At 18:00 ET on Friday the 24th of April, members of the wormhole corporation The Dark Space Initiative [TDSIN] found themselves logging in inside reinforced towers and their inboxes flooded with structure damage notifications.
Across the class-6 wormhole system of J142528, TDSIN towers had been reinforced by a Lazerhawks [LZHX] Dreadnought fleet supported by over thirty T3 cruisers. By invading TDSIN’s home with a large fleet and threatening the assets within the towers, LZHX hoped to force a large scale engagement between the two Capital fleets.
The eviction attmept culminated in a massive capital and T3 cruiser fleet battle between TDSIN and LZHX, resulting in over 230 Billion ISK worth of ships destroyed.
Initial Offensive
The notion of eviction grew out of a grudge between LZHX and TDSIN, which consisted of taunting from both sides, according to LZHX CEO Hidden Fremen. Accusations increased tensions between the two groups, with LZHX being accused of blobbing, and TDSIN of constantly farming capital escalations.
Initially, LZHX began the invasion by seeding a small force of two Dreadnoughts and a sub-capital fleet. But with the defenders having an estimated sixty Dreadnoughts, hole control would have been difficult for LZHX to maintain.
However, two ganks (one and two) by Hard Knocks Inc. [HRDKX] of TDSIN Capital escalation fleets meant that almost twenty Capitals were cleared out of the wormhole system. Additionally, TDSIN Capital pilots were podded out into known space. Following the Phoebe jump changes, moving Capitals into wormholes has become increasingly difficult, meaning replacing them would take too much time.
These engagements provided the impetus for LZHX to initiate the invasion, quickly taking control of the static connection and bringing in more Dreadnoughts. After gaining control, LZHX attempted to anchor a staging tower to grant temporary protection.
TDSIN seized on this opportunity by dropping a forty-man Dreadnought and Tech 3 cruiser fleet on the aggressors, attempting to stop the tower from anchoring, according to TDSIN CEO ExookiZ.
Although they apparently caught the LZHX fleet off guard, ranged Dreadnoughts and well-positioned warp-ins utilized by the aggressors meant that the fleet was overpowered. Furthermore, the staging tower could not be killed before the force field came online, bouncing the sieged TDSIN Dreadnoughts far away from their supporting fleet.
While ExookiZ commented that the remaining Dreadnoughts were supposed to be out of siege and the bounce saved much of his sub-capital fleet, the few sieged Dreadnoughts were quickly scanned down and destroyed by LZHX.
Another engagement followed shortly after, with a TDSIN Tech 3 cruiser fleet being destroyed on the LZHX staging tower. LZHX winning two engagements at their vulnerable moment of entry proved critical in maintaining hole control for the next few days.
After these two engagements, LZHX began reinforcing the towers, more than fifty of which, were reinforced by their Dreadnoughts.
Hole Control
Throughout the night, LZHX maintained hole control and brought in additional Dreadnoughts through the static connection. Hole control means in wormhole space to maintain a tight control over the wormhole system’s static connection and close all other wormholes to prevent help from arriving.
However, a frigate-sized wormhole opened up into TDSIN’s home, allowing their pilots and more reinforcements to arrive using Interceptors.
According to Hidden Fremen, LZHX and TDSIN leadership agreed in a diplomatic meeting to keep the conflict solely between the two parties. Yet in anticipation of LZHX calling in their allies; HRDKX and Quantum Explosion [QEX], several TDSIN members requested backup from corporations such as Dropbears Anonymous [BAERS] and Band of Magnus [BOBAS].
To access J142528 without control of the static connection was not a matter of just stargate jumps, but the chance a wormhole connection between two systems will form. A source within BAERS revealed that they collapsed their static connection over a hundred times, a practice known as rage-rolling, in the course of six hours.
While their attempts to attain a connection were futile, some BAERS pilots managed to arrive through the frigate wormhole and were subsequently given ships by TDSIN to assist with the defense of the system.
BOBAS achieved success in finding a connection to TDSIN home, but their fleet was caught while entering the wormhole and fell to the combined forces of QEX and LZHX.
The number of QEX members present during this small engagement contradicts a LZHX claim that they only requested help after other groups began to arrive to bolster TDSIN numbers.
Members of HRDKX were initially placed on alert for a LZHX request for help, then subsequently moved to deploy at 22:00 ET on the 26th of April. Reinforcement timers were set to come out at 01:00 on the following day, the 27th of April.
Although the majority of the eviction is spent maintaining hole control and watching the towers, pilots often come in anticipation of the final battle. Sources within HRDKX say that the possibility of a battle caused by a final stand from TDSIN and allies was their main motive in coming to the aid of LZHX.
The members of QEX and HRDKX coming to the aid of LZHX had the effect of almost doubling the size of their sub-capital fleet, with pilot numbers over a hundred as the final moments of the reinforcement timers ticked down.
The two day hole control process saw the arrival of HRDKX and QEX members to aid LZHX. Members from BAERS, Sniggerdly [SNIGG] and other miscellaneous corporations came to strengthen the TDSIN defense fleet.
Fleet numbers on both sides still cannot be confirmed, with LZHX claiming that their capital fleet was outnumbered forty to twenty and TDSIN claiming their sub-capital fleet was outnumbered eighty to a hundred and fifty.
Final Fight
With hundreds of billions in assets on the line, TDSIN and allies decided to make a final stand for their home.
At 01:00 on the 27th of April, the reinforcement timers came to an end. LZHX utilized their twenty-man capital fleet and began destroying towers while the large multi-alliance Tech 3 cruiser fleet remained on the static wormhole in order to continue the hole control, according to TDSIN accounts.
While LZHX were destroying the fourth tower with their capital fleet, the massive hundred pilot defense fleet landed on top of them. Simultaneously, Interdictors bubbled the sub-capital fleet on the wormhole exit. Momentarily, TDSIN’s massively outnumbered the aggressors and a massive capital brawl began on the tower.
With LZHX capitals outnumbered twenty-two to thirty-eight, Dreadnoughts and Carriers were massacred under the immense damage output, as revealed in the battle report. All of LZHX capitals were destroyed while only downing approximately half of TDSIN’s Capitals in return.
However, the tide quickly shifted when the massive sub-capital fleet of LZHX, HRDKX and QEX escaped the bubbles and landed on field with the Capitals. While the sub-capital fleet could not match the damage of Dreadnoughts, the lack of Vigilants and only a small number of Lokis on the TDSIN side meant Dreadnoughts could not apply their damage effectively due to tracking issues.
Furthermore, ECM Tengus jammed out the support fleet while neuting Legions drained the Capital ships of their capacitor. With a decent amount of damage coming from the aggressor’s Tech 3 fleet, the TDSIN Capitals were slowly overwhelmed and destroyed.
With a sub-capital advantage, LZHX and allies managed to hold the field and destroy twenty-six of TDSIN’s Capitals. TDSIN managed to extract their remaining Capitals and a small contingent of their sub-capital fleet back to their vulnerable towers.
The battle report reveals the chaos of the brawl, with almost 120 Billion ISK lost on both sides in a surprisingly even battle. Although TDSIN lost more ships, they fielded relatively cheaper armor Dreadnoughts while LZHX brought the more expensive shield Dreadnoughts, which account for the majority of LZHX’s losses.
In small fights, shield Dreadnoughts offer far more survivability and damage output than their armor counterparts. However, in a large dreadnought brawl, the difference in tank matters little as the capitals rely mostly on their HP buffer to survive as long as possible, thus negating the advantage of the shield tank.
Aftermath
With wrecks littered across the field, LZHX survived with their large sub-capital fleet and only a single Dreadnought which had not participated in the battle.
At this point LZHX leadership decided not to continue and destroy the rest of the TDSIN’s towers, as they had attained the massive brawl they wished for and only had a single remaining dreadnought. Grinding the remaining forty odd towers would have greatly demoralized their pilots.
Although TDSIN lost a massive Dreadnought fleet and some towers, they succeeded in stopping the eviction. However, it is rumored TDSIN will be shortly evacuating regardless, and move to class-5 wormhole space in order to pursue more PVP opportunities.
A 48-hour ceasefire was signed by all parties in the aftermath of the battle to allow for safe evacuation of assets from the wormhole system. Such policies attest to the transient nature of wormhole space relations, with entities helping each other one day, and fighting each other the next.
Consequences
In a Reddit post made by HRDKX Operations Director NoobMan, he describes how such battles and evictions speak to a larger conflict between entities living in class-5 and class-6 wormhole space.
A grudge triggered in the aftermath of the BOBAS eviction by HRDKX, the conflict caused both the attempted invasion of each other’s ISK-making wormhole systems and a war of words on social media sites such as Reddit.
Such conflict effectively ended when alliance No Holes Barred [NOHO] collapsed due to internal problems, with their member corporations moving to class-5 and class-4 space. Other class-6 alliances such as Exit Strategy.. [EXIT] and Merchant’s Trade Consortium [MTCU] also evacuated their wormhole systems.
With TDSIN rumored to be moving, BAERS stands to be the last of the large PVP class-6 corporations. With the support of the null alliance Brave Collective and their sister wormhole corporations, BAERS would be a formidable challenge for any entity to evict.
While the ensuing reddit thread was littered with comments regarding the decline of PVP activity in wormhole space, it is undeniable that such prosperous space give rise to epic and expensive battles.
Image courtesy of Franky Saken of Hard Knocks Inc.
