Over the past year, the Drone Regions have been experiencing a surge of activity after lying fallow for almost two years under various rental empires. The reason for this is down to several factors. First and foremost, the changes made to jump mechanics in Phoebe made holding vast swathes of space impractical, leaving a power vacuum throughout many of the Drone Regions. Additionally, the new Aegis sovereignty mechanics have enabled small groups to take sovereignty without the capital fleets the Dominion system demanded. As a result, many new and resurgent alliances are branching out into the Drone Regions, with brush fire wars becoming a common occurrence.
One example of this is best seen in the region of Scalding Pass, where almost 10 alliances share the same region. With so many groups sharing the same space, fights and roaming gangs are a frequent occurrence. Additionally, new alliances continue to push in to Scalding Pass, eager to find both content and new territory.
The Current State of Scalding Pass Sovereignty.
On Sunday September 27, Advent of Fate, a relative newcomer to Scalding Pass, and resident alliance Phoebe Freeport Republic, squared off over a valuable jump bridge belonging to Phoebe Freeport Republic in the system of Q4C-S5.
Initially, Advent of Fate arrived in Q4C with a small fleet of shield battleships, mostly Rattlesnakes and Nightmares, supported by a few dreadnoughts. Phoebe Freeport Republic soon arrived with a Caracal fleet and a good amount of interdictors, intending on holding down the expensive dreadnoughts as they began to batphone Test Alliance Please Ignore, one of the larger nearby entities. Advent of Fate quickly set to work killing off Phoebe Freeport Republics Interdictors at a fast pace, getting closer and closer to freeing their trapped dreads by each passing minute, while suffering relatively no losses in return.
Seeing that their Caracal fleet was mostly ineffective, Phoebe Freeport Republic FC Ninja Uitoh formed up a fleet of armor battleships with triage Archons, and bridged in on top of the Advent of Fate fleet. However, the cyno used for the bridge was killed before most of the fleet could make it in to the fight, trapping the two triage Archons and a couple battleships in Q4C without any kind of support. This failed cyno allowed Advent of Fate to neut out the two triages before the main fight could begin, giving them a large advantage. Additionally, by this point Advent of Fate had successfully cleared enough interdictors to evacuate most of their dread fleet, leaving behind only one Phoenix. As more and more Phoebe Freeport Republic and Test Alliance subcapitals arrived in Q4C, this last Phoenix found itself trapped, with three Test Alliance dreadnoughts slowly wearing it down.
However, Test is not the only large alliance that lives near Scalding Pass, and Advent of Fate reached out for help to Etherium Reach-based Triumvirate., which formed up a Rattlesnake fleet of its own, and made their way to Q4C, making it just in time as the Phoenix found itself in trouble. The resulting bloodbath claimed in total 22.45 billion ISK. Advent of Fate and Triumvirate. inflicted 21 billion ISK in damages, and Phoebe Freeport Republic managed to shoot down 776 million ISK worth of ships in return.
While this fight was not as large as some of the larger fights in null and low-sec over the past few months, it is a relative important event in Scalding Pass as newcomer Advent of Fate begins to move in on some of the more established alliances, potentially heralding a change in the prevailing power structure of the region.
TMC would like to thank Ninja Uitoh of Phoebe Freeport Republic and tru drksniper of Advent of Fate for their contributions to this article.
This article originally appeared on TheMittani.com, written by Sven Tekitsu.
