The anchoring of a Keepstar in Nalvula by Project.Mayhem saw the system become a hotbed of activity, as pilots from all across New Eden flocked into the system to take part in attempting to destroy it….and succeeding.
The Keepstar was defended by a Machariel fleet fielded by Project.Mayhem, with a Circle-of-Two fleet aiding in the defense. They faced off against a Northern Coalition. supercapital fleet, which included 90 supercarriers and 70 titans. Below is a list of the largest Alliances and Corporations present in the system at 10:48am EVE Time.
Click the image to be taken to a more detailed D-Scan which was taken just before down time.
The Keepstar was anchored on 23 August and set to come out of the invulnerable stage roughly fifteen minutes before downtime. As the timer hit an hour left, Nalvula began to fill up. At five minutes until it became vulnerable, the majority of the combined fleets began to show up, as cynos were lit, bringing in the battering rams of supercapital power. The citadel, came under immediate attack once vulnerable pausing the all important repair timer after only a few seconds. Even downtime didn’t help Project.Mayhem’s and their hopes to save the citadel as the repair timer is reset after downtime and the citadels health would not be replenished. Once downtime hit, it took roughly fifteen minutes to bring the server back online, and another five to bring Nalvula up. The moment 70+ titans logged back into system was captured by Killah Bee in his tweet below.
At this point, five minutes had elapsed in-game, so the timer—which had been reset to fifteen minutes— was sitting with less than 10 minutes left.
Prior to downtime, time dilation in the system was at 32%–the highest during combat. As pilots logged in after downtime, it spiked to 10%, and despite a lull back to around 25% the TiDi increased to stay at 12%. 3,050+ pilots in Nalvula was making the new servers work almost to the limit.
Time Dilation has been a worry for many players as it was summised recently that a system under heavy TiDi would prevent attacking forces from hitting the minimum required amount of damage per second to destroy to citadel. This is mainly because the repair timer and damage per second requirements currently do not factor in how much tidi there is in a battle. So of course it quickly cam to the attention of pilots on the r/Eve subreddit, that Project.Mayhem FC and director Tau AD was unloading over 800 shuttles in a POS in the system. The apparent intention was to place unnecessary load on the server creating enough time dilation and thus thwarting any attack. GMs were quick to respond, removing roughly 200 shuttles, but leaving the rest present. Tau AD received a two-week suspension for his actions, ostensibly for intentionally attempting to influence the stability of the server when the time came. Tau AD’s actions the previous day may have drawn more attention to the Keepstar than would have normally and it is likely more pilots joined the fray after learning of the Keepstar’s existence. Despite worries about Time Dilation potentially causing an issue the Keepstar did not survive, wilting under the impressive firepower put against it. Goonswarm FC dabigredboat explained:
“We dormed 70 crows to come and see if we could help get the thing online. I like Snuff and PM [Project.Mayhem] right now and I am FCing. We are red to everyone else here, so why not?”
When asked if his fleet accepted it may be a one-way trip but the goal was to use the TiDi hopefully to inflict more damage than losses, his response was simple: “Nah, I was bored, so I woke up to do it.” Pandemic Legion’s fleet commander, Killah Bee, also commented on PL’s involvement. When asked if the form-up was out of malice or just a general call to arms to destroy a lucrative target, he responded that it was more of a target of opportunity. “Yea, basically. It’s a Keepstar and it’s the first one we were actually aiming to kill. So I invited everyone keen to kill the Keepstar with us.” Project.Mayhem fleet commander Tau AD refused to comment on the fight, instead sending out a general message to the alliance.
“Thanks everybody for coming.we did great job.we showed that we have balls to fight against hall eve and anchoring keepstar without bluetrain.i was very surprised that we formed so many dudes at this time.we’ll anchor a new one.but later. and we’ll fuck all alliances who came today 1 by 1. Thanks everybody once again!”
Of notable absence was Snuffed Out, an alliance who supposedly have close ties with Project.Mayhem. At this point, it’s impossible to determine if they refused to show up, or simply couldn’t make it. Unfortunately it has since been confirmed by CCP in a tweet from CCP Fozzie (below) that no killmail was generated for the Keepstar’s demise. There is precedent that when historic killmails aren’t generated CCP will not construct a killmail to replace it either. But there was a promise of something else in its place.
@CEKillahBee Server didn’t make a killmail (happens sometimes when tons of players are involved). We may be able to do something else though — CCP Fozzie (@CCP_Fozzie) August 24, 2016
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Quendishir is a junior pilot in Project.Mayhem, a pirate alliance basing out of Lonetrek low sec.
Feature image by Desas
