under no tidi, the amount of time before my angle and speed puts me in range is very short; usually the danger is minimal. I swear I had enough time to watch them wave from their cockpits at me in the awful tidi. The yellow boxes came slowly, then the red boxes, and finally I died in a fire. My one regret is that I had but one Eris to lose in M2.
I warped my pod back to the Keepstar and reshipped into a Sabre. Warping myself back down to the fleet, I anchored up. Lacking the crazy speed of the Eris, I decided to play the defender and defensive bubble role. The Eagles did great and now I was merely but an observer of the fight. The thing about tidi is that though the game around you is moving slowly, chat is not. Local was primary. For a guy now hitting bubble, saying bomb, clicking a few defender missiles, I didn’t have much skin in a very slow fight. So, I watched the numbers. I watched the fighters. I watched our Eagles clash with the three fleets on the field, all the while feeling pretty confident in the trades. Some of us died very early because of our aggressive entry onto the field. We knew it would happen. We were told it would happen. We didn’t much care, so in the beginning we suffered casualties. Watching Cerbs, and expensive fuckery die, I knew we had more than made up for it.
Our enemy hadn’t noticed though. They were deadset that they were winning the entire fight. We heard quite a lot of talk about us feeding, losing the isk war, the objective etc., but still we kept smashing them in the mouths. Their FCs fled, warping off, trying to escape, and still local was primary. What can I say; they bravely ran away. Clearly, they hadn’t won the ISK war, the objective, or even the fight. They lost expensive titan pods.
Post-Battle Considerations
After the fight, I left the Sabre Kira Jayde had left me, still super clutch, in M2 and went back to 1DQ and reshipped into an interceptor. I blew past their gate camp and cloaked up to have a conversation, a chat. Unfortunately, few were very talkative afterwards, so I guess I’ll ask the question here.
If you lose the objective, the isk war, and the field to your enemies, where is your victory? I guess for trapi, no caps, the real victory is the friendships you’ve all made along the way.
