TTC Allies Fumble War Dec Mechanics for the Perimeter TTT Keepstar Armor Timer

In a completely expected move, the Tranquility Trading Consortium Keepstar in Perimeter was reinforced pretty quickly after Vily began the unanchoring sequence for the northern TTC structures.

If you are not sure what I am talking about, you can catch up on the sequence of events that led to this with these three posts.

• Wednesday –New Keepstars and Sotiyos Banned from High Sec Space
• Thursday – The Imperium Withdraws from the Tranquility Trading Consortium
• Friday –The Tranquility Trading Consortium is Closing Up Shop

There are lots of links in that third post to fill in any gaps.

Goonswarm Federation (GSF), along with some other alliances including The Initiative and Brave declared war on the TTC with an eye towards blowing up those structures before they could unanchor.  Somebody got in and set the first timer right away, so that the battle over the armor layer fell on Saturday night my time, or at about 01:30 UTC on Sunday EVE Online time.

Tranquility Trading Tower

It seemed pretty obvious that we were going to go up to Perimeter and shoot the Keepstar.

But before that kicked off, Gobbins, head of Pandemic Horde, sent out a ping to his alliance declaring that GSF had made a “little oopsie: with its war declarations.

One of the classic blunders, declaring war in high sec against Vily or something…

Gobbins plan was to NOT ally with the TTC against GSF, but rather to just ally with TTC for the war decs of GSF allies.  Then they could shoot all of our allies and we wouldn’t be able to shoot them.  That was his master plan!

So that happened and was noted on Reddit.  Meanwhile, when the time came around there were pings for two fleets, with Asher Elias leading a Rokh fleet and Alterari Phoenix leading a Ferox fleet, Perimeter as our destination.  But the pings insisted that the only GSF members join.  We ended up with 250 people in the Rokh fleet and about 150 in the Ferox fleet.

None of the people in those fleets could shoot the alliances that had not joined the war as allies of the TTC… but that also meant that they couldn’t shoot us.

Even as we were forming up and changing fits, notifications came in that Fraternity, Pandemic Legion, Pandemic Horde, and Slyce, were signing up to be allies of TTC against GSF.  They seemed to have recognized their mistake, if a bit late.

The notices arrive

As noted by Gobbins, when you join a war as an ally there is a four hour cool down before you can actually start fighting.  The last of those war decs were about an hour before the battle for the armor timer would begin.

We would start shooting the structure at about 01:40 UTC, but they couldn’t shoot us until three hours after the armor timer fight kicked off.

So we made our way from Delve to Perimeter.  I was in the Rokh fleet and we landed on a Frotizar to wait for the timer to come out.

Tethered and waiting

That gave us some time to change our fits from travel to the siege… which went rather comically as it turned out that about half the fleet did not read the MOTD or didn’t understand it, because people didn’t have the fit or the right extra ammo.  Fortunately, we were right next to Jita, so somebody went over and bought us modules and ammo and we got ourselves squared.

(I was among those who missed 2 out of the 3 requirements, though I am going to claim that I was busy trying to get the travel fit together for a Rokh that had been sitting around since the final months of World War Bee when we were expecting to fight to the last on the Keepstar and would need back up ships.)

When the time came we warped to the Keepstar, landing at a bookmark between the uprights, waited a little bit, then commenced shooting it.

My Rokh with the Ghostbird SKIN

Meanwhile, Fraternity and PanFam were there with fleets that they couldn’t do much with.  Gobbins had pinged for “max dudes” and ended up being unable to shoot us. They flew around, warping in on us as we sat there shooting Keepstar.  But they couldn’t touch us without getting CONCORD on them, and we all had our safeties set to green (or most of us did) so we couldn’t even shoot them by mistake.  So we just shot the structure.  A few people… ours and theirs… managed to bring CONCORD down on themselves.  But mostly it was just us shooting the Keep.

CONCORD hanging around after zapping somebody

The only opposition we had throughout the fight was from TEST, which we had war dec’d earlier and which had allied with the TTC well in advance, and from Vily who was manning the Keepstar defenses.  TEST was out in force… which for them these days means about 20 people… so they were not much of a threat.

Our fleet between the uprights

Meanwhile, a Keepstar in high sec doesn’t have a bomb launcher or a PDS to swat away drones.  So Vily was targeting individuals and trying to blow them up.  I am pretty sure he killed a Vigil at one point, but wasn’t doing well against anybody who was paying attention.  I had my turn as a target but called for logi as I was red boxed by the structure, so never got under 80% shields.

Eventually, as the armor layer had less than 30% left, Fraternity hit their timer and was able to attack us.  They warped an Eagle fleet in on us, along with some of the few TEST people who had been hanging around.

But we had been expecting to be fighting hostiles from the get go.  So we dropped drones and put them on the Keepstar, which was enough to keep the timer paused and keep damage ticking down, and turned our guns on the fleet that warped in.

They stuck around for a few minutes, took some losses, then warped off, leaving the battle.  The highlight for me was getting the final blow on a TEST Catalyst, which put a kill mark on my Rokh.

And that was pretty much the battle.  We turned our guns back on the Keepstar and at almost exactly 04:00 UTC we finished up the armor layer.  The sturcture pulsed and we got the timer for the final fight, 4 days and 20 hours from the end, which puts it at around 5pm Pacific time on Thursday for me, or just after 00:15 UTC this coming Friday.

When the next fight will happen

After that we gathered everybody up and made our way back to Delve.

The battle report for the whole thing was a mess because it was in high sec and a lot of random people showed up and only people who got on kill mails or who were blown up were counted, so the numbers shown do not represent the numbers present.

Angry Mustache broke the report out into four groups, but I cropped down the header to the key players and so it would fit on the page here.

Battle Report Header – Cropped

The peak numbers I saw in system never made it to 3K.

The peak I noted

Time dilation hit 10% at times, but was usually in the 20-30% range, which made the client pretty responsive, with commands getting handled quickly, even if everything was moving at 20-30% of normal speed.  I thought we might have to go to downtime with crushing tidi all the way, instead we were back home and docked up 5 hours after the first ping.

Now to get ready for the return bout on Thursday night, when Fraternity and PanFam will actually be able to shoot us for the whole fight.  In the mean time Gobbins is getting dragged pretty hard in r/eve for failing on remedial high sec war dec mechanics.

Related:

• Reddit – TTT Armor Timer reinforced mostly without a fight, hull timer Thursday 0020
• Reddit – Goon High-Sec Strategic Planning Department Fails according to Gobbins
• Reddit – A collection of Discord quotes about the battle