On Tuesday 26.1.10 the rent for Tactical Control Units (TCUs), the structures that determine sovereignty on 0,0 systems, seeded by CCP with the Dominion expansion became due. Some Alliances had taken care of the bills in advance, some were prompted by the eve-mail three days before, some had enough money in the correct Corporate wallet division to cover the costs.
Three alliances were too disorganised to pay and sovereignty dropped in some of their systems. For the Goons, the largest alliance in Eve at the time this triggered a failure cascade that led to them abandoning their space empire to their old rivals: Bob, now known as the IT Alliance.
I present to you here a fascinating account by one of the invading Alliance leaders.
Dearest Filthy Killers;
I just awoke from some sleep after what has been one of the most amazing days of Eve I have ever experienced. It all begun on monday when our Titans and Supercarriers warped boldy onto the field in D-G to take down the jammer. What proceeded to happen over the next 30 hours was pure chaos and ecstasy in motion.
Timeline
Mon 25
19:00 -19:10 Titans & Supercarriers take down D-G jammer
19:10 -21:00 Friendly forces bridged into D-G from multiple titans. During this time multiple skirmishes and pos bowling happened in D-G. Hostiles will to fight was destroyed.
21:00 - 22:00 Several hostile POS destroyed in system.
22:00 -23:00 D-G Station placed into 2nd RF with no opposition.
23:00 - 23:59 WD-VTV hostile I-HUB and TCU destroyed with no opposition. We then went to 9KOE and killed a hostile tower that had just exited reinforce.
Tues 26
00:00 - 03:30 Small skirmishes by roaming gangs in and around D-G. I was watching system and had been stalking a few carriers as they began to rep POS modules. I DD'd one thanatos and killed it and called for light support to come assist in bumping the other back out of the pos as several titans were logging in for some fun.
Pesky Supercarriers wanted some action as well and Provi-Blob had a nice BC camp all in a nice little ball on the F9E gate in a bubble. So with carriers on standby in GE and scouts reporting all clear. I unleashed 3 Supercarriers to go eat the BC gang. As they landed they started smartbombing claiming 20+ kills in under 20 seconds. Provi-Blob sensing blood called for backup and then the fight was on. Our supercarriers were bubbled well but tanking fine killing hostiles at a rate of 2-3 per minute. Then word was recieved that Goonswarm was moving a 50 man BC gang in this direction. I issued the order for supercarriers to leave the field but they were very tackled by HIC's and dictors.
Knowing that situation could turn into a problem very quickly a warpin was setup and 4 titans came in and DD'd hictors to free our supercarriers. Boom Hictors down I told supercarriers to warp and as I did a bubble was dropped on Lordmordred's Wyvern as the other 2 escaped. Mordred was calm and insured that his tank and cap was holding fine but Phreeze had just entered D-G local. Goons jumped and started pounding our now lone single supercarrier. So I warped my rapier in ontop of Mordred and lit a cyno bringing about 8 carriers in to help spider tank and clear more tackles.
Within 5 minutes the carriers and supercarriers were able to loose the Wyvern and it broke free into warp. At this point I had been podded and decided to go get my carriers as 10 more carriers were also ready to jump into the fight. Virtuozzo lit a cyno and in we poured with more carriers warping instantly to the field. One of our carriers a thanatos piloted by Therik was primaried and even though being spider tanked by 7 other carriers had fallen to 40% armor. As the new carriers joined the field we stabilized our spider tank. But local was now almost 300 with almost 200 being hostile.
What proceeded next was amazing. Here we were 20 tackled carriers fighting 200 hostiles. We aligned to the planet where our POS was and started to take down targets. No matter how many we killed it seemed more appeared. Sometime during this bloodbath a friendly pulse Zealot made it onto the field which the carriers made sure to keep alive. For the next 20 minutes we butchered the hostile force. The field now littered with wrecks and almost all hostile dictors and hictors dead our senses told us that we should take our leave and warp out to the POS while we could.
Sure enough not but a moment or 2 later after our carriers left the field hostile capitals warped in. At this point all hostile dictors had been killed and the collecting swarm of titans had grown jealous of our fun and shenanigans. Virtuozzo made a warpin targets were assigned carriers and supercarriers aligned in case we needed to bail out our boomsticks. Whoosh 5 titans warped to a spot far off the F9E gate. DD fired was repeated by all of the titans followed by warping out by all as well. We giggled and took some relief after what had been a 4 hour running battle.
185 killed for 4 losses (6 capitals killed). GO US TZ!!!
04:00 - 11:00
After taking carriers back to GE and relaxing what seemed to only be a few seconds a "Source" contacted me and was very excited. " Goons just lost SOV everywhere" he said. At first I was shocked and figured it to be a troll he had bit on. Insistently he proclaimed " Sov is down GOONS are SHITTING themselves" . I ordered up a few scouts to burn over to Querious and verify this was true.
"OMG GOONS HAVE NO SOV TCU AND IHUBS ARE ANCHORED" scouts reported. I quickly started yelling on comms and chats alerting as many people as I could. Pinging jabber " Goons Sov is down get in FLEET". Ships were swapped to BS > FSI > Dictors as I scrambled to assemble the fleet and move it to 4-07. As this was going on I was locating TCU's and preparing to go in and start taking out TCU's. I contacted SysK as well as getting on IT teamspeak and going from channel to channel waking them up and instructing them to get there alliance awake and in fleet. All the while im nudging people on MSN and pinging away at jabber.
We moved to H74 and took down the TCU and started to online one of our own. After that we raced all over Querious killing TCU's and getting dropped on by 40 Goon carriers that were hellbent on stopping us. We would get a TCU into deep armor and then Goons would drop a carrier blob on us and we would have to withdraw for lack of numbers. By this time IT and SysK were getting fleets up and moving. Only 2 problems SysK's fleet was small and underpowered and IT's fleet was being blockaded in 1-SMEB by a 150+ Goon fleet. All of us were speaking and we all decided to press on as this opportunity was to great to give up on. AAA would continue to run around and inflict as much damage while SysK moved on T-PAR. IT continued to battle Goons and keep them fixated on trying to stop IT from reaching NOL.
I swear ive tried to remember the exact order of where we went and which TCU's were killed but it escapes me. I was tired as hell and running on pure adrenaline. But we made progress Goons would hotdrop and we would bail to another system and continue pounding TCU's I was in multiple convos getting TCU's sorted and freighters moving to acquire IHUB's. All the while orchestrating moving new gangmembers and ammo resupplies in from various points.
Finally someone got Molle out of bed and he answered my MSN. Next thing I know he was in game and working to build numbers. Liam from SysK had a harder time of getting adequate numbers and to make matters worse ZAF was blockading TCAG with a medium sized gang and carriers. He eventually was able to break the camp and get to TPAR but it cost his ships and precious time. Omg was time prescious because everywhere were little timers of onligning TCU's that Goonswarm scrambled to get back up and online. To make matters worse some of the TCU's we killed had been replaced by new ones but they were anchoring at POS's. At one point we reshipped many people into Logistics so that we could deal with killing TCU's at hostile POS's
Molle Liam and I were constantly speaking with eachother in a groupchat with other FC's scouts and " Intel Sources" collecting and reporting hostile movements size and etc. We had decided that the Primary targets overall had to be J-LP and NOL-M9 the former being Goons capital staging point and the latter being there subcapital staging point and main market hub. Terciary to this was I1Y and H74 for AAA ( logistical points for Querious Delve Period Basis ) and TPAR for SysK to facilitate attacks and staging. Liam was now in TPAR but Molle was still blocked but his numbers were growing.
I dropped what we were doing and moved our fleet to J-LP and started working on the TCU to only be dropped by Goons Carrier blob. We managed to kill the cyno but the AAA fleet was only about 90 strong at that point. We withdrew next door to F-T and killed the TCU there. Scouts reported that Goons carrier blob had left J-L and it was now mostly clear. It should be noted that Goons were basically moving a carrier blob all over there space attacking SysK IT and AAA to try to stave our attacks. Unfortunately for them we understood the tactic and decided that we had 3 fronts and they could only stop progess in 1 of the 3 at a time.
With the F-T TCU down we moved back into J-L and shot the TCU. As the TCU got to about 25% Armor a new cyno was lit at a POS in line with planet 9. I issued orders for dictors to move 90km in the direction of planet 9 from the TCU and keep dictor bubbles up. I ordered the fleet to align away from planet 9 and to " Throw every bit of DPS you have at this TCU now". This system was crucial to get control of Molle was blockaded Liam was in Period Basis we had no help or backup it was on us to get it down. In came the Goon carriers "YES" our dictors caught them in the bubbles and out of rep range of the TCU as the TCU was getting into hull. I can only imagine the panic and disappointment Goons felt watching there TCU slowly drop to deep structure damage powerless to do anything to stop it as they were trapped in our dictors web of bubbles. I felt bad for them for a split second as im sure they were feeling there space and power slide out of there grasp. Then I came to my senses and we BBQ'd that TCU and warped off in a chorus of cheer.
We moved on with no waste to the next system with a onlining TCU. The process was as simple as warpin shoot align to something and go to the next as soon as the TCU died trying to preserve every second of time. We made it to our 3rd system after J-L and started to shoot the TCU. Molle exclaimed " We broke through and are in NOL but Goons just dropped caps on us to try to stop us can you get here?" . I told everyone to pull drones and put a scout ahead and we burned for NOL . As we reached PR- we found a Rebellion BS gang of about 30 trying to block us. They retreated into NOL and we followed. We jumped in and engaged killing some as they tried to escape and I ordered our scout " Get me a fucking warpin on those caps".
By the time we got on field and loaded grid there were only 10 or so caps left we proceeded to butcher them while Molle kept cynoing more and more dreads and titans to the field. We reposistioned once moving in close range to some Goon/Rebellion BS that came in as a last ditch effort to turn the tides. Killing them and the last caps dieing we warped out to the TCU being joined shortly after by the entire IT capital ans subcapital fleet burning the NOL TCU down with only a few minutes left for Downtime. We killed it with 5 minutes to spare and I decided to try to move towards 49-U to regroup after downtime. Sadly we only made it as far as 319 and the order was issued to dock up and wait for downtime to pass.
12:00 - 19:30
After downtime we quickly formed back up and moved down the pipe towards 49-U stopping otw in 2 systems to kill more TCU's The second one should be noted we killed with less than a minute before it finished onlining. Realizing that we couldnt kill anymore TCU's we moved people back who could get in dreads and recruited more new gang members as well. While this was going on Molle was working to kill J-L's 2nd TCU that Goons had ninja'd up and Sysk had killed the TPAR and 1 other TCU. We got capitals and BS moved to I1Y and proceeded to kill the IHUB and then go siege the station. I have to say that stations have a ridiculous amount of hitpoints and with only 20 dreads a few assorted carriers and 30-40 BS it took us a hour and a half to shoot the station all the way down to 0 structure. During this time freighters were moved in and we got a IHUB anchoring and onligning in I1Y.
PPN got the killing blow on the station in I1Y and got a station manager over to setup station timer revoke cloning contracts and rename it to a fitting name. I1Y Evil Thug Memorial FUCK YES I thought. We restronted dreads and then moved everyone to ED-L9T where this process was repeated in less time due to growing numbers but nevertheless still seemed like a eternity. As this was going on Molle was killing random Goons trying to escape with assets including a Jumpfreighter. Rebellion moved a 100 man BS gang to tpar along with 20 carriers to try to stop SysK from getting there TCU online. SysK's fleet was pretty small as Liam had told 200 of his pilots to log in D-G the night before. We were working to bridge them out with a AAA titan as they logged in but it was clear the Period Basis front would collapse if not bolstered. We were in siege in ED-L9T and werent able to move to help SysK so IT luckily had just came out of siege 1 capital jump away. Molle volunteered to jump his 200 capitals into TPAR to stave off the counter attack of Rebellion. Liam took 10 carrier losses and heavy subcapital losses protecting the TCU till IT was able to come in with the calvary and butcher Rebellions fleet making them flee.
At this point we finished ED and VVS had won the station but didnt have someone to take care of the station there so they turned the station over to Havoc. As a joke I renamed the station ED FIX HQ and this got some giggles. The best part of the whole day though was Evil Thug hoppin on Teamspeak to see what we had all been up to. It was reported to him that we with BOB and SYSK were burning Querious Delve and Period Basis to the ground. We also let him know we captured I1Y and named it in his honor. This was a moment of personal satisfaction and gratitude to all of you that we have been able to come alive and work so well together. Capturing that station and naming it in Thugs honor was one of the things I think I will be most proud of in Eve.
After ED was finished we moved onto H74 to kill the IHUB and then back to Catch to prepare for our CTA in D-G. I was tired and had been FCing for 26 hours straight at this point. I turned the fleet over to Nighthawk Virtuozzo and Xero and proceeded to stumble to my bed and fall fast asleep. I dont know the exact details of what happened in D-G but judging by the killboard we WTFPWND Proviblob and killed the IHUB.
I want to say thank you to everyone in this alliance who has gone out of there way to show up get in fleet and to never run out of desire to kill and burn everything we see. Special thanks go out to all the FC's scouts and logistic teams we have been moving at a hurried pace and you all make things so much easier. I cannot express enough the gratitude I have for you all.
Source: http://www.scrapheap-challenge.com/viewtopic.php?t=32147&start=240 originally posted on the Atlas Alliance forums.
No comments:
Post a Comment