A Keepstar Dies in Catch

The war is over and most groups are back in their homes… old or new… and working on building up for the next struggle.  Out in Delve we have Ansiblex jump gates again and an industrial infrastructure in progress and ADMs on the rise.

But there are still some details to take care of.  While most of the PAPI structures have been cleared out, a Keepstar was still hanging on in Catch, in U-QVWD.  That might have been the most reinforced structure of the war.  The Initiative went after it many times, but it was a key waypoint on the capital highway to the east, so PAPI forces kept showing up to defend it even when they were not doing much in Delve proper.

They even gave it a name to taunt Dark Shines of INIT

But Monday night late USTZ the final timer was coming up for it.  The question was whether or not TEST or PAPI would put any effort into defending it one more time.  It was far from Outer Passage, but not impossible to get to.

The Imperium was not going to take any chances.  Capitals moved out the day before and as tht timer counted down subcap fleets were formed up and sent to Catch.  After all, who doesn’t want to get on a Keepstar kill?

Titans waiting their turn

There was even some chatter about Pandemic Horde doing a flash form and maybe coming our way.  But nothing came of it.  The joke went around that they accidentally jumped to the bait beacon in UQ-PWD like so many of their comrades before.

I had a jump clone and a couple of ships over in Curse in an NPC station just a couple of jumps away, so I grabbed an Ishtar I had sitting around and joined in to watch the fun.

Ishtar watching the Keepstar

I have been a bit under the weather and wasn’t feeling up to being in main fleet, so I did this on my own.  I waited until the Keepstar was down to about 15% then warped in range and took a few distant pot shots at it.  I scored no hits, but you get credit for trying.

The Keep exploded soon there after.

Another one bites the dust

I made it on the kill mail with about 800 of my fellow Imperium pilots.

GSOL, well practiced at this now, swooped in and grabbed the core then salvaged the wreck.

GSOL doing its thing

There is another TEST Keepstar in 0SHT-A, one gate over in Curse.  I am sure that will be next on the list.

 

PAPI Drops a Keepstar in T5ZI-S

Pings went out earlier today for Imperium forces to log on as the invaders were piling up a large number of ships in the T5ZI-S system in Delve, which is just one gate away from the Imperium’s main staging and capital system, 1DQ1-A.

Over the course of the week PAPI had been pushing hard to retake and hold the SPNZ-Z constellation which includes T5ZI-S.

T5ZI-S and 1DQ1-A on the map

On the Imperium side the expectation seemed to be that PAPI was going to take its first run at reinforcing the 1DQ1-A ihub, a necessary step before any serious attack on structures in the system can begin.  The Imperium put battleships and assault frigates on the T5ZI-S gate in 1DQ1-A and bubbled up the gate to slow any attackers.  Capital ships were jumped on to the nearby Keepstar and supercarriers put their fighters on the gate.

Keepstars and Fortizars in 1DQ near the gate

Then word came over coms that PAPI had brought in a Providence jump freighter and deployed a Keepstar in the system, on grid with the 1DQ1-A in T5ZI-S.  PAPI had the gate bubbled on their side and had brought in more than 800 heavy assault cruisers with capital ship support to cover the initial deployment of the Keepstar.

Neither side opted to jump forces into the other and once the initial deployment sequence finished and the 24 hour clock start for the primary deployment, both sides stood down.

The Keepstar now deploying in T5ZI

Now things are lined up for another big fight tomorrow, with the Keepstar coming out to anchor at a little after 17:00 UTC.  Both sides will be planning and gearing up for that.  It will be a weekend fight, so there will be lots of pilots available to get into and fight that develops.  We will have to see if PAPI decides to try and cheese another Keepstar even by using the bubble wrap tactic they went with in YZ9-F6 last month, or if they have something new to try.

And then there is the Imperium.  Do they have a counter if it turns out to be another bubble wrap drop and what other fresh tactics do they have up their sleeve.  We will find out tomorrow.

Bubble Wrap Plan Gets a PAPI Keepstar Anchored in NPC Delve

When I first came here, this was all swamp. Everyone said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built in all the same, just to show them. It sank into the swamp. So I built a second one. And that one sank into the swamp. So I built a third. That burned down, fell over, and then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up. And that’s what you’re going to get, Son, the strongest castle in all of England.

–King of Swamp Castle, who only took four tries to get his castle built

On the bright side, the Imperium didn’t have to sacrifice another trillion ISK in ships.

Today saw the fifth attempt by PAPI to get a Keepstar planted in NPC Delve, this time in YZ9-F6, the site of the failed trap last week.  When the Imperium jumped in and warped to the structure to start the fight, we found it surrounded by 149 warp disruption bubbles.

Bubble wrapped Keepstar

There were also dictors putting up bubbles inside the bubbles and various groups of hostiles deployed around the Keepstar.

When the timer hit zero they managed to get the Quantum Core in right away, so we didn’t even get the free hits we got away with last time around.  But there were so many objects on grid that people were getting disconnected as they warped onto grid.  There was a momentary discussion about what we should do, but the timer was ticking down in real time.  In the end, there did not seem to be a way forward, so after some small clashes we turned around and went home.

Bubble fly by

The battle report shows a very small amount of losses compared to previous battles.

Battle Report Header

I had to go in and fix the battle report to get people on the correct sides.  That is a sure sign that not much happened, when the BR tool doesn’t know where to put people.

We were, of course, out numbered as usual, though not by the margin that the BR might suggest.  There was around 4,500 people in local, so the numbers on the BR are an under count of people who who showed up, since it only grabs people who were on a kill mail.

4,438 in local as the timer started

If you came and left without blowing something up (or getting blown up yourself), you were not added to the tally.

Bubbles in bubbles with more bubbles showing up

So PAPI has their foothold in NPC Delve.  Now where will they go from there?  Have they changed their mind about avoiding our Keepstars?  Or has the past two weeks of fighting in NPC Delve convinced them that would be a bad idea?  Either way, some of us got most of our Sunday back to do other things.  But somebody had to hang around and clean up those bubbles.

Other coverage:

• New Eden Post – PAPI Keepstar Fully Operational in YZ9-F6, NPC Delve

A Costly Imperium Victory at FWST-8

The map in EVE Online currently shows one big hot spot if you go to statistics and click the option to show ships destroyed in the last 24 hours.

That big orange ball in Delve

Over at DOTLAN it shows the most violent null sec system of the last 24 hours to be FWST-8, where more than 10K ships were destroyed.

Delve is a dangerous place

Yesterday I mentioned the destruction that happened when the Imperium killed the first Keepstar that the invaders dropped in FWST-8 in NPC Delve.  I also mentioned that they dropped a second Keepstar that could be attacked shortly after that post went live.

NPC Delve and vicinity

Yesterday was the return to battle in FWST-8 as the Imperium once more went all in to defend Delve from the invaders.  Shortly after 17:00 UTC the Keepstar finished its deployment and went into its anchoring phase, during which there was a 15 minute window in which it could be simply blown up in one pass with no future timers.

With a days notice to prepare, both sides were ready to contest this 15 minute window.

I took a little break from work and joined in for the first wave of the attack, going with the Rokh fleet.  We were bridged in early, as FWST-8 is a single titan bridge from 1DQ1-A, the Imperium’s main staging and capital, and waited for the timer to count down.  Tom Flood gave us instructions and warped us on grid when the time was ripe.

Of course, there were many people in system, so time dilation was down to 10%.  The past official record for one battle, the one certified by Guinness, was 6,142 players in the battle at 9-4RP2, the infamous million dollar battle.  There is no doubt a methodology required to assess exactly how many players are in a system and connected and active, but I did see local well exceed that number early on.

6,446 in local

I am not sure if that qualifies for a record, but it was a lot of people.

With all those people and things slowed down, Imperium forces did not arrive on grid and put enough damage on the Keepstar until almost seven minutes had run off the clock.  While everything else runs at 10% speed, the actual time runs in real time, so a slip up can cost a lot of time on the clock.

Warp disruption bubbles drawing as we arrive on grid

I was in full “potato mode” with graphics turned down to keep my client from bogging down trying to draw everything in sight in high detail.

We successfully stopped the clock at about 8 minutes and kept fire on the Keepstar.  As long as the structure was getting enough damage the clock would stay frozen, so we could not slacken our pace.

The first pause point

The enemy was out in force as well and clustered around the Keepstar to defend it.  Our job was to shoot the structure, their job was to shoot us.  When we were blown up and ended up back in 1DQ1-A, we had to re-ship and get back in the fight.  In this way the Imperium kept cycling ships, ranging from frigates to dreadnoughts, into the fight as losses mounted.

After I lost my first Rokh, I stopped and went back to work, but the battle kept going.  I peeked in on the INN live stream of the battle every once in a while and saw the Jabber pings keep rolling by as more and more people got into fleets to attack the Keepstar.

Later, when I was done with work, I jumped back in.  One of the fleets we were using was made up of ratting doctrine ships, Myrmidons and Gnosis, which were thrown on grid at range to send their drones in to attack the structure as they tried to burn out of ranged to avoid retribution.  I threw an alt in to try that.

Gnosis on grid

That Gnosis did not last too long.  I had better luck with the Rokh, which required you to use a bookmark that put you 200km off the Keepstar, within range of the fit with the sensor booster running a targeting range script.

You had to land, align back out, lock up the structure, shoot, then warp off once the hostiles started to lock you up, a process easier said that done.  Each step of that could take minutes and it the bads started shooting at you, their guns would keep cycling while you sat there waiting for the server to pick up your command to warp off.  I died a few times for want of attention from the server.

Also, I learned the hard way not to accidentally click on an overview tab that has brackets on.

So much stuff on grid!

That locked up my client for a minute as it worked that out.  It was a good thing I was on a distant perch and not in range.  I might have been blown up before it drew all those brackets.

I had my main and my prime alt alternating with Rokhs.  Progress was being made on the Keepstar, but it was slow going.

As the day wore into evening at my end, the enemy switched up and sent their subcaps to our staging Fortizar in the system to bubble it up.  That was where we were bridging in, so warp disruption bubbles there would keep us from getting to the Keepstar.

Bubble battle at our Fortizar

That came scarily close to working.  Our fire on the Keepstar slackened enough that the timer started up again and two more minutes ran down before we got enough fresh ships back on grid to stop it again.

Second Pause Point

The grind went on.  As the hours went by people in Europe dropped out for the night as more people from the US joined in.  The total players in system began to sag.  The high water mark was not held for long, but it carried on close to 6,000 for quite some time.  As the evening turned to night that number dropped to just below 5,000 as sightseers and the tired left.  But the battle carried on.

My biggest mistake was accidentally warping straight to the Keepstar.  The server didn’t pick up my abort, but I managed to load high damage, short range ammo and get in quite a few hits before I was blown up.  I don’t think they expected that.

My pod on the structure after my Rokh died

After losing half a dozen Rokhs, I switched over to bombers.  There was a dedicated group throwing bombs from stealth bombers, good for 6K of damage each launch, while trying to stay alive.  You can uncloak, bomb, warp off, and cloak up again if your good and if the server picks up your commands.

It was then that the big panic of the night happened.  The enemy had brought in titans to kill our dreadnoughts faster.

Enemy titans arriving

We slipped again and the timer started counting down once more.  All bombers were ordered on grid to shoot their bombs and then use their torpedo launchers to get enough damage on the structure to stop the clock.

We managed it, with losses, but the clock was now down to under two and a half minutes.  Another slip and the Keepstar would likely be save.

The third pause

This was especially agonizing not only because hours had been spent on the attack, but we were also about 80% done.  We just had to stick it out.

The target remains

I could not however.  After about six hours of constant runs on the Keepstar it was getting late and I had work in the morning.  I called it a night at about the 90% mark, even as pings were going out for more people to join in.  I was in a bomber in system, so I warped off to a safe and then found I couldn’t safe log because the 15 minute timer was still running down… at 10% speed.  So I just cloaked up and left myself in space.  I left Jabber up as well and I saw the ping in the morning announcing that the Keepstar had been destroyed about an hour or so after I went to bed.

But the cost. My loss tally will be up significantly come the next weekly war summary.

The battle reports are all muddled due to so many groups showing up to fight or just gawk.  But it looks like the Imperium lost over 1.5 trillion ISK worth of ships, with more than 5,500 ships destroyed in the fight according to one battle report.

Battle report header

It also shows that we did that even as we were outnumbered.  It wasn’t us swarming a smaller group, but us throwing ourselves repeatedly against a larger force.  And, as with the last battle, the kill mail for the Keepstar itself went missing, so you can add 187 billion ISK to the attackers.  They also lost 3 titans getting to the battle.

The details from another battle report show the ships that were sacrificed in the fight.

The Imperium is Team 1 on this chart

One fleet running for a while was Asher handing out Vexors with drones for people to fly in and attack the Keepstar with.  You got your Vexor, insured it, got it into battle, got blown up, and collected some free insurance ISK.

Our foes are feeling pretty good about killing so many of our ships.  But that wasn’t the real point of the battle.  The point was to show how hard we will fight when then step into Delve.  A lot of hay has been made about “flood plains” and how we let Fountain and Querious go without throwing in for a big fight.

But now we’re in Delve and we are ready.  Some propaganda was immediately forthcoming.

Welcome to Delve

Now we are restocking our supplies and getting ourselves ready for the next round.  The invaders want to advance by dropping Keepstars rather than by attacking ours, no doubt thinking their superior numbers would make this a safe way to get into Delve.  Now they know they will have to commit to a huge fight with every step on that path.

I am sure both sides now are planning out next steps and digesting lessons learned.  A third Keepstar drop is expected.

Related items:

• INN – Live Blog of some of the battle
• INN Twitch – The 14+ hour continuous coverage of the battle
• Razorien – Screenshot gallery from the battle

The Last Keepstar in Tribute Falls as We Look for More Targets

Another Northern Coalition Keepstar was destroyed as I slept.

The Keepstar in SH1-6P, formerly the PanFam staging citadel to defend Tribute, was destroyed at 09:45 UTC, which was about a quarter to three in the morning for me.

Keepstar Kill Mail

The Keepstar was gunned and got some kills, including a dreadnought and a carrier.  But, as with the Keepstar in P3EN-E, the rigs pulled in advance to minimized the value listed on the loss at ZKillboard.  The destruction was seen as inevitable by both sides.

Even at that hour of the day more than 1,000 pilots were on the kill mail.  I suppose it helped that the coordination team pinged about the op every hour on the hour, doing a count down to the op.

That was the last Keepstar in Tribute and, while I haven’t done a survey of the region, it feels like we are running out of targets there at this point.  The last I check the war tracking thread in the forums, which lists out every structure kill and charts progress on ihub destruction, it did not seem like there was much left in the region.  Certainly the operational tempo of the deployment has slackened greatly in the last few days.  As late as last Thursday I was able to catch a couple ops every evening.  Over the weekend that seemed to drop off dramatically.

There are still things to do.  Vale of the Silent may still have targets for us, though we quickly get beyond two super jumps from our staging as we drive into that region, which makes things awkward.

And there is the cleansing of the structures of PanFam front and/or ally Mogul Financial.  Several of their structures in Tribute have been destroyed already and the coalition has declared war on them so as to be able to hit their structures in low and high sec space.

But after that I am not sure where we will head.  It is possible that we will get the order for a huge move op home in the next week or two, so we can resumed mining and ratting and chasing interlopers in the manner to which we have become accustomed.  For me that will mean going back to SIG/Squad ops out in the east somewhere.

Or maybe GSOL will drop a Keepstar in some place crazy like Y5J-EU, from which we can burn the far side of Vale of the Silent, some of Geminate, and be able to jump to the system that has that gate to The Kalevala Expanse.  That doesn’t seem likely.  It would certainly stretch our logistics.  But it could happen I suppose.

If I were betting money on it though, I would guess we will be headed home in a couple of weeks.

Keepstar Nocturnal Mission

I was up because it was hot.  It had peaked over 100 degrees in the afternoon in Silicon Valley, and even as midnight approached the temperature hung in the mid-80s.  It was too warm to get to sleep easily, so why not just stay up and see a couple of Keepstars blown up?

Given how long they have been around, there haven’t been that many Keepstar kills.  The list of losses over at Zkillboard isn’t that long, even if you add in the couple that didn’t register correctly.  I’ve been around for a few of the kills… including multiple Circle of Two Keepstars… but it is still something of a special event to see one explode.

And that was my initial plan.  Very low commitment.  I was just going to slip into M-OEE8 with an alt in a stealth bomber and watch the fireworks there.  We had a couple of citadels parked around the target, so I could tether up and watch.  So nearly an hour ahead of time I was setup and watching.

The M-OEE8 Keepstar awaits

There were actually multiple targets on grid, but only one really mattered, and the timer was counting down.

Other targets on grid, with blues on their own citadel

That would let me watch one Keepstar, but there was a second one in 0-YMBJ that was set to come out about 30 minutes after the first.  For that one I logged in with my main.  The target was just one jump over from our staging, so I would just stealth bomber over to watch that one as well.

And then the calls for fleets started going up.  There were nearly 2,000 pilots logged into our staging system, and I decided to go with one of the Baltec fleets.  I already had a Megathron.  That would get me on a kill mail or two.

But then they needed logi… somebody always needs more logi… so I bought an Oneiros, put on the Emergency Response SKIN, stuffed a Bouncer and four Warrior IIs in the drone bay and undocked.

Oneiros ready to go

Sothrasil was our FC, and he warped us off to the Athanor off the undock, then back onto the titan that was going to bridge us.  However, everybody was so anxious to go that there were dozens of titans crowded in and it was tough just to click on the correct one.  The call had to go out for titans to dock back up because they were bumping the bridging titans.  We got to hear about that because it was another operation with all fleets on the same voice coms.  But things did clear up for us and we were bridged into M-OEE8.

And from there we gated one system over to E-OGL4 to shoot a Fortizar that was already out.  We landed in close enough that I was able to put a Warrior II on it before we anchored up and motored well out of drone range.

You can almost see the Fortizar

That went placidly as nobody bothered to gun the Fortizar until it was almost dead.  When somebody did show up they turned on the PDS and killed my drone, but the structure was down to 5% at that point, so I was on the kill when it exploded.

The Fortizar explodes as we align out

Meanwhile, back in M-OEE8, more ships were piling in.  Super carriers were putting fighters on the Keepstar the warping to tether up while a range of third party fleets from TEST and Dead Coalition… and even a couple of NC/PL ships… were hanging about watching the structure get chipped away, waiting for their moment to get in range to take a few shots so as to get on to the kill.

Supers strewn about the field

Sothrasil brought us onto the Fortizar on grid with the Keepstar where we tethered up and waited our turn to take a shot at the big target.  One person in our fleet, alleged to be a non-English speaker, warped off to the Keepstar to get his shots in on his own and was blown up for going off on his own.  About the same time a carrier pilot in an Archon trying to control their fighters ended up warping to the Keepstar and was likewise blown up.

Archon sacrificed at the altar of the Keepstar

Somebody ran out in a blockade runner to try and look the wreck, but I don’t think they made it out safely.

Caught grabbing the loot

My alt in his stealth bomber decloaked and put some torps into the Keepstar, then warped back to tether up and watch the outcome.

Sothrasil then had us align and we warped in to take out shots.  I dropped the Bouncer II I had brought along and set it to firing a few rounds before scooping it up.  We then aligned back just as the call for the titans to jump in came over coms.

Our little fleet visible as the titans land in front of the Keepstar

Asher was directing the titans.  The plan was for them all to land and then use their doomsday weapons in order to send off the Keepstar in style.  It didn’t quite go to plan… people shot their

weapons early… but it still looked pretty neat.  I put my camera on the Keepstar and got some pretty shots through the uprights.

Doomsday beams of many colors

A bunch of screen shots were posted in chat, so I’ll link to some of those if you want to see more of that moment.

• Titans landing
• In the titan pack
• Titans on grid
• Firing through some Baltecs
• Doomsdays starting to fire
• The titans in a blue glow
• Full firing
• More firing
• Doomsdays going
• Keepstar blows

The Keepstar blew up, most everybody got on the kill mail (more than 1,500 people recorded), the titans got their money shot, the operation was a success.

Keepstar blows up

Now there was just the matter of the other Keepstar, now out of its timer and repairing, eight jumps away.  When the M-OEE8 Keepstar blew I immediately sent my alt in his bomber off towards the gate to get to the next target.  For the first couple of gates it was like swimming through molasses due to time dilation, but it soon cleared up and he was moving quickly.  Fortunately there were no gate camps.

Over in 0-YMBJ a fleet of carriers had been sent to put fighters on the Keepstar to stop the repair timer and chip it down to get it ready for the kill.  However, the fighters had been doing a very effective job and there wasn’t much left to shoot when my alt arrived, and he was there ahead of the whole fleet sitting in M-OEE8.

Calls were made to pull some, then all fighters as the fleets began jumping in.  People were getting antsy about getting on that second kill so, despite being told to take a shot and stop firing, people blazed away with all they had.  As titans landed, more doomsdays were set off, without much regard to who might be in the way.

Somebody blowing up in the pack

I put my alt in range and set torpedoes flying, but my main was still in M-OEE8, sitting on a titan waiting for the bridge to go up.  Meanwhile people were calling the percentage left on the Keepstar, getting everybody worked up.  The call was 8% left when our bridge finally went up.  But there was traffic control and many of us stayed in the jump tunnel for a long time.

When I finally landed, there was only 2% left on the structure.  I immediately dropped my Bouncer II and set it on the Keepstar.  I was just in time, but others in our fleet landed too late.  The Keepstar quickly exploded.

The second Keepstar blows

Still, more than 1,500 people were on that kill mail as well.  I managed to get on there with both accounts.

After that it was just a matter of getting everybody home.  On the bright side, we were all just one gate from our staging.  On the downside, it was now 1:30am local time for me… and much later/earlier some others… so people were sluggish about getting going and the subcaps had to sit around and make sure that all the big stuff got out safely.

The Mittani got on coms… it must have been 3:30am for him, though he is younger than I… and congratulated us on the kills and said that we needed to work out how to move this many people around between kills, since some people didn’t get on both as promised.

We were later informed that, with these two Keepstars, the total value of structures and ihubs destroyed in Tribute now exceeded 1.7 trillion ISK.  Somebody is going to have to go kill a lot more Rorquals back in Delve if they want to claim that equal damage is being done back there.

Slowly but surely the capitals drained out of 0-YMBJ and we were able to go home ourselves.  We docked up, I logged out, and then headed off to bed.  It was still hot in the house, but it was a little less so than earlier and I was now tired enough to drop off to sleep.