An Imperium supercap fleet counter-dropped an Out of Sight. [OOS] capital ambush in 8CIX-S (Venal) May 12th, in a battle that destroyed more than 99 billion ISK. The situation was similar to the POS trap that OOS, with the aid of Pandemic Legion [-10.0], sprung on 35B ISK of Circle-of-Two [CO2] ships last week. The action kicked off again with CO2 bashing a Bora Alis [BORA] POS in their ongoing campaign to retake Venal’s moons.
This time CO2 was already suspecting an ambush. They prepared well before returning to the POS as its reinforcement timer ended, fielding a fleet headed by 14 Imperial titans, 10 supercarriers, 13 dreadnoughts and 16 carriers. In the aftermath of the drop and counter-drop, 7 Imperium dreadnoughts, and 17 dreadnoughts and 3 carriers flown by Out of Sight., Black Legion. [MEN.], and Bora Alis were left charred husks floating in the cosmic aspic.
Background
There is a long history of conflict in Venal between Out of Sight. and Circle of Two (the Imperium’s Venal appendage). Circle of Two outnumbers Out of Sight. by a wide margin, but both have powerful friends. Both OOS and CO2 consider Venal to be their ancestral lands, and neither is shy about blowing up a few ships to prove it. Last October, CFC ships descended upon a cynosural field lit by CO2 FC Sebastien Saintfrusquin and disemboweled an OOS Erebus. OOS responded by killing Saintfrusquin’s Ragnarok last January .
Saintfrusquin would have to wait months for his revenge, as CO2 went on a campaign in the Drone Regions, and rallied to CFC campaigns in Fountain and Delve. During this time OOS’ ranks were reinforced by many new Russian members, and they took the advantage of CO2’s distraction to claim many of the most valuable moons in Venal.
CO2, however, returned from Delve and has been bashing moon towers in Venal since, leading to this latest series of clashes. Most recently, CO2 was ensnared by OOS on a tower in N5Y-4N and had their fleet swiftly finished off by a batphone to Pandemic Legion. This provided the motivation for Saintfrusquin to come back from Delve and start to try at smashing some dreadnoughts, using the same bait and switch tactics the Russians were using.
The Trap
CO2 reinforced an 8CIX tech moon with a small fishing fleet, but there were no bites. The reinforcement would end at downtime, and right before downtime Saintfrusquin was ready with his replacement Ragnarok, and his Imperium allies on alert. In an interview with Saintfrusquin, he said:
From experience, I know BORA will have a single triage thanatos that they bump with a 100MN Stabber in the forcefield when I try to doomsday it (I had tried 3 times before). Before downtime, their carrier proceeds to 8CIX as usual. more intriguing, I see on the map two cynos in N5Y right before DT. could have been CO2 or allies, but still this perks my interest.
DT comes and passes, I start forming the CFC/Imperium caps and supers to kill the tower. And my scout in system gets me interesting intel, out of 7 hostiles, one is the carrier, one is an osprey, 5 are unknown. That’s extremely unusual, BORA usually puts all their guys in logis on the tower– to me, this has “TRAP” written all over it (cloaked, dictors, cynos, etc…)– and if they show me a triage, it means they are baiting a titan, and if they are baiting a titan, they have to have dreads ready. They know my scout, they know my titan, so I decide to spring the trap with my titan.
I make sure the Cap/Super backup is at jump cap and without cooldown. cyno is lit, I jump the titan, and I use another char in a bomber to scram/web the stabber, thus securing the DD on the triage carrier 🙂 4 attempts it took me, he is by far the hardest target I ever hunted.
As expected, a bunch of dictors decloak and land on me. so I’m alone on grid (they killed the cyno and the tackling bomber). they bubble me all around, and light their cyno. an alliance scout tells me of dreads undocking in N5Y.
they jump on me. 21 dreads and 3 carriers.
the Titan [Saintfrusquin’s Ragnarok] lights his own cyno.
The Battle
When the Imperium super-capital fleet (including 14 titans) jumped in, the space-tides had turned. According to Saintfrusquin, the OOS dreadnoughts were stuck in siege mode and couldn’t get away before they were bubbled, so they gave up on his Ragnarok immediately and started popping as many Imperial dreadnoughts as they could. When asked about the Imperium casualties:
The fact they killed 7 dread is due to doctrine difference. Our Coalition Naglfars are optimised for multi-purpose, so they are lightly armor-tanked to make them very strong at blapping battleships if it’s ever needed. [a dead Imperium Naglfar] is a typical fit for us, only one tank rig, and 4 tank modules. their dreads are optimised for pure anti-capital warfare, so they tanked them shield and invested in some deadspace hardeners that are reasonably affordable. so their dreads end up with more damage than ours, and MUCH more tank. most of theirs can tank a doomsday without even overheating. so that’s why our dreads took a beating there 🙂
A flight of Imperium subcaps arrived as the fight was ending – they missed most of the fight due to the Imperium over-enthusiastically jumping all of their titans, leaving none to bridge. The Imperium titans pilots reported dreading the possibility of Pandemic Legion popping in from a wormhole to crash the party again, though no such reinforcements arrived.
In a short five minutes – less time than it takes to microwave a frozen lasagna – the battle was over and 75.21b ISK worth of OOS, BORA, and BL. capitals and 23.92b ISK of Imperium dreads were in ruins. And of course, the Imperium fleet went on destroying the tower.
When contacted, the only OOS member to respond, L0SER18q, said only:
It was leak about our planning op and goonie counter drop us. Nothing interesting.
After some hasty actions, which were unnoticed, whole eve knew all about our plans.
Though it’s unclear what leak he’s referring to, maybe the cynos in N5Y going off early, I’d say what happened was at least a little interesting.
This article originally appeared on TheMittani.com, written by Ramon Rakow.
