In the early hours of January 4, Guardians of the Galaxy and Pandemic Horde dropped a small capital and supercapital fleet into a fight over a Goonswarm Federation-owned Astrahus in the Pure Blind sytem of ROIR-Y, reinforcing the citadel into its final timer.
The system is somewhat behind enemy lines for Goonswarm, who use forward outposts in ROIR-Y to launch attacks deep into space owned by Pandemic Horde, Mordus Angels (MOA) and Solyaris Chtonium (SLYCE), among other northern foes. Now in its hull reinforcement stage, the citadel could be destroyed on Jan. 10, with the potential for another battle.
The conflict began just after the vulnerability window opened at 0100 EVE time, commencing with the attacking forces of GOTG and Horde assaulting the structure with subcapital fleets of Typhoon and Tempest battleships respectively. Six minutes later, an Imperium Hurricane fleet landed on grid, and were promptly joined by hard-hitting sentry drone Ishtars that undocked from a station within the system.
Twenty minutes later, the attackers brought a small dreadnought squad into ROIR-Y. This was quickly followed by the first wave of carriers, supercarriers and force auxillaries. In all, nearly 900 ships were fielded during the battle. GOTG brought the overwhelming majority of the capital ships, including 25 carriers and 33 supercarriers as well as the initial dreadnoughts, while Pandemic Horde added just 21 vessels to the flotilla. Fifty minutes after the fight began, the Goonswarm forces surrendered the station’s armor layer and retreated, with the Hurricanes returning to Delve.
While the attacking fleets of pilots from Horde and GOTG won the strategic objective, they lost the overall ISK war. During the fight, the system reached eighty-five per cent time dilation, and when all was said and done, the attackers had lost ships valued at more than 45 billion ISK in total, even with the advantage of their combined capital and supercapital fleet. Goonswarm Federation and its Imperium allies lost 32 billion ISK and fielded only three capital ships. A full battle report can be found here.
