Last night saw possibly the most one-sided capital ship slaughter that Eve has ever seen. I really wanted to be able to write about being part of an epic battle but unfortunately that isn’t the case. Over 1650 people, with some counts as high as 1700, turned up to take part in the final battle for D-GTMI and it showed. Admirably the server managed to stay up even when over a thousand people we duking it out on the T-RPFU gate.
From my point of view the initial skirmishes on the gates and on Paxton’s staging POS went admirably. We were able to trap their capital fleet, pick off several of them, and force them to jump out of system. After this we had dominance of the system and were able to guard the gates and stop CVA from being able to get a fleet in. Eventually they made a bid for the SBU on the T-RPFU and our support fleet was ordered to warp in. Oh. My. God. It took me about ten minutes to even warp onto the grid and even then I couldn’t see anything. Once I was finally on grid I spent 40 minutes circling the gate waiting for the grid to load.
When it eventually did, just as I was about to give up, I went to work and spent the next hour tackling capitals as our fleet desperately tried to get their guns to work. Even though I could now see the enemy it still took ages for my navigation, targeting, and weaponry systems to respond to my commands.
From what I understand the CVA fleet had it even worse. Their decision to leave the system and then attempt to re-enter meant their lag was at least as bad as ours, if not worse. The final score says it all. With approximately equal numbers in local (the survivors aren’t shown and 1700 minus our 850 is another 850) we killed 28 carriers, 103 dreadnoughts, and 409 sub-capital ships for the loss of just 12 ships (3 battleships, 6 interdictors, 1 HAC, 1 interceptor, and an industrial).
I have boosted my killboard statistics but this is in no way the epic battle that we had all hoped for. As always CVA deserve credit for having the balls to jump their capital fleet back in but in retrospect it was a foolish decision and they could have avoided the heavy losses inflicted upon them. CCP Atlas was observing in system and I hope that they got some good information about the lag. Lets face it, they’re unlikely to find a better example of stress testing.
Who knows what’s next for us. There’s still plenty of mopping up to do in Querious and Delve and our leadership have to decide how far to take our punishment of LFA and their allies. One thing is for sure. There will be more epic fights in the future, even if its just the Provibloc trying to liberate D-GTMI. I also look forward to getting the chance to do some more small gang and solo roaming in the future. Its been a while…
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January 29th, 2010 at 6:33 pm
line between foolish and ballsy is determined by the outcome.
January 29th, 2010 at 7:23 pm
I think I called them both during that. Agreed, though.
January 29th, 2010 at 8:16 pm
Gutsy/foolish call to jump back into the system, at least you can understand why they did it.
What amazes me more is the amount of solo people who will warp to zero on a camped gate when the system is that hot.. or sit perfectly still in a deep safe just waiting to be probed out and warped on.
Not that I'm complaining
January 29th, 2010 at 11:06 pm
Ah well.. fight was epic in terms of ships involved.. all them titans n stuff.. mmm
I must say the CvA FC threw alot of isk into oblivion with his jumping out-jumping in debacle..
Thanks?
January 30th, 2010 at 7:13 am
A shame lag got in the way of something epic. Although the kb stats are epic by themselves. And i would guess you could characterize the CVA blunders as epic. Hopefully CCP gets the lag sorted soon for all you 0.0 jocks (at least back to pre-dominion levels).
By the way Wens, you know where to find us when you need a little break from the fleet marathons.
February 1st, 2010 at 1:43 am
Lag has always been a major component of large fleet battles. It is unfortunate that in this battle, the outcome was so ridiculously one-sided.
I was one of the first capital ships lost in D-GTMI. I was singled out by a AAA Titan pilot and Doomsday'd in to component parts. Then CVA fleet was called to activate smartbombs to destroy dictors in our ranks. I barely got out with my pod, but my wreck was destroyed. One carrier gone forever. However, I do actually take some pride in being destroyed by a Titan.
So this soldier gives a polite (if a bit terse) salute to soldier on the other side. o7
Fly well… and may I catch you sleeping at the gate.
February 1st, 2010 at 2:26 pm
Nice post Mesada .. I'm in U'K and I was really hoping for an epic fight that night…. too bad it turned in a turkey shoot … and I wasn't even part of it for about 2 hours.
So fly safe and may our bombs find you dozing in the ice belts