Southeastern Null Sec Declared Open to Non-Bloc Alliances

With the exit of FI.RE from the southeast of null sec, the open question has been what will happen to the territory that they evacuated?

Null Sec Coalitions Map and the FI.RE exit route

Neither adjacent bloc, PanFam in the northeast and the Imperium in the southwest, seemed interested in the space and but were unhappy with the idea that it would fall under the control of the other.  Meanwhile the area has already started to fall apart after FI.RE’s departure looking at the sov maps.

The Coalition map of the southeast

It was announced yesterday that PanFam and its allies and the Imperium have come to an agreement, along with WinterCo, and signed a treaty that will limit bloc expansion into the southeast of null sec.

The treaty covers the following regions in the southeast:

• Scalding Pass
• Detorid
• Wicked Creek
• Immensea
• Omist
• Feythabolis
• Insmother (partial)
• Tenerifis (partial)

The partial zones are due to Pademic Horde and Slyce taking some systems on their boarder in Insmother.

PanFam’s cut of Insmother from DOTLAN

Likewise, the Imperium is taking some systems in Tenerifis that are adjacent to its territory.

The Imperium’s grab in Tenerifis from DOTLAN

The agreement states that Those regions are now open for unaffiliated alliances to use, meaning alliances that are not affiliated with any of the four major blocs (B3, Imperium, PanFam, Winterco).

The major blocs can still roam through the area for content, but they have agreed not to take sides in any conflict within the area and to not attack sovereignty or structures of those who take up residence in the area.

In addition, no rental activity of any sort will be allowed within the designated region.

The agreement is slated to last for one year, at which point those party to the agreement can decide whether to extend it or not.

The signatories to the agreement are:

• Asher Elias of The Imperium
• Dark Shines of The Initiative.
• Gobbins of Pandemic Horde
• Hedliner of Pandemic Legion
• Noraus of Fraternity, leader of WinterCo
• Riotrick of Slyce
• Vince Draken of Nothern Coalition

Not represented as signatories were any of B3 coalition’s leadership.  B3 resides in the northeast of null sec and includes many of the former FI.RE members who fled the southeast, so perhaps their agreement to leave the area alone was implied already.

The idea seems to be to allow space for smaller groups to come to and explore sovereign null sec.  How it will play out remains to be seen.

Before World War Bee the Imperium used to use Querious as an incubator region for small alliances wishing to try and spread their wings.  Querious Fight Club, as it was called, had specific rules to keep groups from being destroyed quickly, enforced by the long arm of the Imperium.  However the war washed all of that away and Querious has since become a home to core Imperium members.

How the southeast will fare under the new treaty remains to be seen.

FI.RE in Flight! Complete Collapse in the Southeast!

I had just gotten around to writing about the fact that there was a war going on between Pandemic Horde and FI.RE coalition down in the southeast of null sec when the past weekend and now the war seems to have been decided.

For all of its outward bravado, both from its leader and its line members in r/eve, they clearly knew they were in trouble.  They had former allies, Pandemic Horde, attacking them headlong from the north and the a grudge holding Imperium on their western flank not only unlikely to help them out, but actively attacking them in some cases, which left them in an untenable situation.

They could have possibly turtled up and held a single constellation, or at least dragged their foes into an apocalyptic battle, the way the Imperium did in World War Bee, but it isn’t clear if they, as a coalition, have the sort of cohesion and bloody minded stubbornness to pull that off.

Between a rock and a hard place, they could have potentially reached out to Fraternity to join Winter Coalition, with whom they held space with in the southeast previously.  The problem is that PanFam space lies between FI.RE and Fraternity space.  That would have been a trail of tears, a trip of frightful losses to get past a hungry Pandemic Horde.

The other option was the B2 coalition in the northwest, made up of Brave, WE FORM BL0B, and a few other alliance, some of whom were neighbors until WWB shattered Legacy coalition.  But the trail there would be past the Imperium, a hazard all its own.

As it turns out, FI.RE had chosen B2 as a destination, and B2 came to the Imperium looking for passage.  In a world where almost all of null sec turned against us to wage WWB the Imperium has forged new relations.  B2, on our northern boarder, has become a group we can work with.  We are not allies, but we have cooperated with them against the Fraternity/PanFam Axis of the East at H-PA29 in Venal and just last week at Skarkon in Pochven, so we were apparently open to the idea.

On its side of the equation, FI.RE approached the Imperium and “made amends for past wrongs,” the details of which I am sure will come out at some point.  But I am sure it wasn’t cheap.  That allowed the Imperium to grant FI.RE egress from the southeast to join up with its new coalition mates.  A migration is in progress.

Null Sec Coalitions Map and the FI.RE exit route

They got a free pass through our space, but we aren’t helping them out otherwise.  Their structures and sovereignty are all going down.

That leaves the question as to what happens when they exit.  That is a set of eight regions in the southeast of null sec where the owners have run off.

I am sure Pandemic Horde will take some of that space to add to their rental empire.  But will they want to push their border right up against the Imperium?  I am not sure anybody would want to rent that close to the end of the Eye of Terror Ansiblex highway to become content for Goons, and I don’t think Horde is going to move itself down there to protect them.

Perhaps some smaller groups will become a buffer between the two powers.  Or maybe we’ll have Pandemic Horde on our doorstep.  We will have to see how this plays out.

Fortizar Fight in a Wine Dark Pochven

Pochven is the region created at the end of the Triglavian when 27 systems were ripped out of empire space, including Niarja, a key system in the old shape of high sec shipping.  There was a big fight over that system before it fell.

The map triangle

That is a nice logical map of Pochven.  Actually in the star map it is a little more confused.

The route between the stars in the new region

Pochven is like wormhole space, in that you cannot get there via gates and local chat only displays those who actively say something, and like null sec space in that it is a region with gates between its systems where there is no CONCORD or other empire space rules.

I’ve been to Pochven three times.  The first time was when the Triglavian change over took place.  It was the creation of Pochven.  I Ieft a character there in a ship that was blown up not too much later due to carelessness.

The second time was a few weeks back.  I was fiddling with the Imperium wormhole tracking app and was out in my Buzzard scanning down holes and just traveling around to see what I could find when I decided I wanted to see how to get to Pochven.  Most people use special filaments to get there, but I didn’t have any of those and thought I remember something about wormholes being used to get there.

I ended up finding the Pochven Entry Guide, a web site put together by a couple of people, including Debes Sparre (who has left a comment or two here and who I met in person at EVE Vegas) that helped guide me and my Buzzard into the region.

A Buzzard in Pochven

But I didn’t have anything to do there besides explore, so I left and found my way back to Delve via other wormhole connections.  I had learned I could get there, get back, and that the whole place was dark… much darker than null sec… and tinted red, just the way the Triglavians like it I guess.

And the third time, well that was last week and it was for a structure fight.  Pandemic Horde has a Fortizar in Skarkon, one of the Pochven systems, and a ping went out alerting us to be ready to go to a fight over the armor timer.

A Fortizar in the dark red space of Pochven

Pochven is also special in that you can’t drop structures there.  The only player structures in the region are legacy ones, deployed before Pochven was formed.  So killing this structure would be kind of a big deal.  So I was in for that sort of event.

We formed up in 1DQ1-A in Delve.  I ended up in Mike Flood’s fleet, which was our Sacrilege doctrine.  I nearly jumped out to join up when Asher put up a Stormbringer fleet, but decided to stick with the tough HACs.  (Also, they were asking people not to jump ship.)  So we had 250 people in fleet ready to go, we just had to get there.

Getting there was a task in and of itself.

The easiest way into Pochven is filaments, but you can’t filament a 250 ship fleet.  So we had to break up into fleets of 15 players each, fly off into a safe because you cannot be close to a structure or a celestial when you filament, and teleported into Pochven.  We landed in Senda, which happened to be where I ended up in my Buzzard a few weeks back.  Then the fleets had to reform and travel to Skarkon.

Sacs taking a Trig gate in Pochven

We were being joined by some other parties, like Brave and WE FORM BL0B, who were also keen to see if we could bring down Horde’s special Fortizar.  Because of this we had to be careful who we shot.  As it turned out, our FC would be calling enough targets to keep us busy so we didn’t have a lot of time to get into trouble shooting temporary allies by mistake.

The timer counted down and we were soon pretty heavily engaged with Horde and their allies.  While they brought a lot of people to defend this valuable asset, they also called in friends, so it was a fairly large fight.  Of course, there being wormhole style local means I can’t tell you how many people were in the system at any given time, but the battle report, which I will link later, put the participant count at 1,485.

Sacs flying across the battlefield

For us it was quite a busy time.  The battle only lasted a couple of hours, which was a good thing on a weekday evening, but we made the most of it.  Mike led us against a Horde Sleipner fleet that seemed to pose the greatest risk to us.

Following the FC through the wine dark sky

We were locking up targets, firing a single volley, then moving on to the next, having enough firepower to pop ships that way.

We went on like that for quite a while, not sustaining much in losses as the many fleets on the field sought their own targets.  The Stormbringers seems to drawn more attention to us, being annoying pests with their bouncing lighting firepower and their expensive hulls.  Eventually though we attracted enough attention to start taking some hits.

A Sac blowing up in the middle of the formation

Horde has some bombers around and they lined up on us and hit us with electron bombs, which drained our capacitors, turning off our armor hardeners, our tracking disruptors (which we had been harassing the Horde Paladin fleet with), and our MWDs, which made us slower and more vulnerable.  Losses began to mount.

Another explosion in the fleet

The fleets were so intent on each other that we ignored the structure after a while, each side concentrating on blowing up ships.

In the end, the Fortizar repaired itself.  Horde won the armor timer.  Their structure was preserved this time around.

Meanwhile, we hit a point where the odds were growing against us.  Getting back into the fight was easy for our foes… or at least the ones that remembered to set their home in the Fortizar.  We had to make our way back from Delve.  And it was late and the objective had been decided, so people started calling it a night.

We set about trying to disengage, which can be a tricky thing to do.  Getting away can be fraught with danger, and I have been on fleets that have hazed a retreating foe, inflicting more losses every time they made a mistake.

With the help of some sacrificial interdictors, we managed to get some distance from the enemy and get ourselves to a rally point.

Gating away from the fight

Then came the chore of getting back home.  You can filament straight TO Pochven, but when you filament out you go where the filament takes you, which for us wasn’t going to be anywhere close to Delve.

I figured, but Buzzard bravado still lingering, that if somebody could just get us to the hole out of Senda I could find my way home.  But we had some exit filaments, which meant breaking up into 15 ship fleets again and finding the right system in Pochven for the optimum jump out.

Our group got out okay, though we were delayed because the FC left our filament in the station where it had been traded to him.  People were already forming up into groups, taking a path up through Cloud Ring to the Eye of Terror Ansiblex highway which would lead them home to Delve.

Feeling a bit left behind, I got out the Imperium wormhole tracking app again and found the that there was a Thera hole not too far away and another that would drop me in Aridia, not too far from home.  So I ran that route, in the main fleet but taking a different path.  That cut off enough jumps that I ended up catching up to them back in Delve as they were arriving.  I was home again, ship intact, only minus some ammunition and most of my drones.  That happens.

The fight was one of those battles that both sides enjoy, somewhat even in outcome, but with enough kills that everybody felt like they got a piece.  Somebody put together a battle report that separated out the two main parties from the third party locals who showed up.

Battle Report Header

The third parties are Team A, we are Team B, and the defenders Team C.   A pretty close fight.  I ended up on another 52 kill mails according to zKillboard.  Somebody also posted a video of the battle, if you want a closer look at the action from the PanFam side of things

 

After the fight Asher, who had led the fleet that set the timer initially, said we would be headed back.  So we shall see if I get into Pochven for a fourth time.

Related:

• Reddit – Battle Report and fight description
• Reddit – Video post and fight details

War in the East Once More

If you are a regular reader of r/eve you have no doubt no doubt noticed an uptick in alliance and coalition level propaganda, which is always one of the side effects of a null sec conflict.

FI.RE, a null sec coalition in the southeast of null sec centered on the once mighty Legion of xXDeathXx alliance, is under attack.

Null Sec Coalitions – Jan 21, 2023

If this sounds familiar, it might be because the Imperium took a couple of swings at FI.RE last year.  FI.RE had been letting their PAPI allies drop structures on the boarder the Imperium shared with FI.RE to use to harass Imperium space.  At first The Initiative and some local residents started on FI.RE, then Imperium SIGs and squads got involved, and then the whole Imperium.

Both sides claimed victory in those fights.  The Imperium blew up a bunch of structures and pushed deep into FI.RE space, but eventually fell back when FI.RE’s allies, notably Pandemic Horde, showed up in numbers to help defend their space, tilting the numbers against the Imperium.  So FI.RE claimed they drove off the Imperium and were able to retake a bunch of their space, while the Imperium got to point an a number of regions that were essentially burned down where FI.RE had to start from scratch again.

The usual null sec stalemate.  It is difficult to kill a corp or an alliance from the outside in EVE Online.   It requires an internal failure, demoralization or really poor leadership, for an organization to fall apart.  So FI.RE took back its space and carried on.

Then came the current war, and the propaganda line from FI.RE was that they sent the Imperium packing last year so they were ready for a new war.

The only problem is that the new foe is their former PAPI allies Pandemic Horde… that is the group that bailed them out when the Imperium came knocking.  And the Imperium isn’t going to take over Pandemic Horde’s role.  In fact, The Initiative has deployed some of its forces to take yet another swing at FI.RE as well.

So FI.RE looks like they are in a bit of a bind.  Maybe.

The question is how committed either of the attackers are to a goal of really going after FI.RE in any serious way.  On the one hand, both of the attackers started out deploying just SIG or squad level forces, which is usually the indication that it is more of a search for content than an actual invasion.

On the other hand, SIG and squad level actions, when they find success, often lead to more forces being deployed.  Things might have started small, but the propaganda escalation this week in r/eve seems to indicate that a nerve has been struck somewhere.

Just yesterday Pandemic Horde flooded the zone, inviting lots of people to some and kill a Legion of xXDeathXx Keepstar in Insmother.  (RAZOR Alliance, a FI.RE member, also lost a Keepstar, though it got caught in a freighter as they tried to sneak it away.)

This is a fight I am viewing from the sidelines, and r/eve can be a treacherous source of information when two sides are fighting a propaganda was along side their space battles.  But eventually zKillboard and DOTLAN will tell the tale.

Related:

• INN – The Extinguishing of FI.RE?

A Lunch Time Brawl in Period Basis

One of the problems with EVE Online… and, really, any game that depends on PvP for its best content… is that the fun and the fights happen at random times and don’t always line up very well with real life.  There have been any number of fights that have gone down while I was at work or had something else going on.

But sometimes you’re in the right place at the right time.

Yesterday, just as I was getting ready to drop work for a bit and get some lunch a ping popped up on my home computer… which is about two feet and a 90 degree turn from my work computer now that I am perma-work from home… announcing that Pandemic Horde was in our space and shooting a jump bridge and it was time to form up and go shoot back.

Home defense fleets tend to be quick and bloody and I had not fired a shot in anger since the big fight at H-PA29 in Venal back at the beginning of December.  Lunch could wait a bit, so I logged in and joined John Hartley’s fleet.

The choice of ships was Caracals, the Caldari missile cruiser, loaded with Mjolnir Fury heavy missiles, because apparently the Horde Drake fit has a EM hole in its tank… meaning its resistance against the type of damage a Mjolnir missile brings was low.

I didn’t have a Caracal on hand… we have so many doctrines that I cannot keep track… but some were up on contract.  I had to change the fit a bit for the planned mission.

Caracal in the hangar

After a bit of waiting around to fill up the fleet and to make sure people were bringing the right fit… there were changes for everybody…  we were able to undock and head south for TN25-J, the system where the bads were shooting our stuff, one gate from Delve and on the route to Paragon Soul where some of the early battles of World War Bee were fought.

Warping off to death or glory

We held up on a Fortizar to let stragglers catch up.

Holding on the Fort for stragglers

Once we had critical mass, John Hartley warped us to the gate and had us jump through and hold our cloak.  There were enough people jumping through that tidi slowed things down, but once we started through in numbers we found the enemy waiting on the gate for us.  As I loaded in I could see them putting up bubbles to hold us on grid.  Nobody was running away from this fight.

We uncloaked and went to orbit and started firing at targets as they were called.

Starting the fight in bubbles

I was interested to see how this would all turn out.  We had the numbers, but they had bigger and harder hitting ships.  If they had been tanked well against us, it could have gone badly for our side.  I made sure my ship was insured before I undocked.

But the EM hole in their tank turned out to be a real thing and we sent enough missiles their way that Drakes began to blow up pretty fast.  With tidi and slow module reaction times and the amount of damage we were throwing out I could barely keep up, managing to get missiles away on maybe half of the targets called, and a considerable number of those missiles didn’t reach the target before it was gone.

Our Caracal ball in the middle of things

I set myself up to shoot just on volley per target.  They were not lasting long enough for two salvos to have any hope of hitting any Drake called as primary.  We flew in orbit around the FC and just locked and fired and reloaded when launchers ran dry.  It was a good 30 minutes from the first kill mail I was on until the last target died, a brawl that ran on due to there being plenty of targets and both sides being willing to go head to head.

The last kill was the Horde FC, Mist Amatin, who jumped his Monitor through the gate, but was tackled before he could get away.  We all jumped through the gate and the FC had our logi rep him for a bit so everybody could get a hit in on him to get on the kill.

Everybody shoot the FC ship

And then we were done and it was time to go home… and time for me to get some lunch.

We’re done here

We lost 34 Caracals in the fight, but blew up 110 Drakes, which would have been a pretty lopsided outcome.  But the battle report was spoiled for us because somebody dropped a Revelation dreadnought on the hostiles, which the Drakes went after with a vengeance, burning it down quite quickly.  Out there with a shield tank doctrine we couldn’t do much to help the armor tanked dread.

That Revelation, worth about 6.5 billion ISK, along with the capsule worth another 1.5 billion, evened out the battle report quite a bit.

Battle Report Header

We still came out ahead, but not by the margin we might have.  Then again, it meant that both sides came away with their own victory.  The trade for the dread wasn’t great, but it always feels good to kill a capital ship.

And I somehow walked away listed on 81 more kill mails.  A nice little lunch time fight.

One Way Trip to Perrigen Falls

Apparently the rule is that if there is ever a wormhole connect that will land us in PanFam space we are obliged to throw some cheap ships through it just to see what sort of trouble we can get into.

So when the ping showed up asking for a Ferox fleet for a one-way trip, I was in.  First, I hadn’t been on a combat fleet so far this month.  My self-imposed rule is to get on at least one kill mail a month as a sort of “proof of life” that I am playing.  If I cannot manage that I ought to just unsubscribe.

Second, I still have a pile of ships sitting in my hangar left over from World War Bee, including more than a few Feroxes I could part with, the remains of The Mittani telling us to stock up for the anticipated final battle of 1DQ1-A that never came to pass.  I was more than willing to part with a couple of those.  So I joined the fleet, hopped in one, insured it in the hope of the promised of a one-way trip being true, and off we went.

Ferox fleet on its way

There was a Thera wormhole over in NPC Delve… if you don’t have Signal Cartel’s EVE-Scout Thera wormholes shared bookmarks handy, you should subscribe… which we jumped into.

Another wormhole, in case you haven’t seen one recently

Once we jump into There, it was a long warp to an exit wormhole.

Feroxes in Thera… know your nebulae

That wormhole dumped us into Perrigen Falls, which is one of the regions Pandemic Horde owns.  We were on one side of a gate and a PH Keepstar was on the other, so we jumped in and anchored up to see what we might be able to shoot.

Getting off the gate in MJ-5F9

They clearly had an inclination that we were coming and had parked a couple of HAW dread around the gate and had some interdictors handy to try and bubble us and hold us in place.

We got out of the bubbles and warped off, the back on grid again, looking for a place where we might be able to take down one of those dreadnoughts.  That would have been a fine prize.

Trying to pop a Phoenix on the gate

We ended up warping in and out a few times, losing a few ships with each run, but were not able to get a good spot where a capital might fall.  We did managed to pop a few subcaps along the way, but we were hemorrhaging Feroxes by the third warp in.  We only came with a few logi, so we were not going to last long on grid.  We certainly couldn’t stand up to dreads setup to shoot subcaps.

As we were warping out after one run my Ferox was the primary.  The ship exploded and my pod carried on with the fleet warp.

Just my pod in the fleet now

I exempted myself from warps to keep from slowing down the fleet, then warped myself back to the gate to get the pod express home.  I was obliged immediately, my pod was tackled and popped in short order.

They got me, just like I had hoped

I got to see the pod death screen, which seems to have been updated.  The shell of my golden pod, part of the 10 year anniversary box set (along with the Mystery Code… and don’t get me started about the Mystery Code), was visible.

A golden shell broken open

And that was about it.  The battle report showed we lost all but one ship, and I am not sure how that one ship survived.

Battle Report Header

We lost badly, but we expected nothing less.  There was always the hope that we might catch them unawares, but that rarely works out. (Sometimes we come out on top, but not often.)  My own Ferox got hit by a couple of dreads and a paladin, which added up to most of the damage.

I also got the insurance payout, plus some additional ISK for SRP, and managed to get a Ferox out of my hangar.  And I got on a few kill mails, so my monthly goal was accomplished.

I was happy enough with that result that when the FC asked who wanted to go again, I grabbed another one and insured it.  But word came down from command to knock that off now that PH was alerted.  Still, it was a bit of fun on a week night.

Rebuffed Again in X-7OMU

We had another op out of Cloud Ring run last night.  The ping popped up as I was sitting down, so I logged right in and got in the fleet.  We were once again headed out in Sacrileges, so I went with the logi wing in my Guardian.  As we were getting ready I stepped away for a minute, got distracted, and when I got back I heard the FC, Kocicek, telling us to align for the Ansiblex.  I quickly hit the undock button and got out just in time to pick up the warp and follow the fleet, jumping through not too far behind.  By the next gate I was caught up.

Sac fleet outbound

We took the same route we took the other day after the move op, heading up to 6RCQ and into Pure Blind.  It was gate, Ansiblex, gate, and so on until we hit our first waypoint, KLY-C0.  There an armor timer was coming out on a Pandemic Horde Raitaru, which we formed up and shot, sending it to the final timer.

Just a blob of us flying around

That done, we warped off to a Fortizar of our own and met up with a titan who quickly bridged us off to our next destination, X-7OMU.

Off we go

There again.  That was where we had a tough time after the move op, and PanFam and the locals were formed up and waiting for us again, with Abaddons and Muninns and capital support, again.  This was another armor timer, thus not the final fight for the structure, so I suppose there was some question as to whether they would show up.  Question answered.

We got on grid with the Astrahus, as we did back on Saturday, and started putting damage on it as the time came out.

Circling the Astrahus

Unlike the last fight, where we left the citadel grid to take the fight elsewhere, this time we stuck it out.  It did not go well.  The gunner on the Astrahus was throwing a mix of damage and void bombs at us, the latter which can disrupt even cap chaining Guardians.  The void bomb hits and your capacitor is suddenly empty to the point that your cap transfer modules turn off and if you’re not paying attention you can find yourself drained and falling behind.

Meanwhile the damage bombs were keeping everybody broadcasting while the web on the Astrahus was on our anchor to slow us down, though we kept swapping anchors in order to mitigate that.  And then the hostile fleets came out to get us.  Things seemed to fall apart about then, though I was very busy following broadcasts for damage.

At one point Kocicek warped us and I caught the warp just as an interdictor bubbled the fleet, so I was alone until I could turn around and warp back to the fleet with a couple other ships that happened to be as quick to align as I.  That broke the cap chain where I was until I got back in range, by which time one of my cap buddies was down, as were two of the alternate anchors.

Kocicek told us to starburst as a bubble went up and warp to a safe.  I was getting yellow boxed as that happened, but had quickly scooted out of the bubble that was on us and was warping off as damage began to hit.  I was going to get away.

Almost on my way out… just pixels left on that align bar…

And then another bubble went up and I was just inside of it, cancelling my warp.  I scooted out of that, overheated my hardeners, and set myself to warp once more.  Damage was landing and I had to move to align and things looked pretty dicey for a bit there.  And the warp drive kicked in and I was off.

The hull is still half full, right?

I had warped to a planet, but wanted to get away from there, so warped to another in order to make at least a mid-point bookmark.  But X-7OMU is one of those huge systems and I fell out of warp before I made it to my destination, my capacitor drained.

So there I was, wandering at a mid-point in the system, halfway into my structure, heat damage on my lowers (and no nanite repair paste, I seemed to have forgotten it), and not really in any shape to do anything but hide.  However, Kocicek spoke up and told us to warp to him when he said to… so I got that up and ready to click… and he said “Warp to me…” and I was off.  And then he counted down from three, so I landed way off from him, but still on grid and close enough to get the fleet warp that pulled us all off to the J-CIJV gate, where we jumped out of the system.

An unguarded way out

We went from there to G95-VZ where we tethered up on yet another Fortizar we have hanging around the region and the repair function slowly took care of my hull, armor, shields, and heat damage.

Repairing on the Fort

From there the way home was pretty straightforward.  Once everybody was ready we made our way back to the end of the Ansiblex network and headed back to Cloud Ring from whence we had started.

Back in the Cloud Ring nebula

The fight, such that it was, did not go well for us.  The battle report, which looks incomplete to me… though if you don’t get on a kill you don’t appear on the list and we got precious few kills… shows us taking a pasting for very little gain.  We lost the objective and over 100 ships for only 9 real kills.

Battle Report Header – Click to Enlarge

But we cannot win them all.  Mistakes were made, ships were lost, and hopefully some lessons were learned, as I am sure we will be back again.

During the fight I did see Riverini get called as a target, one of the few I I recall coming up.  The experience of the fight was invigorating enough that he actually wrote about in on EN24, his first post in quite a while.  There was also a short AAR on Reddit, again highlighting that this was not a shining moment for the Imperium.

Fortizar Defense Brawl in JE-D5U

Another trip up north, up the Eye of Terror and into Pure Blind.  I’ve been up north a few times to defend one structure or another and a fight has yet to show up for me.  Not that there haven’t been some fights lately, it just hasn’t seemed to happen when I’ve been on the op.

But last night things finally rolled my way.  There was yet another Fortizar to defend up in the north and the word was that PanFam and the locals were going to form for it.  Maybe the other side was emboldened by killing our Keepstar. (Unanchored, and in a freighter, but they still killed it in the end.)

Anyway, the call went out for the op, but Asher had pinged Reavers a bit before looking for some people to fly ECM burst interceptors.  I’ve done that before and not many people were X’ing up, so I figured I had best jump in to help there.  Also, the ships are handed out for free and during the battle you get to sit above it all and see the whole thing… not that the view helps me much, I still never get what is going on half the time even when I can see it.  I took an Ares from the offer and got ready.

Asher was set to lead the Sacrilege fleet, so he had a newer FC, Kappa Hutt lead us on to the field.  So the Sac fleet and a Baltec fleet set off for the north with our interceptors flying along, peeking ahead to scout, then letting the others catch up.

My Ares in with the battleships

As we made our way along the route we caught up with some bigger ships that had started out ahead and were also making their way to the fight.

Some dreads in the mix now

We zipped ahead though… there was a gate that had been seriously bubbled, but that doesn’t bother interdiction nullified interceptors… and arrived in JE-D5U up in Pure Blind ahead of most of our fleet, but there were already over 300 hostiles in the system according to local.  There was going to be a fight it seemed, and the timer was counting down.

Less than six minutes to go

As the other fleets arrived we set about bookmarking our perches over the potential battlefield.  The plan is generally that we sit cloaked on a perch while the FC scans down a potential target, often the FC of a hostile fleet who is usually out in front of the pack.  Then we get the word to uncloak, overheat our burst jammer, and align, at which point the FC warps everybody beside himself onto the target.  We land, started warping back to a bookmark, then set off our ECM burst.  If the warp was good we’ll be in the middle of some hostiles and break some of their target locks… this is especially good if we land in the logi… and be warping back before anybody has a chance to take a shot at us.  Done right you don’t even get any heat damage on your mid slots because the burst goes off as you’re going into warp, which shuts down the module.

So we got ourselves in place as the timer counted down and the fleets got into position.  A fight seemed guaranteed as there were quickly over a thousand people in the system, with TEST dropping in to third party on the event, and even some notable PanFam FCs on grid like Vince Draken and Headliner leading Muninn fleets.

Hostile Muninn fleets getting ready

The timer hit and the repair cycle started, which meant we had to defend the Fortizar for 30 minutes while it repaired, though that 30 minute timer could be paused or pushed back by hostile fire on the Fort.  It was on.

Fight around the fort begins

Kappa Hutt was having a bit of a problem getting a probe signature on a good target.  Time dilation and system responsiveness was really bad, with the tidi number well below 30% for most of the fight, and into the 10% for some stretches.  Still, he got something and we got ourselves ready to go.

Uncloaked on a perch above the fight

We were then thrown into the fray to set off our jammers.  I landed pretty well the first time and got off some jams.

In with the hostile logi even

Meanwhile, the forces on the fort broke tether and were shooting up the attackers as they ran past the structure.

A Baltec Megathron on the fort

We warped off and back to our perches where we waited for the next target.  The scanning interface was acting up for Kappa still and for a few runs SpyFly Catharsis found wrecks for us to warp to, which worked as well if we timed it right.

Once again into the mix

We were getting good warps and I don’t think I went in even once where I didn’t get at least break a few target locks on hostiles when I landed.

Along the way I got a pop up that a bounty had been collected on Nkosis when his Sacrilege went down.  I think I have mentioned him before, but he is a newer addition to the coalition who is so enthusiastic and positive about the game that he has become something of a celebrity in his own right in the Imperium.  But being a celeb means he gets razzed as well and at some point he got a bounty place on him, which he didn’t like and said so, at which point everybody started adding to his bounty total with an eye towards getting him to the number one spot.  He was into the top ten last I checked.  I, too, put a bounty on him, so now I get a notification every time he gets blown up when I am in game. (I used to put bounties on our FCs as that pop up was often the quickest way to find out the FC was down.)

We had a bit where we had gone so many times in a row that we didn’t have enough capacitor to make a run, the ECM module needing over 200 units of power to activate on top of the bit you need to get your warp in and out.  This was when the system was into the 10% tidi zone, which is the slowest the game will go and, if that isn’t enough, controls begin to lag and your commands may get ignored.  Waiting for cap to refill during that was excruciating.  Somebody suggested we wait for our weapons timer to go down and just warp to the fort to tether and fill up our capacitors, but at 10% tidi having just 15 seconds left on the time meant nearly a three minute wait.

Still, tidi hits everybody.  The targets were as slow as we were and were not going to get away.  Cap was restored and we were sent in again for more runs.

Aligned for another run

By the the tidi was starting to relax a little bit, or at least get up into the low 20s, and Kappa was able to get good probe locks on some likely targets, so we spent some time dropping on names I recognized.

Coming for Vince

Down around the fort, the repair timer vacillated between running down and being paused, but kept moving slowly towards the structure being repaired.  By the time we got past the worst tidi it stood at around ten minutes.  We kept on going.

Landing on the hostiles again

At about the eight minute mark on the timer it seemed like the battle had been decided.  The hostiles pulled some distance and “gf” for “good fight” started getting spammed in local by them.  Some “fofofo” appeared in local as well, which I am going to guess was from Asher’s sac fleet as he is the only FC I know who still does the “fofofo” for victory.

From that point tidi began to ease up and we were released to go loot the field if we wanted.  Being in interceptors would seem to give us an advantage, but Goons will plunder like no others.  I didn’t come up with anything.

Somebody dropped an MTU, which is always a target on a battlefield no matter which side drops it.  I zipped over and got in on that kill.

Not that I needed another kill mail.  Landing on fleets and setting off an ECM burst puts you on the kill mail of anybody you jammed should they get blown up after you’re there.  My kill board was well padded by the end of the battle, with 111 new entries, enough to get me momentarily onto the top ten for KarmaFleet.  (The last time I did that I was also doing ECM bursts.  It is a kill mail whore’s dream.)  Most of them were hostile ships, but there were not a few blue targets on the list and quite a few pods.  A few of us even got the final blow for pods that were self destructing when we hit them.

The timer ran down and the fort was safe.

Tethered off the save Fortizar

At that point we were done.  Kappa set us free to head home, which should have been a quick ride in some interceptors.

Back through gates towards Delve

There were some bubbled gates along the way, but an Ares just passed through bubbles.  I was feeling somewhat invulnerable flying home, which I should recognize by now as a sign of impending doom.

My usual travel Ares has a 1.83s align time, and the game lore is that if your align in under 2 seconds you cannot be caught unless you are extremely unlucky.  But this Ares, fit for ECM burst runs, had a 2.03s align time, which means 3 seconds by the way EVE Online calculates, which means it can be caught.  It isn’t likely, but somebody who is good in the right ship can get you.

And they got me in Cloud Ring with a camp that was primed and ready to catch anything possible.  Normally I am inclined to attribute losses to my own incompetence rather than claim my foe was really good, but I think this crew was actually pretty good at this.  I was toast and knew it almost instantly.  Kind of a sour point to end the evening and I always feel bad when I lose a hand out ship, but it happens.

As for the fight, it seemed to be lauded by both sides as a good fight.  Asher posted a salute to the attackers on Reddit and other related posts seemed to be similarly warm and fuzzy about a real fight going down, which was a bit of a change from the acrimony over the Keepstar thing I mentioned earlier.

The results… well, pick your battle report generator and get your results.  EVE Battle Report Repair Tool seems shy of the mark for totals while the zKillboard report is detailed but has a habit of pulling in things outside of the fight.  For a report header image I am going to go with EVE Fleet Manager, which is close to the zKillboard totals, but which lets me pull out a few oddities.  I don’t think the Guristas, for example, really took sides in that fight.

Battle report header – trimmed to the top 7 alliances –  click on it to enlarge

Overall quite a fight.  A big brawl, fairly evenly matched, lots of losses on both sides that went largely our way as we had the Fortizar to tip the balance.  And there was quite the array of space famous names from both sides.  I even saw Bad Juice, who once challenged Asher to an MMA style cage match back during a Reavers deployment.  I was happy to report in the Reavers channel that he was still around and that I managed to get on his kill mail.

That battle would probably be the beat event of the month for me, but the word is that the Goon Expeditionary Force will be deploying later today, so the promise of more fights is out there.  Or at least more structure shoots.  Mittens was using the term “glassed” again, so we might just be burning down structures somewhere.

A Final Fight then Home From Venal

The fall of Darkness, the alliance at the core of the Dead Coalition… once the Guardians of the Galaxy coalition… a couple of weeks back was a sign that the fighting in and around the Venal region was likely going to fall off.  Not immediately, of course.  Wars have their own momentum, and being deployed up in Venal with the Goon Expeditionary Force and ready to fight meant there were still some sizable clashes after the news.

The final fight for me was a dust up between a GEF Typhoon fleet and a Pandemic Horde Ferox fleet in Q-7SUI, just a jump from where we were staged.

Typhoons undocking

There was a call for more firepower so I bought a Typhoon, figuring I would regret it when it came time to move home, that being one more ship to get back to Delve, but whatever.  So got ourselves in range of PH and their Feroxes and the shooting began.

A Ferox exploding in the pack

My worry about hauling home a Typhoon was unfounded as I managed to get it blown up during the fight.  That left me hanging out and watching things transpire.

Just a capsule in the bubbles

A couple of PH pilots locked me up at various points to try and pop by pod, but their Ferox fleet was moving fast and they we not often in range.  I took a few hits but was able to motor to the gate and jump through to dock up.  This was fortunate as I realized at that point that I had deployed in my Reaver’s speed implant clone and, while it wouldn’t have been a tragic loss, it would have cost me a couple hundred million ISK to replace it.

As I was gating out HAW dreads were dropping in to join the fight.

Cyno off to the right

I got back to the station and re-shipped in a logi hull, but the fight was over by then.  While we had killed more more ships, the battle report showed the ISK went well in favor of PH and company.

Battle Report Header

That pretty much wrapped up the deployment for me.  There were some further fights… a couple of good ones from all accounts… but I missed out.  But when the first call came to fly home… I kind of missed out on that too.  I think I was playing Pokemon Sword.  And it is unlike me to miss the first move op.  It has long been my practice to be on the first one because there have been times when there has not been a second such op.  I was on the first move op to the deployment.

Fortunately, there was a second op… or whatever op it was I got in on earlier this week.  I joined the mixed bag of subcaps who wanted to go home.  Given that ranged from frigates to battleships, it was going to be a slow move.  I grabbed the largest ship I had out on the deployment, a Jackdaw, and undocked with everybody else.

The flight home wasn’t too bad.  It ran about an hour.  However, it would have been a lot quicker if we had been closer to the Eye of Terror, the Ansiblex Jump Gate network that runs from Querious around into Pure Blind.  Being out in Venal meant we had about twenty gates to take to get to the terminus to the network.

Move op landing at another gate

Mixed bag we were, but it was a big mixed bag, with about 150 in fleet.  So while we didn’t make up a coherent doctrine, we had the mass to pass and the locals left us alone.  Once we got to the travel network about three quarters of the time in fleet had passed.

Welcome to the Eye of Terror

After that it is about eight connecting gates and five jump gates and you’re back at the Keepstar in 1DQ1-A.  While it was slow going for a bit, with align and warp and align again, it was safe.

That done, there was still a bit of time left in the evening, so I clone jumped back up to Venal, where I still had two more ships to bring home.  I grabbed the Purifier stealth bomber and ran the route again solo.  This is not always advisable.  A move op often signals to everybody that people are trying to get home and highlights the route to camp if you want to pick off stragglers.  However I managed to slip through without any issue and was soon making the warp from the final Ansiblex on my route.

I cloak up for every warp. You never know who will be there when you land.

And so ends the deployment for me.  There were a few good fights for me, and enough structure shooting to keep me satisfied.  Now we’ll stand down for a bit until somebody figures out what we ought to get up to next.  Isn’t it about time for a Burn Jita or something?

Structure Shoots in Venal

I kind of enjoy shooting structures in EVE Online.  That probably has some roots in the early Reavers operations where, deep in hostile space, we would fly around and shoot towers to see if we could get the locals to respond.  Structures are conflict points, places that you can force your foes to come and defend… unless they didn’t want that structure anyway.

And given that we are out in Venal, which is NPC null sec, structures are all the more important as both sides are a ways from home.

A Pandemic Horde Astrahus – A likely target

There has also been a variety of fleets to roll out with.  I flew down in a Jackdaw, which is a staple doctrine for the coalition, and I had a chance to use that from pretty much the moment we arrived.

It is always good when the FC calls for sniper mode

There are also the torp bomber operations, a staple of the coalition since the Fountain War back in 2013.  With a black ops in support they can be bridged out to a target without all that messy mucking around taking gates everywhere.

Bridge up, time to jump!

Once out at the target even a modest fleet of bombers has enough firepower to hit the damage cap smaller Upwell structures, so they can be used for any timer stages.  With only three launchers, a couple thousand torpedoes in the cargo hold will last for a few shoots.

Torpedoes flying

While stealth bombers are easy enough to kill, if hostiles show up they can just cloak up and fade away if the opposing force is too big to handle.  And if they don’t show up, we set the timer or get the kill.

Previously pictured PH Astrahus

In addition to those old standbys, and the Sacrilege doctrine I mentioned last week, we have a new fleet doctrine just for this deployment based around the Typhoon battleship hull.  We have been north with Typhoons before, as during the Hakonen deployment.  Being cheap and easy to fit for line members, they are back again and represent the ships of the line for fighting PanFam and their battlecruiser doctrine.

A Deacon logi ship in with the Typhoons

When we heard that the hostiles are forming up to fight us over a timer it is time for the Typhoons to assemble.  If we get numbers things tend to go fairly well for us.

For Typhoons I decided to fly with the logi wing, which means a Thalia or a Deacon.  The Deacon is preferred, being cap stable, and only looks a bit like the sorting hat trying to consume a horn of plenty.

Of course, I stuck a combat drone in its drone bay so I can tag targets when things are quiet, though things are generally only quiet when we’re shooting structures and the hostiles don’t show up.

Another structure down

And so it goes.  The deployment so far has been pretty good.  Most evenings when I have some time and a desire to log in there has been a fleet running that I can get into.  And things have been pretty active overall.  My momentary jump to the top of the KarmaFleet kill board has since been thoroughly eclipsed, showing that there have been fights happening.

Given the situation out in Venal, things could stay active for quite a while.  Both sides seem to want fights and there are a lot of structures out there as yet untouched.

That Athanor needs to be hit before the moon chunk is ready

Structures keep things going.