Fighting continues between Legacy Coalition and PanFam in Cache, punctuated by a larger skirmish in I6-SYN this past Thursday. The battle centered on an anchoring Astrahus owned by Test Alliance Please Ignore (TEST). The citadel was dropped by members of the Legacy’s Predators group as a staging structure as a way to engage the locals looking for content. INN spoke individually with Anure of Nullsech Sholupen and Vily from TEST, looking for more detail on the fight.

INN: What can you tell us about the fight?

Anure: We scouted it – they’ve been trying to do some attrition stuff in Cache for a few weeks but it’s mostly meh stuff. Feeding off the newbros in the area. So we figured they wanted it down, so we let the group know it was being anchored and groups pinged for what seemed like was turning into a blob fest.

INN: How did the initial engagement go?

Anure: It turns out that fax are still aids; especially in tidi.” (Referring to time dilation which occurs when high numbers of players flood into a system.)

So Panfam spent quite a lot of time trying to kill things through triage reps but couldn’t with 200 Muninns. So we dropped dreads, killed the fax, then extracted them all after the citadel died.

INN: Who do you think came out on top?

Anure: I think the ISK war was heavily lost by Panfam but the Astrahus died. It wasn’t the greatest fight.

The final total shows that Panfam and allies, lost ISK at a 3:1 ratio with 75 billion ISK lost to neutralize an anchoring 600 million ISK structure. The sentiment from PanFam, however, is that the fight was worth the losses. Willingness to commit to a fight and deny a foe easy content and safety, it seems, more than justifies the risk and effort.

Vily of Legacy Coalition expressed similar sentiment about the cost of the engagement:

INN: Did the Astrahus die, I wasn’t able to find a zkill for it.

Vily: Correct, the astra died during the fight. When there is a fight with 800 vs 800 an astra worth 2-3 eagles is like the last concern of anyone on the field, but the panfam forces left their drones on it and it died slowly over the course of the battle.

INN: Was the planting of the Astra bait? or, rather, intentionally intended to serve as instigation?

Vily: No, we have planted a number of astras in the region. This one just drew a fight which was odd.

INN: The account I had received was that the Preds group was heavily targeting newer players (whether coincidentally or otherwise) and the response was in defense of said players.

Vily: I’m not tracking NSH being anymore newbro friendly than anyone else. We are targeting NSH because they are attacking Fi.Re.

A brief glance at NSH’s killboard bears out the reports of additional fighting and hunting on both sides. Engagements range from Predators activity hunting NSH capitals to NSH Cerberoi trading with Caracals from Fi.Re’s UNREAL Alliance (URL) and URL Moas killing NSH miners. Cache and the regions nearby look likely to see more destruction in the weeks ahead. It remains to be seen whether or not this will prove the spark that ignites the next major war.

Whatever the political situation, though, one thing remains true: Fights in null sec continue to follow the meta of “He who comes with greater numbers or more faxes wins”, unperturbed by the recent nerfs suffered under CCP’s Surgical Strike release. That these fights will continue to happen over relatively inexpensive trigger-points seems a certainty. How much of that is attributable to CCP’s intentions, however, is arguable.