On November 19, EVE Online’s largest coalition, the Imperium, publicly announced that it was going to war. In a thirty minute speech, the leader of the Imperium, The Mittani, cited the imminent threat of a new coalition basing out of the region of Cloud Ring as the primary casus belli, with the secondary goal of projecting the Imperiums’s firepower into northern low-security space.
However, what was initially hyped as the beginning of a new great war became more of a slog through the Aegis sovereignty system, as the residents of Cloud Ring evacuated their belongings out of the region, leaving behind only Australian time zone attack windows, and spitefully renamed stations.
With no defenders other than the automated timer system and a few Griffin pilots, Cloud Ring soon fell to the Imperium, as the first stage of the Imperiums’s purge of Cloud Ring and surrounding low-security space.The low-sec region of Black Rise became the next region targeted by the Imperium, where a high number of POS’s belonging to Snuffed Out, WAFFLES., and various local entities have been reinforced and subsequently destroyed.
As a result of this offensive into Black Rise, on December 2, a good number of POS’s were timed to exit their reinforcement timers, with one particular Snuffed Out POS in Iralaja emerging from reinforced mode around 23:00, a time in-between the end of EU TZ and the beginning of US TZ. Seeing the readymade opportunity for a large fight, Snuffed Out FC D0nnieDark0 contacted Psychotic Tendencies, another low-sec alliance, and made preparations to try and catch the Imperium in the middle of what had been as yet an easy grind through abandoned POS’s. As the timer ticked down towards the end of the Iralaja POS’s invulnerability, a sizable Imperium fleet consisting of armor T3 cruisers was sighted moving out from their current staging system of D2-HOS by Snuffed Out scouts.
In response, Snuffed Out and Psychotic Tendencies formed a fleet of armor Machariels, and waited for the Imperium fleet to arrive in Iralaja. When the Imperium brought in three dreadnoughts to finish off what seemed to be another abandoned tower, Snuffed Out and Psychotic Tendencies bridged into the neighboring system of Martoh, in an attempt to catch the dreads in the middle of their siege cycles. While Snuffed Out and Psychotic Tendencies arrived just as the dreadnoughts were exiting siege, two dreads were caught by and held by Snuffed Out HICs.The Imperium subcapital fleet quickly responded by repositioning themselves to a bookmark 400 KM off of the POS, followed by a second repositioning that brought them into optimal range on the Snuffed Out and Psychotic Tendencies fleet. However, while the Imperium Proteuses were in ideal range on the Machariels, the reverse was also true, as the Machariels were equipped with auto cannons, which posses a greater if not equal optimal range.
As the Imperium Proteuses stayed within the Machariels optimal range, the sheer damage from the Machariel’s auto cannons was able to tear through Proteuses in about five seconds of concentrated Machariel fire. Snuffed Out and Psychotic Tendencies Machariels on the other hand were able to be held up by their logistics wings reps, due to their large buffer tanks and remote sensor boosted Guardians. The Imperium then cynoed in a group of two triage Archons in an attempt to supplement their own logistics wing, a move that saved several Proteuses. However, as the casualty rate for the Proteuses continued to mount, the Imperium extricated as many caps as they could and withdrew from the field, leaving Snuffed Out to rep their tower.
#content, vol 3.5 – tishu box vs cfc
Video from the perspective of a Psychotic Tendencies Machariel pilot.
The butchers bill for this engagement comes in at 26.15 billion ISK, with Snuffed Out and Psychotic Tendencies inflicting 25.84 billion ISK in damages, while the Imperium inflicted 168 million in return.
In terms of importance, this fight marks the beginning of low-sec Alliances banding together to halt the invasion of Imperium alliances into their spheres of influence. Considering the fact that a good deal of money moons remain in the hands of local entities in both Black Rise and the low-sec surrounding regions, it is highly likely that both the Imperium and various low-sec entities will continue to engage each other over money moons and other assets.
Update: The original text of the article indicated 2300 EVE Time was completely within EU Prime Time. This has been corrected.
This article originally appeared on TheMittani.com, written by Sven Tekitsu.
