Nerve Wracking

Sunday night as fleet was forming there were reports of an Astrahus citadel being anchored in Ostingele in Placid and its 15 minute repair cycle would fall right in the middle of my fleet. For those unaware, a citadel or engineering complex take 24 hours to anchor, and then have a 15 minute repair cycle before coming fully online. That 15 minute window is the best opportunity to attack and destroy them before the full defenses come online and its only open to attack at certain vulnerability windows throughout the week. And Ostingele is of particular importance to us right now as its where we are clashing with Black Shark Cult of Caldari Militia for control.

Since it was Superbowl Sunday the fleet was smaller than normal, only 12 of us to start, swelling to 15 by the time we got underway. After an unproductive fight with a clever Nightmare pilot in Fliet, we arrived in Ostingele with 11 minutes left in the repair cycle. Not a problem; any shooting at the structure pauses the repair cycle so if we decided to attack, we had all the time we needed.

We arrived on grid with the structure at the Fedmart NPC station 3800 km off. There was no defense fleet. The structure was owned by a 4 man corporation, alts we figure. Rumours in intel put them as alts of Northern Coalition Dot however, so we figure attacking it will bring some attention.

But we're in tech 1 cruisers (except one snowflake in a tier 3 Legion) so what do we care? We engage and wait for the defenders to show up.

90% structure remaining - Haha this is funny, we're so gonna die.

70% - OK, this is weird.

50% - We're halfway through. We might actually do this?

30% - Cyno 24 AU away, is that them coming for us? Thanatos on grid! No wait, its on the Fedmart station... getting ready to launch fighters? No, it docked.

10% - This is so nerve wracking!!!! They are going to chase us off in the last few percent, I know it!

Then it counted down the last few percent counted down and it exploded in an extremely satisfying flash of light as it gave birth to a new sun. I got top damage in my humble Thorax and the whole effort took ~45 minutes for 15 of us, 3 in logistics cruisers.

Good to know.