Destroying the Forge of Heroes

Last night saw the first big structure big structure kills in PAPI’s staging system in Delve.

It was just a few weeks ago that we were prodding the already somnolent PAPI by gating into T5ZI and and shooting their structures while they sat around and watched, unable to form up enough pilots to stop us on a Saturday night.  Now we were back into the viper’s nest to blow up some of those very same structures.

A TEST Sotiyo waits for us

With PAPI’s failed assault on 1DQ last week and the subsequent announcement that they would be withdrawing from Delve, the Imperium moved into high gear to retake the region.  As I mentioned in yesterday’s war summary, but Sunday afternoon the Imperium had recaptured all of the infrastructure hubs in Delve, the critical piece of the sovereignty mechanics that gives an alliance control over a star system.

In addition to that, the Imperium had also been busy reinforcing hostile structures across the region in order to keep them from being unanchored and carried off by the retreating PAPI forces.  That included the key structures in their staging system of T5ZI.

Those timers started to come due last night, with two Sotiyo engineering complexes and a Tatara mining and refining platform on the menu.  One of the Sotiyos carried the rather dramatic name “Forge of Heroes,” which alone paired it with the Keepstar, named “Tower of Legends,” as a primary target.  Hubris must bring down wrath.

As the time approached the capitals and super capitals undocked and jumped one system over, going from 1DQ to T5ZI.  There is no cyno jammer there any more and it is easier to spend the jump fuel than try to shove all those big ships through the gate.  They landed at cynos on the Fortizar that was anchored on the Keepstar grid in T5ZI, which is where all the targets were located.

The big toys jumping in

The first target was a different Sotiyo with a less pretentious name (Mad Scientist’s Lab or something) to which all the supers warped to in order to start the attack.

Open fire on the Sotiyo

The titans are big and obvious, but up above them is a flat formation of supercarriers who were there to add their fighters to the mix.

Closer up on the supercarriers

As that was under way there was also a Tatara was also out and available.  Some of the subcaps went over to start on it in order to pause the timer.

The first Sotiyo was beaten down, though it took some time in no small because there were so many ships in on the shoot, which turned the tidi up effectively slowing everything down.  But it was worn down and exploded nicely.

The first Sotiyo blows up

You can see the bubbles put up during the last could percent of hull in order to keep any any PAPI ships from slipping in and grabbing the quantum core, that valuable “always drops” item that has been required to activate all citadels since the update in January added in grandfathered structures.  The Sotiyo core is worth 10 billion ISK.

From there everybody shifted over to the Tatara and applied fire to it.

A new target for the big toys

That too blew up nicely.

The Tatara begins to brew up

Once again you can see the bubbles up to thwart core theft as well as the two Rorquals that GSOL jumped in to collect the core, any loot, and salvage from the kill.

During this the Keepstar, the “Tower of Legends,” came out for its armor timer.  We were not going to get to kill it, but fighters were sent out to hit it so as to advance the destruction cycle to the final phase, the hull timer.

And then the “Forge of Heros” hull timer came up and that was the next target for us.

The turn of the Forge of Heroes

I have a picture from the other side with overview brackets turned on, which marks every ship, fighter, and drone with an icon.  You may need to click on it and view it full size to get a good look at how many ships were on grid.

Brackets on showing ships on grid

The Sotiyo was gunned and even managed to kill a few of the attacking ships, including a carrier.  But the outcome was ordained.  The Sotiyo blew up.

The Forge of Heroes undone

Unfortunately, neither Sotiyo generated a kill mail.  That sometimes happens when there are a lot of players on a kill mail.  We had that same issue with the four Keepstars we blew up in NPC Delve back in Octobers.  We would have to content ourselves with the Tatara kill mail and some of the fighter kills.  There were also a few ships in build in the Satiyo that showed up as kills.

After that the show was over.  The system went from about 1,200 people down to a few hundred pretty quickly as the capitals jumped out and the subcaps headed for the gate.

A crowd at the gate… and a Trig dread coming to take the gate with us

The next big show will be the Keepstar.  That timer is set.

The time is foretold – Thursday at around 23:59 UTC

I am sure the crowd wanting to join in on that kill will be even bigger, and the carnage even greater as a Keepstar’s defenses can be quite formidable.  Killing that will terminate a lot of clones locked up in the station along with sending a lot of left behind gear to asset safety.

All of that will end up in Irmalin, in the Khanid region, 30 days down the road.  I am sure there will be some camping of that station when the time comes.