Everyone knows by now that there has recently been a multitude of super kills across New Eden and this is simply an addition onto this ever growing scrap heap. This kill however is slightly different from those before as it is of those who tend to kill unaware supers instead of being caught themselves as explained below.
The pilots involved in this are Keown who lost an Aeon and Niding who lost an Avatar, both these are part of the CRY.NET [CRY.N] corporation in the Nihilists Social Club [NULL] alliance. What makes this interesting is that [NULL] is well known for super-capital killing as part of the #REKKINGCREW led by RoCkEt X of Pandemic Legion [-10.0]. This crew are notorious for catching unaware super-capitals such as this Nyx and this Leviathan to name a few.
This makes it an even more surprising loss as they are usually well prepared and plan all actions but apparently this time it was not the case. They were caught out by what appears to be a Provibloc bait fleet in the system of Valmu in the region of Domain as proven by both of these dreadnaught losses prior to the destruction of both titan and super.
Click for Killmail
Click for Killmail
As it was clearly a planned event I contacted the diplomat xHjfx of Curatores Veritatis Alliance [CVA] who put me in touch with vyshnegradsky who was apparently one of the FCs and organisers of the event. He provided me with the following mail for a run down of events:
[NULL] have been reinforcing and destroying assets in the area for years. Almost all of the fleets we took out there got dropped by the supers. Before Phoebe we couldn’t drop them due to them having PL as a perma batphone, and post phoebe limited our jump range to the area. Even without a support fleet, being in lowsec, they were able to get away. However we noticed after the fight for the Ziriet R64 that they were very surprised we counter dropped them.
Putting these together Fardendur got the idea to bait out their supers and counter drop them. We moved a strike group of cap pilots we use alot, and a group of players we fly with alot in HICs and neuting ships. We had to be very careful as we know that they have alot of spies in our fleets/comms so we formed up seperatly. The original plan was to go ahead last week, but due to a lack of numbers we stood down.
Fast forward to this week and we thought we would have to stand down again. Our planned form up time was during the form up to finish an incursion in the region, so we doubted our bait fleet would get numbers for a POS bash to lure them out. Still I managed to get a 30 man Ishtar fleet with 2 bait dreads and an Archon. As we are moving to the target system, we realise our titan isn’t online, other titans in the area are offline, and titans that could be online are out of range.
To deal with this our HICs and neut ships burnt into Mamet, 1 jump away from the target system, where they docked up and logged off, waiting on login screens. We moved a cloaky cyno HIC into the target system aswell. We move into the system, Valmu, and set up on the POS. We were unsure as to whether or not they would drop us as they had just come back from killing a blue POS a few jumps away. Our luck finally turned though and they jumped into us.
An Avatar, 2 Aeons and a Nyx jump in. One dread was immediatly DD’d off the field and fighterbombers started laying into the second. I burnt our Ishtars over to an Aeon to start bumping it whilst killing bombers. Our cloaky cyno warps in and lights his cyno ontop of the first aeon, to which our dreads jump in and start melting. The people in Mamet log in and burn over aswell.
We get offers for back up and so a couple extra fleets are raised and burn towards Valmu. During this time I realised we had actually been bumping an Aeon TOWARDS the POS. Alas it was too late and before we can change direction he coasts into the shield. The other Aeon dies and we start tearing into the Avatar. The blue reinforcments turn up as the Avatar dies.
[NULL] had also been pinging for help and a small Navpoc/BLOPS fleet with several triage Archons bridge in off field and warp to the Titan as it dies. We manage to kill most of them, and extract most of our capitals before the remaining enemy fleet MJD’s off. We finish reinforcing the POS, scoop the lott (which thankfully hadn’t been Agmard) and head back to Providence.
As explained below following the loss of both dreadnaughts the Aeon and Avatar died in quick succession as shown below.
Click for Killmail
Click for Killmail
This makes a total of 137 Billion ISK destroyed thanks to a planned trap as they had became complacent and assumed all would go to plan. RoCkEt X explains his view on how the events transpired:
RoCkEt X > So basically, a few of the guys we work with have been running around doing their own thing despite repeated warnings they continuously dropped in the same places over and over. Shown here, here and here of which there are several more.
RoCkEt X > He was warned against it several times, and told he was being hunted but ultimately he got hubris and decided to go drop on a CVA subcap fleet, by blapping their dreads with the titan and a few supers. The problem is he didn’t tell anyone he was doing it so the first we heard of it was when he was being shot by 15 dreads. We sent a blops fleet (because it was the only way to get there fast) in an effort to kill HIC’s however the titan was dead before we got there, but we managed to save the guy’s two remaining aeons.
RoCkEt X > Rescue fleet’s losses are estimated at about 10bil but we look after our friends
Amymuffmuff > So it was well played by provi due to the repetitive nature of those pilots and their habits?
RoCkEt X > Provi’s trap was good in theory although it was slow and poorly executed but credit where it’s due they were able to capitalise on the arrogance that titan pilots get when they manage to live so long without biting the bullet.
RoCkEt X > #REKKINGCREW did all it could to respond to his call for help, but with so little notice – there wasn’t much we could do… we’re good at what we do, but with 15 dreads shooting you… there’s nothing we can do about it
Clearly this is simply down to the opportunity that was presented to them which could have easily gone the other way but likely was simply down to their confidence and possible carelessness as no thought was made to even make others aware that it was going on until it was too late.
The battle report of the event is here with a video shown below.
Additional videos as posted in the comments below:
[If you have any comments or intel you would like to provide please contact me at [email protected] or via an in-game mail]
