On 21 January 2015 at approximately 1800 EVE-time a Ragnarok Titan belonging to Andi279, member of the DARKNESS. alliance was destroyed by the combined fire of a hastily formed coalition consisting of members from Infernal Octopus, LowSechnaya Sholupen, No Value alliance and AXIOS.
The fight started when a small group of Infernal Octopus decided to poke the dragon (N3 coalition), of which DARKNESS. is a member and attacked a POS in the Jasson system in Aridia. The POS in question was a R64 moon and had been taken by DARKNESS. back in late December last year from the Infernal Octopus alliance.
I managed to catch up with the main FC for the fight and CEO of Infernal Octopus, Quindaster for his side of what happened:
Mail Lite > Can you give me a quick rundown on the events leading up to the kill?
Quindaster > Aye, story starts a few weeks ago when this happened…
Quindaster > They then dropped a few titans on my Thanatos near station a few weeks ago in the hopes of DD’ing it.NC. tries to drop supers on a carrier on station.
Mail Lite > So they were being overly aggressive?
Quindaster >Yes, after we incapacitated their POS mods in Soliara system on an R64 moon, they started getting angry and in the next few days dropped their whole super cap fleet on our towers, which you can see from our killboard here. After that they killed 16 of our towers on empty moons where we had simple reactions running which again can be seen on our killboards. And they were so happy to kill any of our useless towers, ‘cos they can’t kill anything else! And they linked the pos mods, disruptors and gun kills in local.
So we decided tonight to kill something of theirs; so we took three of our carriers and went to shoot their POS mods in Jasson on the R64 moon which they took from us a few weeks ago. We warp to the Darkness. tower and start to incapacitate the POS mods and a POS gunner or watcher logs on and starts to launch noobships for cynos. Ok, we simply waited to see what they would bring.
They drop some ‘dictors and bombers on our carriers and a few cruisers, recons, Tier 3 BC’s and Onyxes. We start to fight with this small fleet. We can’t kill them fast, ‘cos they always re-warp or burn away to 90km, so we ask our blues from AXIOS alliance to help tackle them and kill the small ships. I call AXIOS and they form fleet, and bring a few T3 ships, like Loki, Proteus, and start to catch the DARKNESS. small ships. DARKNESS. warp off the tower but keep point on a few of our carriers by using the POS disruptors. Few of our carriers warp off at this time ‘cos there was no reason for them to stay there (DARKNESS. fleet was under POS shield). So this left only 2 of our carriers on field and then the DARKNESS. fleet starts to approach our carriers and point them, one carrier warps off as I remember and left only one carrier on field. When we start to kill them with our subcaps, a cyno goes up and in jumps a Ragnarok. My expression when I see this must have been hilarious.
Mail Lite > So he jumps in on his own?
Quindaster > Only one Ragnarok jumped in, some NC. Ishtar fleet was on the way, but it wasn’t important for us at that point. I start to shout for our people and our blues in any channels to get into dreads. We had 2 HIC in system and they warp in to point the titan and start trying to hold it until our people start to come online and get into dreads. When we start to login, one of our HIC’s dies and I’m afraid the titan will warp off before our people login; they ask what they need to bring and where to jump to etc., you all know what I mean. This Ragnarok DD’s our lone carrier, and we warp in some ships with cynos and start to jump in the dreads, some dreads are still just logging into the game when some have already jumped, everyone was excited and no one cared about possible losses on our side.
View from Quindasters’ Dread (click to enlarge)
Quindaster > We kill the Ragnarok, come out of siege and jump out or warp out when the NC. Ishtar fleet was on the way to the grid. We looted the titan, so all losses were covered in this fight from DARKNESS. titan pilot’s wreck. Here is what the titan pilot said in local:
[18:32:01] Andi279 > perfect bait guys
[18:49:15] Andi279 > it was a good drop
[18:49:17] Andi279 > you did well
[18:49:36]Andi279 > I have played this game so long now its nice to see a drop like that
Quindaster > We wait when NC. decide to attack our empty moons and link POS mods in local like they’re happy with their kills. They may be good at killing POS mods, but we are good at killing flying ships.
Mail Lite > I’ve had intel that the titan jumped accidently and wasn’t meant to be on field. What would you say about that?
Quindaster > Well, I don’t think it’s true, because he DD’d our carrier which was left on field from the beginning, and they don’t have any support fleet in range in the usual titan systems, so in my opinion it’s absolutely not true. And I think they use this moment for it to kill our carrier. Because in previous fights, we kill three of their carriers, NC carriers and we didn’t lose any capitals.
Mail Lite > Do you expect any retaliation from NC. and DARKNESS for this?
Quindaster > I think yes… maybe they will attack our useless rection towers to get revenge and get a lot of kill from POS mods. 🙂 They still have few titans here near our systems in logoff and few moms. I know in Soliara they still have some supers. A big thank you for the fast reactions on comms for LowSechnaya Sholupen, No Value alliance and Axios.
Andi279 is now top of the board tonight with this loss which totalled in the region of 135 billion ISK. In all, the combined N3 losses totalled 137.5 billions ISK while the lowsec groups who managed to snag this kill only lost a little over 7.5 billion ISK in the fight, and most of that came from the one carrier that the titan managed to doomsday at the start of the fight and the HIC’s he was trying to get cleared off him to get his titan out to safety.
Click for Killmail
In a bit of a twist to the tail, information emerged after the DARKNESS. titan was killed that he was actually in fleet with a number of other N3 supers, mostly consisting of Northern Coalition. pilots, and was told not to jump but misheard the command and ended up alone on the field after jumping to a bad cyno. It is also understood that the pilot, Andi279 is actually the titan alt of the DARKNESS. CEO Sort Dragon, although this has not been confirmed.
If this is true, then it makes this titan a huge loss to DARKNESS. and must leave their CEO with egg on his face, especially in front of the other N3 CEOs. A ping was sent out by Vince Draken around the time this titan was tackled.
Vince: “VINCE_DRAKEN: LOGIN ALL THE THINGS NOW” and “CAPS TACKLED LOGIN GET IN FLEET TITAN TACKLED
Despite many attempts to contact anyone from DARKNESS., I have been unable to do so, however I will update this article if they do respond to my correspondence.
Here is a video of the Ragnarok kill from a 3rd party who happened to be in the area.
If you have anything that you think should be reported on EN24, please contact me at @mail_lite on Twitter, email at [email protected] or Eve Mail me in game.
