The stakes were high in BY-MSY on Feb 23 as TEST Alliance Please Ignore brought out the big guns to battle Stainwagon and allies, with Soviet-Union and Red Alliance ships forming the bulk of the fleet. The battle that ran up a total loss of 330 billion ISK between both sides and was fought between over 600 pilots. It might be assumed that this was a fairly important strategic battle waged over a tower or citadel or something along those lines. This battle however, had a much more humble beginning. We managed to get in contact with TEST FC Blue Ice, who was in command of the TEST fleet for this particular op, and were able to get the rundown from him.
“RORQ’S TACKLED IN BY-MSY! LET’S GET ‘EM FELLAS!”
Reports came across TEST intel channels that there was a TEST Rorq tackled in BY-MSY, and that the Rorq was taking fire from a pair of Red Alliance carriers. TEST formed up a Hurricane fleet to rush to the aid of the Rorq in distress, and made their way to BY-MSY confident that they would be able to handle the pair of carriers and be back home in time for dinner.
Things got dicey almost immediately though, because shortly after the TEST Canes warped in on the carriers, they were dropped in on by a massive Red Alliance Typhoon fleet who were more than happy to trade some ammunition. This was the first red flag, so to speak, as TEST didn’t have eyes in G-M4GK to know that the Typhoon fleet was coming, or any other backup fleet for that matter.
Nonetheless, with a flight of subcaps fully committed and unable to reship into Maelstroms to counter the Red Alliance Typhoon fleet, Blue Ice decided that his best course of action was to put out a call for Combat Carriers and Force Auxiliaries. This is where things began to take a bit of a turn for the worse for the TEST defense fleet. Under pressure to save both his fleet and the Rorqual, Blue Ice rushed the warp in and wound up dropping the his carriers around 40km off of the dreads instead of 70km or more. This robbed them of their biggest advantage—range—and put them directly under the guns of the hostile dreadnaughts.
According to Blue Ice, at this point he started getting a hint of that fishy feeling, a gut instinct telling him that maybe this wasn’t such a great idea, but it was too little too late. Shortly after the TEST caps arrived on grid, they were surprised by an opposing backup dreadnought fleet, again coming from G-M4GK.
SHOULD I STAY OR SHOULD I GO?
It’s hard to say if the TEST FC maybe should have cut his losses at this point and waited for some more thorough backup from allies to arrive. Dead set on saving his fleet, Blue Ice pinged for supers. Though only 6 supercarrier joined, Blue Ice thought more were on the way. Still under serious pressure, he ordered the cyno lit, and the supers jumped in. Placement on the cyno was again terrible, however, bringing the supercarriers in only 40-50km off the opposing dread fleet, right in the middle of the fray.
Whether by design or by luck, Stainwagon had another dreadnought fleet with about 50 pilots ready to cyno in from VL7-60 in northern Esoteria. This proved to be the nail in the coffin for the TEST fleet. A number of the TEST carriers managed to burn away to a safe distance, but Force Auxiliaries dropped like flies, and the supers which had jumped in on the wrong cyno didn’t stand a chance.
The call had been put out to TEST allies to get in and help out, but the damage had already been done. 3 supers had gone down including Blue Ice’s own, along with a bunch of FAXes. The Rorqual which had started the whole thing went out in a blaze of glory. TEST was eventually reinforced by allies and cleared the remainder of the Stainwagon fleet out of BY-MSY. In the end, though, Blue Ice recognized that his stubbornness along with a few critical errors resulted in what was a fairly decisive loss in the ISK war in this battle.
While we were looking for information regarding this battle, a rumour surfaced that Blue Ice is not cleared to be pinging for supers or capitals. While Blue Ice neither confirmed or denied the rumour, he did state that he would go out of pocket to reimburse the other 2 supers that had been lost along with his own due to his error.
It just goes to show that things can get out of hand in a quick way in New Eden. Even an experienced FC can get overwhelmed when things escalate quickly. In this case, what started out as a quick and easy rescue of a single miner turned into an all out brawl.
