The CFC forces that have gathered in the Fountain region were challenged by the combined forces of Northern Coalition (NC)/Black Legion (BL) yesterday, in the border system with Aridia region (D4KU-5). The battle lasted 90 minutes and resulted in mostly battleship losses for both sides.
In the end, the CFC won the day by establishing military control over the battlefield, but at a cost to their overall strategy of demoralizing NC/BL with “weaponized boredom.” NC/BL were thrilled to lose on paper, because they could point to the 2:1 odds and roughly coming out even. This works well for their public relations.
The “invasion” of Fountain and “counter-invasion” of Delve in general have yielded little. There are no sweeping victories or crumbling defeats. Pilots call this a “war of denial;” Deny all objectives, deny any fun. The true victory in D4KU-5 is that the fight happened at all.
April 2 and 3rd, while general activity was low, the forces of NC were deploying Sovereignty Blockade Units (SBU) in the D4KU-5 system. This is the first step in stripping Sovereignty away from the CFC. These SBU’s are constantly being put up only to be shot down, much like an invading climber’s grappling-hook on a castles wall. The SBU’s are a regular feature of Sov wars and are usually not heavily contested, but they cannot be ignored.
NC corporation, Evolution took control of D4KU-5 a few weeks ago, but only held it for 5 days. The CFC was determined not to let that happen again. NC placed new SBU’s. The CFC formed up 200 pilots to take them down, mostly in Dominix (Domi) and Navy Apocalypse (Napoc) class battleships.
The CFC was well on its way to clearing the SBU’s with no resistance, until scouts reported that CFC had deployed a handful of dreadnoughts and carriers as well.
Normally, FC’s will sit out fights with terrible odds, but if they think they can find a path to some kind of victory they will assemble and fight. NC/BL FC’s decided to form up their 100 pilots stationed in Aridia (hophib), with the aim of killing those carriers and dreadnoughts.
Getting enough logistic pilots in fleet slowed the form up long enough to let the CFC finish off the SBU’s and extract themselves from the system. The only thing left on the D4KU-5 to Hophib gate were some small frigates. The rest of the CFC fleet was on its way home.
The NC/BL Raven battleships jumped into D4KU-5, launched small drones and ate up whatever CFC frigates didn’t warp to safety. The gate was theirs.
The CFC had no initial reaction, their work was done. NC/BL started shooting the CFC’s SBU’s (which is a terrible game mechanic that lets a group contest their own lands, essentially locking out other SBU’s).
After a few moments, the CFC, turned around and reentered D4KU-5 on far side of the huge, 160 AU system. NC/BL positioned themselves, and listened intently to the reporting scouts that were eyeing CFC movements. With the two navies in the same system, time ticked down slowly.
Then the real fight started: not unlike this great trailer from CCP, at the 1:55 minute mark:
The CFC Domi’s warped below the waiting NC/BL Raven fleet. NC/BL interdictors launched defensive warp disruption spheres (bubbles) to control range by keeping the Domi’s distant, and the Ravens fired all their missiles at one Domi at a time at long range. The Domi’s launched sentry drones and counter-targeted the Ravens, and scrambled their frigates to slow the Ravens.
Raven drones were effectively killing off tackling frigates, while the battleships exchanged alpha strikes. The Ravens had the upper hand, however, CFC Celestis cruisers were successfully dampening the range of some of the Ravens, nullifying there ability to do damage at long ranges. This tactic would normally force the long range Ravens to close in, exposing them, but NC FC’s had enough alpha with the remaining Ravens.
NC/BL had also dropped in a triage carrier at a distance. Piloted by, Ketch Kan, the triage carrier was saving Ravens left and right. Noticing this, the CFC moved in to disrupt the repair ship, first, by warping to a fast frigate in their fleet (ping point) and then warping them into close range of the triage carrier. The Domi’s then utilized their capacitor neutralizers to drain the triage carrier’s energy, making it unusable. Ketch, a vastly experienced pilot, tanked long enough to safely extract the carrier back to Hophib.
Note: Normally triage carriers are expected to die, and most pilots would have, but Ketch seems to pull of impossible feats: He once put up a POS in the middle of a huge fight while NC was losing handily in the home CFC system.
Travis Musgrat, the FC for the NC/BL fleet was killed and FUUUFA took over, but the confusion during the change over left some Raven’s stranded, and subsequently killed, after the order was given to micro jump “up” 100km away, to get a more favorable range on the Domi’s. Once they jumped, the Ravens once again went to work on the Domi’s cutting them down. The battle was going favorably for NC/BL who were able to keep distance between themselves and the Domi’s while effectively killing tackle with deployed drones.
The CFC lit a cyno and brought in their dreadnoughts to increase their firepower. They also called for reinforcements. A second CFC Dominix fleet entered they system, replenishing their losses, and even more were forming in their home staging system. Travis called for dreadnoughts to be on standby on the hophib gate, to counter the CFC’s added fire power, but the stargate was heavily contested.
In a risky move to free up the gate area, the NC FC warped into the CFC sentry drones to use large smartbombs to clear them. This was a bad idea considering the smartbombs destroyed their own missiles just as well, so they were unable to do both types of damage at the same time. The Domi’s, having the Ravens in close, were able to neutralize their energy, shutting down the smartbombs. The Raven’s began to pull range but took heavy losses. (video 5:50 mark)
By then, NC/BL intel reported the CFC had another 180 Domi’s on the way, and supers were logging in, to counter the dreadnoughts waiting in the other side of the hophib gate. Orders were given to stand down and extract as soon as possible, causing a few more casualties for NC/BL
Fighting was a blast – totally worth it.
If only we had bailed about 7 minutes earlier than we did… 🙂
