mandag 16. mars 2015

The Siege of Hub

It all started on a day like just like any other day. Not this week. Nor last. But several months back. When we had just moved into SingSing (Yes thats the name of our C4 wormhole). Through our connection we had two other groups who were already fighting eachother. We made an agreement with one of the groups and togeather we took down some carriers. The name of this group we decided to fight together with was Revenant Tactical [-R3V-]. We had a blast and started talking about them joining Unsettled. However our policy of all alliance members living inside our C4 put them off as they still enjoyed the C5 they lived in.

HeWhoShallNotBe Named
contacted us on the proposal
of joining forces.
And so time passed on as she always does. Days became weeks and weeks became months. Along the way some of our members in Dracos Dozen went over to fly with them aswell and tho we rarely saw them again in our chians, a bond was formed. Along the path R3V chose to move on from their 5-4 to a new 5-3. And it is here we reconnect to recent history. As content dried up for them in the 5-3 they reapproached us to further discuss a joining of f
orces and invited us to move into their 5-3. As before we were very positive to flying with the pilots in R3V. But again the idea of moving into a 5-3 was very little tempting. But we started a discussion to see if we could find some way of making it work. Having previous experience from living in a 5-3, both ICOL and .ORLY knew it was mostly a one way street to Lowsec depending on roaming wormholes and incoming connections to actually do content in wormholespace. This was less desirable then

Two days later, on february 27, we got a urgent call. Russians had seeded R3V's wormhole and reinforced two towers. A series of communications started to go forth and back to assemble what we could of intel. It appeared to be a few minor groups. They seemed like no real threat really. But we digged a little deaper. And on one killmail a very familiar name showed up. DURA LEXX. This was not the first time we had encountered this name. No in fact we had come across them on several occasions.

A desicion was made and we assembled the finest fleet UNSET had ever flown before. We strolled over and took wormholecontrol. We set up a staging pos (since they had already seen our fleet) and logged of inside system. Then as many as possible helped keeping wormhole control through the night. Since this was not our alliance home we did not call a CTA or schedule a wormhole control group that could hold 24/7. And during US and AU tz we very much relied on R3V to keep control. But as russian prime began on the saturday too few were online to keep total control. Now the sadest part of this endevour was that timers on towers had not been manually set and expired in russian prime and our weakest timezone. (Yes we had a chat after timers began about how to adjust strontium in towers to alter the outcome). But we decided to make the best of it and assembled as many people possible on the login screen as the tower timerz approached.

Now I will take a moment and explain a little bit. The history of DURA LEXX and their friends is not easy to interpret. They are not pro on the level of Blood Union and Quantum Explosion. They do silly mistakes from time to time and after what appeared to be a falling out between DURA LEXX and QEX/BU a year or so back they have never flown togeather again. In this operation they were flying with Duckling Union, GALAXY ALLIANCE and Total Absolution. Since they impressivly managed to lose an archon to a tower we did not think too highly of them and maybe took a bit light on their ability to call others to do their work.

As the timers passed R3V pulled out a Thanatos to rep the tower. Painfully slow but sitting on the edge of shields it started repping. We kept our pilots on login screen expecting the hostiles to pull a somewhat stupid move. We did not expect them to be able to get in reinforcement so as their dreads and an archon landed on grid with tower we logged in and went straight for the capitals. Little did we know that this would be our fatal flaw in the defense (and much to my own blame for calling the tactical move). Neuts were put in place on the Archon. Guardians got up chain and the grind began to break the archon. Since it was in the middle of the day most our EU forces were not avaiable leaving us with the now somewhat tired homedefence of R3V and less than optimal UNSET fleet. Luckily for us a frigate wormhole appeared earlier before the fight. Connected directly to No Vacancies home system. Striking up a conversation with some old friends there, they brought a few bombers through to try to assist us.

The stumped feeling when you get overrun by ishtar fleet
Not many minutes into the fight scouts reported a massive fleet coming in through the static C3. Ishtars. Many of them. It was the nullsec StainRUS fleet who had come. They by far outnumbered us and as ship after ship got alpha'd off field the resignation set into our fleet. People scrambled to get out of bubbles or into POS. The havock of the ishtars annihilated our fleet completely. There was no way we could even land reps as ship after ship fell. The final numbers was daunting and as FC got blasted away noone stepped up to replace him even. A sad day indeed.

It all ended horribly wrong. From the optimistic tone when our fleet arrived the evening before, to the loosing of wormhole control and eventually utter defeat to the nullsec fleet. As the day went on R3V made the desicion to accept our offer to them to join us in SingSing with entire corp. As EU primetime approached we easily took back wormholecontrol again after the nullsec fleet left. And then we started shipping out assets. R3V agreed to a "cease-fire" with the russian corps (who could finally get some decent sleep) and the haul began. Most assets was moved out but some long gone members assets and leftover ships got left behind. Along with several POS's that it seem Total Absolution got the honor of cleaning up. By themself. As a final offering several of the capitals from R3V was lined up and self destructed.

It was a great honor coming to your aid R3V and we welcome you to our alliance. 
Great fun have already been had so look forward to even more :D 

The final lineup of R3V capitals as they all self-destruct