This morning I didn't have to go to work, so I logged in and - hey, there's a fleet up. Nice. Let's see what's going on! What, Thanatos tackled? Two jumps out? On my way!
https://beta.eve-kill.net/kill/53104394/
Apparently, some RAZOR guys tried to do some entosis work early in the EUTZ morning, which is a quiet time. But they were mistaken: there were plenty of volunteers to go and hunt a hostile carrier, and so the Thanatos died. By the time that happened, I had been logged in for all of 10 minutes!
Around downtime command nodes decloaked in our home sov in the south, in the border area of Wicked Creek and Scalding Pass. Some regional hostiles tried to create some in game content for themselves by forcing us into action. I had never entosis'd before but went to work nonetheless and with some hiccups we managed to save our sov. Mission accomplished, at the cost of one Atron.
A few hours later I am somewhat bored in NJ4X-S, our staging in Tribute. A fleet goes up, I join it and there's an exciting piece of news: apparently there's a Nyx tackled! A hostile supercarrier, belonging to the alliance Fidelas Constans (FCON). Now supercarriers aren't Titans of course, but a supercarrier kill is relatively rare. Supers usually die in massive battles during wars or are hunted down by specialized forces. In all my eight years of playing Eve, I never managed to participate in the destruction of a supercarrier.
Our fleet switches destinations halfway through and we have to do a chaotic switch from one fleet to another as well. I understand why when we land on a Titan, that will bridge us to near our final destination: you have to be in the same fleet as the Titan, else it cannot bridge you. Instead of having to travel the entire way to the place of battle, we are bridged to one jump out of the tackled super. We quickly make the final jump and - there it is! We bump it away from the gate, it is completely bubble wrapped in interdiction bubbles - and it is dropping quite fast. Some corporation members are still at the Titan waiting for a second bridge, but it never goes up - the super explodes before they get a chance to get on the killmail:
https://zkillboard.com/kill/53112560/
Notice that there are no allied capital ships on the killmail; the super was destroyed exclusively by subcap ships. Notice, too, that this supercap died in the region of Deklein, home of the CFC.. with little to no opposition from said coalition! The unlucky captain of the lost super later commented that, quite early into the fight, he had come to realise that his ship was lost, so he asked his comrades not to come to the rescue, and instead save their own ships for a later fight.
NOFAD pilot Wolven Hunter missed the Titan bridge by a wee bit and he was mad for several hours afterwards, disappointed that he'd missed his first capital ship kill. Little did he know at the time..
Around 18.30 Eve time, a stratop fleet left NJ4X-S. It was announced only shortly before and the FC requested us to fly Svipuls (Tech 3 destroyers, powerful and nimble, but fragile) and entosis ships: we were going to attack hostile sovereignty structures. Suddenly, however, the fleet was given a new destination and I could hear the excitement in the FC's voice.. what's going on here? As fast as we can we make our way to our new destination, jump after jump. Wait - I was here before, this afternoon, for my first supercarrier kill! Could it be..? Apparently, yes! On the very same spot where the Nyx died a couple of hours ago, about a dozen FCON capital ships, carriers and dreadnaughts, are tackled and bubbled. An impressive hostile fleet, but it is paralyzed by our bubbles and tackle, and I see very little subcapital ships defending them. We anchor up on the FC and begin to apply our tackle and warp interdiction bubbles to prevent the capital ships from warping off or jumping through the gate. And, of course we begin applying our dps. Slowly we begin to grind away at the massive hostile ships facing us.
We are again in Deklein, same system, same situation - and again not a lot of support for the caught hostile ships..We kill a Chimera carrier, then a Moros dreadnaught. It is slow work due to the fact that we just don't have a lot of dps with us! But gradually our numbers improve as allies bring subcap ships but also some dreadnaughts to help kill the hostiles. Illustrative: 78 pilots destroyed the first Chimera, but around 200 pilots were on the field for the final Chimera kill. Between those two kills, not even 20 minutes had past - but FCON lost three dreadnaughts and nine carriers in that time. It is brutal and relentless, and no FCON ship escapes.
Notice that, in the linked battlereport, there is only one lonely Goonswarm pilot - and remember that this is Deklein we're talking about!
I had allowed Wolven Hunter (who is in school and should not go to bed too late) to come with us on the fleet because I thought it would be a short entosis excercise.. but he got a terrific fight and his first capital ship kills to boot. He's a happy Eve pilot now!