ATLAS leaves the front and we go back to X-7

ATLAS sent an alliance mail and within hours it was leaked.

As I sit in X-7 I shake my head at the news but it wasn't due to any surprise, rather it was with some resignation. Unlike the campaign to take Fountain and Delve, the NC campaign was not well formed at the beginning and chaotic on too many occasions. There was no clear idea of what our goals were and how to do it. 'Kicking NC in the nuts' wasn't going to cut it for me. Of course, operational security concerns aside, it didn't feel 'right' and that most operations were outside of my time zone and too few for the number of alliances we had.

Involving five different entities/alliances (of which not all were ready at the starting line on the 1st April), it would have been a mammoth task for anyone to organise but take a look at the egos/characters of the leaders on BOTH sides and it was only a matter of time before some slight was given or received and then all bets are off.

The attack on H-W failed in its tactical goal of holding NC inside H-W AND the strategic goal of gaining meaningful ground and holding it elsewhere. It is my opinion but am sure it is shared by many within the alliance. It certainly didn't dent NC's morale either. So the SC lost this one. Simple and no amount of spinning will change this. However, there isn't too much doom and gloom or recrimination at least inside -IT-; we're just getting on with the next part of the campaign. Logistical headaches and all that.  Unfortunately, I have no idea what this next stage might be. I am quietly confident that we've been re-grouping since the bulk of our forces pulled out of H-W last week and expect more ops this week. The NC is such a big beast, we should have attacked across multiple fronts, spreading their forces and not all ganged ourselves into H-W where numbers DO matter. Even if it was patiently snipping off outlying systems one by one over weeks and months of patient campaigning. Much more preferable than the monster cluster fuck that H-W turned out to be where pilots we're stuck logging in, the node crashed too many times, and no fun was had.  

Compounding this, we have PL and friends back in our home system running amok and I was disappointed with how our 'home front' alliances had been performing. In fact, RKK had to relocate back to Delve to properly deal with the situation.

So, as I sit in X-7 I read with interest on the various forums all predicting the imminent collapse of the Southern Coalition.

I am living in most interesting times.

The Campaign for PNQY

The attack and the taking of some high-end moons from PL and GOONS was merely a prelude it would seem. With some secrecy, I was asked, no ordered, to fleet fit my megathron and pack plenty of ammunition and drones and to regroup at the friendly POS in 6-C. I arrived ten minutes early synching in with the rest of my alliance mates. Plenty from DARK as well as RKK, EVOL and others. There was an air of excitement and a buzz.

As I dropped out of warp; I arrived at the POS and the huge, awe-inspiring form an Erebus-class titan blotted out the sun. It was there, sitting just inside the shields with dozens of smaller ships zipping around it, finalising whatever it was doing. A large fleet of over two hundred ships had already gathered and it was obvious the titan was going to bridge us somewhere. Rumour had it that we were null-sec bound.

Our fleet commander came online and within moments we jumped to a system; largely empty except a large POS tower and the second titan of the night, this time the Amarr behemoth. We were jump bridged a second time to a third location with a third titan! The logistics back bone to set this up must have cost plenty of isk but we jumped again and this time landed at our destination: FOUNTAIN.

I was immediately put into a fleet of battleship class vessels with two more fleets made up of support and scouts. We then proceeded to attack the towers dotted all around this system. The towers were held by an alliance calling themselves 'Event Horizon' (EH), an alliance that rents this part of space from the bigger Pandemic Alliance (PL) or the Sons of Tangra (Sot); not too sure which one. Our orders for the week were finally revealed to us by SirMolle, the alliance leader. They read simple enough, we were going to take this system and for the first week we would knock down all hostile towers and place our own towers. First order of the day were three towers coming out of reinforced and we warped over to the moon and began destroying the shields and armour of the various modules and then finally the tower. After each tower was destroyed, we placed our own - the idea was to try and reuse all enemy towers if possible. The assault was quite relentless with more and more IT pilots becoming available, replacing the ones we had lost.

EH, PL and GOONS tried to mount a number of counter-attacks but they did not achieve the objective of stopping the system slowly slipping into sovereignty neutrality. Once this was achieved, IT, with it's own towers raised over the fallen EH towers, would take over the station and claim victory.

It was exhausting work, alarm clock ops for me on Sunday and Monday (22nd/23rd) had taken more out of me than I had expected. We killed every hostile tower coming out of reinforced, no matter what time zone; such was the number and dedication of the IT pilots. Quite inspiring to be honest. While the various forums would use kill board statistics to accuse IT of losing the battles, our objectives was to take the system and by the end of the second week - we were well on the way to this.

By the 23rd November 2009, IT had 14 towers up as opposed to the zero towers by Event Horizon. We took down their towers and raised our own in its place; we even decided to try and re-use as many of the pos modules as possible. However, the real prize was the outpost in the system - once the out-lying control towers were replaced, the outpost would become vulnerable and we could send our ships and soldiers to eventually capture it. The clock is ticking now and by the 28th November, the outpost (affectionately called 'Yoshimi' by ex-BoB members) will be held by IT alliance.

There's been plenty of drama notably the 'friendly fire' incident where PL destroyed a SoT titan that was piloted by an ex-BoB member. Under the false accusation of this pilot defecting to re-join his former BoB colleagues now in IT; the titan pilot was caught and destroyed. The irony was that IT alliance had a hate/hate relationship with this titan pilot and would never take him back, titan or no titan. More details are here: From EVE-ONLINE (http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1217733) - the dialogue is, well - fun.

HUN Reloaded and that wave of thoraxes

The EVE Alliance tournament was much, much better this time round. Games were a little bit more unpredictable, the organisation smoother and the EVE TV guys and gals are top notch; even Stavr0s.

My favourite match was Star Faction versus BoB. SF came with ten (10) thorax class cruisers - my first love and still the best T1 cruiser in EVE. BoB had solid tactics with a fleet setup that hadn't changed but the 'raxes chewed through BoB and killed them. I cheered myself hoarse. What a wonderful match!!!

HUN Reloaded eventually won and deservedly so.