Our Dreadnaught fleet of between 30-40 ships jumped to our midpoint while we waited for heavy interdictors and other tackle to arrive in the target system. My tackle characters jumped in first and proceeded to cloak up and tackle respectively.
On arrival I counted around 20-30 N3 capitals on field shooting a Sovereignty Blockade Unit ("SBU"). There was a mixture of carriers and supercarriers.
Dreadnaughts were then ordered to jump and landed around 40km off the N3 capitals. Siege modules were activated and we started killing Archons. After a few carriers died we moved onto a Hel class supercarrier and then a Nyx supercarrier. While the supercarriers were dieing, additional Dreadnaught groups from our allies in the CFC were jumping in bringing the total number of Dreadnaughts on field to around 80 I believe.
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| The view from my Nagalfar-class Dreadnaught |
At this stage Pandemic Legion and NC. began jumping in more capitals. The first wave included 4 Titans(!) as well as additional carriers and supercarriers. After destroying the Nyx we moved onto an Avatar class Titan and destroyed it.We tried to kill a second Avatar but could not break the remote armor repairs from the now significant N3/PL capital fleet on field.
All throughout the fight, N3/PL were constantly pouring in more capitals whereas after the first Titan kill we stopped deploying additional Dreadnaughts. We then tried to start killing Archons but again could not break their remote repairs. We were then told to exit siege and align out to try to extract. I was half-way through my 5 minute siege cycle at that stage so I mentally prepared myself to lose my (first!) Dreadnaught.
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| An Erebus-class Titan unleashes its Doomsday device |
Pandemic Legion Titans were constantly doomsdaying and N3 had also deployed a Dominix fleet with interdictor support to continually bubble our Dreadnaught fleet. As such, the Dreadnaughts could not extract. Other notable supcapital fleets were Goons in Dominixes, Razor in Muninns and Solar in Tengus.
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| Doom continues |
At the end of the fight, Black Legion attempted to bomb the warp disruption bubbles encasing their Dreadnaughts in the hopes of destroying the bubbles. This failed however and the majority of its Dreadnaughts were destroyed.
The final kill count was roughly:
Rus/CFC:
70-80 Dreadnaughts lost
N3/PL
x1 Titan
x 2 supercarriers
x 20 carriers
Battlereport: http://dog-net.org/brdoc/?brid=24872
From both sides' posting on Kugutsumen.com it appears that the ISK losses on both sides were relatively equal. I believe the TheMittani accurately summed it up by noting:
"The reality, of course, is that G15Z was a bloody [f**king] battle on both sides and isk-wise each side is likely to be within spitting distance of each other, with only a narrow victory for the RUS/CFC, but folks will slapfight about which side won/lost and it'll give them something to do for the next couple of days. vOv"
Conclusion
Well this fight was my first Titan kill ever so I'm grateful that I've now 'ticked that box'. Apart from that however I must say that capital fights are actually relatively boring, at least to me. If you are in a Dreadnaught (as I was) you cannot move and basically activate a single module (your guns) for the entire fight while using capacitor booster charges and watching your siege module tick down. Apart from overloading there really is very little else to do. While I will replace my lost Dreadnaught, my enthusiasm for Capital battles has been diminished.
In terms of strategic significance, the loss of so many Dreadnaughts may dent the Russian Coalition's ability to counter slowcat deployments in the immediate future. In addition, N3's belief that they can continue to use undersized capital groups to grind sovereignty structures may have been degraded.
Once again, I do have pictures on my home computer and I PROMISE to post them when I get home.
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