After stretches of meaningless battles, the CFC and N3 conflict in the Fountain/Delve region has heated up. The CFC’s counteroffensive has been yielding results as the first major station in Delve has fallen (ZXB-VC). Darkness and Kadeshi have been unable to get a solid defense up so far and have suffered the loss of seven systems near the border with Fountain.
In ancient war terms, the front gate has been compromised and the enemies are flooding in and burning everything in sight. All while the current sov mechanics timetable ticks away. In June, new sov mechanics will change the face of null-sec in fundamental ways, making this conflict either a brilliant strategic push or a fool’s errand. There is no consensus what the future holds.
Months ago, when the Phoebe expansion hit, southern null-sec alliances made some territorial adjustments. The Pandemic Legion sold off their renter alliance. Brave (as Hero Coalition) settled into Catch and signed a non-aggression pact with the holders of Providence Region. NC, Darkness and Kadeshi (part of N3) moved into the tri-region of Delve, which was vacated by Initiative, under orders from the Goonswarm-led CFC. Events have led to all these parties folding into one conflict over Fountain and Delve.
After Pandemic Legion hit the Hero Coalition piñata too hard and broke it apart, the Brave Collective, a sizable part of Hero, retreated to Aridia Region lowsec to light the “fun-flame” again by third-partying fights between the CFC and N3, who are engaged in border skirmishes between their respective territories.
This round of skirmishes and border raids comes after NC pacified Aridia Region’s moons and joined with Black Legion to storm through the middle border of Fountain, from Aridia’s Hophib system. The campaign package was put together by FC leader Travis Musgrat (NC), who admires Elo Knight (BL), and Vince Draken (NC) reluctantly sanctioned it to keep people busy while the new sov mechanics got worked out. In a coordinated attack, Darkness and Kadeshi sieged Fountain from its southern border.
Both incursions were met with a sizable defense force called down from the northern home territories of the CFC, although NC and BL made good progress in the late USA and AUS time zones. The CFC navy took a few days to get set up but were able to effectively stop any serious territorial losses, and, having gotten dressed up with no place to go, they decided to counter-march on Delve. They roamed south in fleets of 800 strong taking systems with impunity. N3 was put on the defensive and Darkness and Kadeshi losses started to appear. NC recently relocated to Esubara to help defend Delve.
Brave Collective arrived in Aridia not long ago, putting them near the fight, only 4 jumps from Delve (and 4 jumps from NC in Esubara). Brave is still seen as a school of small fish in these waters and naturally sharks moved in to feed for fun. Brave has not officially taken any sides in the area and instead skirmish around their new home.
Sort Dragon, the leader of Darkness, and nominal leader of sister alliance Kadeshi, claimed to pay Brave to interfere with the CFC, at least for one fight.
“On another note, today I hired @BraveNewbies as a trial run attempt to see how they perform as a Merc alliance, thanks for the good service.”—Sort Dragon (Leader of Darkness), Twitter
Diplomats from the CFC and Pizza (CFC ally) doubted it was true, since their intelligence reports do not conform to this. They claim to have Brave well infiltrated. A leak, some say from Sort Dragon himself, that shed light on the aftermath of that message was sent out:
“I did legit hire them yesterday morning”—Sort Dragon
“I highly recommend you don’t jump on this train of lies. while we’re not going to leak logs from us or other third parties, I do know exactly what happened…we have brave infiltrated up and down the chain off command, and logs from us and third parties directly with brave leadership”—Sion Kumitomo, Head Diplomat for Goonswarm, CFC
“i find it kinda funny that you hired brave to fight on your side while CFC just wanted them to stay out of the fight aka not feed. they told us they were warping around system pretending to look like they were helping because they didn’t wanna fight either side but were afraid to upset PL. im not even kidding. they betrayed BL but thought it would soften the blow if they didn’t really pick a side”—wheniaminspace, Confederation of xXPIZZAXx, Goonswarm Ally
The overall picture painted is that Sort Dragon was bluffing to the CFC that he had hired help to defend Delve. The CFC want to take Delve to give it to their ally, Confederation of xXPIZZAXx, and install them as a buffer area between them and the NC in Querious. This is an offer they once proposed to Brave, but Brave declined, not wanting to look like a puppet for the CFC.
The CFC don’t want Brave involved in Delve for either side, but they have had close dealings with Black Legion in the past as they were aided by them when defending their home in Catch. Brave could easily tip the scales in N3’s favor because N3’s current problem is fleet participation, not military might. If Brave were to field subcapital groups that could keep N3 supers from getting tackled, N3 would be more likely to bring out the heavy ships.
If the CFC were to hire Brave, this would interfere with their plans on rewarding Pizza with Delve. It might also entice Pandemic Legion to third party, and the CFC would rather have Pandemic Legion far away. They accomplished this by paying them 600 billion to fight Nulli Secunda a few regions away.
Pandemic Legion has historically been the deciding vote taking contracts: during the removal of Against All Authorities for Dead Terrorists, the removal of Solar Fleet for N3, and removal of Band of Brothers for Goonswarm in Querious. Their only defeat was the Halloween war, when the CFC and Russian alliances combined to defeat NC and PL in the battle of B-r5rb.
The overall goal in the southwest of taking sov in Delve or Fountain will have to be weighed against the new realities of keeping sov after June 2’s expansion. Most heavily invested PVPers are sitting on the sidelines, waiting for the new mechanics to arrive. The overall intensity of null-sec pvp is low, especially on the N3 side. There seems to be a malaise about how much to invest in any sov endeavour, but N3 will try to extract a toll from the CFC at the very least.
The CFC is selling this war to their members as “the last fights of Dominion sov” and they are correct. The proposed new sov mechanics get closer every day, and the blob style of fighting will be much less effective. This is why Pandemic Legion and other large PVP alliances are starting to recruit lower skillpoint players to fill in the ranks of their Kampfgruppe reaction teams. Pandemic Horde adapts the realities of the Brave Collective combat style to the new sov mechanics, where teams need to spread out to control.
All elite alliances will need more FCs and more people to fill those squads, and their large scale PVP experience wont matter as much as their skirmishing skills. That is well known. What is not known is how important it is to be in place, holding sov, when the starter gun fires.
