If any of you are like myself then you must also regularly check the killboards of New Eden to see if any juicy kills have occurred along with large scale fights. One particular fight did not have the usual large scale of capital losses so was honestly skipped over by myself but fortunately I was contacted by an entity involved and have since discovered the aspects of the fight explained below.
The capitals in question are those killed in the system of Bosboger in the Heimatar region on the 12th April as shown in the image below:
Click for Killmail
As shown by the image the losses were by 2 different entities; Dead Terrorists [IKILU] and Already Disbanded [AD] who are well known allies in the region. Those involved in their destruction are also by multiple entites; The Periphery [RIFT], Triumvirate. [TRI] and Flex Point [FXP]. [RIFT] have previously had a large scale fight with [IKILU] which resulted in a 35 Billion ISK brawl. This time this kill shows that these forces combined to take on the forces of [IKILU] and [AD].
Due to the scale of the engagement the usual killmail battle report on a standard killboard ends up being convoluted so this battle report modifier was provided to me, by Dhu’gall of That Escalated Quickly [M8WTF] who are known allies of [RIFT], so I could determine who to contact from each side. Showing that [TRI] where in fact not exactly one their side.
I contacted the main entities from the “blue”, “red” and “green” teams about their involvement and I received replies from; Letelio Denmun of [IKILU], Annah Kitheran of [RIFT], Garst Tyrell of [TRI] and hitman xz of [FXP] which are detailed below, beginning with Letelio Denmun.
So on the evening of the 12th, we in Dead Terrorists and Already Disbanded began forming our new Battleship fleet doctrine with a view to fighting [M8WTF] and [RIFT] who were forming in their respective staging systems presumably in order to defend a [RIFT] tower coming out of reinforce that evening in Bosboger. Nonetheless, aware that [M8WTF] and [RIFT] have been historically unwilling to fight DT/AD without support, our keen eyed scouts remain vigilant for movement from other notable entities. Sure enough a large fleet of assorted low sec Russian alliances, most notably [FXP], Neo’s Fleet, and Old Man Gang are spotted heading to Bosboger at around the same time that [RIFT] and [M8WTF] begin to undock. The combined enemy fleet, consisting primarily of Armour T3s and Faction Battleships, is particularly impressive because of the staggering amount of EWAR and Guardians in tow. This confirms our decision to reinforce our battleships with a large number of Archons, a strategy that has enabled us to fight unnumbered fairly successfully in the past.
At around 17:10, with the combined enemy fleet still several jumps away, a RIFT carrier pokes its nose out of the force field in Bosboger a begins fixing up the shield. At this point we decide to show our hand and proceed to bridge in our battleships and carriers on top of the RIFT Nidhoggur. Much to our surprise, the carrier, despite being out of triage, was unable to manoeuvre back into the POS shield and promptly blew up.
Click for Killmail
Moments later, [M8WTF], [RIFT], [FXP] and co stormed into the system and landed on grid way out of the optimal of our close range battleships. For a few minutes, as local fluttered around 250, the fight proceeded uneventfully with no notable losses taken on either side. Unhappy with this stalemate, [M8WTF], [RIFT] and [FXP] moved closer to our battleship/archon fleet with a view to applying more damage and energy warfare. This ill-advised move was met by them taking a string of losses in quick succession before abruptly retreating back out of our optimal ranges.
The tide began to turn a little when a group of around thirty Ishtar’s landed at range to support the enemy T3/Battleship fleet. With local hovering around 300, a combination of time-dilation and split fire from the various hostile groups resulted in us taking a handful of minor losses whilst still hitting back with consistent high-value kills and even a few Ishtar’s (as they accidentally drifted to close). Nonetheless, the enemy fleets, being quick learners, went back to staying out of our optimal and hugging the POS shield such that our targets could escape back into the force field if they were breaking. These strategies proved to be as effective as they were frustrating insofar as, for the remainder of the engagement, we were able to kill little more than lightly tanked support and the occasional straggler.
Of course, growing accustomed to the split-fire and time dilation, our carrier pilots were also ensuring that our losses were few and far between. As such, we had planned on continuing to bridge in reinforcements with a view to inflicting more loses upon the enemy fleet or, failing that, just killing the control tower that they had been effectively using as safe-haven. But all good things must come to an end, and what caused this fight to end was the arrival of a large [TRI] Machariel fleet. The sort of alpha delivered by 40+ Machariels would have been brutally effective against our fleet, especially given the pressure we were already under. Therefore, with local hitting 400, we gave the call to withdraw. All but three of our carriers and the vast majority of our sub-capitals were able to warp/jump to safety. Our suspicions, that the [TRI] fleet had come with a view to aiding the fight against us, rather than as a disinterested genuine third party, was subsequently confirmed as the various enemy fleets left on grid opted to finish of [IKILU]/[AD] stragglers before looting the field together in peace.
Overall, we were very happy with the fight. The ISK war was lost by the [IKILU]/[AD] side but by a relatively small margin, given the circumstances, and, primarily, because of the losses taken upon withdrawing, rather than throughout the actual fight. Respect goes out to [M8WTF]/[RIFT]/[FXP] for bringing the fight and for utilising certain strategies, such as range and force-field, very effectively.
To confirm or deny Letelio Denmun’s theory about [TRI] coming in support of [RIFT] and friends I contacted Garst Tyrell who provided me with the following response:
Amy,
Theres not much to our story for this fight. We were staging to fight XIX in the drone lands as usual but they ran and docked up when they saw our fleet so instead of disbanding we noticed 300 people on the map in bosboger. We found out there was a big fight going down and simply burned over to the fight.
We warped at range and helped to kill some of the [IKILU] archons that had stayed in triage while the slowcats fled then we left. I’m not even sure what the fight was over.
And before anyone from [IKILU] cries, no one batphoned or asked for us to be there. We simply saw the fight going down and decided to have some fun. The system was in up to 90% TIDI so there was plenty of time to burn on over from LXQ.
This clearly shows that although it may appear that they came in support this is simply not the case. The next response I received was by Annah Kitheran who went into detail about the events leading up to, and throughout, the event.
We had a tower in Bosboger reinforced by [IKILU] and [AD] on Friday evening. We were pretty sure that when it came out (in early EU prime time on a Sunday) we’d have a hell of a fight on our hands so we coordinated with [M8WTF] to get an op called for both of our alliances.
In case anyone has missed it this has been quite the grudge match so far in Heimatar and the surrounding regions. We were expecting a pretty heavy fleet from the [IKILU]/[AD] side of the equation so I reached out to a few of my contacts in other alliances also to see if we could bulk our fleet out a little. We are heavily outweighed in terms of caps in the equation and it has been a repeated theme to see overwhelming capital numbers dropped by the other side for even minor engagements.
On the day, out of the folks I contacted only 1 group could make it and they were interdicted en route by the server problems immediately before the timer; too many of their pilots discovered sunny weather outside whilst waiting for the EVE launcher to stop taunting them. Luckily for us a number of Russian entities had reached out asking to be allowed to join us and Shadow Cartel appeared to be a no-show for the other side. We got the details on the [IKILU] fleet including 28 archons, around 40 BS and T3s; multiple bhaalgorns and vindicators and the rest bulked out with short range high DPS navy megathrons.
We elected to roll with T3s and guardians with our Russian frenemies bringing BS support and more guardians, we had close to 120 in fleet but entirely subcapital and I think most of EVE by now understands the difficulty of breaking even a small slowcat setup with subcapitals, still the gauntlet was down so we were preparing.
By this point an intrepid friendly Nidhoggur pilot had already set up on the POS to rep it without telling any of our FCs. We were mid form-up and attempting to rally together the fleets that were coming when he reports a cyno on the POS and the hostile fleet we had already scanned landing on his nidhoggur. That was over quickly (and entirely predictably) amidst no small amount of mockery in alliance chat for which I really should apologize as the primary instigator, it is quite clear he was attempting to help.
About 10 minutes later [M8WTF] led by hydro9 hit Gulmorogod and our pilots rendezvoused on the in gate to the system. I passed command of our guys across and we warped in on the opposite side of the POS to the hostiles and began exchanging fire. The initial pass of the fight wasn’t overly kind to us. We were struggling to break hostile reps and we lost most of our support battleships to the heavy incoming dps and then a couple of guardians to vindicators getting in amongst them. After that our reps stabilized, T3s were holding under reps, defensive webbing seemed to be keeping the worst of the harm away from our guards but hostile reps were still holding on our primaries. I was pushing for a POS dive at this point but hydro pointed out there were hostile pods warping out as the Russians were breaking alternate targets and we were slowly wearing them down.
Hydro started trying to time volleys in heavy tidi with module delay and this got us more traction, a number of megathrons were saved by hero triage reps in 5% and lower structure but a few started to die under the target switching and we felt like we were making (slow) progress and things continued with the occasional dead hostile BS and our reps holding. (I copped a primary somewhere in there in the middle of the hostile fleet for what felt like about 5 minutes but even webbed down by vindicators and struggling to activate my DC due to bhaalgorn neuting my proteus held, ducked back into the shields and then regrouped on the anchor).
After an hour or so of back and forth we got a heads-up that [TRI] were on the way to third party, we decided to tough it out and see how things went. When [TRI] finally turned up in arty machariels, [IKILU] bailed as many of their ships as they could, judging from local smack they assumed they’d come to help us. Relatively predictably [TRI] shot the remaining [IKILU] capitals first and sat out of gun range of our fleet so we tanked, held tackle, burned through the caps and then ducked into the shields effectively ending the fight.
Was a fun one for all concerned I hope. Massive props to the logistics pilots.
This yet again corroborates the form of [TRI]’s role in the engagement. It does appear that they were slowly breaking the tank of [IKILU] and co but [TRI] managed to speed up the process and ultimately led to the most expensive individual loss of the fight as shown below:
Click for Killmail
With this being the most expensive sub-capital loss:
Click for Killmail
The final person contacted, as previously mentioned, was hitman xz who stated the following:
Last week, a diplomat from the alliance [M8WTF] contacted me and offered to join forces for a really good fight against the alliance [IKILU]. The proposal was approved and agreed to approximate the timer output POS. We also invited our friends to the party – Royal Pirates, Smile ‘n’ Wave and an Out of Sight fleet which was several Tornadoes and about 60 Ishtar’s. The POS existed reinforced mode at about 17:00 EVE time and by this time we have gathered a fleet of 20 Navy Apoc’s, 10 Guardians, 10 Celestis and a handful of different formats and merged with Escalated and The Periphery, who were in t3’s.
As we drove to the point of battle, on the grid of the POS came the [IKILU] and [AD] fleet which was 28 Archon, 50 BS – Megathron Navy Issue, Vindicator, Bhaalgorn and others., and support in T3’s and frigates. The battle began and the fight itself was going on for a long time due to tidi which maxed out at 20% reaching about 1.5 hours of real time. Many hostiles were saved in low structure thanks to the slowcat support which perfectly saved them.
At some point Vindicators began to burst from the second or third transfer DPS and victory could be seen on the horizon. The enemy still held for some time but then came Triumvirate and their Arti Machariel fleet with Oneiros and without waiting for their arrival onto the grid Archons started to jump out of the system. So we finished off the remaining Archons and go back into the POS shield.
Victory. Our grid, The Periphery POS protected. GF.
All in all the fight resulted in approximately 30 Billion ISK destroyed, not quite reaching the previous, but it looked like it was overall a good fight. From the numbers on the evf modified battle report here it shows that the defenders had roughly 180 against the 100 attackers and 60 who 3rd partied reaching around 340 in total. With this many pilots involved, and the rapid growth in different entities included, it is likely that other engagements of a similar nature will occur. It is unsurprising that something of this scale would draw the likes of 3rd party groups as the number of pilots in local clearly imply that something must be occurring and I look forward to writing about it in the future.
I would like to thank all groups involved for their responses and hope I did you justice.
[If you have any comments or intel you would like to provide please contact me at [email protected] or via an in-game mail]
