The System BMNV-P is nestled nicely within the Syndicate region; the Initiative’s staging system is right next door. It was attacked this morning by the Mercenary Coalition (MC). What looked like definitely a trap, too good to be true, turned out to be the real thing! This reporter spoke with one of the combatants from the Initiative side, Spry Jack. Thank you again, Spry, for helping me to figure out the gist of what happened. Also, if anyone has anything further to add to this, let me know. The story around the campfire this morning is that MC had deployed a few dreadnought class capital ships to burn down a Player Owned Starbase(POS). Taking an early morning stroll through the often dead middle between time zones, a pilot, Pandoralica happened to notice the dreadnoughts on his directional scanner. Quickly informing the leadership, the word went out about the Dreadnoughts. At first, they didn’t have the bubbles situated but quickly remedied that; they caught the capitals in siege mode.
Considering this, it appeared to be a trap set by MC. Initiative decided to take the chance, and pings went out. Calls went out for tackle, Machariels, Bhaalgorns, logi, and your standard support wings, as well as those who couldn’t yet fly doctrines. They put up eyes in all the potential escalation systems but all was quiet. For those of you unfamiliar with the mechanics and wondering why the dreadnoughts didn’t just burn away or try to escape during the time it took for the Initiative to form is a matter of siege mode. Siege mode increases a dreadnought’s defensive capabilities and damage output (DPS) by quite a substantial amount, but it anchors them in place. It also has a very long active time of five minutes! You can go ahead and decycle it(turn it red), however the anchoring remains until the module’s time has run out.
One can only wonder why MC deployed such large ships with such little support. Looking at the killmail, I see a Scythe, Stork, and a token interceptor which was likely used for burning perches. The Initiative started by quickly burning down the ceptor, then began working on the first dread, a Nalfgar piloted by Ju1ik. Better than a CCP event, the first dread dropped a single PLEX when it melted – talk about great prizes!
After they burned another Nalfgar, they began working on the Revelations. At some point, the MC support wing were called as primary and they quickly melted as well. Initiative then finished the final three dreadnoughts.
When the dust settled, and all pods had been cleaned up or sent home, the total loss was 25,499,508,263.32 ISK, which is no small sum to lose, let alone without even taking so much as a tackle ship. When asked if there was anything he would like to add, Spry told me the only activity in the MC system was the people they podded home. When asked how it would affect things in the region, I was told INIT hasn’t even bothered to have MC -5 or -10 (setting negative standings to denote hostility); they just aren’t even on their radar.
Flawless victory boys, well done.
