$20,000 of ships destroyed in the biggest battle of gaming history

I thought you guys might be interested in this - sadly the events that occurred last night on EVE online haven't trickled through to this forum yet.

tl;dr The pilot of a capital ship the size of Manhattan and worth around $3500 misclicked and warped alone instead of bringing in the rest of the fleet. Events eerily similar to WWI ensue as players, corporations, coalitions and alliances scramble to attack or defend this sitting duck.

Essentially, there are two "Mega" coalitions in the game right now, the Clusterf**k Coalition (CFC) and the Honeybadger Coalition (HBC). A coalition is a group of alliances that band together. There are also 3-4 other smaller coalitions (Russian Bloc, N3), as well as some independent notable alliances (Black Legion in this case).

These are all Nullsec powers. The HBC's core alliance is TEST; an alliance that is based from and recruits out of your favorite website, XXXXXX! The CFC's core alliance is Goonswarm, which is based in and recruits out of your least favorite website, XXXXXX!

Now, it would appear that these two alliances were born to be rivals, but it was not always this way. When the reddit corporation (alliances are composed over individual corporations) first joined EVE, they were attacked by the SA corporation, goonswarm; who were already very established in the EVE universe. Instead of becoming enemies, the Goons were taken aback by the adorableness of our attitude towards the game, and we became allies and soon to be best friends. They nurtured us, tought us, fought for us. Our current leader, Montolio, decided that he wanted to take a path of independence.

We met another group of players in an alliance called Pandemic Legion. They are considered the big bad guys of EVE. They posses hundreds of the Super Carriers and Titans; the most powerful ships in the game and which the pictures in the OP are mostly comprised of. Basically, these guys have a public mumble channel called OG mumble. Mumble is a program like teamspeak, if you didn't know. This was when Battlefield: Bad Company 2 was popular, and some of our guys joined their channel to play with them. They befriended them, and more people joined to play and more and more. Soon, their EVE alliance had invited us to go on campaign with them; and it was hella fun. They were a bunch of old players, and our raw enthusiasm of the game seemed to make it more fun for them, and their wealth, power and experience taught us a lot.

The problem is, that our new PL friends are direct enemies with our Goonswarm bros. These tensions were drawn down, and we eventually got both of them fighting for us to attack a new threat to us in the South. But that's another story.

What's important to last night is that we chose to go with PL instead of goons, and we formed our own coalition; the HBC. Between PL's ability to drop many of the most powerful ships in the game, and our ability to rush in with hundreds of support ships to back them up, it's a potent force.

Last night, a relatively small pirate alliance that controls a good bit of territory nearby Goon-land thought that the goons may try to attack them over a local moon; which holds mineral resources. They informed a fleet commander in Pandemic Legion that this may be happening, and PL set up to ambush goons.

The goonswarm Fleet commander (FC), Dabigredboat, is a prettty interesting character, who is loved or hated throughout the game, but that's another story. Anyways, he is flying a titan. These are the most powerful ships in the game, they do a lot of damage, can take a LOT of damage, and are ridiculously expensive. Additionally, they can move across the universe rapidly with a jump drive; but they can also move OTHER SHIPS across the universe rapidly by "bridging" them.

Sidebar: EVE has an interesting feature where people can buy game time cards (30/60 day) and sell them in game for in game money; allowing wealthy people to essentially play the game for free, and allowing people who are wealthy out of game to have the money to do what they want. This provides a rare insight to the actual value of in game item. And a titan, like dabigredboat's, would cost something like $3500 dollars to buy with out of game money.

Back to the story. So basically, boat is in his titan getting ready to bridge a full fleet (~250 dudes) onto this small pirate alliance. Except he makes a mistake; he clicks JUMP instead of BRIDGE. That sends his $3,500 ship right into the middle of this pirate corporation with nobody nearby to support him. And then all hell breaks loose.

If you'll remember, PL was aware that something might be going down, and when the pirates inform them that a titan has jumped in, and not only a titan but Dabigredboat's titan, they jump in 3-4 supercarriers. Supercarriers do more damage than a titan, but don't take quite as much and aren't quite as expensive. Boat orders Goon and CFC supers to log in, and they drop a few more supers in to help boat. PL goes into hyperdrive and goes all in; they drop every supercarrier they have available, and are frantically calling everyone they know to get there as well.

And then Boat makes a crucial mistake. He should have realized that his titan and the few supers he called in to support him were going to die, and cut his losses. But instead he panics, and calls in EVERYTHING the CFC has to help get him out of there. At this point, the battle transcends hell and goes into every god damn layer of Dante's Inferno. The CFC commits every supercarrier, titan, dreadnought (basically floating gun platforms that do a ton of damage) and regular carrier (which are basically "healers") that they can. PL does the same, and the rest of the HBC is in right behind them. My fleet, and the rest of the TEST fleet burned across the universe at best speed to get into the fight, and all of our capitals (dreads/carriers) and supercapitals jumped in ahead of us.

Also, goons are not well liked in the universe of EVE. They have fought against (and won against) pretty much every major player in the game. So the rest of the smaller coalitions also jump into the fray. And even though we're technically "unfriendly", they join ourside and the whole universe of EVE piles onto the CFC. My poor laptop crashed when there were 2800 people in the solar system (And there were hundreds more in surrounding systems), but it was epic.

The CFC lost a lot of sh*t. ~44 Dreads, 29 Carriers, 5 Supercarriers and 3 Titans. The HBC and the rest of EVE lost 10 Carriers, 6 Dreads, and one Supercarrier. It's a mind boggling amount of damage done, and money lost. But that's EVE.

EVE Online

I can't stop getting that image of Nero in startrek out've my head when i read that post " FIRE EVERYTHING!!!"

Mass Online Battles = WIN

For interest sake how did long the battle last

The most "intense" part of the fighting was around ~5 hours long, with Time Dilation (when a sector gets overloaded time passes slower so the servers don't crash) factored in the battle actually had a duration of around 20 minutes in game.

A previous fight in EVE had a similar amount of players, but the value of the ships involved was far less.

Here's a report from the actual battle events (from what's basically a newspaper for EVE)

http://themittani.com/news/asakai-aftermath-all-over-cobalt-moon

Tl;dr:
Pandemic Legion plans to ambush a ClusterF*** Coalition ambushing a small pirate militia.
DaBigRedBoat (CFC Fleet commander) misclicks and jumps alone.
PL see DBRB's personal Titan class ship and commits fleet to destroy this prize.
DBRB calls for help from all of CFC and start to gain an advantage.
PL ask for help from the rest of EVE to help and get it. CFC begins its retreat after suffering heavy losses.


"Wake up - do not login - listen to mumble from here on out" — Jabber broadcast from Dabigredboat to CFC capitals

A few days ago, Dabigredboat — a Clusterf**k Coalition (CFC) coalition level fleet commander, known as DBRB — had deployed capitals in Akora to mess with Liandri Covenant, a Caldari Militia alliance. Pandemic Legion (PL) took notice, as this is close to where they kept their supers. When a similar situation presented itself — a Liandri Covenant cobalt moon was coming out of reinforce in Asakai-Drunk ‘n’ Disorderly (DnD), a Gallente Militia that was attacking said moon, reached out to PL. DnD asked PL if they would be on standby if the CFC dropped capitals or supercapitals, offering to have a large number of heavy interdictors (HIC), the only ships that can warp scramble a supercapital in lowsec, on standby. PL agreed.

“Everything in war is simple, but the simplest thing is difficult.” —Carl von Clausewitz

Boat’s plan was simple: hot drop the militia forces in Asakai, kill what he could, and get out. When the opportunity presented, he attempted to use his titan character, Oleena Natiras, to bridge the subcapital fleet in. However, he made the mistake that dooms many titan pilots: He hit jump instead of bridge. Once on field, he was tackled by DnD HIC's, who reported the Leviathan to Elise Randolph of PL. Elise decided to go for broke and committed forty PL supers to the fight.

“ALL CAPITALS SUPERS TITANS EVERYTHING LOGIN JUMP TO MJI3 THEN JUMP TO FIGHT SIEGE GREEN 20K FUEL” —jabber ping from Dabigredboat to all-all

“Then it seemed rather grim.” —Elise Randolph

Once PL supers were committed, jabber pings went out all over the CFC for fleets. The operation had turned from saving Boat’s titan to destroying the PL fleet. Subcapital fleets were formed and capital pilots logged in. One of the effects of Time Dilation (TiDi) is that it affects not just the system the fight is taking place, but several systems out. Capitals ships were able to arrive much quicker than usual since they jumped in from outside of TiDi effects. When PL saw that the CFC was going ‘all in’ to Asakai, they reached out to other groups. They started out by contacting the N3 Coalition. When N3 agreed to assist, PL contacted TEST who started to make their way up north as well.

However, neither group was initially close and Asakai is located in the CFC’s front yard, so to speak. It was a simple matter for CFC capitals to use cyno beacons to move to the battle and CFC subcapitals could use the highly developed jump bridge network. So, in the initial stages, the CFC had local superiority and was able to down one PL Nyx while three others warped out in low armor and even one at eighty seven percent structure. A CFC Hel died, apparently unable to turn his hardeners on due to TiDi. Well before this time, TiDi had hit the maximum, ten percent, and the lag was horrible; it took a carrier pilot nearly ten minutes to refit a smartbomb. Local was well over a thousand and climbing; it would peak at over two thousand and seven hundred.

“Nulli and now NCdot are streaming towards this fight. EVERYTHING, but particularly hictors, need to get here” —jabber ping from The Mittani to all-all

“So, shit was getting real, we pinged all PL to get out of their slumber.” —Elise Randolph

While the CFC was pinging their jabber channels, PL had basically contacted every single other group in New Eden with a promise: after the fight was over, everyone would depart in peace. As TEST and N3 and Honeybadger Coalition (HBC) alliances made their way into the system, a happy little coincidence occurred: Black Legion (BL) was, according to Elise, in the middle of a fifty man dreadnought move and was in range of the battle. This gave the anti-CFC forces a distinct advantage. According to Elise, “we had three fleets working together, we were able to take down 3 targets at once — a huge thing in lag.” While one fleet would attack Goon supers, another would work on carriers and dreadnoughts.

At this point the order was given for CFC titans to get to jump cap and get out. A few minutes later, in the capital fleet chat word of a friendly POS in system appeared. The alignment was changed and titans were ordered to warp if they could. At the same time HIC's were called primary by the capital and subcapital fleets alike. Supercarrier ECM bursts were used in attempts to allow the titans to get out. Boat put out a call for carriers that were able to triage to x up in fleet and rep the titans taking damage. Once the titans were ordered out, the CFC forces knew the battle was lost; it was simply a matter of how much of the supercapital fleet could be saved.

Once most of the titans had cleared the field (Oleena Natiras remained on field to the end, while others had crashed) shield tanked supercarriers were ordered off as well. Armor tanked supercarriers remained for quite a while longer but were eventually ordered out, clearing the field. The remaining capital fleet was then extracted as best they could.

“But he [Boat] was unfortunate in this case, probably the only circumstance that CFC couldn't pull a numbers trump card.” —Elise Randolph

This fight could appropriately be called Everyone vs. CFC. The HBC, N3 and BL all put up huge numbers in this fight and unified purely in opposition to the CFC forces. Over three thousand pilots were involved, mostly due to the fight being streamed. TiDi was also a contributing factor, with pilots able to cross dozens of jumps to join the fight and find the battle still raging. Another was the location. The fight took place in a lowsec system. Pilots from all over, who would not in a million years go into null, steamed as fast as they could to Asakai. Eve-Kill is having a heart attack over this fight at time of press, but it would appear that approximately 274 separate alliances took part in the conflict. Nearly ten percent of EVE players logged in were in Asakai, most of them fighting the CFC.

The CFC Skyteam’s Reaction

The CFC skyteam was kind enough to have a chat with me. They recognized that mistakes were made and that the situation spiraled straight out of control. They plan to implement stricter controls over the use of supercapitals to attempt to prevent something like this from happening again. Furthermore, they stated that titans should never be committed to lowsec. Every time that happens it turns out poorly. The whole situation is reminiscent of the Northern Coalition loss to the Drone Russian Federation in Uemon nearly two years ago. When all is said and done, they all emphasized their continued support of Boat, saying that he is a good fleet commander and will remain a coalition level FC.

As far as relations with the HBC: the CFC diplomatic position remains unchanged, according to a diplomatic director. Those wishing for a CFC/HBC sovereignty war to emerge from this event will be disappointed.

Elise Randolph and the PL View

Elise Randolph was kind enough to be interviewed for this article. While he disliked the lag, he did say it was “some of the most playable massive capfights I've been in.” He further went on to praise DnD, saying they “were true heroes, brought every hictor they could, and just kept on coming.” He credits the tipping point of the fight to TEST, which arrived with over five hundred ships.

In the end, I think Elise sums up the whole fight from both sides quite well: “It was a very fun, very bloody, incredibly surprising fight over a Cobalt moon in lowsec.”


The Broader Political Implications: Shadoo Speaks

We asked Shadoo of Pandemic Legion, one of nullsec's foremost thinkers, what he thought the Asakai situation tells us about the broader situation in 0.0:

Sala Cameron and MrBlue had been working on dropping a small CFC SC group lead by Dabigredboat for about 3 days nows, and by looks of it -- tonight was the night when all the stars aligned. With nothing at stake, no moons threathened or sov structures to grind -- both sides threw caution to the wind and went all in.

Thanks to DnD low sec combat experience against capitals, they were able to clear 80% of the Fighter Bombers with smartbomb battleships at the start of the engagement. This reduced enough damage to swing the DPS war to our side and reduce our losses. Still, the fight was very close with several PL/HBC supercapitals saved in low armor/structure and with all of nearby low sec, and even Jita cleared from Heavy Interdictors -- DnD hero tackle managed to provide a decisive victory over the tackle war and thus turn the tide of the battle.

I feel this fight epitomizes the position the Mister Vee (of GSF) and myself advocated few days ago, and thus we feel vindicated now that it was once again clearly demonstrated that you do NOT need to invade anyone, shoot any structures or engage in a soul-destroying 0.0 SOV war in order to kickoff epic fights in EVE. Some people in EVE needed a lesson that big fights almost always happen by accident‚ and the lіkеlyhood for them occurring iѕ exponentially bigger when there ISN'T a space empire at stake. Best fights are those where both sides go "f*** it, bring EVERYTHING" just because they can and have a good brawl.