Bring Me The Head Of Kirith Kodachi - Report

Announced by ISD

 I logged in my alt Kla'strit a little after 8pm and started to organize the two channels I setup for the attackers and defenders, BMTHOKK Attackers versus BMTHOKK Defenders. I arrived in Teshkat and saw local already approaching 80 with Noir Mercenary Group already present.

I spent the next half and hour fielding questions, getting some of the attackers organized into a fleet which I referred to as the Kitchen Sink Attack Fleet, and watched local climb over one hundred, then one hundred and fifty. Looks like we got ourselves a rumble.

Finally at 8:59 I logged in the Chimera, already in space to avoid an undocking incident, and warped to the chosen location: Planet IX Customs Office. I picked it because it was situated close to a Terran planet on the sunny side, making a great backdrop for the videos I was going to take. As I entered warp I announced the location in local, Ninveah channel, and both attackers and defenders channel. I landed and soon after a few frigates showed up and began targeting me. The fight was on.

Click to Embiggen!

Unfortunately for the attackers, Noir was in a tight fleet with Drakes and Basilisks and well led. They started picking off targets and would have been a tough fight for the attackers by themselves, but a second sizable defending fleet warped in from the Gallente Hero Channel. While several groups of attackers tried valiantly to dispose of my ship I was never in any danger and only repped myself once during the next 40 minutes. There was some confusion when I got Global Criminal Countdown and a repping logi ship in the Gallente Hero Channel fleet was targeted by Noir because he was flashing red, but quick communications between the FCs smoothed things over.

At 9:40 it was obvious no big attacking hot dropping force was waiting in the wings. I congratulated the defenders on a stellar job (including bringing in a triaged Archon carrier for repair support!) and then asked them to kill me. I came to die, and to the victors go the capital killmail. The defenders turned their weapons on me as requested and I activated Shield Booster, Smart Bombs, and watched as the firepower poured in. In minutes it was all over.

I was podded quickly and realized I had forgotten to change my clone location. Instead of still being in Teshkat I was in S9X in Providence with nothing but an Ibis! WTF? At least I could still upgrade my clone quality.

The winners of the prizes:
- Felix Dcat for most damage: Gila cruiser.

- Lynn Seed for final blow: Navy Armageddon

- Frozen Fallout for pod killmail final blow: Navy Slicer

I'm still collating killboards and killmails but trying to determine who got the most in the event is insane. If you think you are a candidate, please email or post a comment with a link to your killboard stats!

I got a good amount of video which I'm going to try and put into a couple minute video for posting over this week or so.

So was it a success? Overall definitely. I do wish it was a little more even in terms of attackers versus defenders, but it was hard to predict if someone was going to go "all in" and hot drop a few hundred man fleet on the event. Had that happened, it was possible that the defenders could have been wiped out to great cost. Still, I think people had a good time and judging by the reported carnage, and there was no shortage of kills to get in on.

Take that Amamake!

Finally props to CCP. I asked for a reinforced node and during the whole event with brackets on, full effects on, I had no noticeable lag. I was activating mods easily, deploying and recalling drones constantly, and never once had issues.

Here are some reports from around the interwebs.

From Diary of a Space Jockey by Cozmik R5, who I personally targeted and attacked near the end when I saw his Thorax on the overview:

All in all this was an awesome event to be a part of. Many congratulations are in order: To Kirith Kodachi for his 6 years of blogging, his hosting and organizing of the event and for being an awesome sport. To Alekseyev Kaarde and Noir Mercenary Group for 3 years of operation and living up to the name of "honor guard". To my corpmate Felix Dcat for putting AMC and MAPU right on top of the damage board. To all the other winners which I don't remember right now and can't check because my work's firewall is too stupid (no worries, I will edit the post as soon as I get home). To Goonswarm for not disappointing for being your crazy selves. And finally to everyone who showed up, sometimes leaving far-away Null-sec homes just to get a crack at Kirith. Both fleets had people who are usually enemies flying together and generally having an awesome time. I would also like to personally thank the guy who stepped up as FC on the attacker side; I may not like huge fleets and 0.0 blobs but when stuff needed to get done he got it done faster than I've seen in some 10-man fleets.

Read the whole battle report on his blog.

dangman4ever said in the comments of last post...

Good times. May have lost a bomber but got on 8 great killmails, one of them a certain carrier :)

Apex on Lost In Eve forums:

Just finished with the event. Guess I will give a breakdown on how it went for me.

-Initial fleet went up and those of us in the attacker channel started joining. In our fleet we maxed at about 50 ppl if I remember correctly. Local hit 212 just before event started.

-Event started and one of our guys got a warp in on Kirith's carrier. We warped in at range. I had bombers warp in on me at greater range.

-S*** hit the fan. We started losing people left and right as we were extremely outnumbered. Lag was there but very manageable for those with higher end PCs. Although even then it claimed some victims, my friend lagged out and was promptly podded.

-We said "screw the carrier" and began warping out. I warped to a planet (I was in a Manticore) and found a neutral raven sitting along side me. I called the raven over comms and fleet began warping to me. Raven went down.

-We then had more neutrals warping in who were fleeing the fight or just warping around. We quickly decided to spread out to planets and have people call out when they had a tackle on someone. We basically did this the majority of the 30 minute event timer as it was pretty fun. A couple guys got hero tackles and made it out in structure. I think one guy actually made it with only 14% structure left by the time we killed the ship he was pointing. Here is a short list of ships that died from our planet roaming. (These are just the ones I got on that have been reported up to this point. There are many more.
Arbitrator
Brutix
Eagle
Blackbird

-We eventually got reports that the carrier was taking serious damage and if you wanted to whore onto the kill mail now was the time. (Note: at this point the 30 min timer was up) I warped to a fleet mate who had point on the carrier. I got a single volley off before going pop. A Manticore for a Chimera km, I think that is a fair trade.

-Carrier went down.

Overall it was a really fun time. It was my first ever large fleet op. And I was glad I thought ahead of time and set my overview to only show those not in my fleet as the majority of my fleet mates were red. Also, there was a lot more coordination than I thought there would be. Voice comms were generally clear with not too many people talking over each other. We also responded well to calls for support when someone got a point on a neutral.

Nateryl on Lost In Eve forums:

I was in the attacker fleet but unfortunately apex, my little incursus went down in the first 5 min. It was a blast to listen to the voice comms for the next hour as you guys kept getting random tackles. This was a great event and glad I showed up but I wish I got to see more of it My first fleet fight of that size so it was fun and exciting to see.

Nice job Kirith, and an awesome turnout and cool way to bring the Eve community together for explosions and kill mails

From Scrapheap Challenge...

GreenYoshi:

Cool event. No capital opposition to the carrier, though one friendly Archon was dropped on the field. The attackers weren't coordinated enough, and the defenders had a ton of reps. There was some infighting between the defenders when logistics went flashy to rep Kirith's Chimera, but nothing overwhelming. At 2:33, defenders held the field, and Kirith requested that we (the defending fleet) destroy the Chimera. I think the count in system was around 250 with almost no lag at the apex.

Thanks for doing this, Kirith. Bit of a blob fest, but still fun (for me) in the end. Congrats on your 2000th post.

And Marko Box:

Fun event, some1 should organize this more ofthen
We came there in suicide thrashers/blackbirds warped in to main fleet to km whore, then we lost half of fleet, reshiped and then spent the evening warping from planet to planet poping random stuff. Much lolz where had
Congratz kirith on the 6 years of bloging, i hope you will repeat this with mothership once u hit the 10 year mark

 AkJon Ferguson on Eve Online forums:

Great event. A little one-sided, but everyone was expecting a hot-drop so it's hard to blame Noir. for bringing so much logistics. Nice job, Kirith.

Serenity One :

Thanks Kirith, That was awesome fun!

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If anyone else has reports, please link them in the comments! Thanks to everyone, the video hopefully will be coming soon (TM).