One of my in-game names is Dirk Stetille, and I was until recently a senior member and leading FC of a Malpais alliance called Badfellas Inc. Badfellas are a subsidiary of Northern Coalition. and responsible for the initial reactions to sovereignty assaults within Malpais, as well as the defence against major threats to the Brothers of Tangra rental empire. I am here to provide you with an overview of what has been an interesting few weeks in the Dronelands.
In recent weeks, you may have become aware (and if not, here’s a primer) that the Dronelands have come under assault by a number of different parties – V0LTA in Cobalt Edge, the alliances Out Of Sight. and TERRA REGNUM in Perrigen Falls and some probing attacks into Oasa, with Paisti Syndicate making efforts for a foothold in Oasa as well.
This seems to me to be fallout from World War Bee, a realization, now that Goonswarm have been evicted from the North, that Drone space is actually quite valuable. Of course, the reason Drone Walkers joined the war and burned Tenal to the ground in the first place was the rumours of a coming invasion through our Borders with Gurista space.
Getting back to our more recent goings-on, these forces have been organized, mostly overpowering, and above all, they have not stopped. I cannot say what, in actuality, has occurred politically and diplomatically in Cobalt Edge, save that V0LTA were pressing that front hard. I can say for definite that OOS. and TERRA have spent the last week or so reinforcing and consolidating their beachhead in Perrigen Falls, as well as pushing into Oasa. They have removed and replaced POSes from a number of the systems in the TPB-KG constellation in Perrigen Falls – mostly the money moons, R16s and rarer, but almost certainly noting locations of capital construction POSes in order to pause builds with sov attacks. As well as this, they have onlined an Astrahus-class citadel in 01B-88, and last I heard had plans for a Fortizar-class citadel, if they haven’t dropped it already. They have superior firepower in their own time zone, as well as a larger and more experienced cap fleet. They also have super-caps and titans within this area of operation, and have gone so far as to titan bridge response fleets onto anti-entosis harassment.
To rewind a few weeks, on the 23rd of July 2016, my alliance was informed of a timer to kill an Astrahus within allied space. Our initial alliance response was to reinforce allied forces with a drake fleet when we heard about the first Astrahus coming out of its deployment timer. We heard about this event with approximately 4 hours until the timer, and as any of you who were there can attest to, were entirely outclassed once we arrived to fight. (Battle Report – https://zkillboard.com/br/80188/).
After we killed their citadel, they immediately dropped another, in almost the exact position of the previous one, thus generating another timer. This battle, and more precisely the fact that OOS. had annihilated multiple allied fleets and capital ships with approximately 30 Cerberus, some logi, and tackle, whilst only losing a single sabre and the Astrahus hull, prompted a fierce and rapid discussion and dissection of what had occurred within private coalition channels. The end result was that our own disorganization as allied forces, our lack of a unified doctrine and fleet, and our inflexibility when attempting to counter OOS. forces were all identified as having led to this colossal loss on our part.
Having been Badfellas point-of-contact for our allies during this first fight, moving between alliance and blue comms sharing intel, I volunteered to co-ordinate and lead the allied operations for the next timer. I would be our primary FC, with my secondary being an FC within our allies, and my tertiary being another senior FC within Badfellas. With approximately 22 hours till the next Astrahus timer came out, I organized a unified doctrine of armour battleships, mostly Machariels with a mixed bag of other Battleships, had almost every member of our allied forces on a single comms, within a single fleet, and organized to arrive at the same time. We also had PvP-fit capital support on standby, comprising a dreadnought, 3 Faux, and multiple carriers. Arriving on-grid with approximately 4 minutes to go until we could begin to hit the citadel, I received reports of OOS. and TERRA bringing a Sleipnir fleet composition, as well as having both capital and super-capital support available and within jump-range.
The battle report from this fight tells a certain amount of the story, but it is my opinion that they dropped the capital ships was to see if we would counter-escalate, knowing they had super-cap support available if necessary, as well as to guarantee their victory. I made the decision not to bring in our capital ships, knowing that those supers would almost certainly mean the destruction of most of the fleet either way. Once we all cleared grid, OOS. and TERRA had their Astrahus online, as well as their beachhead within 01B-88.
After this loss, I was ordered to stand down and switch my focus by leaders within Badfellas, the same individuals who, within the private coalition channels mentioned earlier, advised a move away from large set-piece battles, changing instead to standard off-TZ harassment tactics and jamming their entosis ships. I attempted to put together a response fleet to the MTO2-2 sov timers, pulling in multiple T3 destroyers, tackle and even a blackbird or two for ECM support. We encountered capital ships on nodes, regardless of the 5x penalty to capital ship entosis, and engaged a Minokawa on the basis we would have a couple of minutes to bash the capital and force the enemy to maneuver before we moved on to other targets. Instead, we found ourselves in a fight for our ships, as a cynosural beacon went up and we had a Cerberus response fleet with various support ships bridged on to us – our first indication of their willingness to use super-capital assets against our efforts. Very few ships survived that engagement, although one of our blackbirds made it home with structure damage, in a surprising turn of events.
fter this point, I largely lapsed out of playing, logging in merely to check mails and chat to people on comms – the lack of impact I had achieved, as well as the politicization of my relations with coalition members and the backlash I received within my own alliance for attempting to help all contributed to my sheer incapability to motivate myself anymore. Despite that, I retained access to various out-of-game communication channels. And I watched as arguments occurred over the following days, on topics ranging from lack of support for defending POSes to a change of communication infrastructure.
This is where my intelligence starts to slip slightly, because this coalition-wide channel collapsed after a flurry of insults were thrown. However, I have used contacts in various places to keep my finger on the pulse. V0LTA have mostly ceased their efforts to push further into Cobalt Edge for the moment, seemingly content to defend their sov and utilize what I can only assume is an alt alliance to take part of the sov burden there, Black Pearl Alliance. This stasis has allowed inPanic to respond to the threats in the other regions of the Dronelands, with their FCs now spearheading coalition fleets across multiple regions and staging from IAMJ-Q in Oasa, attending timers with Cerberus fleets, such as this citadel kill.
Most recently, we have seen movement from both Paisti Syndicate and Circle-Of-Two. Looking at Paisti, they have attacked and killed towers in both Perrigen Falls and Etherium Reach. as well as helping V0LTA engage inPanic fleets in Cobalt Edge. CO2, meanwhile, have been pushing into Malpais in recent days, dropping super-capitals on ratters (https://zkillboard.com/kill/55621483/, https://zkillboard.com/kill/55621634/) and bashing POSes as they find something to kill. Reddit has also heard about a battle between defending forces and OOS. in Oasa, a battle that pit some 80-ish members of OOS. and others against more than 300 allied defenders in KED-20. Here I will only provide a link to the Reddit comments, as the battle reports aren’t exactly accurate with that many different alliances in the fight.
All told, the Dronelands is under a serious amount of hostile pressure, and spending a lot of isk to keep at even the current levels of activity. It is something that I will be keeping a close eye on, being my former place of residence. I also have to wonder if the hostiles in that space will continue their assault – groups such as V0LTA, OOS. and Paisti typically have not held sov, or are not interested in sov within the Dronelands, so they may get bored, instead moving on to areas of more consistent content. The Dronelands has turned into an interesting place recently, and all the signs suggest it will continue to be for some time to come.
