As with the previous post, 3 Nulli Secunda [S2N] supercapitals died today consisting of 2 Aeons and 1 Hel.
On the 9th February 2015 the StainWagon Coalition and members of N3 clashed in a continuation of their war over moons and sovereignty in the south-west of New Eden. For the first time in this conflict mass capital fleets clashed in the Stain system of GD0-7H. Stain fighting, which is a Sanshas’ Nation controlled region, has primarily revolved around the destruction of POSs controlling R64 and other moon mining assets following the gains made by S2N in the Esoteria region. The fight detailed today began over one such engagement as explained below.
S2N FC Killah Bee explained their side of the battle as follows:
[Editor’s note: The following has been modified for readability]
Stainwagon were repairing one of their towers in system with triage carriers. The call was made to drop titans and DD them off the field. In doing so 3 titans bumped with over 9k plus m/s.
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One titan managed to warp to one of the others so when slowcats and supers came in we ended up with the slows on one titan and the supers on the other 2. The first Aeon died without anyone being aware of it. He didn’t say a single word on comms or broadcast for reps he just suddenly died. The Hel who died next shouldn’t have come in because we were unable to hold it under the damage from their dreads. As the supers were dying we focused on killing dreads. Unfortunately the third Aeon died due to bumping and desync (who was the only one who should have died.) The reason they didn’t kill more with their dreads is likely the fact that they jumped them to their tower before warping onto us instead of just landing on grid and applying dps. The only carriers that died were those who didn’t broadcast early enough so couldn’t be saved. In the end CFC and SW were trying to bump more supers as we were killing their Ishtars. In the end after they got the last Aeon they decided to leave field as it was late for RUS tz and at this point we extracted.
I’d like to say thanks to Vince for travelling all the way with supers even though we didn’t end up needing it and props to SW for their super numbers though all in all it was a good show for S2N.
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Although Killah Bee praised S2N for their participation in the fight it has to be noted that along with the 3 SC’s above, S2N lost 140 Billion ISK while the Stain Wagon Coalition lost 72 Billion ISK and CFC, who provided support to Stainwagon, lost 18.5 Billion ISK according to this modified battle report. S2N originally started the engagement by putting their titans at risk by using them to destroy the triage on field. Had they not done so, dropping supercapitals and carriers to save them would not have been necessary. Ignoring the fact that they didn’t need to use the titans in the first place, the main cause for the losses primarily revolve around pilot error in the form of not communicating and bringing the wrong ship. The losses in total would have been even greater had it not been for the Russian alliances reaching the end of their willingness to commit due to the timezone differences as Northern Coalition. alone had at least 80 supercapitals en route.
The opposing view of the battle has been provided below by vurionek of Soviet-Union.
[Editor’s note: The following has been modified for readability]
We had a tower coming out of RF which we placed triage carriers on to repair as fast as possible. They were ordered to only enter for one cycle, though a few fucked up and went into another. We knew that they were preparing to drop titans and DD us so we had a small dictor fleet ready to go. As they cyno’d in and began to DD a few carriers off field we bumped the remaining in and tackled the titans on grid. Once their titans were tackled Nulli responded by bring in supers and slowcats in support. Even though they had a large amount of supers and slowcats on field we decided to take the fight as it seemed in our favour and we were on a friendly POS which was fully stronted and a position we could retreat to if needed.
We began dropping dreads and supers onto field but there was a fuck up with cynos as some dreads ended up landing within the subcap fleet instead of onto the POS as planned.
One of their supers appeared to bump too far out of refit and rep range and was soon primaried by the combined fire of our dreads and supers which allowed us to break it. Then we focused fire on the single Hel on field due to it’s lack of tank in comparison to the larger Aeon fleet. As this was occurring news spread to external parties and both CFC and NCdot responded by sending Ishtar’s to field as super fleets attempted to move into position.
As Nulli began to try and extract we managed to bump away an Aeon and kill it as they successfully managed to hit a good bombing run on our support fleet. The biggest losses we took in the fight were the dreads and carriers.Thanks to Nulli for having the balls to drop the titans and fight us. We aren’t as strong as them but Nulli was overconfident and you can’t completely underestimate us.
For those of you who didn’t notice the Battle report linked above. Find it here.
A video of the above battle is shown here:
A second video was linked in the comments below of a slowcat POV:
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Whilst this fight was occurring there was various support fleets on route to reinforce each side.
One of these was Northern Coalition. who initially brought in a Ishtar fleet, which rapidly died without logistics support. They also attempted to move their supercapital fleet towards XZ-SZK in Period Basis which has the regional gate to CJF-1P in Stain.
Due to the common understanding of the jump fatigue mechanic the second wave of supercapitals to move from F2OY-X, led by Vince Draken (alliance CEO and lead FC), began to travel via gates to the system of QY1E-N.
As the travel fit supers entered the system of 8-YNBE who were at the head of the pack and began to warp to the out gate of YQX-7U, they noticed that Fatal Ascension had bubbles setup on gate along with an Ishtar fleet who began to enter system. The FC of NCDOT made the call to have all supers tackled to approach their respective gates whilst the situation could be fully assessed. Shortly after this it was discovered that one of the supers piloted by Jelly Bee had been bumped off-gate and was currently in travel fit. The call was made to get all supers still in transit to jump into system and assist with repairing the lone Aeon. However, the reps were incapable of holding as the resists were not high enough to sustain the damage so the Aeon was told to light its cyno (which all travel fit supers are equipped with as standard) to allow triage carriers and additional supers to enter system to provide more reps and allow it to refit.
Whilst the Aeon was dragged back from low armor the supers began to primary hostile dictors with little effect as their fighters were primaried and removed from the field. As it became apparent that they wouldn’t be able to extract without a support fleet, NCDOT began pinging for a tempest fleet issue and triage fleet to come save the entrapped capitals.
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Unfortunately as the support fleet began to take the jump bridge from F2OY-X to QY1E-N FA were able to kill 2 Archon class carriers due to one being in triage and the other unable to tank as it was in the process of refitting.
As the support fleet entered grid and began to clear Ishtars off the field the Fatal Ascension fleet began to leave grid as their objective in holding up the NCDOT supercapitals was complete.
The battle report can be found here.
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Whether it was planned or not the decision to use the titans in hostile space clearly was the catalyst in the overall loss of over 230 Billion ISK and is one of the more prominent fights of this year so far. The changes to jump mechanics clearly played a pivotal role as it did prevent the reinforcement from both sides with a maximum amount of capitals as was seen prior to the Phoebe expansion. One thing that can be seen from this is that the changes haven’t entirely stopped such a fight from happening but caused those involved to commit fully if they hope to survive for any prolonged period.
Thanks go to Killah Bee and vurionek for their reports and to all of those involved for creating the content.
[If you have any further information or intel to provide please EVE Mail Amymuffmuff in-game]
