On the 17th October a Capital fight occurred in the system of Huna, Aridia. The fight involved the majority of the low-sec Russian entities in the region including alliances such as LowSechnaya Sholupen [-LSH-], Darwinism. [DRWIN] and Infernal Octopus [DBLOC], who were attempting to destroy part of Northern Coalition. [NC]’s super capital force.
It initially began when a small gang consisting of 8 Dreadnoughts, with roughly 10 Proteus and Guardians in support, began reinforcing a Burning Napalm [SM3LL] R64 POS in the system of Fobiner. As they began engaging the tower the super capital forces of [NC] prepared to engage whilst acquiring as much intel as possible on what they may have in support. [NC] was not completely prepared by the time they had finished but fortunately they travelled next door to Huna and once again began engaging more towers which belonged to The Northerners [N8RTH].
However a week earlier in the system of Ghekon, over another [SM3LL] R64, the same group of Russian alliances attempted to kill a [NC] super capital by using a bait fleet on a POS before jumping in a selection of armor Macheriels with neuting battleships in support. They were nearly successful as the target was a Leviathan class titan, the only shield class super-capital fielded by [NC], which only had the shield transfers from the Nyx class super-carriers to keep it alive. The tactic of bumping the titan away from it’s fleet very nearly succeeded but it was ultimately saved as Russian battleships began to fall one by one. A link to the battle report can be found here.
Following on from the above [NC] expected a similar bait scenario as it is well known that any possible support fleet for [NC] is many regions away if mass jump clones are not used. To ensure that the same mistakes were not made this time a decision was made to keep all shield tanked super-carriers away from the field. With the hostiles entering their second cycle on tower in Huna the call was made to begin moving the armor super carriers via gates to the system of Defsunun where they could cyno directly onto the dreadnought which was currently tackled by the POS. Prior to moving towards the engagement [NC] Fleet Commanders noticed a large number of pilots in space in Querious, further enforcing the thoughts that this was certainly setup as a possible trap.
Once the cyno was lit the armor super capitals jumped into system as the FC hit the “regroup” button moving all vessels in space towards his location. Fighterbombers were deployed and dreadnoughts began to be primaried with the first destroyed shown below.
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Shortly after the cyno beacon was lit by [NC] the Russian entities lit a beacon of their own, bringing in a “dread bomb” with a Cerberus fleet in support who seemingly travelled via a wormhole. They then began focussing their firepower on a Nyx who slowly but surely began losing armor hitpoints. To make sure that the Nyx lived the titan class super-capitals, including those with shield tanks, were ordered to travel to Defsunun where they could jump into system and begin volleying dreadnaughts off field using their Doomsday weapons as they jumped in. Below shows the first dread Doomsdayed by an Avatar from [SM3LL].
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At the same time as this kill occurred [NC] had their first and only capital loss of the engagement. A triage archon piloted by White Aero who was brought in to provide additional repair support on the Nyx though he was quickly removed from grid by the large firepower of the remaining dreadnaughts on field.
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As more and more titans came into system and began destroying the remaining dreadnoughts the Nyx gained armor and was completely saved. The only remaining ISK lost by [NC] came from the large amount of fighters and fighterbombers destroyed by the Cerberus support fleet on field. With the last dreadnought destroyed a selection of sub-capitals began to be primaried, with the final kill being the Tengu shown below.
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I contacted both entities who provided me with the following.
Travis Musgrat, FC for [NC]:
So our spy’s in 4-5 different alliances told us that they were going to try and tag team us. Our spy’s told us the exact fleet numbers of the LSH bait fleet, coven/stain fleet, v-3 rus fleet, as well as fcore fleets (had more than one alt in each of these). They even were kind enough to tell one of our spy’s to have a dread ready for a secret ~thing~ at the same time as their posted rf op.
We saw fcore in fountain, coven forming in stain and v-3 rus in querious all ready, as well as the 35 dreads for the dread bomb so knew they were actually dumb enough to try this.They started shooting a POS and we logged in 30 seconds into their first siege cycle about 50 supers/titans. It was out of direct range so we waited for a second seige cycle but I was hesitant since I really wanted to not get into a tidi fest since I was supposed to be watching football at the time. I graciously allowed them to do a third seige cycle to rf the tower and then spy’s told us they would be kind enough to do another tower next door to the first one.
I decided to just take supers, so when they hit seige on the second tower we started burning 4 gates to get in range. To be perfectly clear they knew perfectly well we had 80 supers/titans logged in and in fleet when they hit seige on the second tower.
To get in range, it was 4 jumps so they were out of seige by the time we were in range. They just sat their out of seige since they were bait so we jumped in and started hazing dreads. They decided to bring in their dread bomb at 300km so every 2 dreads we killed another 2-3 warped down, since they bumped pretty bad on the jumpin. One nyx got to about 40% armor but we were clearing dreads quickly so he was ok. We started bringing titans over and just rek’t all of them.Any nerd with google translate and a rus proxy can get an alt into lsh, or any of those other rus groups so we kinda lol’d when they actually dropped dreads. Plus fountain core isn’t a real alliance and is basically just a alliance full of alts(spy’s) so idk why they expected it to go any different than it did.
3Better from LSH provided the following to reports:
Ghekon Fight:
So this OP was based on the moment when [NC] tried to drop LSH dreads which were seiging the Ghekon tower at friday that week. It was decided to use only a small amount dreads only as a bait. The DPS group should consist only of armor battleships. Due to the organisational fuck ups and less than 24 hours for preparations our numbers were low. Nonetheless, the OP wasn’t cancelled (even though I suggested the opposite).
When the bait dreads were exiting warp, [NC] supers started logging in, which could only mean one thing – they knew we’re going to bait them. As the dreads made their first shots, [NC] opened the cyno and 12 titans jumped in. Soon after our allies were in warp to a bridge titan, while the aridian fleet picked the only shield titan on grid. With the allies ongrid levi got neuted out and began melting. Meanwhile [NC] started bringing supers to the fight. A minute later or so, the aeons had stabilized the levi’s capacitor who had ~45% shield at that moment and we realised we lost the chance. With the arrival of [NC] subcapitals, the aridia\fountain fleet started leaving the field.
Huna Fight:
With the failure of killing that levi where even a blind person could see that should we had even a handful of dreads on standby the levi would have died, the masterminds of LSH came up with a new “tricky” plan to bring MOAR. More subs, more dreads. The rest was generally the same. Soon after the bait group started bashing an R64 tower, [NC] titans and supers started blinking green in the watchlist, but this time they weren’t in a rush to drop us, but simply kept logging more and more armor supercapitals. As we reinforced (5 cycles) the dyspro tower the gang went to another R64 next door. [NC] weren’t so bold with titans this time and began taking gates (we weren’t in the direct range of them this time) with supers only.
Many people were invited on the party, so we decided to try give a fight anyway (a lost fight better than no fight at all). On the second cycle of sieging a huna R64 the supers cynoed in. The primary was called, orders were given to get on bridging titan. Due to some miscommunication the blue cyno was lit at the perch, so the dreads had to take a warp before sieging, and what is even worse, several dreads sieged right out there (the dudes are bad). The primared nyx was slowly melting (too slow) the dreads were dying. Some minutes later it became clear that no supers are gonna die here, but it was already too late. the titans now appeared on grid and started activating their DD. With the death or extraction of the dreads, the subcaps left the field.
Overall the Russian forces lost a total of 38 dreadnoughts with a total ISK loss of approximately 110 Billion in total. This report shows the last 29 destroyed equalled 82 Billion in losses which I then added the initial 9 of 27.8B. Clearly even though [NC] lost only 1 Archon at a value of 2.16 Billion ISK this does not include the large amount of ISK lost in fighters and fighterbombers which have an average of 30 Million ISK per drone. This dscan shows that 43 supercarriers and 27 titans were fielded. So if each supercarrier lost on average 5 fighters and fighter bombers it would equal 430 lost at a value of 12.9 Billion ISK. Clearly this is impossible to know exactly but either way it shows that there was a drastic different in the ISK destroyed/lost by each side which could have been quite different had [NC] lost a supercarrier or titan as they do not have the payout a platinum insured dreadnought does. On average it costs 700m for platinum insurance with a payout of 2.3B. Therefore, without including the cost of the hull/fit, they could have received roughly 60 Billion ISK in insurance – over half of what they lost. However the morale and ISK efficiency victory still clearly goes to [NC].
The question is, will it happen again? What will be there next tactic if so? We shall be sure to keep you informed no matter what happens.
A video for the first fight is shown below:
A video for the Huna fight is shown below:
With an additional one found here:
[If you have any comments or intel you would like to provide please contact me at [email protected] or via an in-game mail]
