Things heated up in E-YJ8G as a Pandemic Legion slowcat fleet got tackled in the system. Several hundred Domi’s and Tengu’s poured in system in an attempt to kill the carriers. NCdot formed a slowcat fleet of their own to respond to the threat and combined fleets with PL. This put over 160 slowcat carriers on the field against roughly 200 Domi’s and about as many Black Legion/-A- Tengus.
The carrier’s reps were holding against the sub-caps and the rest of N3 arrived in a Proteus fleet (close to 100). The slowcat fleet was able to start working on the domi’s; however several tidi minutes later Razor and Black Legion jumped in over 80 dreadnoughts in an attempt to break the carrier’s reps. They were unsuccessful and PL/NC/N3 dropped over 100 supercarriers on top of the dreads and went to work.
For several minutes in max tidi dreads were slowly dying to the supers, however pilots soon realized that everything was becoming unresponsive. Soon after, the node crashed and local went from 1200 to 800 and then shut down. N3 was quick to the login screen, as was the hostile sub-caps. Early reports stated the dreads were still on field, however once everyone re-logged it was discovered that the dreads were all gone.
The N3 Proteus fleet, however, was massacred while the capital fleet was trying to log back in, and was the most significant sub cap loss of this fight. Around 12 dreads were killed once the supers arrived and the rest were saved by the node crash. The dreads were not able to kill any caps, though N3 did lose 3 carriers to the tengu fleet during log in.
Here is the EVE-KILL and BR-DOC reports of the fight.
There were also some interesting effects brought about from the node crash. This is the first node crash during a large fight since the Rubicon update, and some very strange things happened. First, on login the pilots from all sides emergency warped to random spots all over the system instead of back on the grid. Supers and carriers found themselves with no capacitor on initial login, though it came back once the loading was complete.
Another tragic effect though was the loss of over 1300 Fighter Bombers, which is about 48 billion ISK. This is because the fighter bombers were left on the grid because of the disconnect and did not return to the supers once they logged back in. A very small number of the super pilots reported their FBs were back in the drone bay as they should be upon a disconnect, but everyone else was left to petition their missing FB’s. This did not stop CFC forces from seizing the opportunity, though, and instead of looting the field they started to work shooting all the fighter bombers.
TiDi and large fights bring about some interesting results, and I think that CCP and TiDi were the only clear winners of this engagement. I also spoke to some FC’s in NCdot who stated they have been requesting the the nodes in the area be reinforced due to the timers coming out, but it is unknown if this has/will happen. It certainly did not appear to be helping in this fight, if it was even done.
In the end, the N3 capitals left the field and mass petitions have been filed to get back the lost fighter-bombers.
There are more fights expect all weekend as the timer board is full, so more Battle Reports could be coming, and TiDi will no doubt be seen again.
~jsb
