Once upon a time, for that’s how all good stories begin, there was an alliance that never died. Red Alliance has weathered the storm, losing space multiple times but always bouncing back, since its founding on 02-21-2005 (making it one of the oldest surviving alliances in the game). A recap of how Red Alliance ended up in Delve begins a few months ago. Last year, when the DRF split, they backed xDeath against SOLAR. At the time, xDeath had been the slightly weaker competitor. As the war began to heat up, it became more and more apparent that xDeath was not the powerhouse they once were, and were incapable of going toe-to-toe with SOLAR. It got so bad that Krutoj, and several other VIPs, bailed on xDeath. UAX wasn’t about to let his alliance roll over though, so he contracted PL to join the battle. PL tipped the scales heavily in favor of xDeath in a rapid way, quickly pushing SOLAR out of the area. With the contract concluded, PL left. Meanwhile, RA had been splitting their focus between SOLAR and Against All Authorities. They had been struggling when PL was not there to assist them. About two months ago, they were short on paying their bill for PL’s contract and right around this time, things began to go downhill rapidly. Red Alliance lost their home system and quickly capitulated. In negotiations with -A-, they were offered an NIP and space in Delve in exchange for ceasing to defend nor pay for sov space between SOLAR and -A-. Red Alliance accepted. FAIL quickly moved to their new space, but Nulli Secunda refused to give up their pocket and decided to fight.
Initially, Red Alliance began gobbling up the space vacated by FAIL and a few of the other alliances that had accepted -A-’s offer to relocate. Red Alliance dropped a TCU in 9GNS-2 had set it to online shortly after downtime. Due to the timing, a Nulli FC who wasn’t one of the regulars had to take the fleet out to kill the TCUs in that system and a few other systems in the area. The fleet took down the TCU, then onlined a Nulli TCU in its place with no resistance. Mistaking this victory for a free pass to shoot all things, the Nulli FC led the fleet out on a hunt for more things to kill. In O-IOAI, they ran into resistance. The aHAC fleet type was… apparently not familiar to the FC, and without Shadoo there to kick him in the metaphorical balls and take over the fleet, he welped the fleet. He then called for people to reship in the more familiar panic geddons. Nulli rolled out again, and ran smack into the Red Alliance fleet in 8WA-Z6. It went badly for Nulli, losing the geddons and the two triage carriers that jumped in as logistics support. Red Alliance followed up by killing the Nulli TCU in 9GNS. It was a rather impressive slap in the face of the traditionally confident Nulli. An alliance that is used to fighting out-numbered and often manages to still come out with the win. Some might turn to the forums and whine about blobbing, or unfair mechanics. Nulli simply notified Eve News 24 of their losses, shrugged their shoulders and stepped up their game.
Earlier today, progod called up a Nulli fleet to finish the work they started, by hitting the iHubs they had reinforced in NOL-M9, QX-LIJ, and HM-XR2 with exit timers of 1230, 1600, and 1751 respectively. Nulli was able to put together a fleet of about 140 subcaps when scouts in NOL announced that RA and Viking had arrived. With 240 subcaps, 20 super carriers, and 12 titans. There were also around 30 bombers in system as well. So, progod called for the fleet to reship to bombers and max-range Nagas in an attempt to harry the RA fleet. Against the odds… nothing unexpected happened. RA steamrolled the system, Nulli got a few kills, but lost as much as they killed.
Nulli headed home. Red Alliance, then, made the mistake of splitting their fleet. The Viking abaddon fleet split off and went to C3N-3S, where they bubbled the station and put up SBUs. With only 80 subcaps, the Viking fleet was a target that progod could not pass up. NOL and C3 are not within titan bridge range of each other, so, progod knew that he would have a fixed amount of time to burn the Viking fleet before he would have RA’s fleet to contend with. While Nulli reshipped to panic geddons, RA’s supers began reinforcing Nulli’s towers in NOL. 150 Nulli began undocking into the Viking bubbles in C3N. The Viking FC apparently decided to fight it out, and hope RA could arrive while he held down Nulli’s fleet. Nulli went to work. Red Alliance called for their subcaps to get into range on their titan, then asked for a cyno into C3N to throw their subcaps ahead of their supers. It took RA a while to bridge everyone in the neighboring system of QY1. By the time the RA subcaps began streaming into C3N, the Viking fleet had already been slaughtered. Nulli had just finished killing the bubbles on the station when the RA subcaps jumped into system. As the RA fleet warped to the station, Nulli warped to a bounce 500 km away from the station. Nulli had their prober out, waiting for the RA fleet to land. As RA landed off the station, thinking they would be at optimals, they quickly realized their targets simply weren’t there. Prober was quick and the Nulli fleet warped into the middle of the RA fleet before they could escape. At zero, the panic geddons chewed up the RA artybaddons. Nulli quickly bubbled the RA fleet, and hero dictors continued to drop bubbles on the RA fleet as their FC tried to disengage the fleet. In the end, the field of battle was littered with RA and Viking wrecks. By this point, word of the fights had filtered out and Nulli’s fleet had swelled to over 200.
The HM- timer was minutes away from ending with the majority of the Red Alliance subcap fleet stuck reshipping to rejoin the fleet. Nulli was mulling over their next move. Red Alliance began reshipping to hellcats, so progod had Nulli reship to aHACs as counter. He had no illusions that Red Alliance would be kind and split their forces for him again. Nulli bridged to AJI instead of directly into HM, as RA bombers were already in system, and losing a fleet to bombers had already been done by one side, so neither were in any rush to try it again. Red Alliance had about 140 subcaps in NOL with Viking reinforcement en route. Red jumped in, and warped to a ping off the gate. Nulli jumped into the system and quickly warped to the NOL gate where Red had just jumped through, hoping to catch them on the gate. The Red fleet was about 1000km off the gate, but Nulli still had their ace in the pocket, a veteran prober. The Nulli fleet was on top of the Red hellcats before they knew what hit them. They spread tackle, losing a few ships initially, before the aHACs could get to speed under RA’s guns. Once again, Nulli began ripping through their opponent. Vikings bridged into NOL, and jumped into the fray. They were unable to impact the course of the battle though. Pandemic Legion arrived then, with sniper Oracles. Amusingly enough, the RA bombers kept driving PL off before they could become a threat to Nulli. In the end, Nulli walked away with another 100 kills.
Nulli went on to finish off the iHub and headed home.
The war has now gone both ways. We’ll have to keep an eye on Delve to see how this develops. Good fights to everyone involved!
Bagehi
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[...] Alliance and Nulli have been duking it out. Fighting escalated here, before Pandemic Legion entered the region, smelling blood. This culminated in the following [...]
RA is horrible.
PL is shooting both of us. We love having PL around, they actually stand and fight us. I am 99.9% sure the feeling is mutual too.