More Marauding Russians

So you may remember our #YOLO into Dura Lexx from last month (here). Well, Dura lexx was at it again, except this time actually for the reals.

EN24 covered the fight in some way here. This coverage is as usual semi-accurate - I am not sure who the correspondent talked to but it wasn't anyone from the AU Timezone. 

There's a wee bit more backstory here from our side of things.

Firstly, let's deal with the Russian side of things, with reference to the previous run-in we had with Dura Lexx and Balcora Gatekeepers. You see, after the last shoddy effort by Balcora, where RLML-armed Tengus and 6-plus Marauders turned up to shoot our light Svipul + Scimitar fleet, and Balcora didn't support us at all, I was instantly suspicious. I heard all kinds of excuses, and they came on here all affronted for their e-peen and e-honour, but it's now pretty clear that we were set up. I'm pretty sure Dura Lexx knew they weren't getting a fight from Shadowfiregirl et al. and cut a deal; draw someone in as a batphone, we will shoot them up, and fuck off. So, we were plied with lies and mistruths, came in good faith, and got stomped, as would happen when soundly betrayed.

So caveat Emptor, dear reader, you have been warned.

However, things were a bit different with DAM.

I got a ping from DAM out of the blue; would I like to help them deal with Dura Lexx's invasion of their C6 Red Giant? They had a way in to the C6 via Thera. We had a cnnection to Thera 7 jumps away and it was slow as FUCK on the weekend, so I got the guys to ship into nullified Protars (drone Proteii), Augoror Navys and Stratios and we went in, ASAP, with a Fagroller for probe escape contingency. We made it in, skirmished on the connection, just as the Russian contingent began signing in and gained hole control.

I hit up a few other organisations and got some guys rage rolling up from a C4 (same maths with an R574 static from C6, you just can't roll caps in), and got Haywire. in via a frigate hole also from a C4, in 12 Svipuls, Confessors and ceptors. We got in a half dozen more toons in ceptors and Jackdaws.  We scuttled into a refuge POS and sorted out a strategy.

Well, we tried. What the EN24 article fails to even cover was the 48 hours prior to this battle, which saw the loss of the first DAM tower; it wasn't defended because of several reasons.

DAM didn't run a single POS gun on their towers. This is not uncommon in C5-C6 space. the reasoning goes like this: your tower is going to be blobbed by dreads, no guns are going to survive, it is therefore pointless having guns on your POS. This is acceptable logic, until you have a POS loaded with ships which is rapecaged to an inch of its life and you cannot clear the bubbles in your off timezone (and Russia's strong TZ). This is fine - if you have some spares.

Remember, you can anchor guns on POSs even if the POS is reinforced. This would have been a Good Thing to Have (tm) when trying to clear off bubbles. A couple of faction large rail guns, deployed suddenly and onlined in 4 minutes, with some cunning stop bubbles jacked up on grid to frustrate direct warping of enemy capitals, and you could have accelerated the destruction of the rapecage in relative safety. Of course, you have to plan ahead and have those guns not in your CHA but inside a hauler in your SMA.

Thus DAM struggled with insufficient numbers of bombers and toons, to get ships out of the rapecage, by trying to blow up T2 large bubbles using bombs. The difficulty was of course, a complete lack of ability to risk losing capsules. Nevertheless, skirmishes went on, cosing a few suicide Jackdaws, etc. 

The second thing was a lack of coherent strategy on DAM's behalf. I was a reluctant entrant into cap-heavy warfare, and resisted getting lumbered with being FC. Panicked 3 a.m. American comms wasn't helping either, and it was abundantly clear there was very little definitive organisation within DAM in Aussie TZ. Logistics hadn't been sorted; stront, POS guns, ample supplies of bombers, probers, hulls, a list of POS passwords, a clear strategy for fits and tactis, all lacking. So it was a fair compromise to stand down for the night and come back for the first timer in 8 hours, and if that failed, fall back to the next timer, which was coming up during US TZ in 17 hours. Our 50-man fleet of smallish, logi-light, cap-deficient people stood down for 6 hours and set our alarm clocks.

That timer went, and the POS carked it; so we reset for 11 hours to Monday a.m. and reset alarm clocks. To say Catastrophic Overfiew Failure rolled in 2 hours earlier than the timer basically, unluckily for us, saw nearly all of BUGRY and Prolapse. miss the shennanigans, likewise Haywire.; so it's not correct to say that nothing happened AU TZ, it just didn't result in 100 billion ISK killed.

Finally, you will note Balcora Gatekeepers dying alongside their Russian allies; so you can see confirmation of my suspicions that we were set up.