Welcome to a new series on EN24 where we will be looking at the ‘small things’ that might not make a full EN24 article but are either funny or interesting enough to share anyway! We here at EN24 will be running one of these articles once a week after scouring the intel channels and other intel outlets for information to share with you, our readers.
Black Legion. defeated by their apparent lack of math skills. 
Last night Black Legion. formed up with the intention of heading out to R-ZUOL where a large fight over a N3 station timer was likely to draw a massive amount of groups, including CFC, Russians from the Stainwagon coalitions and other entities looking to get involved in a bit of a fight. To get to the system where the fight was going to go down Black Legion scouts had found a Wormhole leading into the system of Thera, which the Black Legion. fleet decided to use as a shortcut.
After the Black Legion. force had assembled in the Frugleur system on the connecting wormhole, FC Elo Knight called for all his Logistics Pilots, Interdictors and Recons to jump through into Thera. Once they were through and realised that a small CFC fleet was waiting for them on the other side of the wormhole Elo Knight called for his main DPS fleet, consisting of around 120 Tengu strategic cruisers to jump in and get ready for an engagement.
This is where it all goes wrong. Apparently the scout who found the hole had not properly checked the mass allowance or had incorrectly informed Elo that a fleet would be able to travel through with no issues. The Tengu fleet tried to jump in only to be spat back out when the wormhole collapsed on them. In all only around 10% of the DPS tengus managed to jump into Thera while the remaining 90% of the fleet were standing bemused and wondering what to do next.
The fleet inside of Thera, once they realised what had happened, tried to make distance and get to safety. Unfortunately for Black Legion they lost nine of their Logistic cruisers, four strategic cruisers and two of their interdictors amounting to a loss of 4.2 billion ISK. The CFC lost just eight ships for a total of 326 million ISK. Battle report can be found here.
BL. will now be offering free classes to their scout pilots in how to correctly assess the usefulness of wormholes.
Strategic Objectives defended in HHQ-M1, but is it worth the cost?
Early in the morning on the 24th January 2015 a POS tower belonging to the N3 coalition came out of reinforced in the system of HHQ-M1. The N3 set an alarm clock op for the tower timer, expecting a fight from both the Russian alliances in Stainwagon and the CFC forces who seem to be enjoying being a ‘third party’ in these fights. As they knew roughly where these pilots would come from they managed to set up drag and dictors bubble along their respective routes. While the dictors tried to slow down the incoming forces of the CFc and Stainwagin the Nulli Secunda POS was repped and stronted to prevent the combined attackers from taking down the tower and thus saving the strategic objective.
However, even though the tower had been saved on this occasion the CFC and Stainwagon fleets still jumped into the system to try and both put the tower back into reinforced and take down some Nulli Secunda ships. The Russian alliances had decide to form a faction battleship fleet consisting of Tempest Fleet Issues, Machariels and Apocalypse Navy Issues while the CFC forces had amassed their now expected assault frigate gang which consisted of Harpies with a large bomber wing also accompanying the fleets. The combined Stainwagon/CFC fleet totalled just over 190 pilots.
The N3 fleet, which was dominated by Nulli Secunda with a few Fraternity. pilots thrown into the mix, fleeted up in Rattlesnakes and brought in triage Chimeras for support. The Nulli Secunda fleet consisted of just 70 pilots and were completely outgunned from the beginning of the engagement. While the Nulli fleet did manage to do some early damage it was easily overcome by pure numbers from the Stain/CFC side and they started taking down enemy Rattlers very quickly.
Once the dust had settled the Nulli Secunda fleet had lost around 24 billion ISK while the CFC/Stainwagon fleets had only lost a combined total of around 780 million ISK. Nulli Secunda may indeed say they won the strategic objective in this fight however the fact remains that, if you look back over the last week or so and include the fight in A-CJGE, where N3 Coalition also managed to secure a strategic POS with significant losses, they are losing a lot of the ‘large fights’ on ISK while denying the Russians and CFC the objectives. While this might help the moral of the Nulli Secunda/N3 group, soon it will start hurting the wallet of their members and that moral will soon start to erode.
Full battle report can be found here.
R-ZUOL Station timer defended.
Last night a station belonging to Nulli Secunda came out of reinforced in the R-ZUOL system in Immensea. Local seemed to have spiked at around 1450 during the fight with the CFC and N3 coalitions making up the most of the pilots in system. The CFC brought at least 500 pilots to the fight while the defending N3 coalition brought around 480 pilots. However a large part of the remaining 400 or so pilots were made up of groups including the Stainwagon and other russian entities who harbour no good feelings toward the N3 coalition alliances and were there to take the station from the defenders, meaning that the N3 alliances were outnumbered by around 200 or so pilots during the fight.
According to sources The CFC had a large Ishtar gang supported by the normal assault frigate and bomber wings in system when the timer ended and more Ishtar’s and support on the way, while the N3 alliance ran interference throughout the system, causing a large number of smaller engagements on the edges of the system, the main force managed to protect a group of seven or so Archons who were repping the station. During the repairing of the station the attacking bomber wing continued to try and annoy the subcaps on the station undock.
While the CFC were unhappy about the lack of a concerted effort to push them back and out of the system by the N3 alliances, it seems that the plan on the N3 side worked. They managed to repair and save their station without needing to sacrifice too many ships. Once the repair was done and the N3 Archons had docked along with the defence fleet who had been standing sentry over them, the CFC/Russians landed and put the station back into reinforced. Of course, having done this, it is likely that the forces of Black Legion., who couldn’t make the fight due to a mathematical error, will be in attendance this time along with other groups who may not have formed for one reason or another.
Full battle report can be found here
Chinese server ship skins.
It seems the chinese server are getting some treats for their new year celebration. In case you didn’t know, the chinese new year is actually celebrated on the 19th of February and each year is named after an animal in the chinese zodiac, so 2014 was the Year of the Horse, 2015 will be the Year of the Goat/Sheep and 1986 (the year I was born) was the Year of the Tiger.
If you would like to know more about the chinese years of the Zodiac, then feel free to have a look at this website.
Anyway, the ship skins look like they will be exclusive to the chinese server for now. So lets have a look at them.
Machariel sporting a black and silver paintjob with blue trim items.
Rattlesnake in a red and grey paint job with light grey decals.
Abaddon which looks amazing in a white and black paint job with loads of gold trim.
Armageddon in matt black with a light blue tribal type patterning.
Raven in gold with white trim, very bling.
Eagle in a matt black paint job with gold trim.
Drake in a black paint job with two tone gold trim. Another one of my favorites.
Dominix in a flat black paintjob with gold and silver trim.
Big thanks to AredditorAMA from R/Eve for the links.
Will we be seeing these on TQ at some point? I think we will probably see versions of them come up as CCP gets closer to releasing their new and improved ship skin system. I think these skins, or a variance of them, will be amongst the first ‘non NPC corporation’ skins that we will be able to purchase and apply to our ships. I may be wrong but it would make sense to me for them to be introduced to the TQ servers as part of the release for the ship painting system.
Well thats it for this weeks, and premier, issue of ‘The Small Things’ and I hope you enjoyed it and we shall see you next week for another edition!
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.
