DECOY

Hi, EVE Forums!

DECOY is a Null-Sec PvP Alliance based in G-0Q86 in Curse - about to enlist in Angel Faction Warfare.
We are recruiting both CAPSULEERS and CORPORATIONS who share our enthusiasm to grow

Formed mostly having met at Fanfest or other EVE Events; our pilots have flown with every major alliance in the game and decided to start our own project with our momentum and energy. We have no blues and fought to stage from our Freeport Fortizar & Azbel in Curse, taking all the R32/64 in the G-0Q86 constellation. We have a buyback tool, manufacture/research facilities, SRP & content-based objectives:

We most recently made The Scope for our Freeport Astrahus being too close to the Zarzakh gate :sweat_smile: :headstone:

MEDIA:
FC Chat w/ Pando: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dauY39xbHiI
Harpy Fleets: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkjRmloH95Q
WWB2 Fight w/Higher Perspective: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPMteFXV8a8
YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB_KjOeBr_bc688NUUrNMbg

WE ARE LOOKING FOR CAPSULEERS:

  • TEAM players
  • Have a microphone and know how to use it
  • Have every Battleship & Subcap Weapon Platform trained to level III
  • Have 2+ accounts
  • Be willing to wear the correct attire (Angel clothes!)
  • Have ~4b ISK ready to invest in mainline doctrine ships

WE ARE LOOKING FOR CORPORATIONS:

  • Have 15+ Heartbeats
  • Have corp-level activity, alongside alliance-level activity
  • Clear ambition and collaboration

For me, itā€™s the stories that make EVE. You can spend years training, months grinding, days planning and hours fighting to experience a few minutes of chaos that give you stories to talk about at the EVE Meetings & Fanfests. These stories have been my IRL gateway to travelling the world to meet corpmates, alliance mates and even hostiles - this is a fantastic game and I am blown away by the incredible people who play it.

DECOY is our way of carving our own part of space, and building something that we can be proud of. I am enjoying this journey and look forward to sharing the stories here on the EVE Forums, alongside our alliance Discord.


Campaigns with Decoy


Campaigns with Fraternity

  1. BJK
  2. xDECOYx
  3. Living in H-5GUI - Battle of West Venal
  4. Battle of D7-ZAC - Defeat & Progress
  5. From Venal with a Grudge
  6. Vale of the Content
  7. Esoteria Deployment / Army of Mangoes
  8. Tug-of-War in Nalvula
  9. Snuffed In
  10. The Future

BJK

I had my first real taste for PvP back in early 2015 when my RL friends corp Quam Singulari joined Triumvirate. We staged out of Uemon and fought XIX/NulliSecunda every day at 17:00 + 20:00 with Rattlesnakes until we secured sovereignty, then stations, then moons - then the entire region.

In late 2015, I started my own corp with some other friends Iā€™d met along the way and rented a pocket in Fountain from Black Legion. They started getting invaded by SMA, so I assembled the renters in FozzieClaws / Sebo Vexors and actively defended our space; then my corp got recruited into The-Culture upon forming. After one too many POS bashes with RLML Cerbs, I decided to move back into Tri.

At this stage, Tri held most of Drones - then started pushing into Insmother. I helped their newbro alliance ā€˜Deus Vultā€™ by getting involved in stager seeding and support fleets.

After this, I moved to The Imperium and ran a campaign for TNT camping Horde and putting pressure on Pure Blind, then eventually stole a constellation from Horde as they were trying to setup in Drones. A great FC from The Imperium called Kendarr started to form his own alliance; I was the first person to join Trigger Happy.

We inherited a constellation; then started fighting some of the people around us. One of my proudest moments was booshing my entire fleet to safety during blackout as I saw a TRI Loki Fleet on 1AU scan from us! TRIGG was a great place to be - I will always be grateful for Kendarr inviting me along to Fanfest despite my anxiety - EVE London 2019 changed my life for the better and I wouldnā€™t be playing with the confidence and personality I do now if I hadnā€™t have met these amazing people.

After Kendarr left and the vision for TRIGG changed; there was a mass-exodus of talent as people moved to various other alliances. I found myself in Horde where Iā€™d occasionally run fleets, then in Triumvirate once more brawling Test in Cache; until getting drafted as an FC for PAPI during WWB 2. This is where I gained a decent amount of notoriety, and I will stand on my soapbox for a moment and state a very controversial but meaningful assessment.

During WWB2, a LOT of the FCs were in it for themselves. Horde had a system where timers were relayed just after downtime, people would claim one each and/or fight over the timers (usually wanting the hull ones because theyā€™d have more numbers). Butā€¦ FCs would rarely join each others fleets. If they werenā€™t running it, they werenā€™t interested. The ā€œaverage line memberā€ (I hate that phrase btw) showed more dedication than the people supposed to invoke their trust.

On top of this - if an FC did a great job; the other FCs would rarely cheer them on. The attitude was ā€œOh, I could have done that betterā€, ā€œThey got lucky they were fighting against ā€˜xā€™ā€, ā€œOh well they fed last time so I guess theyā€™re even nowā€. Unlike The Imperium who had their own battle-bard, firesides and news platforms and would actively scream the success of every individual pilot - PAPI had the opposite, and became a cloud of negative energy for anyone who had a heart to get involved.

Whilst internally there was toxicity; externally, there would be an unspoken level of respect between hostile FCs. The biggest compliment I received came in the form of a reddit meme created by INIT. This unspoken respect from hostiles, along with the raw love and energy beans gave me pushed me through it, and I will always look back with fond memories.

As WWB2 started drawing to an end, my brain was fully geared up for whatever comes next. After seeing Fraternity (a heavy CN-timezone alliance) was about to throw-down against Euros in the North, I reached out to some good friends and got the ball rolling.


xDECOYx

I reached out to Luke Anninan who offered me the opportunity to grow a corporation here - as well as run fleets for the Alliance/Coalition. As Iā€™d been to Fanfest 2019 and spent many years on comms with amazing people - xDECOYx quickly grew to 15 close friends within weeks.

This corporation genuinely feels like a family. We formed over lockdown - so setup the classic #beer-time channel so we can celebrate each others minor victories to cheer us all up, and a #fresh-air channel because getting steps was important and exercise is encouraged, and a #Netflix-and-chill channel to share our love for the hit Aussie comedy trio, Aunty Donna. When we have our corp meetings, weā€™re more likely to play Jackbox/Skribbl so we can be abrasively indecent towards each other - sharing the results for those who couldnā€™t be there and knowing we can drop in/out of the games at a convenience. The respect between each other within our corp discord is so strong; that some people have invited RL friends, and even FAMILY to our group.

ā€¦But when it comes to EVE, xDECOYx is the group that starts working on the strat ops 2 hours before the timer, moves the cynos, scouts wormholes, pre-stages caps, forces a minor escalation by using alts in bombersā€¦ All that good stuff. We have a wide range of talent here - from former Imperium diplomats, former CEOs from high/null/wh/low, IT whizz-kids and talented FCs who see the same vision of growing a team with respect and support.

This incredible bunch has changed my life, and Iā€™m honoured to be able to speak with these people daily. Thank you Jonas, Farrow, Ginnik, Aurora, Ybytlan, Linium, Tisme, Bloodflake, Havok, Rijn, Shiva, Rudina, Kardon, Josh, Leonidas, DJRobin, RedBandit, Ledeanio, Miwa, Solrykia, Lady Eleanor, Etin, Ohe Hai, Kim and Shakar for building this community.


Living in H-5GUI - Battle for West Venal (January - February 2021)


By the time we joined, Fraternity controlled SOME of Vale - but we had a lot of sov and structures to flatten. We had a lot of resistance to some of our follow-up operations; but regardless of whether we could take the fight or not, we still formed every time - but picked a different objective -or- just had a roam.

2021-01-23 21:00

Rote Kapelle anchored an Athanor on an R64 moon worth 14b per month, so we got DRESSED UP NICE AND FANCY and popped it:

Athanor | Signal Reflection | Killmail | zKillboard

We decided not to anchor one over its place because we didnā€™t really have a full fleet to contest the onlining timer incase they brought something. This turned out to be a problem as Hostiles began anchoring another shortly after - so we formed 6 days later to kill that too.

2021-01-29 20:45

We originally formed for the ihubs in X445/K8X, but there were 3 HAC fleets coming to fight our oneā€¦ So we decided to reship into Caracals and have some fun.

We platinum insured FULLY PREPARED to Valhallaā€¦ but instead, outmanoeuvred so hard that TWO SEPERATE CERB FLEETS ran from us and gave us a very nice looking battlereportā€¦

Battle Report Tool

One off-grid highlight was the Barghest coming through on the Rote cyno (trying to pinser us 150 vs 50) SO CONFIDENT heā€™s stay out of range of us, that he got left behind and memed on by DarkSide.

Also they headshot me 3 times, which is fine I guess. But they failed a bombing run, failed to cyno on top of us at zeroā€¦

2021-01-30 00:00

We formed for the Athanor anchoring in Y0-BVN. We were moving our Tempest Fleet Issue ships across from Oasa so xDECOYx formed alts in Bombers. We took the bombers into system and kept the citadel paused, but then a cyno lit and garmurs/interceptors/sabres bridged on top of us at ZEROā€¦ with Evasive Maneuvers VI trained, we ALL GOT OUT SAFE.

The TFIā€™s were now in range - they bridged in to finish it off as the light tackle that came to screen bombers were unable to fight the battleships.

Athanor | Signal Reflection | Killmail | zKillboard

Weā€™d pre-empted this, so had already setup POS in system, meaning we could comfortably bring a titan in to bridge home. As hostels had come to us, we decided to spool up on the staging ihub of Rote, and managed to complete it before coming home.

With Rote losing valuable Athanor income, we made a play to headshot M-OEE8 directly from them:

2021-02-01 02:00
Battle Report Tool

Elo Knight came to guest-FC Muninns for Fraternity allied with Nullsechnaya Scholupen in Cerbs. Rote Kapelle had their Sacrilege fleet with caps, but warped to us at range, so Munins easily sat at 100km and sniped them with no issues - Sacs warped out to save themselves and left three carriers and three fax trapped in bubbles. Sacs then reshipped to Dominix and tried to fight on one node, where a brawl erupted with Dreadbomb turning up with a Cerb fleet too. We pushed them away, won the nodes and gg :slightly_smiling_face: ihub now flipped to Fraternity!

2021-02-04 03:00-05:00
Ginnik spotted Rote Kapelle anchoring evac citadels in Otselaā€¦
Battle Report Tool

After this, Rote pretty much rolled over. We were making steady progress in Vale, but started hitting Tribute a bit more actively. We even had some opportunities to hit Venal:

2021-02-04 19:00

Allies had an R64 in Venal reffed - we droped a solo naglfar on it and watched it get pushed into hull.

Our Naglfar got bubbled at the end, and was tackled by 3 Battlecruisers. We sent booshers to deal with it, but werenā€™t able to dislodge them; so we took our entire fleet through.

We frag the 3 battlecruisers, and uhā€¦ they bridge a pathetic Cerberus fleet on top of usā€¦ So we annihilated them, used Dotlan Reading V to get ahead of them and punished the stragglers. After finding what citadel they were docked in, we reinforced that too whilst trashtalking staying classy in local.

Battle Report Tool

2021-02-04 21:00
One of the Scumlords anti-sub Astrahus came out of reinforcement in a stormed system with -50% bonus to remote reps. We were in Muninns and Lorde were in Gilas; Toilet Paper came back in Cerberus.

The only way to win this fight was for us to keep perching; we mitigated a lot of damage by burning in the opposite direction, I felt that we had enough dps to two-cycle the hostile FCs against the rep reduction, but I was wrong, I should have stuck with focusing logi first :frowning:

I made the call in command that we should NOT engage the fleets on the citadel because of the neuts/webs, but the Lorde Gila fleet decided to stay and brawl once the objective is over, instead of setting up on the TP outgate.

The fleet could have gone smoother; but this was offset by the Logiā€™s great performance.

Battle Report Tool

2021-02-05 23:00

We formed a nice Caracal fleet and everyone was hyped to jump into the system. But the maths wasnā€™t correct and the jump bridge was too short, so we hurried up and burned our way to PX5-LR. A lot of trashtalk happened on the way to it! #drunkfleets

The system was empty and started hitting the structure and at 80% of the structure a Sacrilege/Guardian + Zarmazd jumped in. We took the fight and where at every engagement on top of them and got some nice Zarmazd kills.

The main goal to get the armor structure failed but we had an awesome fight and made them bleed some ISK.

Battle Report Tool

xDECOYx then anchored two strategic fortizars in Vale; one in N-HSK0 on the 49-0LI gate and one in UH-9ZG on the 9OO-LH stargate. These would be vital for sov ops over the next few weeks, but before then, we wanted to take care of Tribute.


Battle of D7-ZAC - Defeat & Progress (February - March 2021)

It was difficult fighting TP, Rote, Scumlords, Freight Train Diplomacy and DarkSide all at the same time.So, one at a time, we started taking hostile staging systems - February 2021 saw us trying to headshot Toilet Paperā€™s home system of D7-ZAC prior to establishing a better foothold against them.

2021-02-16 21:00

We formed at 21:00 ahead of the 22:15 ihub timer in D7-ZAC where our entosis caps were pre-staged.

As we undocked, we broke EVE as we tried to leave the system; the Muninn fleet got through, the Cerb fleet had 30-50 (including entosis subs) stuck in H-5GUI and the Jackdaw fleet couldnā€™t leave system. This meant TP managed to run 3 nodes UNCONTESTED from us.

After this, they only needed 3 more nodes to win. We brought our Cerbs and Muninns to D7-ZAC to break a jammer, then this is where it got tricky.

TP reshipped to 150+ bombers to blops around their constellation and kill our caps, completely ignoring the subcap fight. This forced us to evac our caps and try and win this with subcaps. The final nodes they needed ALL SPAWNED IN THE SAME SYSTEM, so we couldnā€™t take the fight to them and push them off the nodes, as each only took 5 non-TiDi minutes to win.

VOLTA had arrived with a 50-man HFI fleet, INIT arrived with a 60-man Kikimora fleet and TRC arrived with a 200-man T3C fleet. After the ihub repaired, we sat off the D7-ZAC gate waiting for them to extract this way. They jumped all of their fleets into us, and we traded well for a while, until INIT fleet warped onto the Muninn fleet at zero whilst moving and hard tackled Noraus, meaning we had to extract as other fleets were converging, losing a lot of ISK for stragglers.

Overall - we did EXCEPTIONALLY well - the trading was great, the volleys were well timedā€¦ interestingly, with the 110 Cerbs we had, we only had a maximum of 92 damaging a pre-repped AB Huginn; the rest of our missiles were wasted - so I could have definitely split to do 2 targets at once. But, I was waiting to save this for the battlecruisers, and secure the kills on the TRC fleet.

Battle Report Tool

In the next few days, we are going to have a change of direction/pace on a grind of Tribute, rather than a headshot of D7-ZAC.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7om4xoQk00E

Whilst trying to headshot D7-ZAC was an ambitious task; it still felt like a defeating blow that we could not steamroll that system - and could potentially set us back weeks. But - the one thing I learnt from Triumvirate circa 2015; is that constant heavy pressure is whatā€™s needed to break an alliance like this. Every day after this fight, we formed twice - around 18:00 and 20:00. We would ALWAYS hit something. If we were going to be outnumbered on an objective, weā€™d go hit a different timer, or take a wormhole somewhere. But every day - we made progress - and our numbers increased, and theirs decreased.

Iā€™d created this brief map for us to get our bearings:

2021-02-17 20:17 - Athanor Ref

We formed a fleet to push an Athanor into hull over in Tribute; hostiles scrambled to form a 40-man bomber wing to try and snipe us at rangeā€¦ They lost 3, disengaged and went home.

Battle Report Tool

2021-02-18 01:00 - Revenge Fortizar Kill

As RC decided to come and pay us a visit in Tribute earlier in the week, we thought weā€™d give them a visit. They were anchoring a fortizar in C0O6 on grid with a PAPI keepstar. We got into system, danced around a little bitā€¦ then killed the Fortizar in front of them. We travelled 5 regions to make this happenā€¦ :slight_smile:

Fortizar | Outback Steakhouse of Pancakes | Killmail | zKillboard

2021-02-18 19:00 - Cerberus Fleet

We formed to cover the anchoring of two ā€˜bait citadelsā€™ across in Geminate, then stuck around to reinforce some more Toilet Paper citadels.

En route home ready for the 20:00 fleet, we brawled with a Talwar gang, lost a logi and gave them a gf :slightly_smiling_face:

Battle Report Tool

2021-02-18 20:00 - Cerberus/TFI Fleet

We formed Cerbs to kill an Ansiblex and Astrahus over in 2CG-5V. We killed the Ansiblex, then found out that DarkSide Machariels were 5 jumps away. We burnt back to H-5GUI and reshipped into TFIā€™s, but landed on the Astrahus 1s too late and didnā€™t kill it :cry:

We reffed it, then TP came back in a bombing/booshing fleet, and booshed a cluster away, and managed to kill them with torp bombers before we could get there. But, they lost 2b in bombers, so meh.

Battle Report Tool

2021-02-19 20:00 - Cerberus Fleet

Continuing with the momentum of war, we travelled to M-OEE8 and bridged onto a Tatara in A-DD and pushed it into armor, whilst also running entosis in A-DD and K-6SNI. Our entosis runners were pushed off by Jackdaws (and Iā€™m not fleet warping 100 cerbs around to chase Jackdaws, weā€™ll lose stragglers on every warpā€¦) so we just commit to our single objective then travelled home.

Toilet Paper tried to slow us down with some bubbles, so we took each gate steady, but with a LEGENDARY bubble from George BubbleYou Bush, we got a Sabre kill with 83 participants!

Sabre | pourfende1 | Killmail | zKillboard

2021-02-20 17:00 - Raitaruā€™s + SOV

Most fleets try and focus on one or two things per fleet and call it a day.

NOT xDECOYx :slight_smile: :slight_smile: :slight_smile:

First, pushed a Raitaru into hull, whilst moving THINGS into LOCATIONS.

Secondly, we started hitting a SECOND Raitaru, whilst parking Entosis boats in 3 systems on ihubs. This sounded the alarm and a few hostiles showed up.

We moved to K-6 and chilled on our Sotiyo and waited. Hostiles sent a few small-gang ships to harass us (Vedmak, Kikimora, Jackdaw). Jonas kept eyes in all three systems and we started to divide the fleet across the three locations to fend off hostiles. This mostly worked, except for an Interceptor who burnt for tackle on a Kiki seperating himself from the rest of the pack, and a Muninn who was completely AFK on an ihub, despite being asked to return to the fleet at least 3 times.

Then, we moved the fleet to a THIRD raitaru and pushed that into hull. So, with the same fleet, we reffed 3 citadels and set 3 ihub timers up for Monday. Gf :slightly_smiling_face:

Also, that was impressive from the Kikimora pilot!

Battle Report Tool

2021-02-20 20:30 - Dancing with Snuff

At 20:45, Rote Kapelleā€™s BLOPS POS came out of reinforcement, and after noticing a few snuffed eyes in local, I figured this wasnā€™t going to be a ā€˜chillā€™ bashā€¦

I setup 10 bookmark spots in advance and an exit incase of pipebomb. We refit the cerbs to Max DPS (3x Ballistic Control Systems) and took plenty of T2 ammo.

We started pretty chill, then a cyno went up and a 50-man Mach fleet w/ Apostles came in. We continued to hit the POS, and every time SNUFF warped to us, we perched, and went back to the POS outside of their range.

We danced for about 15 minutes, being smart with our positioning (getting the correct side of the POS relative to the hostiles to prevent warpins, being full speed aligned to premade bookmarks, etc) and successfully KILLED THE POS right in front of them. DAMN it was fun to dance and win like that!!

After this, we went straight for the next fleetā€¦

Caldari Control Tower | Cyno Tax Haven | Killmail | zKillboard

2021-02-20 21:30 - Double Tatara Shoot

From the wings of the previous fleet, we bridged straight into our former Trigger Happy constellation in Tribute and pushed two more Tataraā€™s into hull. Jonas also came up with the genius idea + implementation of the final ihub in that constellation that belongs to QUOTE, and now that entire constellation is reffed.

Then suddenlyā€¦ it came crashing down for Toilet Paper:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/loj7ng/winterco_vs_freemen_of_the_north_final_baguette/go6cm8l/?context=3

2021-02-21 Quick update - TP Folding:

On Friday I made this map. Even though we were being camped 24/7, we managed to get our home constellation up to Military 5 in EVERY system, but to further increase pressure on our enemies, I wanted to move our focus closer to Tribute to raise the ADMs (ā€œDanger Zoneā€).

On Wednesday, Noraus gave me 9 Athanors to anchor on behalf of Fraternity which we could use and boost indices, but uhā€¦ TP has given in and moving out of Tribute, so itā€™s made life easier for us.

In the coming days Iā€™ll find us something useful to do and a useful place to be. But in the meantime, I wanted to acknowledge how strong xDECOYx is looking as a corporation. We have incredible participation in fleets, and weā€™re frequently contributing the pivotal ships (Logi, links, cynos). We started strong with our bomber alts securing some early objectives and even got some style points with our skins; and the alliance is really warming up to us and trusting us.

Today, someone from another corp jumped into general comms screaming to form a fleet because their dread was tackled on a regional gate, and Jonas, Ginnik and Linium came to the rescue pushing off the sabres with small-gang ships and spooking the hostile cynos whilst I formed a fleet to travel there.

Weā€™re looking good team. Keep it up :slightly_smiling_face:

After this - we paused our entosis operations as Toilet Paper agreed to transfer ihubs/tcus, in exchange for ā€˜xā€™ amount of weeks passage for them to evac across to Pure Blind. They were an incredible group and it was a lot of fun to be flying against them. But still, a little bit more cleanup:

2021-02-25 18:00 - Double Roaming Gang!

Battle Report Tool

We formed to reinforce some sov, but we got distracted by 2x roaming gangsā€¦ a Banderlogs Talwar fleet, and a streaming ANI fleet. We switched from Muninns (to get our objective) into Caracals to chase the Talwars, shredded them, then went across to fight the ANIs (we didnā€™t have enough to break them, but we tried to kite them and got some great bubbles :poggies: hazed their anti tackle and left)

The ANIā€™s came across to our Ansiblex and started hitting it - we didnā€™t have enough Muninns to break them, and at close range, that would have been a BIG F33D, so we switched into Cerbs and playing the align-in, DPS, align out tactic. Worked great :smile:

2021-02-27 17:00 - Sov Timers

WOW, what a productive fleet - we managed to:

  • Delete 5 Hostile ihubs in 2 different constellations

  • Reinforce the final 3 ihubs in that constellation

  • Brawl a 15-man Drake gang (Battle Report Tool)

  • Save a rorqual mining during a strat op ( Battle Report Tool )

  • Push 2 citadels into hull, push 2 into armor (4x cores :vibrate: )

  • Deploy a Fortizar in UH- on the 9OO gate

  • Kill an ansiblex

  • Run a 10/10 :kekw~3:

  • Run a few Havens

Jonas, Aurora,Linium, Rijn Anthar, Ruff and Ybytlan - Thank you AGAIN for your hard work entosising and co-ordinating in the background, it was SUPER complicated today with 2 constellations with 10 systems in eachā€¦ but you moved and ran nodes everywhere we needed. Great job!

2021-02-28 18:45 - Cerbs

A neutral corp decided to anchor a Raitaru in our space, so we sat and watchedā€¦ waited for them to plug in the coreā€¦ then dropped it :vibrate:

+800m core to the Alliance Wallet

Related Kills | Z-8Q65 | 2021-02-28 19:00 | zKillboard

Nice uniform :smile:

2021-02-28 19:45 - TEMPEST FLEET ISSUES

dscan.info - D-Scan Tool for EVE Online

dscan.info - D-Scan Tool for EVE Online

After we anchored a fortizar in hostile space, we got dressed up nicely ready to defend it. Unfortunately, hostiles showed no signs of resistance - so Linium jumped his JF across, we plugged in the core, waiting 15 minutes and plugged in the fitting. GREAT SUCCESS.

We had enough active FAX to rock with the fleet, but we only had 5 dreads with us. Leā€™ts get those DREAD numbers up so we can have some SHENANIGANS

2021-03-01 18:30 - FINAL 3 IHUBS

For this timer, we formed FRT only so our coalition can focus on onlining Fortizars in other places (:eyes:). Once again, xDECOYx brought the GIRTH by bringing enough entosis alts (and critical links pilots) to make this work. (50% of fleet was us, 100% of entosis was usā€¦)

To plug all the gaps, we had a beefy gatecamp on the constellation gate - Muninns w/anchored bubbles with Carrier support. Two smartbombing machariels on the outgate to prevent any jammer interceptors bouncing around - and 12+ entosis boats to deal with the 4.5x and 6.0x adm systems that came out at the same time.

A pretty fluent op, very chill, much successā€¦ CRAB TIME NOW

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From Venal with a Grudge (March - June 2021)

For the next few months, an unlikely duo of V0LTA and BOSS put up decent resistance to progress in Tribute. Our EUTZ is still growing here - so daily hostile faction battlecruiser roams into our space were harder to deal with than they should have been. In fact - it took a month of multiple repeated losses in H-WLT9 to destroy a single hostile Athanor.

It was important for us to kick back - and we did so in both directions. Whilst trying to take Tribute, we made it our mission to distract ourselves with USTZ timers against BOSS in Venal. We saw the true strength of their Raven doctrine here; without critical mass of Muninns, they were impossible to break under FAX reps - and many battles were lost on those grids.

This gave BOSS an over-inflated sense of self-confidence. They attempted to anchor 9 Citadels in our rental space in Branch:

2021-04-07 00:30 - Strat Op

B0SS decided to drop 9 citadels across 3 systems in Branch; FRT formed Muninns, Nullsechnaya formed Cerbs and xDECOYx formed Bombers. Decoy kept some of the citadels paused as they anchored, even COMMITTED to one with 6 SECONDS REMAINING and got it killed in a system with no friendly citadels. POG.

FRTā€™s killspeed was incredible - hostile ships were dying before we could finish the saying the names. In total, 7 of the 9 citadels died and we chomped on a Cerb and a Sleipnir fleet.

Battle Report Tool

The back-and-forth between FRT and V0LTA was tense. We came close mid-April - our subcap numbers matched, and we were pretty confidentā€¦ however we saw them mid 30 more dreads than us so we decided not to engageā€¦

AAR - 2021-04-15 21:20 - TFI Fleet

We just formed an 85-man TFI fleet and had to stand down because we didnā€™t have enough caps.

dscan.info - D-Scan Tool for EVE Online V0LTA fleet

dscan.info - D-Scan Tool for EVE Online Our fleet

Now, these two fleets look fairly well placed against each otherā€¦ however, I scouted 4 in-cynos moving into the system, and we KNOW that hostiles V0LTA has a dread cache across in AW1, along with logged-off supers/titans. Thereā€™s no way I was taking that fight :slightly_smiling_face:

A lot of people believe that FRT is bigger than V0LTA across all TZ because weā€™re a bloc. But in terms of PVP, the reality isā€¦ V0LTA can outform and upship us in EU and USTZ on a daily basis - even for an athanor in our space. Feels bad. The only way weā€™ll fix this is bringing more people into the alliance and training dread alts.

A tipping point felt like the defence of an allied Fortizar in early May:

2021-05-09 23:30 TFI Fleet

An LTRIG Fortizar entered its final timer today, and our CNTZ friends anchored a cyno jammer plus ansiblex in that system. At approximately 20:00, V0LTA formed a 50-man fleet to come and ref it - we formed a 100-man TFI fleet to stop them (we had more TFIs than they had people in fleet :muscle: ) so V0LTA stood down after we gated two jumps. Epic form for a flash.

When the timer came around, V0LTA formed a mighty 64 Nightmares:

dscan.info - D-Scan Tool for EVE Online

dscan.info - D-Scan Tool for EVE Online

We refit the TFIs to have extra EM/Therm resistances to give more survivability, and went with double TD to hinder their range. I was setup for fighting on the Fortizar grid; but we got into system late as my route was BAD. Certain ansiblex are not fueled to take a whole TFI fleet, because they should only see light traffic.

When we got there, we pushed more LO through this JB to make sure we could get our caps through. V0LTA were setup 160km on the other side, so as we setup, they were mostly out of range. TRI mass-fed bombers to us, and TP got a succesful boosh pulling TFIā€™s 100km from our anchor. LUCKILY - they pushed them AWAY from the Nightmares. I anchored towards the pulled TFIā€™s as a regroup, but pulled the majority away from FAX reps so we lost 2 TFI at the start.

V0LTA outranged us by 15km, which wasnā€™t TOO bad because they have poor application at that range, but we had effectively zero application against all except a few stragglers at the back, and one enemy who tried anchoring up on me.

We kept the fight on the Ansiblex long enough that the Fort repaired.

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After a back-and-forth for the next few weeks, we successfully troll-reffed one of V0LTAā€™s final ihubs in UMI-KK. Theyā€™d brought a lot of friends to help them - but as weā€™d just helped PAPI destroy some INIT infrastructure in Great Wildlands, we had some help tooā€¦

2021-05-23 20:40 - iHub Timer

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We formed a new record for FRT in EUTZ, hitting 200 in fleetā€¦ 100 Muninns!

We bridged into UMI and setup early on the 0-Y gate. RC setup at range with their Tengu fleet so we pulled our fleet to the other side of the bubble and waited for V0LTA to come through. As their Muninns came through, we all converged to kill their DPS as fast as possible, before switching to their Huginns. Our fleet anchored up on the hostile FC so we couldnā€™t all be webbed down - the enemy Huginns did not matter.

At this point, NC and Horde bridged into system to put a fist on the scale; INIT had come through with a second Muninn fleet into 0-Y, but backed out when NC and Horde came through.

V0LTA pulled us towards the Tengu fleet, so I pulled our Muninns back towards me as the anchor - then swung wide to take less aggro from the Tengus (we were the focus) V0LTA, fully doomed at this point, just overheated their MWDs and spread across the system to get themselves safe.

During the fight, our entosis livedā€¦

So after this skirmish rounded off, we grouped into the lower half of the constellation and covered the entosis boats. Once we won the event, the cyno beacon entered low power, so we went to kill that whilst we setup the new ihub.

After this engagement, V0LTA remained a thorn-in-our-side for a few more months; poking Ansiblex on a daily basis and filamenting to Pochven as a means to escape. There was the odd time that we traded even - they would leave us alone for a few days after that. But the biggest victory we had was over a BOSS Athanor a few months later.

Whilst Muninns are a great composition; if you donā€™t have enough to alpha faction battleships, theyā€™re useless. Weā€™d grown to the point of hitting critical mass, AND we have several competent individual pilots who run self-probing booshers to split a pack of enemies. The sum of everything weā€™d learnt came into this fleet, and it showed.

2021-08-29 22:30

We initially formed with around 80 pilots in fleet - shooting the Structure with drones on it and having Ceptors giving me perches off grid.

As soon as the first hostile cyno went up, two of our self-probing booshers warp to the cyno and booshed a portion of Ravens away from their FAX. We warped down and nuked those that we could tackle - then a second cyno went up and Machs came into system before we could reposition.

We danced around the grid for a while, before deciding the structure grid was not a wise place to be, with web/tp. So instead, we said ā€˜gfā€™ in local and warped to the outgateā€¦

ā€¦ We setup on the other side, as we saw the Machariels and Ravens, keen to fight, land to chase us through. We managed to pull both fleets away from their safety of a citadel - and proceeded to fight them on a gate grid.

Each time the V0LTA machs came close - a boosher would set them back 100km meaning their mix of Auto/Arty had no effect on us. We picked off the Raven fleet, and switched our attention to the Machs.

V0LTA dropped HAW dreads to try and put a finger on the scale - so CN began pinging like crazy - doubling our fleet numbers. In combat like this, we usually have a dedicated wreck-checker - counting the amount of friendly vs hostile wrecks, to understand if we will still be above mass. Every time I counted the wrecks, I compared it to my dscan - and we just had more and more pilots landing on grid and getting involved. Eventually, the non-tackled machs warped off to safety and left the HAW dreads to die.

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After this fight, there was very little contest from V0LTA for the remainder of Tribute and south Venal - and marks an end of the active aggression vs BOSSā€¦ for now.


Vale of the Content (May 2021 Onwards)

Streamers will ALWAYS have a special place in my heart.
When forming a fleet for your alliance, you usually have an objective - youā€™re going to ā€œxā€ to shoot ā€œyā€ and you will win or you will lose. These victory conditions set are gauged as success or defeat; but regardless of the outcome, it becomes part of your story.
However - when an NPSI fleet forms, the FCs only objective is for everybody in (or watching) fleet to have fun.
Forming a fleet can be a stressful task - especially if you donā€™t know the people involved. So, on a platform trying to find something to do, and people to impressā€¦ it is always a great honour to see streamers choosing to visit Vale of the Silent. We treat streamers with respect and try to give a fair fight. My goal is to always trade EVEN with NPSI groups; I am happy to lose my fleet if it means we kill something of equal value and both sides have fun. (Thatā€™s what SRP is for, right?) Unless of course, we have a CTA to attend, then weā€™ll probably not get involved! https://youtu.be/cyDA5FSx9t4?t=2983

2021-07-17 19:00 - Buzz Buzz!
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Reddit - Dive into anything
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8eZx6yQ4Xk

Bjorn Bee formed a Stormbringer fleet from Jita and brought them across to Vale - I started theory crafting what the most fun engagement for us could be.

Stormbringers zap 10 targets at once - so anchoring up and trying to fight them at range is a bad way to take this - we need to get close to them so the lightning bounces back. So - we went with Muninns, but swapped a tracking enhancer for an Overdrive, and the Multispectrum out for scrambler. This would allow us to get on top of them, and force their guns to hit each other.

We setup in P3EN on the Obe gate and waited for them to jump through. Once they decloaked, we scrammed the closest targets for us. Hostile anchors burnt to 60-70km, which gave us the opportunity to wipe out the closest Stormbringers we had scrammed. We traded 12 Stormbringers for 8 Muninns in this portion of the engagement.

Then - we chased their main anchor to get us in range of the rest of their pack. As we were burning down, the majority of our Muninns were clumped together - so this is where we started trading REALLY poorly. When I warped us away, I noticed our fleet was 100km long.

Bjorn took his fleet back into Obe for a pep-talk and to repair, then we went back to 4-HWWF and reshipped what we lost - then went back for Round 2.

This time went much smoother - we stayed on top of them and just scrammed what was anchored with them. V0LTA came through with a small Muninn fleet and NSH came with a Cerb fleet. NSH and V0LTA engaged each other and I danced around the edge trying to stay in range of the Stormbringers, and our positioning was perfect - we even chased V0LTA home, scramming a few of them on gates, camping them out and forcing them to take a 35 jump detour home through low sec :slight_smile:

2021-09-12 02:00 Ferox vs Caracals
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dMGtONJQ_U
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We received intel that Bjorn was in the area with a super-long range Caracal fleet. They can hit out to 150-170km, so we made a funky refit to our Ferox; we swapped the 50mn to 10mn, replaced the Cap Booster with a Tracking Computer w/Optimal Range script, replaced the Reactor Control Unit for a Signal Amp, and came with T2 Info links plus Frentix. This meant our Ferox could hit out to 145km+30 with Spike, and our tracking would be pretty good.

On the grid, we did NOT anchor - we all aligned to a Customs Office in the distance and spread out, then all aligned towards a POCO in the direction Bjorn was travelling, meaning we closed the gap over time.

2021-07-09 19:47
(Thanks Havok for the write-up!)
BjornBee came into vale with a 60 man Prophecy fleet and headed straight for 4-HWWF on entering he was met by a Darkside naga gang after fighting Darkside and waiting around in 4-HWWF WC ENā€™s Spike en Chasteaux started too form muninnā€™s after seeing our numbers we changed our doctrine to ferox then the call too undock was given and we warped too them and the fight started trading feroxā€™s for prophecys and a lone ceptor tackled Bjorn in his absolution and he melted under the volley of railgun fire but props too his fleet as they warped in logiless and fcless and continued too fight us untill the last man.

Battle report generating... | zKillboard

2021-07-16 19:30 - Buzz Buzz!
(Thanks Ledeanio for this write-up!)

Torcea formed initially a caracal fleet to kill Bjornā€™s 53 Omen Navy Issues. With low numbers, we reshipped to Feroxes and still low on numbers, we heard that Bjorn had engaged a Volta DNI fleet. This was on our Ansiblex that the ONIs were shooting.

Once we got up to 40 dudes in fleet, we bridged in. We passively aligned to the fight. Eventually we warped in @ 100 on the ONIs and then the FC tells us to reload to spike and then shoot primaries - but failed to spot the stork approaching us ever so slowly as we melted our primaries that booshed half the fleet and ended in the FC wondering where the logi was. We killed 6 ONIā€™s before having to warp off.

Second fight was to follow the ONIā€™s into 15-W once they disengaged from Volta - when we loaded the other side, we were in a bubble on the gate and the FC warped half the fleet to the E-O gate where we were told to wait whilst the other half of the fleet engaged Volta ONIs.

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AAR - 2021-09-26 21:00 Ferox ā€˜Home Defenseā€™
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There were several fleets roaming around Vale of the Silent; all of which filamented as soon as we got close. But fortunately, BRAVE got caps tackled on a Bjorn stream, so we went over there instead.

As we got there, they were throwing down as Brave + PL + Horde vs Bjorn + SNUFF + TEST + Hole Control. We got ourselves a great perch in range of the ONI fleet, and our dictors did a great job holding them down - from here we bounced around the grid (in Ferox lol) and broke the engagement apart, and watched in awe as the Brave Zirnatra walked away with 90+ kills. MVP!

2021-11-22 18:30 - Ferox vs Mallers
Twitch
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BjornBee had a 100-man Cruiser fleet coming for our Ansiblex in 15W-GC - after our ping we had 60 pilots in fleet, so we opted for Battlecruiers. A problem with this is our guns werenā€™t going to track very well against the sig of a Cruiser, so we brought some additional Bellicose with Target Painters and used a pretty neat fleet warp:

We took a 50km-spread wall warp, and ordered the fleet to sit still. This way - no matter who the hostile fleet was coming towards, a portion of the fleet would have decent tracking.

Unfortunately, this command and tactic wasnā€™t very clear, as a lot of people started anchoring up with the prop mods on, bumping me away and dying as they were closest to the hostile gang; essentially being a conveyor belt of dead Ferox.

It worked pretty well having pilots look after their own ammo types rather than sticking with antimatter; for the majority of pilots, hostiles were 45-50km away from them - but we started that fight as 60 vs 100, so Iā€™m VERY pleased with how it worked out :slightly_smiling_face:

As the fight went on, more and more people spilled into system, but we took an engageable comp, we got engaged, and we got 100+ kills plus pods.

AAR - 2021-11-29 18:50 - Buzz Buzz!
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BjornBee was buzz-buzzing around near Lonetrek again, so we got on standby incase he came our wayā€¦ then the Ansiblex notification came through.

We were getting ready to travel, then a small INIT fleet came into our ESS in 4-HWWFā€¦ so we snacked on them before going for our main course.

This was the match-up:
dscan.info - D-Scan Tool for EVE Online - WC
dscan.info - D-Scan Tool for EVE Online - BjornBee

We took the ansiblex directly into him, and started killing the tackle - but they continued hitting the ansiblex and reffed it, then warped straight to our ESS. We followed through with close-range ammo and just started trading DPS for DPS. PL came by with a Cerberus fleet as well and followed us into the ESS as well - giving us the boost we needed, as we were pretty heavily outnumbered.

We continued brawling in the ESS playing with different ranges, but eventually pushed them out as our kill speed was pretty high. They left grid, but came back to the ESS to try and kill a few stragglers - at which point we went back in and finished the majority off.

AAR - 2021-12-02 18:30 - Ferox / DNI vs Pando

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Pando was out with his Gila fleet and started hitting our Ansi in 5T-. Knowing they were AB, it was going to be a difficulty tracking them - so we went with TPā€™s on our Ferox and aligned to a Fortizar rather than anchoring (to make it obvious when the drones were incoming). We had a few Jackdaws as dedicated anti-drone which helped out slightly - but the fleet got too spread apart too quickly - so most people werenā€™t in range, and presumably not switching ammo. Instead of aligning, we should have called for the fleet to orbit at 30km, to ensure we had great tracking. We had 2 Scimitars in Hull, but aside from that, we just killed a Curse in exchange for the Ferox Fleet :worryNotLikeThis:

We reformed DNIā€™s and went back for round 2, knowing thatā€™s another nice shield comp with a utility mid slot to hold them down. That was greatā€¦ except we were still outnumbered - AND they had a firewall too - deleting all of our missiles in transit. We managed to nuke the first two targets - but once the Lokiā€™s firewall was in position, nothing else was applying. We made a call to extend the orbit to 30km (learning from the previous engagement), but the delayed missile travelling was too much - I should have either commited us at zero so their firewall as smartbombing their own drones too - or tried to seperate them. Painful!

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Esoteria Deployment / Army of Mango (October 2021 - Feb 2022)

Fraternity and the AoM has a long history of hatred for each other; but this tactical ambush had a bizzare ending.

There were minor skirmishes between the residents of Stain and the residents of Esoteria; but the scale of engagement looked perfect for Fraternitys EN Core. For a few months, we put pressure on Evictus and their Mercenaries, with some victories and some losses:

2021-08-16 18:30 Retributions

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Dived into a wormhole to prevent PIBC from annihilating an Athanor hull timer. We formed Muninns, but didnā€™t realistically have enough to engage that blob, so went for Cerbs to try to kite, but didnā€™t get enough, so went in Retributions.

PIBC were losing the fight until they called for a reinforcement wave of more Muninns. We kept perching our fleet around the grid, and every time we landed, a dictor would decloak and warp to us at zero - so it was continuous fleet warps for about 20 minutes straight.

We got a great boosh on a pack of Muninns, and managed to seperate a few (including the Rokhs) - but every time we seperated them, the Muninn fleet would come on top of us at zero.

At one point, the Muninns had the three Phoenixes trapped with defensive bubbles between them and the Gilas, but they still disengaged the caps to come and shoot our Retributions (thatā€™s the wall of 6 dead retris in one go, I didnā€™t think theyā€™d commit that hard O.o) So yeah, we saved the Athanor by making them fleet warp, and lost a bunch of frigates

2021-08-18 18:30 Muninns

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Back in HHQ-M1, PIBC reinforced the Athanor we saved earlier in the week. We formed a Muninn fleet with blues in Gilas, and brawled against a slightly larger Muninn fleet.

We dived in and started shredding their DPS in exchange for logi. Hostiles burned away from the Gilas and dropped HAW dreads on our Muninn fleet. We ignored this and continued chasing down the Muninns - but weā€™d lost 50% of our logi and 100% of our links - so hostiles perched to wait for our links to disappear.

As they perched, our blues thought weā€™d won the engagement and brought in 6 supers to kill the dreadnoughts. At this time, the hostile Dreadbomb dreads (which we all knew bout) undocked and hard tackled the blue supers, who also escalated with Nightmares.

Knowing it was going south, we dived on top of the hostile Muninn fleet and kept them busy trying to buy as much time as we could for the Gilas to clear tackle and tether up their supers - only one survived.

A very bloody fight indeed.

2021-10-23 20:00+

We travelled to Esoteria for a defensive hull timer in a system with a hostile keepstar. When hostiles saw us, they decided to stand down. This offended us, so we reinforced one of their Fortizarā€™s next door.

Whilst we were busy, TEST decided to form for our ansiblex in 4-HWWF. We logged Carriers/Supers on alts and nuked them whilst we were busy 80j away:

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At 01:00 we reformed for a defensive timer - it went uncontested again, so we began reinforcing more things. Feeling a bit more pressure, hostiles formed Battleships to deal with our DNIs, so we took that fight:

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2021-10-27 20:30 - DNIs vs Esoteria

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The day before, hostiles used Tengus against us - so Decoy imported some ewar refits to give us an edge. Hostiles brought 49 Tengus, 48 Cerbs and 15 Basilisks - we had 42 DNIs, 35 Muninns and 12 Tornados.

We took the fight 10km away from hostiles; as opposed to the 60km I had earlier promised the fleet. We were trading 1:1, but that gave them the confidence to burn inā€¦ so we escalated with another 80 Muninns and annihilated :vibrate:

EWAR was being spread very effectively on the Tengus, meaning we were only really taking the damage from Cerbs - so as we thinned them out, we stopped losing ships completely. It was a bloodbath :amazed:

2021-11-11 21:20 BIG FIGHT

The day before, INIT rocked up to one of the FRT timers down in Esoteria and put a fist on the scale to support The Army of Mangoes. Whilst this was happening, another group decided to reinforce one of their fortizars across in 0SHT-A, with the exit timer tonight. We happily accepted the opportunity to get involved.

We formed Nano Cerbs and made our way across to Scalding Pass, with a little help from some friends, we got a bridge nearby. We setup on grid, and a lot of pilots disconnected immediately - but we recovered as the fight went on.

INIT / GOONS had moved a bunch of caps to the Fortizar, so the first objective was to try and frag a bunch of fighters, while HAC fleets tried to focus fire on logi within the same fleet. We didnā€™t break that many logi ourselves, and committed to the grid for WAY longer than we should have.

The battle report is BLOODY - and we certainly got punished for attending. But still - it was worth the shot.

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2021-11-23 18:30 - Esoteria

We formed in 4-HWWF and waited for hostiles to make a move before jump cloning over. Hostiles bridged into the destination system where TERRA already was, so we pulled the trigger and all jump cloned over. As soon as we JCā€™d and undocked, hostiles had disengaged and warped to their friendly structureā€¦ but they were mass tackled so lost a bunch of Tengus.

They sat tethered for 30 minutes while both our citadels onlined. As we extracted, hostiles moved further down the pipe and encountered this in local: dscan.info - D-Scan Tool for EVE Online We only had 20 DNI and 5 Basilisks, so I took us away from the fight, but our friends went in and annihilated. Battle Report Tool

2021-11-27 18:45 - Shenanigans

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There were two things happening tonight; a fight in Venal, and a fight in Esoteria. We kept eyes on both locations, and pulled the trigger on the one that happened.

There were 3 hostiles: 1x Muninn, 1x Cerb, 1x Tornado

There were 3 friendly fleets: 1x Muninn, 1x Retribution, 1x Harpy

We made it into the target system and setup perches. We could not fight any of these groups head-on, so we had to bounce around the grid and seperate them. We manged to kill the prober from the hostile Cerb fleet; so with the hostile Muninn fleet isolated, all 3 of our fleets dogpiled onto them and held them down:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKCF7IWUBB8

On our way back, we caught the Tornados on a gate/ansiblex and held them down for even longer - then reinforced the ansiblex they tried to leave through

2021-11-29 00:20 - More Shenanigans

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We troll-reffed an AOM Ihub earlier in the week and formed Harpies to deal with their reaction fleet. Hostiles had Cerbs, Hecates and Jackdaws in 3 different fleets - so we bounced across the constellation and seperated the Cerbs - nuked those, and left.

2021-12-06 01:00 - Esoteria Fleet

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Last night we split the fleet into two teams - one DNI fleet under BJK, and one Tackle Team under Joann. The DNI fleet jump cloned across to U-WLT9, and the Harpies took a wormhole to come across to the content.

Hostiles formed Tengus & Tempests to stop us entosising; but they bridged into two seperate systems. We managed to isolate and destroy the Tempests; then started covering the second system. Hostiles bridged their remaining Tengu fleet into the system to regroup with the rest; so we immediately to their cyno and tackled them to stop them tethering - forcing an engagement before they were ready. Essentially; we were 2 fleets fighting 4 fleets - but those 4 fleets came one after the other; we were killing with great pace until a FAX came in.

We managed to reinforce 2 ihubs AND kill the reponse fleet, but it was a long fleet (2.5h!!) - We punched WAY above our weight, so that was a great performance for everybody involved. Well done team :slight_smile:

After this, our assaults got a bit more serious as we proved we could take the entosis timers and steal sovereigntyā€¦

2021-12-08 03:00 - Esoteria Brawl

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https://youtu.be/ISITuH04qEc

Two important Esoteria ihubs came out; we formed EN in Tackle Harpies and CN formed Muninns; along with Russians in a Jackdaw fleet and Elysians (NSH) in Zealots. Hostiles bridged into system early, but we played aggresive and chased them around their own system onto their structures and forced a fight before they could properly setup - we then brought FAX support and allies onto the same grid - our combined fleets absolutely wrecked them. We were struggling to follow the Muninn broadcasts in our frigates because they were dying so fast. Elysianā€™s Armor Lokis kept their anchor webbed down which us time to kill their ewar ships, and then dismantle the remainder.

At this time, Evictus announced that it was disbanding. This would be a significant blow to the Army of Mangoes; as Evictus was their only real EU/USTZ contingent. With an entire 2 timezones missing, we were able to capitalize on this:

Reddit - Dive into anything

2021-12-17 0200 - AOM Astra Hull timer

WC finished a timer in Geminate then JCā€™ed to Esoteria. We merged DNI fleets together with CN and took out the last AOM structure in the D-FV system.

Astrahus | Mango. | Killmail | zKillboard

2022-01-01 23:15 StratOp in Eso/Stain

WC had a fortizar to go defend. We found a drifter WH connection and traveled in harpies to get guys to install more JCs in U-W. While travel took a while, we managed to get more DNIs, Basis, and JCs sorted.

Our first target repaired uncontested. We then went to kill an AOM athanor that was setup by our friends. Killed in uncontested, job well done.

Athanor | Mango. | Killmail | zKillboard

2022-01-04 21:30 - SUPRISE CTA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RSwGgHFh3c

After Noraus formally declared war on the limping Army of Mango (whom weā€™ve destroyed their EN-Core through all the Esoteria fleets over the past few weeks), we figured now was the best time to pull the trigger.

Within a few hours of the announcement; we hatched a plan and found a decent wormhole connection and pushed 120 bombers on grid with their staging keepstar. Bombers were sent to orbit within their optimal ranges and spread out - so WHEN we got DDā€™d, it was less likely to bounce onto other targets.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/761249584798105650/928105857693130752/unknown.png

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/879164895424303154/928059377024376852/unknown.png

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/799370545401430018/928054112589856838/unknown.png

2022-01-06 14:00 ā€“ Mango Keepstar Armor Timer

(Thanks for the AAR, Miwa!)

Riding on the high of reinforcing an AOM Keepstar with ****** BOMBERS, we prepared for the armor timer.

CN formed a load of Muninns, with EN taking support in the form of a Harpy wing and an elite multiboxer with 3 self-probing void bombers.

After initially having trouble finding a route down there, we managed to find an EOL way through a drifter hole and met up with the other half of the fleet that had Jump Cloned.

Some teething problems were had just before the timer, all the FCs and most of the fleet had client crashes and slowdowns due to Tidi and server lag, but this fell back after about 5 minutes.

CN engaged with AOM and RR and traded heavily, while the Harpy fleet screened as many fighters as possible, and the bombers neuted out the enemy fleets (and some friends) with some precision bombing runs. https://i.gyazo.com/1ee5824039f48ccb0a097832669ea156.png

Unfortunately, due to the force multiplier of a Keepstar and a large super fleet, we were sustaining too many losses to be able to successfully achieve our objective and therefore decided to retreat.

https://zkillboard.com/related/30003151/202201061600/

It was a shame to have this defeat; we were extremely excited at the prospect of being able to kill this keepstar whilst AoM still owned the TCU/IHub. But the sudden immediate pressure of a reinforced home keepstar forced AoM leadership to make the crazy decision to donate their home to The Imperium a day later:

The Imperium decided to unplug the services from the keepstar sending it low power, then waited 7 days for the Keepstar to enter an Abandonded state, becoming a giant loot pinata. https://imperium.news/breaking-news-r-arkn-keepstar-destruction/

After this, Fraternity setup R-ARKN & Chill, where we would sit on a bridger and just reinforce every single structure owned by AoM until their keepstar exploded.


Tug of War in Nalvula (November 2021 - January 2022)

Since being evicted from Tribute, the ā€˜Freemen of the Northā€™ (Rote/BOSS/Miscellanous) have been up to all kinds of shenanigans; such as attempting to anchor an Azbel in friendly space during a CCP-Promoted NPSI fleet, but more specifically to us, blopsing onto Fraternity from Pochven.

This is a frustrating mechanic - as you can bridge OUT of Pochven, but you cannot bridge INTO Pochven. Pilots in Rote would sit on a BLOPS bridger and wait for someone in FRT to do something stupid (approximately 5 minutes). Once the Rhea has jumped to a cyno beacon, Rote would bridge in, kill the jump freighter, and then warp to safes and cloak. Once their aggression timer was gone, they would use a Cladistic Filament to return to Pochven; where we couldnā€™t follow them.

We had decided enough was enough, and we would follow them into Pochven and evict them. (Note - you canā€™t TRULY evict someone from Pochven because you can just bridge from a station - but you CANNOT anchor structures inside Pochven, therefore once a flag had been lost, itā€™s gone forever. That was a good enough victory condition for us)

The only way we could follow is to either find a wormhole (which would get rolled very quickly) or take filaments ourselves. So - when forming our giant fleets, I would have to split the fleet into 18 smaller fleets and filament in using the 15-pilot filaments, then step by step (with dotlan open), regroup the fleet in a particular system.

The filaments are constellation-specific, so my strategy was to always filament to the bottom-right hand corner, regroup so we were together, then storm into Nalvula as a group.

2021-11-01 02:00 - Officer Cap Kills

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AerAiQH4VhQ&t=176s

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Our friends in Siege Green recorded this incredible footage; after a back-and-forth exchanging timers on the fortizars - we slammed a load of Muninns into Nalvula to cause some ISK-damage to the defenders. We had enough Muninns to break caps - so we saw some opportunities and took them. Caps CANNOT be built inside Nalvula; so we were very pleased with the result.

2021-12-03 03:20 - POCHVEN THROWNDOWN

Battle Report Tool

FRT EN formed ~100 pilots, FRT CN formed ~100 pilots; so we split into groups of 15 and started filamenting into Pochven. We regrouped in Nalvula on the Fortizar and got ready to throwdown.

We worked with Elysians to bring a wall of Tempests, NC brought Cerbs, and we brought our Muninns. Once hostile Ravens de-tethered, we took a strategic ā€œWarp at Zeroā€ to a PDSing fort to start volleying as much as we can. We started on the Zealots who were adding ewar to our Tempests, then switched to expensive faction Battleships. A couple of times, we switched across to try and break some Dreads - but we simply did not have enough application on grid to make that work.

We bled Tempests extremely quickly, and once we decided the other blue fleets disengaged, we left as well. Great fight, lots of expensive kills; 10/10 would throw Muninns at a Fortizar again.

After this, the ā€˜Freemen of the Northā€™ got pretty hungry for our Nalvula fort, and with the help of Snuffed Out, managed to push it into hull. We formed on the weekend to save it:

2022-01-15 11:00 CTA

Battle Report Tool

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/761249584798105650/931923025597714512/unknown.png

https://youtu.be/iUACugaBItg?t=15

Rote and their merry band of ā€˜Grr Fratā€™ decided to form a doctrine that doesnā€™t have a Covert Ops Cloaking Device fitted; the BR reflects this.

We got into Pochven early (Forming 2h before the timer), held the system as if it were a wormhole (camping all the entrances) and prepared for a throwdown. As we have done previously - we took the filament to arrive in the bottom-right corner of Pochven and stormed the gate together. Other groups did not have this tactic - as we saw V0LTA / BLOB fleet split in half trying to jump into Nalvula - so they had to take a 27j detour to regroup.

Snuff/Rote/Toilet Paper all formed Cerbs to come and fight us - but we camped the majority of fleets out to deny the opportunity to regroup.

The only play they had left was Ravens and Vexors at pre-made bookmarks warping down and shooting the Fortizar; so our fleets regrouped to the Fort grid and we began picking off the Ravens that we could in range.

2022-02-02 00:00 - POCHVEN CTA

Since we evicted them from Tribute; Rote Kapelle have used their fortizar in Nalvula as a rally point to blops us every night. Weā€™re through with this now; so CN is using their inflated numbers over a CN Holiday to fully siege the system and remove Rote from Nalvula, once and for all.

We had 5 timers through the night; 2 Forts and 3 Astrahus. We took the initial one on with Muninns, + CN Muninns, + CN TFIs, + PL Cerbs (at a perch). There was a hostile Tornado fleet bouncing around the grid; but after positioning ourselves well in between a range of bubbles and keep a stack of guns ready, we managed to delete enough of them to lose effectiveness; and we even took a clutch warp away from a 70-man bomber fleet.

Battle Report Tool

The second and Third timers (Astrahus) were uncontested.

The fourth timer was another Astrahus which we ignored, as the fifth timer was the main fort.

We had even numbers to our enemies - but hostiles had Battleships + Caps, and we had a split of Muninns and Tempests. Whilst we COULD have engaged and started to kill some; we needed to keep the Fortizar paused at damage cap for 39 minutes whilst tanking Lance DDā€™s, LR Dreads and Fighters. We saw the impossible odds, and left the final timer to repair.

CN has re-reinforced this timer and we will go again on Thursday Night / Friday AM (2022-02-03 23:45)

D-Scan of system Nalvula

After deciding that ā€˜Throwing Muninns at the problemā€™ was not the solution, we shifted up a gear. CN started manufacturing Battleships and steadily moving them into Pochven - so by the time we were ready, we had Rokhs & Ravens at our disposalā€¦

2022-02-03 23:30 + 6 hours lol

Battle Report Tool

https://youtu.be/gZD5ysNyJi0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzMxxUnx67E

Wow. Rote Kapelle batphoned 50+ alliances to prevent us from pushing this into hull. Historically weā€™ve taken HACS + HACS + HACS vs Battleships + Fax + HAW Dreads; but today we brought out the big guns.

We handed out Rokhs and sat at a perch 275km behind the fortizar; 6 guns on the Fort and 2 guns on targets that came in range. CN joined us in Rokhs, but also had Muninns and Tempests/TFIs sat behind us. We pulled the fight AWAY from the fortizar and centered it around our battleships; and it worked amazing. Hostiles didnā€™t mass-warp to us until the Fort was already 50%; by this point, it was too late. We started losing battleships, but because weā€™d pulled their battleships away from their fax; we were still able to keep the Fortizar paused at damage cap AND melt their battleships with our own guns.

We were in 40% tidi for the duration of the fight but we still managed to push it into Hull in time to warp to and kill the 2nd Fortizar.

Over the next few days, hostiles did lots of evac operations to extract from the fort - but with no safety of tether once the fight is over, we managed to kill these fortizars later with little resistance:

Battle Report Tool

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Snuffed In (January 2022 - April 2022)

On 28th January 2022, Snuff baited out and killed 2 Titans, a Nyx, and a bunch of Dreads/FAX in our home system of 4-HWWF. Immediately after downtime; CN mobilized and undocked their entire SuperCap/Titan fleet, loads of dictors, and began anchoring bubbles where SNUFF dropped. We bookmarked the location of our bubbles and maintained this for the next two months.

Later than night, SNUFF/INIT/Horde brought 348 pilots to attempt a breakout, and on a FLASH form, we had 333 pilots from FRT to fight back. Not only were we ISK positive, but we killed more FAX and they were unable to break the caps out:

The next night, Snuff/INIT/Horde brought 306 pilots to attempt a breakout, to our 308 pilots + NC/PL on standby:

Two nights later, SNUFF announced a deployment to Hakonen and switched into Muninns. This time, they brought INIT + V0LTA + Brave + RED + SibSquads (794 pilots in total) to our 550 Pilots + NC/PL:

After this, things get pretty desperate for SNUFF. Even in EUTZ, they canā€™t find enough people willing to help them, so FRT begins trending on Reddit thanks to a series of tasteful observations:

A few weeks later, SNUFF did one last ā€˜hurrahā€™ by themselves and attempted to meme their way out. They logged in 11 Revelations, 6 Naglfar, 1 Moros, 2 Phoenix and 1 Archon - only 6 ships jumped out and leaving 15 to die.

SNUFFā€™s content deployment dries up as they were unable to kill a single xDECOYx POS in P3EN/IPAY (Yes, WE pos locked it :muscle:) and pilots begin to lose motivation and start logging their dreads in over the next few weeks JUST to get the accounts back. SNUFF ended up blue-balling themselves frequently as we were able to get jammers on quickly each time they formed. A few days later, they announced that Capital Fusion did not meet their ā€˜requirementsā€™; so they have moved to join BL0B now. (V0LTAā€™s rental alliance)

So far, FRT has lost 667b ISK in this campaign, and Snuff/INIT/CAPF/V0LTA/Rote have lost 572b ISK with a remaining 30 caps still logged off in our stager. But we have taken serious advantage of their weakened state, claiming 5 low-sec R64 from them, and watching them fail to escalate in other fights on the map.

https://fleetcom.space/campaign/945uTZ5sF7asNZsuL

In addition to the above; whilst Snuff had a limited capacity to escalate with caps, we took full advantage of clearing out some of their R64 in Low-Sec Forge:

2022-02-08 20:00 - Eruka Double R64

Eruka | Flickr

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We pushed two SNUFF R64ā€™s into Hull in Eruka and turned up to finish them off. The first one became vulnerable at 18:50, and the second at 19:50. We didnā€™t replace the first Athanor immediately, because we wanted to defend the next two at the same time; so a SNUFF alt corp replaced the first timer. We left carriers on our fortizar hitting Athanor #2, while subs came back to hit Athanor #3.

On grid with the newly anchoring Fortizar, SNUFF had their Arty Machariels - but every time they landed 100km away from them, I warped at 100km to a perch 200km behind them; literally treating the TFI like Harpys. SNUFF kept warping out learning 1-2 stragglers behind each time who we mopped up, but then INIT turned up on grid with Cerberus. We warped between the Cerbs/Machs each time, until the INIT fleet was burning directly towards a bookmark I had pre-made. We managed to warp TFIā€™s IN FRONT of the 2.7km/s HAC fleet and kill the Cerb FC early in the fight, causing him to travel to Jita to bu another Monitor :kekw: EveTools Killboard

After INITā€™s FC reshipped, the Cerbs + Machs came in at the same time on top of us - then SNUFF brought a few FAX to keep them alive. Here, we spread tackle across SNUFF and cynoā€™d our own caps in, killed a few fax and watched the remainders scatter.

We sat watching our caps until this Athanor died and we replaced it ourselves; and SNUFF warped their Machariels onto our other caps on the Fortizar grid. They managed to kill 2 of our carriers before a fleet arrived and we killed a few more snuff.

We finished killing all the SNUFF athanors and replaced them with our own; their anchoring wasnā€™t contested. But - the SNUFF titan logged in to bridge them (and INIT) out, so we went across and started reffing their POS, because INIT would not have been able to enter the forcefield. Once the POS was reffed, I bookmarked our current location and did a fleet warp out unaligned. As we warped out, SNUFF tried to land on our old spot, so I warped us on top of SNUFF at zero. We spread tackle EXTREMELY effectively, and brought our caps back into the fight and chewed through them.

This is the photo finish - resulting in a 133b loss for SNUFF:

Eruka | Original size 6880x2880 | Razorien EVE | Flickr


The Future

Fraternity EN is still growing and we have plenty more opportunities ahead of us. The majority of our income now comes from Moons or Instanced Events (Missions/Escalations/Giga-farming incursions nearby) but itā€™s safe to say itā€™s stable for a multi-TZ group without interfering with each other.

Many people complain that ā€˜EVE is Dyingā€™ - but this negative energy comes from people who no longer play the game, or have not been fortunate enough to surround themselves with a community like this.

ā€œWhen all is said and done; let more be done than saidā€. Be the change you want to see in EVE. Encourage chaos. Challenge your friends. But most importantlyā€¦ Give people a reason to login and get involved.

FRT is patiently awaiting the upcoming patch notes before deciding our next campaign - but it feels great to be part of an active PvP coalition building an FC bench and skill pilots with respect for each other. This is a very different experience to where Iā€™ve been before and Iā€™m looking forward to writing the next chapter here.

13 Likes

This was a good read.

Always interesting in the amount of coordination and effort it takes from members to actually keep a large alliance functional and working. And agreed, for me nothing in EVE says it is dying. Still active and enjoying my gameplay. The forums, inactive and uninformed player base tend to be more vocal than the rest in stating EVE is dying.

Saw you yesterday in highsec with the TTC fleets. :slight_smile: We did the shield timer but did not have the numbers at the time to resist the structure and 60 nados.

1 Like

Thank you for taking the time to read and comment, I really appreciate that!

EVE is definitely still growing - just not in the places people realise. Thatā€™s why Iā€™m keen to post this journal here on the EVE Forums, rather than other places EVE is discussed.

Yes, we came along to get involved! We heard there were tornados last time - so we brought fast frigates to catch them for you :slight_smile:

An excellent read. Rare around these parts. I have one question.

Will this be updated? :nerd_face:

1 Like

Thank you, thatā€™s very kind :slight_smile:

Yes - I plan to keep this updated; but it will always be back-dated information - rather than active campaigns. We have eyes on our next project, so an update should come in a few weeks :slight_smile:

Iā€™m an FRT-CN member currently AFKing. I participated in some of your fleets and had a lot of good memories. You always did the right thing at the right time. Will return to EVE when I go to the US for my postgraduate studies next year. Maybe I would move to a USTZ corp of FRT-EN then :grin:

2 Likes

Thank you so much, thatā€™s very kind! I hope you have a great time with your studies and I look forward to flying with you again soon :slight_smile:

The Alarm-Clock Wars

As of Friday 1st July 2022, Fraternity has now declared war on We Form V0lta.

ā€œThe objective is to remove the enemy leadership in the two regions Fade and Deklein.ā€ - Noraus

For the last 1.5 years, V0LTA + FRT reached an informal NIP guaranteeing security of each others borders. Since then, V0LTA began growing and housing a collective of Anti-Fraternity alliances (Scumlords, B0SS, Toilet Paper) and manipulating the residents of Pure Blind (Brave + Banderlogs) into acting as their meatshield when we retalite.

ā€œVolta has started their narrative of them being the last deserving midscale alliance to fight for and shady FRT menace is set onto another land grabbing. They will want sympathy and support from others; they will get a lot of echoes.ā€ - Noraus

We expect this to be a long war as our energy outweighs hostile momentum.

1 Like

Oh so frst running out of space for botsā€¦ Yea plex prises risen so neeed more bots!!

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2022-07-01 - Day 1 of War

CNTZ CTA Ahoy!

:white_check_mark: DO6H-Q Fortizar Online
:white_check_mark: ROIR-Y Keepstar Online
:white_check_mark: 6x Fortizars Onlining in every other system in XFLN-F
:white_check_mark: V0LTA slapped so hard they needed an emergency JF run from Jita Battle Report Tool

Tactical Map courtesy of @Luke_Anninan:

2022-07-02 - Day 2 of War - Skirmishes vs offical V0LTA Sympathizers Brave

Since Brave have official blue standings with GTC, itā€™s now of our best interest to damage their SRP wallet. For the last few days, weā€™ve taken out fights into Brave space to hit ansiblex and antagonise:



2022-07-03 - Day 3 of War - MAX CTA

GTC + Brave attempted to anchor a Fortizar in WinterCo rental space. They amassed 700+ Pilots, the largest scan of them all in the same system showed 324 Muninns, 79 Eagles plus support:

There were a few ways GTC could have attempted to engage us today - either directly in the system or as an ambush en-route. WinterCo has years of experience with nullsec strategy and a very dedicated and resilient core. Our brothers in CN had the energy to maintain the additional infrastructure in Y-1918 for hours giving us every advantage the game will provide - forcing our enemies to not engage due to the scale of defence we had lined up.


2022-07-04 - Day 4 of War

From the aftermath of previous night; there were still lots of bubbles and jammers anchored in Y-1918 on the UJY and 1IX gate. A steady stream of CN logging back in after a long night saw steady traffic in Branch/Venal, and a steady traffic of opportunist hostiles.

There were attempts to poke the jammers and structures in Branch all morning - but we defended them with LR Tengus and Jackdaws.

Around 15:00, all jammers were transferred to Decoy to ā€˜pick up in EUTZā€™ - 2 minutes later, damage notifications came through :face_exhaling: Luckily there was a small fleet already in the area, so we used that to fend off the hostiles. We scooped all but one jammer.

Keen at the thought of a free low-power FLEX structure kill; BLOB formed a Kikimora fleet to come and kill it early EUTZ - so I put the jammer online, forcing it into high power mode, wasting their time :slight_smile:

Then EUTZ came around and we depart to hit GTC infrastructure. WC was on standby, OBLV and MOFR formed one fleet, and Decoy formed a 30-pilot Sentry Ishtar fleet - then went to hit an ansiblex in Deklein. Just as the structure entered reinforcement; a 70-man Muninn fleet landed on the other side of the gate. Perfect timing :stuck_out_tongue:


2022-07-05 - Day 5 of War

The Cyno jammers we were defending came out of RF after downtime; Scumlords attended with a small Ishtar fleet w/ Sentry drones. Me, @Jonas_Skypilot and Ybytlan started with Tengus and killed all their sentry and heavy drones. After defanging, we switched to tackle and grabbed what we could: Ishtar | Aria Winterfell | Killmail | zKillboard

Later, hostiles came back with 2x Vedmaks and 4x Cloaky ships. We undocked a griffin after 30 minutes, repeatedly jammed them both and it passed its 30 minute repair cycle. https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/799370545401430018/993858368039030784/unknown.png

A short while later, we baited both of their Vedmaks:

Next, it was fleet time. Decoy formed 7 Cerbs, 2 Scimis and a Bifrost. We had two Ansiblex coming out of RF in DKUK and A4L-A2 - opposite sides of Deklein. Fortunately, BOB had blessed us with a large wormhole in highsec directly to DKUK - we got in undetected. We got the ansi down to 5% remaining then used a drifter wormhole to make a 4j connection to come across to A4L-A2 - then a second BL0B fleet cynoā€™d in. We bounced back into our drifter wormhole then promptly left.

Local scan, 78 pilots in system - Hostile fleet in DKUK
D-Scan of system A4L-A2 - Hostile fleet in A4L


En route home, we found Efrfan Warrior sleeping on an ansiblex and nuked him:

In USTZ - a large fight broke out over a Brave Athanor. Hostiles dropped dreads to break our FAX; only to be counter-dropped - losing an even-numbered dread brawl. The real question isā€¦ where were V0LTA/BL0B?

image


2022-07-06 - Day 6 of War

The night prior, a Brave Retribution fleet, a Scumlords Leshak fleet and various GTC roamers started reinforce ansiblex through Branch. This morning, all repaired without contest.

There were a few more low-effort reinforcement attempts in Branch, but most were prevented with Jackdaws, Tengus and Cerberus:

In USTZ, WinterCo travelled to fight Brave once more; going for the system of F-NMX6. A fight was started during the attempted capture of the F-NMX6 Ihub - it was successfully reinforced and only Bombers were brought as resistance:


2022-07-07 - Day 7 of War

In response to their staging ihub being reinforced; BRAVE sent out a swarm of Atrons/Tristans to attempt to reinforce 37 IHUB/TCUs across Branch, Tenal, Tribute, Pure Blind and Vale all at the same time. We had pretty quick reactions - with our FCs managing to push all but one off.

In early EUTZ, we saw a few more reinforcement attempts of our ansiblex network, these were pushed away quite comfortably:

But after this, we had a move-op gone wrong. To save a bit of time, we attempted a shortcut via stargate. Unfortuntaely we got the wrong stargate, which meant we were dangling caps underneath hostile eyes with just a frigate fleet as backup. It went as expected:

To redeem ourselves, we went back out to BRAVE space that night and attempt to reinforce their ihub across in EC-P8R - capturing it and getting a great fight.


2022-07-08 - Day 8 of War - BRAVE STAGING IHUB

A poll was sent across to WC, and eventually the rest of EVE, if we should destroy the BRAVE IHub in F-NMX6 - of the 2,000 responses, the majority said ā€˜Ayeā€™:


WC EN formed a full Muninn fleet and a Cerberus wing, and WC CN formed an AHAC Fleet, a Muninn Fleet plus Caps. Prior to the fight happening, we anchored a large POS in every system in the constellation and pre-staged Entosis FAX and Anti-Cap Dreads, incase of hostile FAX. We also lifted the 4 important Ansiblex, knowing they were likely to get reinforced during the day, rendering themselves unusable for the event.

1.5 hours before the fleet started, we began re-anchoring the ansiblex. When the final one began anchoring, BRAVE and GTC both formed ~200 pilot fleets EACH and came to contest the single WC Muninn Fleet on the anchoring Ansiblex. Outnumbered 2:1, WC EN patiently waited on the Keepstar grid, before bridging out of the system - 4 jumps past where BRAVE + GTC were, gunning straight towards the target system.

To get into the F-NMX6 Constellation, we would need to jump into 7RM from the KLY gate. We needed to get through before hostiles setup - so the decoy of anchoring our ansiblex network was successful; we took the Muninn fleet into the constellation before GTC/Brave could setup their fighters on the gate. We began clearing all the anchored bubbles on the gate and on the POS - but by the 3rd system, the hostile fleets had caught up with us so we took shelter inside the POS whilst CN moved their subs & supers towards the constellation.

The first punch of CN gating into 7RM was a huge success:

But unfortunately, weā€™d wasted too much time with the travelling and couldnā€™t move supers around comfortably enough to control the southern part of the constellation where the majority of nodes spawned.

Several fights broke out across the constellation - but ultimately FRT was unable to break the ihub. The capitals we had pre-staged were ineffective as bubbles were not removed fast enough across the POS, and we bounced between ā€˜committing to a fightā€™ and ā€˜chasing nodesā€™:

TLDR we lost the objective and the isk war, the window is now in deep EU.
we were hazing through the first 20mins, brave was doing everything to delay us through the gate, while voltaā€™s fleet tailing our muninns.
Itā€™s a bloody fight for them tho we were already late on entosis. It was the moment for me that I can either choose to give up objective, go for hostile supercaps with our supers.
Or trying to challenge the 5.5ADM nodes. I chose the latter.
our 3 subcap fleets(one was zealot, another one of my mistakes.) then roamed around the constellation. Our logoff dreads logged in from pos killing hostile entosis fax. However the mechanics still favors the defender, under jammer with high adm the contest is extremely unfavorable. This is where I got to pick again. Should I take unfavorable fleet fights in order to stop entosising, siege excessive amount of dreads to kill fax, or play safe defending our own entosis. The meta doesnā€™t allow us to play safe. For every one node we run, the hostile can run 5.
This was when our dreads and crippled zealot fleets decided to face tank and bought other fleets time. This contest is only possible if we form 1-2 more subcap fleets. Brave pulled their best I will give them the credits. Now the headshot window is gone we will turn this campaign into the long slow marathon. Everyone should be ready for that. :frowning_with_open_mouth:


2022-07-09 - Day 9 of War

The morning started pretty slow - there were fewer sovreignty notifications from Brave and GTC couldnā€™t form enough fleets large enough to contest our reinforced ansiblex. Knowing they were still sleeping from the night before, we formed and started hitting their infrastructure in Deklein - grabbing an Athanor and an Ansiblex.

Later in the day, GTC brought an Eagle fleet to damage our ansiblex network, we responded with a flashform of Nightmares and pushed them away with 10% armor remaining:

Next, the EC-P8R Ihub came out of reinforcement. This time, we focused on kills, rather than the nodes - 98 dead Muninns :cookie:


2022-07-10 - Day 10 of War

There were a few more sov attack attempts on WC space during the day, but no successful reinforcements.

A V0LTA Astrahus exited its reinforcement cycle during the day, so EN mobilized to finish it off.

In the same system that V0LTA had their structure reinforced, ā€˜ur dunkedā€™ started shooting another structure. We recieved the call and formed bombers - we managed to secure some great cap kills, but unfortunately could not save the structure:

In USTZ, Deepwater Hooligans started anchoring a structure in Mantenault; next door to BRAVE sov. The structure passed its initial anchor timer, and a decent-scale fight broke out in RQH as we came back through. Feroxes were trading very effectively against the HACs, but the Nightmare fleet got split and started dying quickly to the Muninns :grimacing:


2022-07-11 - Day 11 of War

During CNTZ, another wave of sov attacks happened towards Fraternity sov, but there were no succesful reinforcements. In response, FRT reinforced a few GTC ansiblexes for EUTZ to follow up on.

In EUTZ, xDECOYx dropped an Astrahus in 2B7A-3 on grid with V0LTAā€™s anchoring Azbel. After this, as a corp we took 6 bombers to follow up on the Scumlords ansiblex, and they responded with this:


Hostiles had put themselves in a bad position on grid, so we killed a Tengu and left:

USTZ moved some capitals back towards Vale from Branch, then attempted to reinforce a Fortizar in Venal, but got outnumbered and retreated:


2022-07-12 - Day 12 of War

CNTZ had more sov hits, but all were defended. In return, we reinforced a few key ansiblex that would make travel for V0LTA through Deklein much harder.

At 17:00, WinterCo formed 70 pilots to oversee the onlining of the Astrahus, but we saw 170 hostiles formed to take it out. Those were impossible odds, so we chose to stand down.

At 19:00, WinterCo formed 150 pilots to stop GTC anchoring an Azbel in Branch; but GTC formed 130, BRAVE formed 130 and V0LTA formed 50 - more impossible odds for us to fight, so instead we attempted to hit sovereignty, but we were pushed off by hostile groups moving around.

Whilst we couldnā€™t contest either of the objectives, Decoy had fun killing a few stragglers:

In USTZ, we killed a faction POS used by hostiles moved more caps around.


2022-07-13 - Day 13 of War

CNTZ saw more Sovreingty attacks, but less than previous days. These were mostly deflected by interceptor and jackdaw pilots solo.

EUTZ had a ā€˜restā€™ day, as the strategy is shifting to guerilla based tactics; as we discovered the previous day that it will be impossible to fight these head-on whilst both are in their current states.

USTZ took their daily trip to BRAVE space and traded extremely positive, formally forward-staging all dreadnoughts:


2022-07-14 - Day 14 of War

Iā€™ve gone through the logs and worked out the efforts of BRAVE vs WC Sov:

Today, a further 24 attempts were made with 1 successful reinforcement.

In EUTZ, FRT formed a 120-man Nightmare fleet to destroy a We Fowm Wolta Raitaru in LowSec - but BRAVE + GTC formed a combined fleet of 256 and pushed us off. Unfortunately, they lost some of their fleet to Triglavian gate rats on the way home.


2022-07-15 - Day 15 of War

CNTZ saw another wave of attempted reinforcements (and free entosis links)

EUTZ pinged for a Stabber fleet - so GTC counter pinged saying they werenā€™t going to form, because we were just ā€˜roamingā€™ - but we actually killed one of their structures and small fleet defending it :slight_smile:

In USTZ, SkillU managed to kill Braveā€™s ansiblex from EC-P8R, and we covered a few more structures anchoring.


2022-07-16 - Day 16 of War

11:45 - GTC pings a flashform CTA
11:47 - GTC pings to get more pilots in fleet
12:04 - GTC pings that the ansiblex to their staging system is camped and not to take it.

GTC sent a CTA up to Branch to reinforce an ansiblex and entosis the Y-1918 Ihub - but WC push their CTA off with a small Harpy and Cerberus fleet:

USTZ, FRT anchored a Fortizar in BRAVE Sov-Space 7RM uncontested - the exit timer will be next Saturday :slight_smile:


2022-07-17 - Day 17 of War

Noraus (FRT), StarFleetCommander (V0LTA) and Dunk Dinkle (BRAVE) all duke it out on comms during Pandoā€™s FC Chat :military_helmet:

Aside from this; not much fighting happened on Sunday. Felt like a rest day :smiley:


2022-07-18 - Day 18 of War

During EUTZ, BOSS (and mercenaries) attempted to reinforce structures in Venal - so WC dispatched a small 15-pilot Caracal fleet towards them - killing a BOSS Leshak. Hostile response was a T3C fleet - so WC escalated again sending a Cerberus fleet to support.


2022-07-19 - Day 19 of War

In CNTZ, WC defended their Fortizar in Braveā€™s home system of F-N, and reinforced their POCOs.

In EUTZ, GTC brought a Kikimora fleet through a drifter wormhole to a wormhole to contest a structure in Geminate; which we pushed them away from.

Later in EUTZ, a fight broke out in BRAVEā€™s stager and we got outformed:

2 Likes

If he wasnā€™t for that volta guy in kino so hellbent on trashtalking evryone that donā€™t fight their kronos and their 4 interdictor, i would have donate some ship to brave

The Alarm-Clock Wars - 1 Month Summary

WinterCo Update

Hi team :slight_smile: Hereā€™s a quick update of how things are going so far:

ISK-Wise - WinterCo & Friends have killed 982b and lost 960b - we are just ahead of the BR. Notably, Brave have lost 576bā€¦ it will take them a lot longer to recover than FRTā€™s 728b lostā€¦
Structure-Wise - We now have structures in Deklein, Fade and Pure Blind
IHub-Wise - We have not taken any sovereignty structures yet :panda_diplomacy:

ā€“ Letā€™s break this down to the three timezones:

CNTZ - We onlined 2 Keepstars in Pure Blind, 2 Fortizars in Deklein and entire constellation of Fortizars online in Fade. Each time these get hit, CN responds with overwhelming force and landslide victories.
Our EN pilots in CNTZ have also been defending sov attacks - special shoutout to @Hush#7740 for the insane amount of interceptor fleets this month, great job :panda_love: EN pilots have also been defending structures in CNTZ :muscle:

USTZ - At the start of July, Branch was getting structures reinforced nightly by BRAVE in Retris and other GTC alliances in Vedmak/Leshaks. Towards the end of July, BRAVE allowed us to anchor forts in their home uncontested - and with the addition of BIGAB, weā€™ve had some incredible fights.

EUTZ - This is GTC/Braveā€™s strongest timezone and itā€™s showing. When they anchored the Azbel in Branch, they formed 350 people to our 150. A few days ago, they formed 145 to our 85 (Brave was elsewhere). Numbers from both sides are dipping as momentum is fading; but itā€™s more noticable on the defenders side. It wonā€™t be long until weā€™re fighting even numbers - until then, keep your corp mates motivated and logging in. We still have several cards to play - youā€™ll know when they hit the board.

ā€“ So, whatā€™s next?

We are still encouraging PvE and allowing corps to mine their moons - therefore, home defence and reacting to intel will remain a priority. With PLEX prices rising, and our expectation being everyone has a Nightmare + Muninn + Cerb + **Eagle **+ HFI/Sleip + Ferox + Harpy + Caracal + Stabber in their hangar, itā€™s of our best interest to make pilots of WinterCo as rich as possible.

EUTZ will be seeing more ā€œflashformsā€ over the coming weeks, so being close to 4-HWWF (or in a system you can deathclone from) will be vital. Roams will still happen around the clock, and since moving to Vale of the Silent we have never been bored for things to shoot - standing fleet is great for that.

:fire: Thanks for your efforts so far - letā€™s make August just as explosive :fire:

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The Alarm-Clock Wars - 2 Month Summary

WinterCo Update

Hi team :slight_smile: August was all about guerilla tactics for both attackers and defenders. We have a selection of pilots living directly in BRAVEā€™s stager and a BLOPS SIG covering everything else - but we also have people defensively placed in Branch & Geminate with the remainder of our pilots using Standing Fleet to fight against pre-pinged roams.

That said, there were still some big engagments this month, notably the 5ZXX Fortizar and failed dreadbomb from salty ex-WinterCo members.

ISK-Wise - WinterCo & Friends have killed 1.56t and lost 1.64t since the start of the war
Structure-Wise - We now have structures in Deklein, Fade and Pure Blind - with TWO in Braveā€™s stager. V0LTA are attempting to anchor 4 more Astrahus in Branch this week - we will see how much they commit to onlining them on 2022-09-06.
IHub-Wise - We have not taken any sovereignty structures yetā€¦

CNTZ Sov Attacks - Sovreignty attacks against us have slowed down as BRAVEā€™s onslaught wasnā€™t very successful. In July/August, we have recieved 389 entosis notifications, of which only 25 completed, and 0 were followed up on. With no signs of changing soon; CNTZ has deployed content Jump Clones to the south.

USTZ - USTZ attacks against us have been repelled pretty effectively - especially from the INITā€™s handout dreadbomb feed ( Battle Report Tool ) , so our ā€œLate-Night Legionā€ has been going directly towards hostile stagers for kills and content.

EUTZ - EUTZ is shaping up nicely. We successfully defended EUTZ structures in Venal and the numbers gap is closing. Does this mean weā€™re ready bigger fightsā€¦? :eyes:

ā€“ So, whatā€™s next?

EUTZ will continue to ā€˜Flashformā€™ for objectives that are important, but Standing Fleet & Sigs will continue doing heavy lifting.

A war in EVE is not fought by throwing HACs at a wall every night - it is won by providing our pilots with a good quality of life with reasons to login, and removing those same opportunities from our enemies. We have Pochven, BLOPS, a strong energetic FC bench doing daily roams, standing fleet thatā€™s able to kill pre-pinged gangs, public R64, incursion fleets (when nearby), structures in hostile staging systems, and more.

Standby for further announcements as we welcome more people to Team Panda soon :wink:

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WinterCo War Update - October 2022

We established early on that this war would be very different across the 3 timezones - CNTZ (aggressors favour, setting up infrastructure), EUTZ (defenders favour, targets of opportunity) and USTZ (harassment, smaller skirmishes).

CNTZ managed to anchor a keepstar in ROIR and a Fortizar in every system in the east of Fade. These mostly went uncontested, but now they are getting hit with Leshaks, Talos, and Kikimora fleets. Weā€™ve also had a lot of sov attacks up in Branch; big shoutout to Hush H for running so many defence fleets for the initial timers.

USTZ started pushing BRAVE structures to the point where they stopped fighting back changed their timers to EU. We successfully anchored multiple fortizars in Pure Blind in USTZ.

Our EUTZ is the same size as Brave and GTCā€™s individually, so combine VOLTA on top (if they actually form), fighting all 3 head on has been a challenge. Weā€™ve still killed some Ansiblex and Athanors which seem to take a long time to replace - but we have not yet broken any ihubs. We switched to guerilla tactics - the Sons of Bane sig ā€œBurn and Churnā€ led by Sion and ShockFist have been far more effective than Braves and GTCs bomber sig who seem overly scared of my Jackdaw.

This week was Golden Week - a national holiday in China. Our enemies were expecting this to be our BIG PUSH to FINALLY BREAK THE FIRST IHUB and put a lot of resources into jammers and defence - but this is not a holiday fightā€¦ this is a war.

Our brothers and sisters in CN have put disposable caps on the line in an attempt to low-effort some ihubs and structures at 1am their time - GTC decided to batphone everybody who could help them, which created an interesting situation - and gave us some valuable intel.

I can now formally announce the following update:

UMI-KK - MAI SHOUSHOU is now WinterCos new deathclone location for DPS Mains.
O5Y3-W VI - Moon 1 - True Power Logistic Support in Stain will be our jump clone location for all DPS Mains.

In UMI-KK we will be Torpedo Bombers/Force Recons, Muninns, Eagles, Cerberus, FAX, ALL Caps + Nightmares. We may also introduce a T1 Battleship comp - but we will announce that closer to its maiden voyage.

In O5Y3-W VI - Moon 1 - True Power Logistic Support we will be using Torpedo Bombers, Kikimoras, ā€œa Cruiser compā€ and a ā€œBattleshipā€ composition. I would LOVE to use Prophecy Navy Issues there - so if you are farming the tags and can get your hands on some blueprints, let me know. But in either case, this will NOT be a HAC deployment. We will be doing some science that we will bring North. DO NOT MOVE ANYTHING OTHER THAN YOUR JUMP CLONE TO THE STATION, WE WILL TAKE CARE OF THE REST.

For the next 70 days, we will be staging in direct bridge range of our enemies and at the start of our travel network - with range close enough to get back and cover Geminate and Branch should we need. In this time, we will patrol every system within double-blops bridge range of UMI-KK.

Caps are an interesting subject. We had forward deployed them to ROIR-Y, however from in the scale of fight weā€™re having, a single cap is worth 40-50 HACs and hostiles have no problem suiciding to kill them. The Minokawa is the most likely to be called in to support, but itā€™s important that weā€™re all still attempting to acquire cap alts.

With a stager change, so will our day to day activities:-

Capital Ratting should be discouraged outside of CNTZ, aim towards Marauder ratting. A Kronos can get 150m/h in a 100% BRM system. Ishtars can tank the dread spawn and run every site, if youā€™ve got spare ishtar alts reach out to me and weā€™ll get mobilized.

Standing Fleet will act as normal - you can even leave your HD Combat ships in 4-HWWF, as the majority of Vale traffic comes through M-OEE8, P3EN-E, H-5GUI or bridged from Nalvula anyway.

PL + PH being deployed to Pure Blind is simply for content, but it MIGHT have something to do with INIT attempting to complete a keepstar chain North on 23rd September. The only thing this means for us, is our FCs need to keep eyes in X-7, as well as C4C, as well as F-N.

We will also have a few more people joining us in UMI-KK over the next few days so make them feel welcomed.

Most fleet fights will be pre-pinged, but we will When there are not fleets, we will be patrolling the area in Torpedo Bombers. Expect fleets to be prepinged and an uplift in energy. See you in fleet team o7

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Military Update - 20th November 2022

War Update
The war with GTC has taken an interesting turn:

  • Braves morale hits a new low
  • GTC is mostly pinging Venal or Thera fleets
  • EVE has recently hit 30k+ online players for the first time since March 2022.

History of the conflict
After WWB2, BRAVE actively separated itself from PAPI and once again seeked its own independence. Just like WinterCo - BRAVE saw the appeal of being close to the centre of the map - first positioning themselves in Geminate, then hopping over us, into Pure Blind.

After WinterCo announced its intentions to purge Deklein/Fade to make room on the map for a more active and responsive neighbour; BRAVE were seduced into joining a defensive war within a month of moving their supers out of a Fraternity Keepstar, into a Keepstar that Fraternity sold them (and were on standby to defend it on anchor), after helping them move in AND out of Geminate after considering TISHU to be too much of a threat.

We had no intentions of fighting BRAVE prior to this. We respect their infrastructure, their members and their leadership - BRAVE has a unique appeal with its new-player friendly environment and ā€œstay classyā€ attitude, but a few white-knighting FCs have given them a poor reputation and the toxicity is starting to build up.

With BRAVE throwing themselves in front of this train, they have ended up being the centre of nearly every single major battle. (F-NMX6 Ihub, 5ZXX Fortizar, F-NMX6 Fort/Keepstar) Our FCs in this war have also gravitated to focusing BRAVE infrastructure in Pure Blind, because the response has been easier to deal with than both GTC + BRAVE combined (if we hit Fade/Deklein, for example).

With the addition of BFL 3rd party content deployment to X-7 in Pure Blind, BRAVE has truly become the daily punching bag for all of us. Even to the point where a single pilot funded their own keepstar to be dropped in Braveā€™s staging system without ihub control, and GTC + BRAVE + Imperium could not stop it from being anchored. Our UMI-KK deployment mainly consisted of 3rd partying against BRAVE, instead of focusing on our true goal of purging GTC.

The war will continue through use of Sigs; we no longer need the full coalition deployed to maintain this pressure. As such, with immediate effect, we are returning our deathclones to 4-HWWF.

We will return to the operation style which worked successfully when we took Tribute and Vale.

For the front-line, we have a sig called ā€˜Burn and Churnā€™ led by SionPhion of Sons of Bane staging from our Keepstar in ROIR-Y, on the border of Fade. We are doing daily blops fleets/roams to make GTC space difficult to earn in, but whilst BRAVE choose to continue being part of this war, we will damage their pilots income too.

We have a secondary sig called ā€˜Crouching Tiger Hidden Pandaā€™, which is deployed to Stain, but why here?

In November 2021, we supported them controlling Stain fighting against Vindictve & EVICTUS to the point both alliances disbanded, leaving Army of Mangoes wide open in EUTZ for a legendary keepstar reinforcement, sending AoM into freefall resulting in the first abandoned keepstar killmail on Tranquliility. Flash forward 10 months, that same alliance we supported is pinging Max CTAs against us. Just to reiterate; the campaign leaders from Vindicitive, Evictus AND Ferra Victrix, are now all working together in GTC. Essentially; GTC is a combination of everyone weā€™ve fought over the last 2 years, consolidated into a single name.

Expect more operational updates over the next 24-48 hours.

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Thank you so much BJK for opening my eyes with your magic post/pistol. Iā€™m so low on morale and did not even noticeā€¦

Staying classy, having fun, being BRAVE.

This post shall not die.

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