EVE General Discussion

Disclaimer: The following is how I remember it going down. Some finer details may be mistaken.

The defence started up with a few people joining Chribba's usually rather empty Holy Veldspar channel on EvE - we found Chribba talking in there explaining how he was unsure about the sov system and what he could do to defend it. We told him about destroying the SBUs but he was quite adamant that he wished to remain entirely neutral and did not want to appear on any killmails.

Obsidian Hawk decided to go ahead and begin forming up a fleet - adding people who X'd up in the Holy Veldspar channel as well as squad commanders bringing in members of their own corps and alliances. The fleet began growing and was soon at around 40 people.

At the same time we had a corp staging to bring in a fleet of 9 dreadnaughts, until we found out that the system was cynojammed and we would not be able to get them in without opening it up for a much larger hostile hot-drop looking for opportunistic kills. We were considering going in using black-ops jump portals but this idea was thrown out when we discovered that the black ops pilots would need to travel 30 jumps to pick up their widows.

Instead, and as the defence fleet already had scouts moving into the Esa to 9UY pipe and all was reported clear I decided to lead the first squad of approximately a dozen bombers through into null and apart from a couple of anchored bubbles we got there and began to engage the SBU on the ZQ gate.

After a while of firing torpedos into the side of it we were engaged by a lone en-garde bomber, which successfully managed to take out a couple of people before the fleet's slow-ass torpedos managed to pop it and remove it from the equation. The support fire kept up until 3 dramiels jumped the gate and started jumping between safe spots, although not engaging to begin with.

By this time we had another group ready in ESA and Xyloplax lead them down the pipe. They joined us on the ZQ gate and its shields started going down significantly quicker.

Just as we had the SBU into armour the bomber fleet was engaged by a group of about half a dozen Occupational Hazard vagabonds which all warped onto the grid at once. At this point the FCs called to scatter and people hit their cloaks and made for random celestials as OH aligned towards the gate from their ~180km warp in.

At this point I fell out of the loop for a few minutes due to my EvE clients locking up as soon as the engagement started. I lost my main but managed to get my other SB to safety which I used to scout for the rest of the op.

When I got back in to find myself in a pod, most people had made their way towards Chribba's station which was now being camped by various vagabonds and other similar nasties.

While this was all going on we had a separate EvE University fleet making their way in from various parts of the galaxy and around this time they punched their way through to 9UY bringing in what looked to be a mixed BS / BC fleet. There was lots of excitement as local spiked to about 150 as they jumped in and gave warnings to the hostiles that they were there to defend the system, and that they would fire upon anyone who attempted to prevent them from doing so.

The IVY fleet tore through one of the SBUs with relative ease and was ready to move on when local spiked even higher with a large NCDOT fleet entering followed shortly after by another large fleet, which I can't remember, who then proceeded to knock seven bells out of each other.

After a knock down the other fleet left, leaving NCDOT who apparently then went chasing after IVY - leaving a few people behind who kept the rather flimsy SB fleet locked down in station with a combination of interdictor bubbles and HICs.

A few bombers did manage to get out at various points, and engaged in some bombing runs, although the damage only seemed to be minimal but most of the remaining NC. jumped out except for a few tacklers on the gates which we were lining bombing runs up against with what we could scrap together.

The original defence fleet was having a bit of a logistical issue as the 9UY station was somewhat lacking in supplies, and it was a scramble to buy bombs, torpedoes and replacement ships with not enough to go around. I had my alt scout lining up a bombing run on a few of the tackles when the gate started flashing like crazy as dozens of ships jumped back through and all warped off towards another gate.

I followed them lining up again for the bombing run hoping to suicide a few of them as they held at an SBU but the next thing I knew a cyno had gone up - I'm not sure if the generator was destroyed or if Chribba lowered it - but a flash of jump bubbles appeared and the grid now played host to about half a dozen NCDOT motherships all popping fighter bombers and engaging the SBU - so I peeled off to watch.

Was an impressive sight and the supers took down the SBUs one at a time with painful ease considering the time it had taken the public / ivy fleets to take down the previous SBU. The system soon dropped out from vulnerable, to contested, and then as the final SBU went boom it returned safely into Chribbas veldspar-loving hands.

NCDOT moved on but a few other neutrals stayed behind in system - the defence fleet made a mad dash to get out and start moving back to high-sec, it was a bit of a scary time for some because as they were not expecting to be fighting they ended up in null with full sets of +5 or worse. There was much cheering as they made it back into high.