Breaking News: UALX-3 Keepstar Titan fight

2018-07-19

The Legacy Keepstar in UALX-3 came out of it’s anchoring timer overnight. Panfam and their associates are trying to destroy it, whilst Legacy & Imperium are defending.

The fight started out as mostly a subcap fight as the keepstar came out of the timer. The keepstar made it to 10m57s before it was paused by Darkness Munnins, NC/MC and PL Cerberus fleets and Pandemic Horde Eagles. A Goon Baltec fleet got bombed.

The Keepstar is likely to die. That is secondary however, to the titan forces that are currently facing off at the location. Approximately 45 minutes ago, PL, Skillurself/Volta and Tri made the call to commit a large number of their supercapital fleet. Legacy and Imperium have responded in kind, and this is looking to be a fight that may last until downtime. Supers continue to enter the system, whilst the tidi is crushing and disconnects are happening across the board.

Head over to Imperium News Twitch where Boat and Matterall are commentating on the fight.

Update: We have confirmed reports that Imperium and NCdot armour superfleets are moving in to the engagement while a Tri Ragnarok has been destroyed. There is the potential and precedent for CCP to delay downtime for this battle, as happened with at Asakai and reportedly B-R5.

Update 2: Titans have officially engaged, and doomsdays are going off. An Erebus belonging to PL or HRE has been downed by doomsday fire, and the node is creaking under the weight of the conflict. Approximately three hundred characters have disconnected in the space of a minute. GSF titans are in mid-jump, and CCP Falcon has been sighted on the Imperium News Discord.

Update 3: At around an hour and a half after its initial jump-in, the hostile fleet is beginning to bump away. Confirmation of two hostile Erebus kills has come in. The second Erebus, piloted by Tony Bourdain, was fitted with legacy large rigs.

Both sides are committing a minimum number of subcaps. The goal in doing so is to keep the node alive, allowing for the battle to continue as long as possible.

Update 4: GSF is firing doomsday devices as soon as the locks clear. Two TEST Ragnaroks have been confirmed as destroyed as a TEST dreadbomb loads. Estimates put the fleet at 250 dreadnoughts.

Update 5: Imperium doomsdays have gone off. It has been nearly 15 minutes since our last update.

Update 6: CCP Falcon has confirmed that downtime will not be affected by the battle.

Update 7: Reports place GSF’s armour fleet in central Delve. NCdot is reportedly en-route through Etherium Reach towards the fight, and is taking a slower route to avoid hostile hictors and dictors. An unfit FAX has blown up.

Update 8: A recent d-scan reports that 263 titans, 409 carriers, 428 supercarriers, 169 force auxiliaries, and eleven dreadnoughts are currently on grid. There are also three Rorquals.

Update 9: As of 0654 EVE, the Keepstar is still paused with 14% structure remaining.

LATE UPDATE: The Keepstar has been destroyed. As of this moment, 6 PL/FRT/TRI titans have been destroyed to 2 TEST Ragnaroks.

OH GOD IT’S WAY TOO LATE UPDATE: Approximately 45 minutes before downtime, the UALX node crashed, more or less coinciding with the entry of the Imperium’s armor titans from 6RCQ. NC.’s own supercapital fleet, which had reached jump range in LK1K-5 after burning from Tribute around through Venal and the northeast, did not enter the system.

The final score at this time appears to be 11 PL/FRT/TRI/Etc titans killed (including a Blades of Grass Avatar that logged in after the node crash and remap) to 4 TEST titans killed. The attackers are likely to have won the ISK war, given the value of the Keepstar and the 300-600 dreadnoughts TEST sacrificed to eat titan dps and doomsdays. However, as NCPL have long been fond of reminding everyone after losing a dreadbomb: insured dreads are essentially free.

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Comments

  • CarlGustav

    There is three things here that should affect how we look at the outcome

    Losing a KS is a loss that 100% is from alliance funds. It doesn’t affect line members isk bank.

    Losing suicide dreads are often isk wise a Zero sum mechanic.
    As you easily can build dreads and all major alliances have a ton spread out.

    Losing a super /titan now we are talking about 2mo (1mo for a super) of buildtime to get it back. This is why a titan is worth more expensive n logistics then a dread.

    Needless to say losing less then 20 Titans is not something any alliances is going to want to happen. But as it stands I doubt any of the major alliances can’t replace the titan by tomorrow from there alliance stash.

    Then The question stands how was the titans insured and how mutch will it cost it’s pilot to get a new one. What are the SRP rules for titans from the different alliances??

    July 19, 2018 at 12:05 PM
  • Donnie Carter

    The Dreds that where droping in where plagued with DC’s and such a slow load in time from the DC’ing and Cyno load screen that the dred would be dead from the force that was already stable. Yes all side where experiencing DC’s but the titans where loaded and ready to go… while Legacy Dreds where loading and DCing in bulk. Once the Dred forces where started to load you started to see faxes drop like flies. Most all the shield fax’s where dead right before the crash. If the node had not died PL and friends would have lost way more and the Dred force would have done its job. The Crash Saved PL and NC’dots butts.

    July 19, 2018 at 5:40 PM
    • Axhind Donnie Carter

      They are still stuck in space. Hopefully we will camp that space and keep them there for a long while. This could be a chance to kill PL as they will not be able to stroke their ego attacking small entities without their supers and titans.

      July 20, 2018 at 6:24 AM
  • saul ferra

    My conclusion is : the losers are CCP.. their servers can’t handle this kind of battle and it is an huge issue…
    I jumped by dread in the fray at 10pm (PST). Took me 1 hour to load the grid and figure out I was 23%shield in the middle of this titan blob…

    Then I have not been able to activate a single module or lock any target until I went to bed at 2:20am.
    When I checked zkillboard this morning, here what I saw:
    https://zkillboard.com/kill/71335499/
    Sounds like an Eagle made it in the middle of the PL blob and kind of alphaed my dread (3200hp?) while I was trying to load the grid.

    July 19, 2018 at 9:18 PM
    • Josh Coulson saul ferra

      same, i stood and walked away at midnight pst and went to bed, my dread was killed almost 2 hours later

      July 21, 2018 at 3:42 AM
  • In other news, nothing has changed since 2007: big fights are still a dice-roll with general advantage going to whoever was on grid first, but nobody really has any idea what will happen.

    v0v this is why I generally elect to avoid big fleet ops.

    July 19, 2018 at 11:36 PM
    • Arrendis Ganthrithor

      PL was on-grid first.

      July 21, 2018 at 7:09 AM
      • …Which is why they aren’t dead to a man, by the sound of most of the comments. Sounds like most of the additional Legacy dreads that tried to enter the fray were unable to really do much due to issues loading grid.

        July 22, 2018 at 12:06 AM
        • Arrendis Ganthrithor

          From our perspective, they did the thing that was most important: they ate the PL titans’ fire. 200 dreads as a meatshield? Hell yeah. Insurance and build time makes that a trade I’ll do every day of the year.

          July 25, 2018 at 6:57 AM