Large Capital Ship Fleet Used to Seize Wormhole, 100 Billion ISK Lost
A few weeks ago, Aperture Harmonics AHARM moved 16 capital ships into a wormhole to engage Capital Construction Research CCRES for control of the wormhole. The inherent instability of wormholes made this task difficult and time consuming.
The mass of capital ships passing through a wormhole can collapse the opening after only one or two ships have gone through. In addition, CCRES was aware of the pending invasion and made every effort to prematurely collapse any opening they could scan down. Despite these difficulties, AHARM persisted in searching out new openings and moving capital ships in, eventually bringing 11 dreadnaughts and 5 carriers into the wormhole.
Despite a slow start to the conflict, CCRES downed an AHARM carrier early on: "They eventually let their guard down a bit and opened some opportunities for retaliation, and we managed to destroy a carrier that was assisting a subcap blockade of our main tower." explained Thernys of CCRES.
The battle raged through the night and into the next day. With the large number of AHARM capital ships present and assistance from mercenary alliance Noir. Mercenary Group, Thernys decided to follow a 'scorched earth' policy; "We resorted to self destructing a considerable amount of assets, simply to stop them from ending up in hostile hands as spoils. This speaks to the volume of ships in there - we could not possibly have used them all in combat without getting pod killed, and ending up in a station leaving everything up for grabs." AHARM member Seamus McLove reported seeing pilots self-destructing CCRES assets for as long as eight hours.
CCRES estimates that they lost at least $100 billion in assets, despite getting several tech 3 ships out of the area. AHARM reports losing one carrier, but no other loss information has been provided.
In retrospect, CCRES feels no bitterness at their defeat. Says Thernys, "As for general commentary, Aharm received information on a good time to launch an attack, got their assets in place and bought up some extra muscle to make sure the job gets done - this is all well and good and in the spirit of New Eden. We had our own initiative against them planned and in the setup stage, but unfortunately they beat us to the punch." adding that; "The characteristics of wspace being such that external aid can be extremely hard to reach, especially if a hostile force manages to control access to the static exit."
Both sides are adamant about prospering in the near future. Thernys states that "we have already re-established a wspace presence and will continue to be a relevant entity there." Two step also commented from the AHARM perspective: "Our future plans include more of this. We have heard from a lot of other w-space corps that the whole thing made them rethink their own defenses."
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