Scalding Path / Curse heats up – June 26 20:00

PL was mainly moving still on Friday — but we gathered up a gang around 20:00 to counter op hostile gatherings. NC HAC gang took a wormhole to area and proceeded towards 0-w where ATLAS was gathering with a gang of about 120-130 w/ 80BS or so. NC HAC gang had about 80 and played around a bit with the hostiles killing some while losing few as well, considering this was HACs on Sniper BS.

PL formed up with about 80-90 gang with mixed HACs and support and bridged closer — and started burning up. Since this was first HAC gang for about 3 months and new enemy — we were proceeding quite cautiously and hence — slow. Hostiles jumped towards 77s and hugged the gate on the other side while our PL/NC HACs now numbering about 140 or so in local were @ range on the gate on the other side.

Some manuveurs later — nothing much happened except ATLAS moved a gate or two towards 77s and lost a few stragler BS on every jump. They did not want to jump to us @ optimals (thou we were in HACs) — and we hesitated jumping into them as 140 HACs jumping to 80 Sniper BS w/ close range fitted + 40 support… well… hurts.

To our amazement, ATLAS started burning towards 77s — and did so in an unorganized manner letting us start picking off straglers on every gate. To combat this ATLAS left their sniper hacs behind — about 8-10 in total to slow down our dictors while bubbling every gate themselves after BSes jumped. This was quite effective (for their BS) — but meant they now left support behind and kept losing dictors and hictors.

We caught a handful BS anyway who were slower than most and in 77s — hostiles proceeded to 46d and reapproached gate. Given we were now in -A- Sov 3 — we gathered up and checked for titans in local/online while getting our folks on the gate ready to go into now reduced ATLAS fleet (about 80 BS still with only about 15 support). Small XIX gang of about 10-15 HACs had now joined us as well.

Hostiles aligned out and warped off while our dictors once again caught 2-3 stragle. We followed them to ZO- and this time — jumped into them. ATLAS gang had huddled around the gate again w/ close range ammo/scripts loaded and as expected — as we burned off we took losses before making out of the bubbles. About 4-5 PL hacs/recons fell immidiately, but hostile support was getting thinned out as well.

This allowed us to get on range and start on BS — which were now melting. With all hostile support dead — we SHOULD have had a free run at this — but I guess PL are too used to flying Sniper BS & Capitals… since they just sat there getting shot and died .

Hostiles kept melting, but kept to their guns on the gate. Presumably because they were still managing to kill plenty of PL HACs in return. Fight raged on for about 15 minutes before ATLAS called it and tried to pull off the gate. Naturally, about 10-15 were left behind, tackled and killed.

In the end, I think ATLAS killboard is probably the most accurate end result showing (for the ZO- fight, discounting stragler losses) 55 BS Losses, 5 HACs, 2 Recon and 11 Intie/Dictor losses + chowder while killing 30 HACs, 11 intie/dictors and 8 Recons. 22 of those HAC losses were PL, only 3-4 of them were actually tackled when they died.

As a background to the area politics -

The area is heating up considerably with ATLAS/AGGRO at least announcing a move into F9-, which is an ED Sov 4 constellation on Thursday. Everyone therefore presumed this to be a fullblown ATLAS Coalition (COW/Minor/-V-/Sc0rched + A/ROL) assault on XIX presumably now with backup from IRC+ED.

This of course, is a rather interesting decision to make while everyone from the Delve War 2 is still blue to each others and no standings resets have occured… Well, anyway — I guess some people never change and people just will not learn that a huge blob will only attract a counter. Hence, my dream died.

As a counter — everyone started to move pieces into place and XIX announced a reset @ DT given ED were now providing harbour for an assault. IRC/ED reset before the actual XIX reset and assaulted Jump Bridges while still blue — providing a nice assault without getting shot by towers.

I think everyone had a great fun today — it’s refreshing to be in a place where you have 3-4 different groups around you who will all happily rush to fight you. Excellent stuff — and certainly just a tip of the iceberg on what’s to come in this arena!