It was a good day to be Dabigredboat. (DBRB)
After some careful planning on his part he was able to assemble a welp fleet in VFK…
Megathron isn’t really a welp fleet ship…
…and fly it out from VFK-IV to BWF-ZZ, a trip that would normally be 36 jumps, in less than 15 jumps.
The most direst route via gates
All to get another jab in at Raiden. The war may be over, but I don’t think anybody said anything about peace.
Getting from VFK-IV to BWF-ZZ quickly was a big part of the operation, part of the planning that had to be laid out in advance.
In the end it meant having some cynos and a titan handy.
Burning to the titan
The titan bridged us, then jumped itself, then bridged us again.
Welp fleet in low sec space… it is so bright!
Then there was a run through high security space, so some people there got to see 150+ ships jump through their system and cause time time dilation to get invoked. I do not think we lost more than a ship or two to CONCORD firing on people with low security status. My own security status is 5, so I had no problems.
My welp fleet Hurricane in high sec
After the run through high sec space, we assembled in the low sec system one jump out from BWF-ZZ, then jumped in to join the party.
The party consisted of a Raiden fleet, including some capital ships, attacking a Brick sQuaD system. Brick sQuaD, per the plan set up in advance, bubbled up the Raiden capital ships, while Ev0ke and Ewoks, annoyed at being reset by Raiden, joined in to defend the system.
And then we showed up with a welp fleet of Hurricane battlecruisers, bringing that extra bit of fire power, and we all got down to killing Raiden capital ships.
Archon carrier under attack
My own kill board shows six carriers, 5 Archons and a Thanatos, as well as six supercarriers, two Aeons and four Nyx, destroyed, along with a few lesser ships. The smaller ships killed were trying to put up cynos for the most part, so Raiden could bring in reinforcements.
Nyx formation bubbles and under attack
Reinforcements were coming from Northern Coalition, but the lack of a jump-in cyno meant that they had to take the long way in. Meanwhile, we continued working on Raiden capital ships.
Bumping a Nyx… they love to be bumped
Estimated cost to Raiden per capital ship:
- Thanatos – 1,771,956,942 ISK
- Archon One – 1,390,527,829 ISK
- Archon Two – 1,608,390,775 ISK
- Archon Three – 1,250,217,445 ISK
- Archon Four – 1,395,395,958 ISK
- Archon Five – 1,414,549,151 ISK
- Aeon One – 21,862,054,297 ISK
- Aeon Two – 20,773,327,169 ISK
- Nyx One – 22,325,472,207 ISK
- Nyx Two – 19,874,368,685 ISK
- Nyx Three – 19,929,893,270 ISK
- Nyx Four – 17,243,495,305 ISK
Total estimated cost in capital ships: ~130 billion ISK
All dead in under 40 minutes.
After that, just as Northern Coalition reinforcements began to show up, DBRB had us ride off into the sunset, our mission accomplished.
Welp fleet warping off to other tasks
I also created a short video about the trip and battle. Not very detailed, as usual, but my plan is more to give people a feel of what the battle looked like.
Direct link to the video here.
So off we went.
The battle was not without problems. Old habits die hard, and a few of us shot… and no doubt killed… some of temporary allies for the battle. Sorry about that! But the net result was a blow against Raiden.
Because we were in the neighborhood, DBRB had us jump a few systems over to mess with a SOLAR FLEET operation in the system CFYY-J. That did not go as well. We ended up losing some ships to a bombing run and ended up leaving with only a single kill.
Still, we were way up for the day when it came to ISK destroyed.
DBRB got killed and podded in that last fight. So we were let off the leash to burn for home, which we had to do the old fashioned way. It was more than 30 jump gates back to VFK and home, but we got through safely. When you are traveling in a pack of 100 ships, most gate camps just step aside and let you through as long as you do not stray too far from the group.
This is, as usual, my view of the battle, just what I saw on screen and heard on coms. A far more detailed version of the battle is available over at EVE News 24. (The picture in that post is from me.)
There is also a “UI on” video of the battle as well.
Needless to say, DBRB was unbearably smug for the rest of the day. Even The Mittani got on coms during the fight to commend the operation.
All in all, another adventure in null sec. Now I just need to get in on a titan kill.
The Ancient Gaming Noob 