On the 9th September the forces of The Imperium, namely Fidelas Constans [FCON], engaged Out of Sight. [OOS] in a capital conflict following the reinforcement of the POSs belonging to [OOS] in the N5Y-4N system of Venal.
However, due to the overwhelming force brought to the field by The Imperium with RAZOR Alliance [-RZR-], The Bastion [BASTN], Circle-Of-Two [CO2] and Goonswarm Federation [CONDI] arriving to support [FCON] [OOS] decided to safe up and wait for them to leave. In his report below, Jyanfisk explains that they became aware that The Imperium capitals were left on field in the hope of baiting a drop so they could bring in a supercapital fleet to destroy them. As they were aware of this [OSS] decided to wait and set up a trap themselves as they began travelling back by gates.
The Fidelis fleet consisted of a 70 man tengu fleet and capital fleet with 10 dreds and around 20 carriers. We engaged them at our pos in mqfx with arty machariels, killing some recons, like 6-7, lost few machas. But Fidelis batphoned co2, goons, bastion and razor.
Razor arrived with 100 man fleet, bastion with 50 svipuls, co2 with 120 man fleet, goons with 60 man ferox fleet. They all came to fight our 50 man machariel fleet, so we posed up and waited.
It took them some time to realize they have too much for us to fight, so they all left via gates, leaving Fidelis caps behind in N5Y. Those caps were baiting for a goon super fleet with 16 titan / 26 supercarrier , hoping we will drop dreads on Fidelis in N5Y. But we waited till they got bored, since we had a trap set up for those capitals.
Finally Fidelis jumped their caps out to M2- and started to travel via gates to their home system of BKG, at the same time their tengu fleet was gating back home too from N5Y, 15 jumps away.
Once Fidelis capitals entered warp, we docked and switched to close range neut battleships, undocked 8 dreads and bridged on top of Fidelis caps. We had no time to realise we only had 8 dreads and 20 battleships vs 10 dreads and 15 carriers. We sieged anyway and started to go through their Naglfars and Moros’, putting all neuts on Revs. When we killed all but 1 dread and started to chew through archons, an ncdot fleet of around 70 cynabals arrived to assist us and managed to get on 1 archon killmail.After second siege, we disengaged and extracted our dreads back home, since all those gangs were burning full speed to kill our dreads. We extracted like 30 secs before hostile dictors arrived. NCdot disengaged too and started to travel back home, catching a hostile thanatos a few jumps away from H-A and quickly vaporizing it.
We enjoyed, will do again.
As stated by Jyanfisk, Northern Coalition. [NC] were called in to support [OOS] before additional reinforcements could arrive for The Imperium. According to [NC] fleet commander Poision Kevin “it would’ve been more killing of capitals if it wasn’t for me not paying attention to the convo and being late by 7 minutes than what I could’ve” as he explains below.
We formed for a Goon Harpy fleet moving to MQFX (Us and them). On our way there we ran into a small caracal fleet that died. Kept moving and by the time we were 15j out I was told there was a 110 FCON (Tengu Fleet), with 150 RZR (No clue still), 60 Goons (Harpies) and 50 Bastion (Svipuls) trying to engage Out of Sight.
We went there hoping the Tengus would disappear and so would RZR so we could kill the harpies and svipuls with our cynabal fleet. It ended with RZR disappearing, still got no clue what they were in at this point, goons going home (We missed them by two jumps).
Bastion (Svipuls) and FCON (Tengus) at a total of around 200 hunted us while we moved out of the deadend pipe. On our way out we ran into a CO2 Munin Fleet which we tried to trade ships with but with no success. Moving into 9-2 in Venal with HUGE warp distances 200 AU from the gates we were going. We managed to not make it to the dest gate in one warp, and those who did could easily warp off before hostiles landed due to Cynabal warp speed.
Svipuls/Tengus setup in H-P and we regrouped in 9-2, starting to burn back into the dead end pipe, into N5Y where OOS (Out of Sight) had a titan for us to bridge in on the hostile capitals they had tackled.
It would’ve been more killing of capitals if it wasn’t for me not paying attention to the convo and being late by 7 minutes than what I could’ve. I ended up getting neuted and died to the carriers and after that the other Imperium Caps were piling by gates to come aid those capitals. We caught a Thanny and killed it ahead of his group and were killing an archon but due to no dictors left alive we couldn’t do a drag bubble to stop them from coming in and saving him 🙁
As with every fight there are two sides to each story. Therefore for completion I also contacted [FCON] diplomats who contacted the relevant FCs who kindly provided the information below. Nour Samy was apparently leading his first capital engagement with the support of xPredat0rz.
Nour Samy explained the following:
I’m not the most experienced capital FC and this was among the first 5 capital fleets I had FCed and my first legit capital engagement. My co-fc/backup was xPredat0rz who’s much greater experience greatly affected the outcome of the fight and helped me learn and quickly remedy my mistakes during the engagement and turn the fight around somewhat.
I had seen the OOS cyno in/around our exit cynos for a time before we jumped out and began moving home, and I will admit my route was rather predictable, something I do not plan on repeating. I will give it to OOS, they are very good at what they do, and they are definitely a worthy opponent to test and train my skills against.
We decided to move home together while using fleetwarps and accept the risk of bumps to prevent stragglers, we almost made it too except that on our last outgate to SE- my command archon and another boot archon landed just outside of the gate range and bounced 15km away from the gate, we began re-approaching but it was not quick enough.
My command archon got tackled and immediately A dominix/armageddon fleet began bridging in, I had a cyno on my archon and Xpred was with the main body of the fleet next door, seeing only subs jumping in, I gave a call for the fleet to jump back to my cyno and begin engaging.
This was finally a chance for a serious fight for FCON capitals, and I was not going to let the opportunity go. As our capital fleet jumped back in, OOS dreads jumped in as well. I will admit I froze for a minute, unsure of what to do, but pred interjected and had our dreads siege green and from there on, we were balls to the wall, on our own, and support fleets not within range of immediate assistance.
Shield nags are superior to armor nags, and OOS knows that. Once we realized they were shield nags that OOS decided to drop, we know there was very little we could really do. One mistake was I forgot to instruct our dreads to refit for max tank and buy time. We managed to clear enough dreads off the field for our archons to be able to hold tank and begin forcing the subcaps off the grid while our support fleets were almost there.
Overall, it was a worthy engagement, it was loads of fun, we don’t really care about the killboards in this one, this was the first REAL capital fight we’ve had in I don’t know how long, and it was worth it. Hats off to OOS, they won this round, but we’ll be back, and we won’t make it easy for them ;).
xPredat0rz explains how he saw events unfold:
I was the secondary FC for the cap fleet.
Long story short we extracted to the same system we staged out of which was a bad idea and the route was still in jump range of N5Y, Out of Sights staging. 2 Archons bounced off the gate and were dropped on. One of which was the FC with a cyno fit. Only seeing sub caps initially we jumped in to his cyno to save the carriers. Upon landing hostile dreads were also there. Went Siege green refit for combat and started broadcasting targets.
OOS’s Shield Nags were burning through our armor ones pretty quickly. We lost an archon that did not seem to broadcast quick enough as well. We were tanking and hoping for help with the archons left when NC. Bridged in their cynabal gang. With the fight being so close to the stargate I couldn’t smartbomb away the Battleships drones. At this point we were calling for help and the outcome looked bleak. We were balls to the wall. OOS disengaged though as our tengu fleet was still 3 jumps out and we were able to kill a few cynabals before the tengus jumped in. Once we were regrouped all the hostiles disengaged.
Long story short it was a great trap by OOS. We should have cynoed into that system to begin with and started moving from there instead of going back to a safe tower. Lessons learned. Some line members are excited and hope something like this happens again. Content and brawls are fun. Even if it costs 30b to replace everything.
Overall the fight saw approximately 43 Billion ISK destroyed in the engagement with the Imperium taking the brunt of the losses valued just short of 28 Billion. Even though they ultimately lost the ISK war they didn’t go down without a fight and managed to kill 4 hostile dreads before OOS managed to leave field and extract. By the looks of it, it could be the beginning of many more capital engagements to come as the area does seem to have regular fights even if it is not sovereignty driven. PVP is still PVP no matter the reason.
The overall killboard link can be found here with the additional thanatos mail here.
Thank you to all of those who helped provide the information for the above.
[If you have any comments or intel you would like to provide please contact me at [email protected] or via an in-game mail]
