The Sansha’s Nation faction version of a Supercarrier and quite possibly the ugliest piece of shit CCP has ever released. Seriously. It looks like a cross between a turd and a kidney stone, or some kind of rejected Dark Souls boss fight.
-GoonWiki, opening description of the Revenant
The simple description of the event that happened yesterday was that The Imperium got together and blew up a super carrier that had been built by the coalition itself in an orgy of blue on blue violence to celebrate the victories of the spring, the birth of The Imperium, and the general joy of just blowing up something big and ugly.
Blood for the blood god, skulls for the skull throne!
In general such things, from Rifter-level thunderdomes to Vile Rat memorial shoot blues events, are not new and, honestly, not all that interesting at a general level. Ships exploded, just another day in New Eden. It is getting down in the details that makes such events fun.
First, there was the super carrier. It wasn’t just any ship, but a Revenant super carrier, as described at the top of the post. It is a rare ship, the blueprint copy being a rare drop from a rare escalation that includes a Sansha’s Nation super. The word on coms… and all rumors on coms are suspect… was that there was some drama when this blueprint dropped to the point that leadership had to step in and take it away.
But what to do with it?
The Revenant isn’t a very good super carrier. Its only value is in its rarity. But to be able to say you have one, you have to commit a character to live in it. So nobody really wanted it… or wanted it enough to buy out the blueprint and build it themselves.
It was decided that the best route was to build the Revenant and then blow it up as part of a coalition-wide event. The production started and a post was put up in the forums announcing the time and date: 19:00 EVE Online time, Sunday, May 31 in JU-0WQ. And as a cherry on top, the pilot would be Dabigredboat, everybody’s favorite FC5 losing commander.
Then things began to form. The European Goonion, the Euro time zone group in Goonswarm, announced that they would defend the Revenant with a special fleet. Other groups began to make plans on what they would bring to the big show. Asher held a conference to figure out what the Reavers should fly for the big kill.
The day before I clone jumped my alt up to Deklein, put him in a Hawk, flew him out to JU-0WQ, and docked up in the station. I wanted to have him ready to go as I assumed things would be chaotic.
I also jumped Wilhelm up early, but left him in YA0-XJ. The choice of the Reavers was to fly our old-is-new-again Raven doctrine for the event. Most of the Reavers participating were going to fly across New Eden in their Ravens (or Basilisks) before things kicked off, but there was a promise of some Ravens being imported to YA0 for those of us too lazy to fly. So I was hoping to get one of those. But if I missed out, I had an old perma-MWD Drake, left over from the heyday of Drake Fleet , picked out as an alternate.
As the date arrived and the clock moved towards the appointed hour, I logged both of my characters in. I put my alt out on the POS in JU- to keep an eye out for the arrival of the Revenant.
It should show up here some time
Then I got Wilhelm logged in at the station in YA0 and on coms with the Reavers to listen to them coming north across space. That included the usual comedy of people with low security standings and gate camps at the usual low-to-null sec transition points coupled with the pain of flying battleships, which warp slowly.
As the time drew nearer, it looked like the Reavers might show up late. Being fashionably late is fine and all, but when shooting a high value target there is such a thing as too late. While waiting I undocked and motored around the station looking at the array of ships being readied for the big shoot.
Always that guy in the Hyperion
Fleets were going up to accommodate ships from outdated doctrines that people had sitting around. There were Maelstroms from Alpha Fleet, Megathrons and Apocs from Baltec Fleet, Drakes forming up like the old days of Drake Fleet, and a kitchen sink of other ships.
As I flew around, the European Goonion fleet undocked, getting themselves ready for their task. They would be flying a Nightmare fleet. The Nightmare is the Sansha’s Nation battleship, and so absolutely the perfect doctrine to use to defend the Revenant.
Nightmares pushing through the YA0 undock
About that time Oxygen showed up with parts for six Ravens. I managed to snag the fifth one, assembled it, grabbed a little extra ammo… though ammo was scarce in YA0 that day… and undocked to keep watching what was going on.
My Raven with the Wiyrkomi skin applied
As the Reavers approached, so did the hour of destiny. Over in JU- more and more players were piling into the system. I zipped about in my Hawk and even got close enough to the eyes of CCP to get a screen shot.
Lunaire Elois in a Polaris Ispector Frigate
19:00 came and passed, but there was no Revenant on grid. The Reavers made it to YA0 with only two losses from the trip, if I heard things correctly. We got ourselves sorted out, ammo was shared out amongst those who were short, and we headed to a titan where Asher had arranged for us to get bridged in to the event.
Ravens on a titan was a new sight for me…
We arrived in JU-, then warped to the station to pick some people up, waited a bit, then warped out to a safe to wait for the arrival of Dabigredboat.
Ravens waiting for a target
We waited… and waited. Jokes went around about DBRB being a skill short so that we were all waiting for his training cycle to wrap up. Meanwhile the more people kept showing up.
JU- status at 19:43
The hour came and went and no Boat was apparent. Then at about 20:15, the word came that he was here. My eyes on the grid showed his alt in the Revenant at the POS. Only the Dabigredboat was literally red to us.
Dabigredboat arrives… as a red
The delay was caused by an extra special addition to the whole event. Dabigredboat convinced our local pests (and one-time CFC members, until they were kicked) Mordus Angels that he was bored with Goons and that he wanted to defect to them. And, Mordus Angels, ever desperate to chip away at the edges of The Imperium for being kicked, believed that a long time and very active fleet commander, who has been known for his infiltration scams, was going to leave his old friends and allies to join them. They let him in. And then rather than going to them with the Revenant he said he was bringing, he jumped to us so we could blow it up and have it appear on their kill board as a loss. A final bit of icing on the event cake.
But he was on grid now, so it was on.
We warped in and started getting in some hits on the Revenant. However, against the rules, a few dreadnaughts landed on grid, so everybody checked fire on the Revenant to blow them up instead. I am still not sure if they jumped in on purpose as an additional sacrifice to the Blood God or if they were simply part of the 10% that never gets the word and jumped in just to get in on the kill. Lazerus Telraven, who was live streaming the event, was able to unleash a doomsday on them from his Erebus.
We plinked away at the Revenant for a bit, then turned our fire onto the European Goonion defenders to see if we could start whittling them down before the fight became focused on them.
European Goonion Nightmares in action
That did not work out for us. We lost a couple of Ravens… my Hawk also got blown up for just being in the vicinity, though not by the Nightmares… but were unable to bring down a single Nightmare. As it turned out they brought something like 70+ logi ships to support them, so they were able to get reps running as we locked them up and were safe before our missiles even arrived.
After some jumping around trying to break their tanks, we backed off and returned to shooting the Revenant. Meanwhile, my alt, unshipped, grabbed an Ibis and flew back to the fight in hopes of getting on the kill mail with a rookie ship. The European Goonion forces helped out with that, as when the Ravens backed off they turned all their reps on the Revenant, holding the line at 15% shield and even slowly reversing the damage, getting it back up to nearly 20% before The Mittani was reported to have intervened so the event wouldn’t last all night.
Revenant going down
Bereft of its direct support, the Revenant got into armor. That did not last long and when it dipped into hull hit points things were close to done. My Ibis managed to just get into lock ranged and began firing sufficiently to get on the kill mail. From my Raven I could see the last moments and then the wreck. It had been destroyed. Wilhelm and and 1,800 other characters shared the kill mail. And a Reaver got the final blow. Nice jacket!
While the kill seemed to take a long time, it was reported that, if we had been running in real time rather than in time dilation, it would have been all wrapped up in 11 minutes.
Then it was thunderdome time. It was time to shoot the European Goonion and anybody else who looked like a tempting target. I sent my alt after a couple of other small ships, attacking a Burst and then getting into a rookie ship slap fight with another Ibis for a while before getting blown up. Still, he now has 4 kills in an Ibis.
Wilhelm joined in as well, but I was getting a bit tired and it was well past time for lunch, so during a short lull I headed for the nearest gate and jumped out of the system… and out of the time dilation. We had put in a request to CCP to reinforce the system, and clearly they put it on its own node for the event. While tidi reigned in JU-, jumping to the next system over found everything running at full speed. You can see the impact of the event on the system in the DOTLAN stats.
Jumps and ship kills up, NPCs kills down
JU- was also flagged as the most violent system in null sec for a stretch.
Top of the chart
You can see a few other Deklein systems that happen to lay between JU- and staging systems saw a bump in kills as outsiders lay in wait for those trying to get to the event.
As I flew back down to Tribute, the European Goonion was declared the winner in the event, having taken on all comers and held their own on the grid around the POS. They probably could have kept the Revenant alive if not ordered to stand down on the reps. But it was their blue print to start with, so it was fitting that they should come out on top.
Then there was the question of what to do with my new Raven. I had fully expected to lose it, and it wasn’t any good up in Deklein or Tribute, not being part of any doctrine recognized outside of Reavers. I decided to try and fly it back down to Badivefi, our high sec staging system for operations in Querious. I logged back in later in the evening and made the flight all the way back down to the south end of Amarr space unmolested.
The tale of the event is up at TMC and is likely more accurate than my own view of things.
And that was Sunday in New Eden for me, getting out to destroy one of the most rare ships in the game. This was only the fourth Revenant to be blown up. A hell of a way to expend more than 180 billion ISK in assets. Now my last eight kills on the kill board are blues. Well, technically the Revenant was red, since it was in Mordus Angels at the time.
A gallery of pictures from the event after the cut.
The Ancient Gaming Noob 