Death in Hallanen

PVP in low-sec is often more ‘hunt’ then fight. Targets dance around each other in slow, suspicious movements, and many fights end before they begin as one side or other decides committing is not in their best interest.

However, sometimes the stars align and all hell breaks loose –as it did Monday night when a general POS bash turned into a multi-alliance extravaganza in the low-sec system Hallanen.

For me, it all started the day before as an alliance op was called to go take down a different POS coming out of reinforced in Nennamaila. My alliance (Snuffed Out) dressed for the occasion in an assortment of Tech 3 cruisers and capitals, and intel showed that we were probably going to be in for a large fight. The Gallente were showing signs of preparing to defend their asset, and it appeared they would have help from at least one nearby alliance –‘Did He Say Jump?’

We arrived in our subcaps and began pelting the POS, as reports started coming in of a large number of hostile Armageddons and other battleships possibly preparing to head our way.

Around 37 Waffles arrived on the scene in a large Naga fleet, sitting at a safe distance eyeing us. They often third-party some of the bigger fights in the area, though someone had obviously alerted them to the upcoming action. 

Unfortunately, the fight was not to be. It may have been our carriers undocking to join us, or something else but the Gallente spooked and docked back up. And so we sat there, slowly shooting the Large tower. And Waffles sat there, probably cursing whomever told them something interesting was going to happen.

Eventually, someone pointed out in local that if Waffles were to help shoot the tower, at least they’d leave with a killmail. And so they did.

Typically after such disappointments, we disperse ourselves, hopeful for a fight another day. However, our FC had murder in his heart. And so we grabbed dreads and began burning things to the ground.

We reinforced three large towers, including one in Hallanen that had a pretty good timer for us.

Hallanen

I was market trading the next day when I was pinged to get into fleet. It was time to finish the job on the Hallanen tower and it was once again looking like the Gallente were going to defend. Maybe….hopefully?

There were also whispers of nearby wormholes, and additional hostiles possibly traversing those wormholes to attend the party.

We bridged our subs in and once again began bashing at the tower. We did not have long to wait –the Gallente showing up in a similar composition they were spotted in the day before.

And the party was officially started.

We committed fairly quickly, bringing our carrier contingent in. And the Gallente were obviously out for capital blood, as they brought a sizeable dreadnaught fleet with some carriers of their own.

The call was made to light the next cyno, and our Super Caps arrived. “All in, all in, everyone in!” our FC commanded.

I was in a proteus and occasionally the fight turned into a blur of managing dps targets and ewar targets and locking, and shooting and unlocking and swapping for new targets and anchoring and re-anchoring. All while local (and TiDi) slowly climbed up….up…up.

The field was awash with NC. HICs, and Waffles were there in their Nagas. Supers were pointed and then not pointed and then pointed again. Our subs (including me in a Proteus) were slowly burning down HICs in the slow motion of 30% TiDi, and around me hostile dreads were exploding to our Supers.

There was a low buzz in fleet as it became known that others such as Black Legion and Pandemic Legion had caught wind of the fight and were possibly on their way. Dropping supers into full scale combat in low-sec is a little like dripping blood into shark infested waters.

Our FC continued to hold everyone field, slaughtering the final dreads. I think he held on a little longer then was comfortable for our Super pilots--between us beating back waves of incoming HICs, and the impending arrived of BL, I could practically feel them sweating through my computer.

Finally, the dreads were mostly dead and the HICs were temporarily at bay. The call was made to remove our Supers from the field. They made an uneventful exit as the battle raged on with our subs and carriers.

Local was still climbing, however the call was made to stay and continue fighting. It was slow going between the TiDi and the sheer amount of hostile logistics that were on field, but we started work on squishier targets –taking down several tech 1 battleships, and a vigilant.  We also managed to burn down the last remaining hostile archon on field.

No matter what your comp is or how good you are at it, there reaches a point where if enough people are shooting you, you will inevitably break. We tried to get a few more people bridged in, as the 60ish we had on field were not holding up very well at that point. But, there were simply not enough other people online to make a difference. 

BL + PL arriving with close to +175  more people (lots and lots of Ishtars) sealed our fate. (Or perhaps made our already-sealed fate arrive faster…lol) Local peaked at around 640ish if I remember correctly, with just about everyone dogpiling to shoot our carriers.

Our subs held on as long as we dared –trying to fend off a few more HICs and possibly save one or two caps. But eventually, we were told to bail....if we could. It was time to minimize our losses.

Or caps continued to try fending off hics in the effort to get a carrier or two out. When that proved fruitless, they started discussing the best ways to save their pods. 

By my count, we lost around 25 Archons when all was said and done, and killed around 15 dreads and 4 carriers. The battlereport can be found here.

Edit: A Video of the fight can be found here.