The Storm Troopers of The Imperium have shown again that aiming is hard. At last we have had the first and much anticipated large encounter between The Imperium forces and PanFam. The battle took place in the lowsec system of Hakonen.
The Imperium had a Fortizar citadel coming online that PanFam was not keen to see put up. As such, PanFam called for assistance from pet alliances. GotG, PH, MC and Waffles were all present fighting on the side of PanFam, as one would naturally expect.
The Fortizar was due to come online around 02:00 2017-08-08. The Imperium forces in system numbered well over one thousand, but this number was to be matched and exceeded by those of PanFam. Additionally, PanFam had the luxury of knowing that the Imperium super and titan fleet was still back in Delve. This meant that, as long as a certain amount of caution was used, PanFam could use its super capitals with relative impunity.
Unswayed by this fact, The Imperium still decided to take the fight.
At the start of the fight there were over 2300 characters in system, as can be seen here. This number still rose by several hundred as the fight progressed.
After the PanFam Machariel fleet had cleared the Cyno-inhibitors from around the Fortizar, its capital fleet jumped in. Over a hundred supers alone were on the field of battle. With additionally over 400 Macherials and almost 100 Abaddons it seemed that the PanFam were risking little in this battle. They were fully committed to winning the engagement. A full scan of the fleets can be seen here.
The members of The Imperium fielded predominantly their Typhoon T1 battleship doctrine. This is a relatively new doctrine for The Imperium, so overall performance would be interesting to see.
Test were also present in its Nightmare battleship doctrine, which had been brought in from the system of Obe. Test ensured that the fleet was positioned in order to third-party on the fight as best as they could.
As always, TiDi was a factor in the battle, greatly slowing time for all the pilots involved. Module activation also suffered as a consequence of this. Thankfully, disconnects and de-syncing were less of an issue than has been seen historically.
PanFam was able to pause the repair cycle of the onlining Fortizar in short order. Its dominance of the combat grid seemed to never be in any real question. Despite this, The Imperium set about trying to dismantle the collected PanFam fleets.
The efforts of The Imperium were proving to be doomed. There was an interesting element of a fighter battle between The Imperium carriers and the PanFam super carriers. But the superior nature of the super carrier fighters eventually whittled down The Imperium fighters. This resulted in The Imperium carriers being forced to simply watch events from the sidelines.
Headshots were performed by PanFam against Imperium FCs, which again is indicative of a real desire to win this fight as quickly as possible.
With The Imperium failing to trade well against the PanFam, the call was made for The Imperium fleets to withdraw. This left the PanFam free to finish of the remaining 50% or so of the Fortizar. The Fortizar died without having the chance to fire a shot.
The battle report is still likely to be updated, but is currently showing as 28 billion ISK lost by PanFam, 81 billion ISK lost by The Imperium, and Test losing just under 2 billion ISK.
Overall, this is a convincing win by PanFam. The Imperium, however, has stated that this was always intended to be a “dirty war.” It is likely that there is still a lot more to come, and that The Imperium has not lost the will to fight.
