The Failed Trap at YZ9-F6

It seemed like a typical op.  We had a couple of Fortizar timers coming up in NPC Delve.  The enemy, having lost three Keepstars there last week, was probably keen to remove those footholds that allowed us to safely jump in the many ships needed for those fights.  Things might have gone differently without them.

I remember the first ping, because it said that we would be forming up at 23:45 UTC, an easily recalled sequence.  That was a quarter to five local time for me, I would be clear of work and able to join in.

There was a mention that the enemy was pinging about this op and claiming that we were pinging for it a lot.  We hear that a lot, intel back from the invaders about what their leadership is telling them we’re up to.  It often seems quite exaggerated, but if they’re pinging and saying we’re pinging, we will end up pinging more just because of that, so there is an odd cause and effect cycle in it I suppose.

When the time came I got into the Rokh fleet that Lazarus Telraven was running.  I named it “Remember the Lazamo” and went with the fleet when it jumped into YZ9-F6.  There we hung out waiting for the timer to count down.

waiting on the Fortizar

As the timer hit, we went through many of the familiar motions as we began to exchange fire with hostile subcap fleets.  Dreadnoughts soon joined us in the field before the structure and a fierce battle began to rage.

Dreads and subcaps on grid

We started out trading blows with the usual TEST Nightmare fleet at extreme range.  We exchanged with them, then started in on some of the heavy interdictors that were on grid.  Laz seemed quite focused on them.  There were a little more than 1,600 players in local.

Brackets drawn with the new UI only mode

Meanwhile, the fight seemed to be escalating beyond what I might have expected for just a Fortizar armor timer.  When dreads were thick on the ground carriers and super carriers began dropping in, with both sides putting them on grid with the Fortizar.

Imperium supers landing

But we had our own battle to fight.  Time dilation went to 10% pretty quickly and as more players showed up in local, responses to commands began to drag out.  I had the outstanding calls window up to watch what was happening and the wait time before calls were handled began to climb.

In the midst of that I had my own close call for the evening.  An Eagle fleet was passing by us at about 5-8km range and the decided to target me.  I don’t know if I happened to be in just the right place or if it was because I put my drones on the FC, but I saw them yellow boxing me.

I broadcast for reps and put the fact that I was being yellow boxed in fleet chat, overheated my shield hardeners, then unlocked all targets.  We were fighting on the Fortizar and if my one minute aggression timer ran down I would simply tether up and become invulnerable.

But a minute long time is very long in time dilation.

I could see the yellow boxes turn to red and I started taking damage before my unlock commands had been handled.  I was worried that the logi wing might have a similarly long wait in order to lock me up and get reps on me.  In moderate tidi the job of the logi pilot gets easier as you have plenty of time to response.  But when the server is backed up and processing commands slowly you are left to the whims of CCP as to when target locks happen and when reps land.

The first reps landed when I was at half shields, but they were countered by more and more of the guns aimed at me finally activating.  I could see the damage numbers zipping past on the screen at an increasing rate.  More and more logi started landing reps on me as well as my aggression counter slowly clicked down.

The race was one.  Logi was slowing things down, but the guns put me into armor, then into hull.  Reps would push back the shields for a bit, but the issue was clearly in doubt and I still had seconds left on the aggression timer.

Reps keeping me alive

And then one of the Minokawas got reps on me and my shields went back to 100% and it looked like I was safe.  The timer ran down and after an agonizing gap I tethered up.  Everybody’s lock on me, attackers and logi, dropped and the Fortizar began repairing my damage.

Upwell structures are op.

Meanwhile there were now about 2,500 players in local and the fight was spread out.

2,500 in local, blues are us, reds the attackers, purple our fleet

The fight carried on, though fleet coms were oddly quiet.  We were asked to keep quiet, which usually means something is going on in the command channel.  But this was more quiet than I had experienced in the middle of an escalating fight.  We were taken off shooting ships and began hitting deployable warp disruption bubbles.

And then some titans landed on grid.  They didn’t jump in though.  There was no cyno.  Instead they warped in and landed spread out.

Titans landing in the fight

I didn’t think anything at the time about the fact that they were spread out or that they had warped in rather than landing on the cyno that had brought in the super carriers.  I was just wondering if we were going all in on a Wednesday night, escalating up to titans.

Later we learned what was up.  This was a setup, a trap to burn up a bunch of PAPI caps and supers by getting them all bunched up and then hitting them with a multi-titan volley from bosonic field generators, the BFG doomsday that does 40K damage to all things in a wide area over a 20 second duration.

And it didn’t work.  The enemy was in place, the titans were in position, the BFGs all fired, but the server cut off the effect after just three seconds, so they delivered less than 15% of the damage that they ought to have.

Asher Elias posted an after action report to Reddit on the plan and how it was setup and pulled off, which I recommend if you want to know the details.

But after that things went badly.  The enemy, seeing titans on the field commenced to undock and throw into battle as many of their own titans as they possibly could, fielding 278 before the fight wound down.  The local count wound up to about 3,200.

PAPI titans jumping in

Meanwhile our own titans, supers, and caps were now lined up to get smacked.  The hostiles went after our titans first, tackling and hitting them as hard as they could.  16 of the 22 were blown up, while six got away.

Ooddell takes multiple doomsday hits, but managed to warp off

We opted to limit our losses.  We shot up what we could on field.  At one point is looked like maybe we might be able to take down one of the enemy titans that had bounced far from the pack.

Welcome citizen

However, that did not work out.  We shot him for a bit, but after not too long the call went out to stop aggression and to tether up.  The enemy went about picking off targets that they could find.

A good day to see doomsdays

At the end of the day the battle report showed that the gambit had cost us a lot.

Battle Report Header

We lost 2.5 trillion ISK  in ships while killing 722 billion hostiles.  That totals up to about what both fights in FWST-8 last week cost all told.  All of this should make a mark on the October MER.

Ship losses from the BR

In addition to 16 titans we lost 28 super carriers, 85 dreads, and 5 carriers.  We did at least knock down almost 200 of their dreads, though they dropped more than 750 of them.

So it goes.  We swung and missed.  Some times the server favors you, some times is trips up your plans and hangs you out to dry.  The war carries on.

CCP said they may have found the issue that caused the problem with the BFGs, but it seems unlikely that we’ll be able to stage something like that again even if they do fix the issue.

The word is that PAPI has dropped another Keepstar in NPC Delve, in 319-3D again.  It managed to deploy, but it should begin its anchoring cycle about the time this post goes list. [I am told the timer starts at 17:18 UTC.]  Expect another huge battle today.

Related:

• Reddit – Asher’s After Action Report
• New Eden Post – Titans Called in as Escalation in YZ9-F6 Hits Fevered Pitch
• INN – Operation Enho: The Valhalla Ride in YZ9

The 49-U6U Fight Foreshadows Battles to Come

A large battle went down last night in 49-U6U, with over 3,000 pilots in system and a trillion ISK in losses.

Right there in Querious

It was a fight over an armor timer on an Imperium Fortizar, one of the structures we still have in that system in Querious.  I joined up with Lazarus Telraven’s Rokh fleet to go out and help defend the timer.

Rokhs on the move

The invaders had been sending out pings to rally the troops for this fight, no doubt feeling a bit stung when, last Friday, they declined to contest the armor timer on this very same structure even though they outnumbered us.  Their advantage then was insufficient.

Last night they got the numbers, outgunning us on the field by about a 2 to 1 margin.

The fight started when the timer finished its count down.  We had subcap fleets on the Fortizar with fax support for reps.  They had subcaps on hand as well, but started dropping dreadnoughts near us almost right away, the first group landing pretty much on top of the Fort.

On the Fortizar

The Rokh fleet started shooting a TEST nightmare fleet and managed some kills but, as the fight escalated and people kept piling in, the server began to stagger under the weight of commands.  And a struggling server can be a capricious factor.  Back at the KVN-36 fight, the node went down and won us the timer.  This time around the node stayed up, but balked at our super carriers jumping in, with a bunch failing to jump and those that made it getting disconnected.

That stopped the battle escalation in its tracks.  Titans were not deployed and the supers started getting pulled back.  The fight devolved to an attempt to kill as many attacking dreadnoughts as possible.  We were told to stop fighting, tether up, and to get to our Keepstar in system to grab an interdictor to hold down enemy dreads.

That was easier said that done.  I sat for about 20 minutes trying to get my drones taken care of… somebody’s smart bomb managed that for me in the end… my guns to cycle down and for tethering to finally grab me.  And it was a near run thing too.  As I was watching the aggression timer count down the last 20 seconds… at 10% speed due to tidi… a hostile Munnin fleet that was rolling through the scrum decided to target me.  I could see their yellow boxes turn to red as their damage started to land on me.  I overheated my hardeners and hoped for the best.  The timer ended and there was a long wait as my shields dropped below half to almost one quarter before tether hit and I was invulnerable.

I’m going to say that tethering is pretty OP, even when it saves my ship.

Then it was just a matter of getting over to the Keepstar… through a field of warp interdiction bubbles.

Bubble, bubbles everywhere

I spent quite a while trying to motor off in a direction that would get me a clear line of warp to the Keepstar.  I went and did the dishes while that was going on.  When I was back it seemed like every time I seemed to be clear, the server would decide that a Sabre had launched its bubble before I had initiated warp and I would be back to trying to get clear again.

Meanwhile more and more Sabres were being bridged in as bubbles when up all over to hold down hostile dreads.

Bubbles all over the place

Eventually I managed to warp off and made it to the Keepstar, but by then it was getting late for me on a work night.  The battle seemed to have reached its crescendo and was now wandering slowly to its conclusion.  I decided to go to bed.

The Imperium lost, undoubtedly and without question.

We lost the objective.  For all of our dread killing the enemy was able to keep applying damage to the Fortizar and it is now set for its final timer this weekend.

We also lost the ISK war by a two to one margin, with the battle report showing us having lost over 756 billion ISK in ships while the attackers lost shy of 380 billion ISK.

Battle Report Header

Two thirds of our ISK loss can be chalked up to the 14 super carriers that we blown up after  jumping in, a tally that includes a Vendetta faction super carrier.  That Vendetta was 19% of our ISK loss in a single ship.  Luckily the two other Vendettas that jumped in got away, or the count would have been much higher.  But that is the risk you take when you allow your pilots to bring their expensive toys to the fight.

The bulk of the enemy losses came from the 90 dreadnoughts that we managed to kill on the Fortizar, close to a quarter of the 375 they dropped into the battle.

And yet, even having suffered an undeniable defeat, things are not downcast on our side of the war.

Yes, people are pissed about how the servers decided to roll this time.  The first post up about the battle was over at INN complaining about that.  However, somebody is always pissed at the servers when tidi goes beyond 10% and things just stop working.  Generally both sides are, as it leads to missed opportunities.

But there is also the knowledge that this fight is a sign of how hard the invaders are going to have to work to defeat us.  This fight wasn’t even in Delve.  This fight wasn’t even on a Keepstar.  This fight didn’t even escalate to titans.  This fight wasn’t even all that consequential.  There is another timer to go.

But this fight was just a taste of what is to come.  This was the first trillion ISK battle in what may end up being a series of them.  The question is who is going to get sick of this sort of thing first?

In the slow motion scrum of battle

Since Vily has declared this to be a war of extermination, I am guessing we’re good doing this at least a hundred more times.  What other choice do we have?

Of course, that idea must weigh on him as well.  If you look at who showed up to the fight you will see that, once again, PandaFam was there doing the heavy lifting, as they have throughout the war.  If they get tired of this and go back home… which is what they did during the Fountain War, abandoning TEST to their fate… the invasion will be over.

That isn’t going to happen any time soon, but neither is the conquest of Delve.  We’ll have to wait to see who can last the longest.

Other Coverage:

• New Eden Post – Timeline of the battle

Losses in Fountain but a Win in Period Basis

Yesterday during EUTZ PandaFam continued its attacks into the Fountain region where a series of ihubs were set to be contested.  At the end of the cycle, they had added ten more ihubs to their total, bringing the number held as of this moment to 17, taking over the entirety of Taurus and Wyvern constellations, including the key gateway system of D4KU-5.

Taurus and Wyvern constellations

Without ihubs, no further Ansiblex jump gates can be deployed by The Initiative in those areas, hampering the ability to move forces there quickly.  This will also allow PandaFam to quickly deploy Fortizars into those area should they wish to move their staging out of Hophib and into the region, or at least set up Ansiblex jump gates of their own to facilitate the advance into the region.

That leaves the Fountain situation looking like this at the moment.

Fountain – July 21, 2020

PandaFam now holds most of the systems in the area circled in red.  The critical transportation backbone for the Imperium runs between J5A-IX at the border of the Cloud Ring region and Y-2ANO, which is the gateway to Delve.  PandaFam’s position puts J5A-IX and C-4NOD at risk of attack.  Both systems have multiple structures, including Keepstars, but they are likely too distant to hope for Imperium titans and supers to save them.  These systems may be the first Keepstar fights of the war if PandaFam pushes that way.

If C-4NOD falls the region isn’t lost, but mobility in the north will be hindered and the long gate connection to KVN-36 will become the front line of the fight.  The fall back from there is Y-2ANO and Delve.  The connection from Fountain lands in ZXB-VC, which will be a tough nut to crack as that falls within a single jump of Imperium titans and supers.

We’re still a ways from that however.  But the first line of defense in Fountain has been well and truly cracked.

Less contentious was the ihub event down in Period Basis last night.  I wrote previously about how we had lost the ihub in XZ-SKZ to TEST, which gave them a potential foothold down in Period Basis.

Where the ihub was

It is on the boarder with Stain, an NPC null sec region with a bunch of Russians who enjoy nothing more than shooting TEST. (Including, it seems, a TEST Fortizar.)  Perhaps not the ideal invasion route, as their jump bridge network connects up to the Paragon Soul boarder and the combined Legacy and PandaFam titan and super fleets are said to be in the two Keepstars in FAT-6P, which is in the Catch region on the boarder with Querious.

We have failed to take the ihub back from TEST a few times, but Legacy hasn’t really done much to exploit the system either.  Their plan still seems to be to drop POS towers somewhere in our space to exploit.  So yesterday a Baltec fleet went up on Lazarus Telraven, famed FC of the Lazamo and the decision to go all-in at B-R5RB, just as I was finally done with work for the day.  I had a Megathron handy so logged in to go along.  We were once again headed for that ihub, which was about ready to be contested yet again.

ihub event in 22 minutes

We set up on the heavily bubbled CJF-1P to try and catch anybody slipping in from Stain to try and defend the ihub.

Parked at the CJF-1P gate

Lighter response fleets were also deployed and enotsis ships to take the nodes as they appeared.

However, Legacy declined to contest the event.  Aside from one Scimitar that had the bad luck to jump through the gate and into a hungry pack of Megathrons, they did not show.  (I am surprised I was quick enough to get on the kill and even applied some damage.)

The event went our way and we had little to do aside from sit around, help Grath Telkin figure out the GSF SRP system, and watch sumo wrestling on Twitch.  I understand that Asher is responsible for the current sumo obsession in the coalition.  It can be interesting to watch, though everything is in Japanese, so I am sure I am missing the subtleties.  (Though the commercials are anything but subtle. A window into a different culture in that I suppose.)

After the ihub was successfully destroyed and replaced, we headed for home.  We were back to the pre-war state in Period Basis for the most part.

Addendum: The New Eden Post has coverage of the changes in Fountain.

Planning the Return to XZ-SKZ

There was a ping for Megathrons and, having one still in my hangar, I cleaned it off and rolled out with that fleet, proudly wearing my Quafe SKIN.

Megathrons on the move

There are probably better, and certainly more vibrant SKINs for the Megathron, but the Quafe SKIN is old and rare and special.  It was one of the first good looking SKINs from a time when CCP was making some really bland ones.  So I wear that.

We were headed down to Period Basis, where we set up shop around the brand new TEST ihub in XZ-SKZ, the one that replaced ours earlier, and did our own entosis time.

Now we’re the attackers

We were unopposed, to the extent that the other fleet with us slipped off into TEST space to reinforce a Fortizar.  The later USTZ seems to be our time.

The timer set, we rolled on back home.  We will have to wait until Friday night USTZ to see if we can replace it with an ihub of our own again.

everything takes time

We will have been through the fight over the TCAG-3 ihub by that point.  Still lots to do.

In other Imperium News, it appears that a few names from the past have come back to play.  Word was that on Asher’s fleet they had Grath Telkin and Lazarus Telraven on board.  Their profiles seem to indicate this is so.

Famous Names

You can add them to Elo Knight, who is also out running fleets with us.

It is heating up like a real war.