Eve Online DD's fired.

It started off as a normal day in EVE - talking to corpies in between work calls, maybe undocking to shoot someone if I had few minutes. Nothing special. Then, a corpmate asks a question in corp chat:

"What can kill a Rattlesnake and a Stratios?"

Cue probing questions from the corp about where these targets are, since we're all always up for a good brawl with the possibility of juicy KMs. But that wasn't how things would go, it turns out: the Rattle and Strat were sitting unpiloted, next to an anchoring astra in a wormhole, along with 5 Tayras and a Retriever.

At this point, I was definitely exerting effort to keep myself calm.

The next question is the obvious one: where was the entry hole he had used? And as it turned out, the hole was 4 jumps from Jita, but was reaching EOL, so we had to act fast.

We quickly determined that he could use his alt to nab the Rattle, I could grab the Strat, and we would both inject Caldari Indy so we could grab the Tayras if we had time (who knows what would be in them? Probably a core at least.) I jumped to Jita and started burning my way there in a pod, while his alt began the tedious 24j journey from Amarr.

As I was waiting in the HS entry system, a Noctis landed on grid with the heist targets. We began to worry - would the player wise up and move at least his most valuable assets off field? It seemed like we were about to lose it all, as the noctis sat next to the Rattle and Strat for several tense minutes while we had cloaky eyes watching. The alt was still 12 jumps from the entry hole, and the other toons couldn't fly the Rattle.

9 jumps. 6 jumps. 3 jumps. No change from the Noctis pilot.

Finally, just as the Rattle alt was 1 jump out... the Noctis left. Nothing was on grid. We were elated, knowing that while the possibility of getting popped by cloaked ships was still present, it was well worth the risk of a few pods to snag them.

We jumped into the wh, warped to the ships, boarded, and... nothing. Nobody was watching. I definitely got the "pvp-shakes" while aligning back to the out hole, and started cackling with a slight bit of mania as I entered warp. We were clean! We had them! But was it enough?

After dumping the combat ships in HS, we decided that the answer to that question was "Hell no," and resolved ourselves to take this unsuspecting pilot for all he was worth before the hole collapsed. We re-entered and began the game of musical ships to take the Tayras off field - and it turned out to be worth it, as over 1b in Rattle fittings and rigs lived in one, while the core for the Astra was in another.

And so for a mere 30 minutes of EVE time and off the sweat of my enterprising comrade, we both came out about 1.5b richer and with some free faction hulls to boot.

Pictured: Strat cargo with much of the valuable Rattle fittings.

https://imgur.com/6grkxNn

Not pictured: The Rattle, the core, structure fittings, and various other sundries worth a few bil.

Danny Lowbiter, if you're reading this, I'm a little sorry you had to lose so much in one go. But when you leave assets sitting in space... well, sometimes enterprising pirates will make off with your shinies!

Bob giveth, and Bob taketh away.

submitted by /u/jenrai
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Welcome to ISK making 101

Posted: 04 Jan 2021 06:06 PM PST

submitted by /u/BergJac
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VILY DOUBTFUL ABOUT WAR AFTER M2 MASSACRE

Posted: 04 Jan 2021 11:33 AM PST

submitted by /u/Galaxier66
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Had enough, Ron?

Posted: 04 Jan 2021 04:40 AM PST

submitted by /u/Beach_Bum_273
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Ten year anniversary...

Posted: 04 Jan 2021 01:33 PM PST

submitted by /u/MeanwhileSomewhere
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My View of M2

Posted: 04 Jan 2021 03:48 PM PST

Init line member, don't know shit about shit, but since no one asked, here's my take.

A lot of the anger coming from the PAPI side over the last few days is connected to a failure to acknowledge the fact that M2 Round 1 wasn't a near tie or slight win for one side or the other, depending on whether you were counting Titans, ISK, or hulls. It was a catastrophic loss for PAPI, which they then aggravated by failing to face that reality.

If M2 R1 was truly a stalemate or left PAPI with any kind of advantage, they would have re-logged after DT and continued trading. But it wasn't any kind of a draw – by the end of the fight, the Imperium race up the side of the Keepstar had reversed, and the Imperial fleet was pointed and heading straight down at the PAPI supercap blob. PAPI did not have any kind of exit strategy for that supercap blob, which was obvious to all at the time, which is why they didn't log back in, which was absolutely the right call.

But staying logged rather than fighting in that moment reflected a choice. It closed off a number of possible scenarios and meant that their remaining choices were to try to extract from a hostile Keepstar grid sometime prior to the hull timer, a period so short that the Imperium could easily maintain a hell camp in their own backyard for the duration, to wait and let the hull timer go and take the strategic loss, while extracting the supercapital fleet at a time of their choosing, or attempt to contest the hull timer with a fleet depleted of fuel and ammo plus whatever else they could scrounge up. If they chose the last option and succeeded, they'd have a triple win – supercap armada rescued, Keepstar destroyed, Imperium super blob stranded without tether protection. But if they failed, they could quite possibly blow the objective, leave both their fleets stranded, and come out on the heavy side of another massive Titan trade.

The odds were heavily against them here. To start with, any role the stranded fleet could play would be curtailed by the fighter defanging and fuel consumption of the first round. There are some clever tactics one could use to refuel/reload under fire (I won't name them here on the off chance these haven't already occurred to them) but they would be risky enough under any set of conditions and under 10% TIDI, probably impossible. So, if you wanted to try and muscle your way through it, by which I mean destroy the Keepstar and keep your super fleet alive long enough to capitalize on it and destroy the stranded Imperium, you'd need a second super fleet. But the Imperium had this easy, as their backup armada was a mere jump away, while PAPI had to reinforce from halfway across the map, losing precious hulls in the process. And taking the time to reinforce all the way from the far East with proper cover meant no time to pre-stage or gain grid superiority in M2. Even if you skipped the jump to a safe structure and jumped straight onto the KS grid, you'd barely arrive, let alone load grid, before the structure started repairing, in real time, not lag time.

This was a terrible, terrible option, but apparently not worse than just acknowledging that the armor timer victory was ultimately a pyrrhic one, a direct result of 1) a failure to plan an effective exit strategy in the face of a successful armor timer contest (let alone an unsuccessful one!), and 2) a subsequent inability to arrive at the hull timer in large enough numbers and with powerful enough ships at an early enough time that you could effectively convert raw numerical superiority into grid/system control and a tactical advantage. So I'll be the first to admit that in the end, PAPI leadership was left with a bunch of awful choices, which is the point of the "well, what would you have done" line of argument. But it's based on the false premise that the strategic options started when the Imperium fleet jumped in and tethered up.

tl;dr: Had PAPI accepted their very real loss of the KS armor timer and let the hull timer go, playing defense until making a move to free their fleet on their own terms and not on a fixed timer, it's very possible they'd have walked away from this with the dead Titans from round two snug in their hangers alongside their ghost brethren, their trapped supercapital fleet, and precisely the same outcome on the strategic objective they ended up with anyway.

That ain't the servers, yo.

EDIT: added a summary to reduce brain damaging properties.

submitted by /u/erichshephard
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Hey Papi, I don't understand why you were struggling to breach the "Real Delve". It's so easy I did it by accident!

Posted: 04 Jan 2021 09:41 PM PST

submitted by /u/Waltren
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Live feed of M2-XFE

Posted: 04 Jan 2021 06:13 PM PST

https://streamable.com/ssuq5x

submitted by /u/WeylandNZ
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NC. shows TAPI how to jailbreak out of a Hell-Camp, oh wait a second.

Posted: 04 Jan 2021 12:29 PM PST