Less than a month ago, Snuffed Out were the victims of a trap which ultimately resulted in the loss of ten supercarriers and countless other ships, in one of the bloodiest engagements in recent history. Over half a trillion ISK worth of ships were destroyed in the battle of Nagamanen.
Since then, Snuffed Out have been methodically plotting their revenge for the defeat. At the time, Snuffed Out diplomat Capitol One warned that “[the alliance] would be back, stronger than ever.” After several weeks of patient planning, an opportunity finally presented itself.
According to Capitol One,
“[The battle] was…an elaborate trap. We’d been toying with the idea of baiting out TISHU supers for a while but it’s hard to make it convincing.”
He added that
“[Snuffed Out] had been thinking about killing TISHU supers before [the battle of Nagamanen], but that definitely made us more eager to do it.”
Knowing they’d have to provide particularly juicy bait, Snuffed Out contacted both Gallente and Caldari militia forces, and crafted a scheme which involved a false-flag attack by Gallente dreadnoughts on a Caldari POS. With the trap laid out, a militia player contacted Psychotic Tendencies for “assistance.”
Seeing a chance at several relatively easy capital kills, TISHU quickly began scouting for a potential counter-drop. Aware that Snuffed Out were undoubtedly looking to get revenge for their losses last month, Lex Arson, leader of Psychotic Tendencies, notes that TISHU “scouted their staging system” and found nothing. He added,
“[Snuffed Out] were set up to kill supers. They had moved to a different system to avoid being scouted.”
Log-off traps are a staple of baits in EVE Online, but it is rare that they are as successful as this one was. At the time of writing, an anonymous source reported that Snuffed Out had been scouted by another lowsec entity during their preparations, but either this information was not passed on to Psychotic Tendencies before they jumped in, or the scout failed to observe what was actually in the works.
In this case, Snuffed Out were waiting in bridge range of the system they expected TISHU to jump into with a large force of heavy interdictors, dreadnoughts, anti-fighter carriers, and triage. The force was carefully designed specifically to counter TISHU’s supercarriers. In addition, a large force of Tech 3 Cruisers belonging to Waffles were present and ready to lend assistance.
With everything in place, it was only a matter of time before the action began. As soon as TISHU jumped into system, the Gallente militia dreadnoughts left the field. Snuffed Out and their allies were quickly able to get initial tackle on the supercarriers. This was all that was needed to kick off the fight, and Snuffed Out players rapidly logged back into EVE.
Bridging into the system, Snuffed Out were quickly able to get the supercarriers locked down. Though one did escape, eight more were trapped on the field by a large number of heavy interdictors. The ninth was freed only by the desperate efforts of Psychotic Tendencies subcapitals, who did an excellent job applying pressure on just the right targets. Though TISHU attempted to target these ships, they had very few subcapitals to support, and most of these were quickly destroyed.
In addition, Snuffed Out made tremendously effective use of the new anti-fighter carriers. According to Capitol One,
“We set up combat carriers to defang their supers.”
Lex Arson noted that Snuffed Out were perfectly set up to counter the supercarriers, and thus there was little hope of escape. Additionally, he said that
“We were pretty far from home and our rage-ping numbers were pretty low, plus most of our regular doctrines are staged in cloud ring while the alliance is on a deployment in Saranen, so there wasn’t a lot we could’ve brought.”
By the end of the battle, several other groups had dogpiled onto the remaining TISHU supercarriers. A large fleet of Goonswarm Federation Hurricanes arrived, shooting the supercarriers before engaging forces belonging to the Moneybadger coalition that had also joined in on the fun. Several groups, including Pandemic Horde and The-Culture, were present with Tech 3 Destroyer fleets.
Though there are undoubtedly other locals who would have enjoyed nothing more than another battle against Snuffed Out, Psychotic Tendencies’ supercarriers ultimately died so quickly that there was little hope anyone could have responded with anything close to the necessary force. Capitol One described the one-sided battle as “a very satisfying dunk.”
Though they had been dealt a stinging defeat, Lex Arson was very upbeat when discussing the battle, saying
“You win some, you lose some. [TISHU] have plenty more supers where those came from. [Snuffed Out] and TISHU are both wealthy enough and well-connected enough to quickly replace super losses like that.”
Lex’s Hel was one of the supers destroyed, finally falling after getting a remarkable seventy kill marks. He also praised Daklan, who fell with forty-five kill marks.
Capitol One noted that the victory was only possible thanks to exceptional teamwork by a variety of different groups. He praised players from both the Gallente and Caldari militias for helping to set up the trap, as well as noting the contribution of Waffles. Several Snuffed Out pilots saluted fleet commander d0nniedark0 for his contribution to the plan, with Romandra of Snuff Box commenting that it was “beautifully executed.”
This battle marks the second time in less than two weeks that a large force of supercarriers was destroyed in the region. With Black Rise, Lonetrek, and the Citadel seeing so much action recently, players from both sides will undoubtedly look for more chances at such destruction in the near future. You can view the final battle report here. You can also view a video of the battle here, from the perspective of Snuffed Out.
