What began as a small skirmish on January 18 between Northern Coalition (NCdot) and NPC Delve residents Dangerous Voltage, quickly spiraled into a massive capital fight with heavy escalations of supercapitals and dreadnoughts as NCdot found itself caught in a trap set by Dangerous Voltage, Lowsechnaya Sholupen, and The Afterlife.
NCdot started off the initial skirmish on the 6Q-R50 gate in 1-SMEB with a small fleet of Sleipnirs, while Dangerous Voltage fielded a fleet of artillery Lokis. NCdot suffered the first casualties as the massed artillery firepower of the Dangerous Voltage Lokis simply blasted through NCdot’s subcapital logistics. In an attempt to remedy this, NCdot brought in a triage Chimera, which was then quickly countered by Dangerous Voltage dropping in three Naglfar dreadnoughts.
As soon as the NCdot triage went down, Dangerous Voltage turned its attention back to the NCdot Sleipnirs. With losses mounting, the Sleipnirs withdrew from the gate and NCdot FC Dah’ Khanid reformed the Sleipnir fleet into Machariels with supercapital support. Once the NCdot fleet had finished reforming, it returned to the 6Q-R50 gate and resumed its fight with Dangerous Voltage. As soon as the Machariel fleet was fully engaged on the 6Q-R50 gate, NCdot chose to bring in its waiting supercapital fleet in order to help chew through the Dangerous Voltage fleet.
The tide of the skirmish began to turn for NCdot, as the added supercapitals were able to destroy the dreadnoughts of Dangerous Voltage with ease. However, not all the NCdot supercapitals were together, with a few still coming in from the neighboring system of Sakht. When an NCdot Aeon warped alone to 1-SMEB from Sakht, a unified fleet of Low Sechnaya Sholupen, The Afterlife, and Dangerous Voltage sprung their trap, dropping 50+ dreads into Sakht on the 1-SMEB gate as the NCdot Aeon landed, quickly following the Aeon into 1-SMEB. The NCdot supercapitals that were on the 6Q-R50 gate immediately warped in to save the tackled Aeon, but by the time the NCdot supercapital fleet finished bouncing from a gate ping down to the fight, the first Aeon had already been destroyed and a second Aeon was entering armor.
Even with the addition of the supercapital fleet from the 6Q-R50 gate, NCdot ran into trouble tanking the incoming damage from the LowSechnaya / Afterlife / Dangerous Voltage dreadnought fleet, and the second Aeon was destroyed. The next target for the dreadnought fleet was soon found in a Ragnarok that had followed the two Aeons through the Sakht gate. Despite the fact that the Ragnarok was fit with armor rigs, the lack of any armor hardeners on the Ragnarok meant that as soon as its shield was gone, the focused dreadnought fire finished it within a few volleys.
The NCdot subcapital Machariel fleet was not faring any better, as the Dangerous Voltage Lokis had remained in system and were now applying their long range webs to hold down NCdot Machariels for a group of blap dreadnoughts brought in with the main dreadnought fleet. The results of this were catastrophic, with almost none of the Machariels managing to catch triage reps.
As the fight continued, the dreadnought fleet was able to destroy two additional NCdot Nyxes as more NCdot supercapitals constantly entered into the brawl, before finally losing the critical mass just short of killing a third Nyx.
When the dust settled and both sides had retired to lick their wounds, the final total on damages inflicted by both sides totaled 433.84 billion ISK, With LowSechnaya /Afterlife/Dangerous Voltage coming in as the overall victors in terms of the ISK war.
While the losses were certainly staggering, perhaps the most surprising thing about this fight was how well the trap was setup, as Dangerous Voltage, which provided the initial bait, had never worked with any of the lowsec entities that made up a bulk of the dreadnought fleet. In fact, Dangerous Voltage has actually helped NCdot before on multiple occasions, making their role as bait incredibly well planned. As this was the third of LowSechnaya Sholupen’s attempts to trap NCdot supercapitals, it leaves one to wonder what they will try next.
This article originally appeared on TheMittani.com, written by Sven Tekitsu.
