TEST just won that war

Funny thing isn't it?

The big fight in UALX-3 saw 2 trillion ISK in supers and dreads torched. Then the node crashed when Goons or NC or whoever tried to dogpile in to a 5,000 person Local and maxed out TiDi.

So the whole PL super fleet and whole fleets of HACs and T3's were logged out by too many nerds trying to dogpile in to a Keepstar fight.

Now we have TEST with an anchored Fortizar and a giant field of bubbles on the site of the battle, and the logged off might of PL et al slowly logging in their subcaps and capitals into the bubble trap to be blasted to fuckery by fleets of carriers and Harpies.

Some pretty accurate memes show the situation. Osmelet shows the strategic situation.

The strategic reality of EVE nowadays is that if there's a big fight going down, the node will crash or the timer will go through due to TiDi in most situations. Too many nerds try to pile in and they simply fry CCP's infrastructure (cue whining about updating to 64 bit, blah blah blah).

TEST has soundly won this battle, and perhaps given themselves a huge strategic advantage in the short to medium term; even accounting for a 300B ISK keepstar loss, the second is now going to anchor, so they won that fight.

Secondly, the might of PL's super fleet is trapped out for who knows how long, and the subcap fleets are still fractured and dislocated and unable to form. The imperative for both types of ships is different.

For the subcaps they have to die and live again, shiny and chrome. So far dozens of subs and some Apostles have logged in to certain death, and fair enough. If your HAC is SRP'ed it's better to log in and 99% die and get back to making ISK in your ratting carrier / super, than be trapped out of the game for maybe a week or two. Strategically it makes more sense to get torched and be freed up again to re-enter the battle on your terms, in a coordinated fashion than have to be around to do a coordinated login which will likely fail. So expect to see TEST clean up hundreds more as this imperative is driven home by leadership.

For the supers, the story is different. The rescue fleets have to be formed and dropped into grid in coordination, to get the bubbles cleared ASAP, while the supers log in and begin capping up. The window is tricky, because TEST and the Legperium will respond in kind and a big shit fight will ensue, with the advantage firmly in favour of TEST now. So that extraction will be interesting; some have gone well in the past, others not so much.

For TEST, local supercap superiority is now assured in the short term. So they will be well served to reinforce anything they can, anywhere they can, while this lasts. They need to shore up their defenses and anchor what they need to anchor, while the chances of it being blobbed to death are vastly reduced. This gives them an opportunity to wreak some real damage on Fraternity if they take it, which they must. They have to turn a slight ISK-war loss in UALX-3 Round One, and leverage off this for a strategic push.

Interesting times!