Round three of the battle to secure a Fortizar in Hakonen ended pretty much the same way that the previous two attempts did, with the Fortizar in question exploding. I sat on grid to watch it after most everybody else has stood down.
One might well paraphrase Wellington for this fight. “We deployed it in the same old way and they blew it up in the same old way.”
The now familiar pattern started as the timer drew down. They first arrived with Machariels and Abaddons supported by Apostles for triage.
Battleships spreading out on arrival
Then a cyno went up and the mass of super carriers and Apostles, with a few titans in support, jumped into the system.
Hostile supers on grid
They in turn put fighters and drones on the Fortizar, stopping the timer at 13m 51s, a point from which the repair cycle never budged.
Timer stopper
We had capitals on stand-by, but did not bring them out to face the super capital gauntlet again. No aggressive drops of dreadnoughts in hope of knocking out a few supers happened. We stuck with sub caps for this round.
I was with the ECM Burst fleet again, hovering on a perch in my Atron, waiting to be warped in on hostiles to break their target locks.
Again my Atron swoops down upon the foe
After a few runs my security status was down to -7.1. I am no longer safe to wander through high sec. I will have to do quite a bit of ratting at some later date to fix that.
Our main striking force was a pair of Typhoon fleets whose progress I could mark from my perch by following the explosions.
Typhoons blowing up, they didn’t align in time
At one point both Typhoon fleets warped in on the far side of the fight, putting the hostiles between themselves and the Fortizar. I put my camera on the fleet as it began to erupt in a near continuous series of explosions.
They did not stay on grid for long, warping off after taking quite a few losses in exchange for a few Machariels. Our defense was called off shortly thereafter.
The fight itself was not plagued by as much time dilation as the previous two rounds, something a people on coms were quick to attribute to the fact that many of the groups in the conflict declared war on each other since the last fight. That was alleged to lighten the load on Crime Watch, though the fact that there were 800 fewer people in local for the fight seemed a more likely explanation to me. The war decs will likely just mean less worry about gate guns firing on people.
The battle report reflects the fact that we spent less time on grid fighting, with total losses adding up to less than 10% of the second fight and only 25% that of the first.
Battle Report Header for Round Three
The ratio of losses remained close to the same 70/30 split of the previous two fights, so we are consistent on that front. We clearly lost the ISK war, but we drew some blood.
As a skeptical line member, whose only insight into overall strategy is what he reads in the papers, I am not sure where this Fortizar plan is headed. It was reported that the fight managed to cover the deployment of a couple more Astrahus citadels in hostiles space. These “roach motels,” as they have been dubbed, are set to be open to anybody, so if you want to camp in Tribute or Vale of the Silent, there are now rest stops where you can tether and repair or dock up for the night.
Attempts to return the favor by dropping citadels in Delve have been thwarted so far.
And even as we were fighting last night, another Fortizar was anchoring in Hakonen.
Aptly named “Another One”
This Fortizar is different in two ways.
First, it is in a slightly different location, since it was deployed while the one that just died was also going online. Everybody will have to make new bookmarks.
Second, it is set to anchor and hit its 15 minute repair cycle during EUTZ, giving out European brethren a bite at the apple and some content of their own. Will Jay Amazingness and the European members of the Imperium fare any better than we in the USTZ have done? I suppose we’ll get the answer about two hours after this post goes live. The fun is supposed to start at some point after 18:00 EVE time.
Anyway, as the line member space tourist, I’ll keep logging on for these fights. It is what I signed up to do. Join the Imperium and see New Eden!
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