HERO Kills a Titan

Last night on EVE, some week-old newbies got in on the 2nd-most expensive kill in the game. It single-handedly flipped us from losing the attrition war in an ongoing conflict to winning it, boosted morale, and caused a whole lot of drama in our opponents we're still sorting out. In short, it's the type of story you occasionally hear out of EVE.

But let me offer some background on it first.

KiteCo (the local GiantBomb EVE corporation) is part of the HERO coalition, a newbie-friendly coalition that holds territory in the Catch region of EVE. Pandemic Legion (the same alliance featured in Patrick's story on the B-R5RB brawl) has been harassing us for the past 2 months, interfering with our other fights and occasionally attacking our systems to provoke a reaction. HERO has had a rough time fighting back against the veteran coalition, which tends to field 100 of the most advanced ships in the game supported by a few dozen supercarriers and titans, which are the most powerful ships in the game. HERO's fought bravely, but has been slowly pushed back and losing the ISK war against the superior ships. In the process, PL grew cocky that HERO couldn't do much to stop them; even when HERO fielded a huge force of its own capital ships in the battle for F4R2-, they couldn't break a single PL super, and the threat of an opposing supercapital fleet dropping on them had diminished to almost nothing since the last EVE patch heavily nerfed capital jump drives to reduce their range.

That all changed in the course of 3 hours last night.

PL laid siege to HED-GP, an important system on our primary trade route, that morning. People were frustrated. That afternoon, one of our explorers also found a temporary wormhole in one of our systems that connected us to Black Legion's space halfway across the galaxy. Black Legion was known in-game as super-killers, the type of group that would leap at a chance to kill a titan. One of our Fleet Commanders, who was an old friend of the Black Legion brass, offered them a deal: we'd deliver a PL titan right into their lap if they'd provide the firepower to kill it. They agreed.

That night, 2 HERO capital dreadnoughts began killing a PL outpost in that system by themselves. (Dreadnoughts are expensive ships designed for sieging outposts. They're cheap for capitals, but they still cost 2 billion ISK apiece.) PL was alerted and sent a fleet of a dozen Machariel battleships to investigate. As they netted the dreads and began whittling them, one of PL's Titan pilots, named Hurley, asked them to light a cyno beacon he could jump to to get in on the kills. Hurley had become infamous for jumping his Titan in on expensive, vulnerable targets and instantly Doomsday-ing them to dust. The Fleet Commander of the Machariels advised him against it, saying they could handle it themselves and it'd be too risky, but Hurley insisted. Eventually, one of the Machariels lit a cyno beacon for him, he jumped his Titan in, and unleashed its Doomsday Weapon on the dreadnought.

It survived.

The dreadnought pilot expected Hurley to jump in and Doomsday them and outfitted his dreadnought specifically to tank it; Hurley had grown too predictable. Then a HERO fleet of interdictors designed specifically to trap a Titan warped right on top of it just as Black Legion burst through the wormhole, warping across half the galaxy in an instant.

And then all hell broke loose.

Every single HERO pilot was called into action: grab whatever you can and kill the Titan. PL sounded high alert, scrambling every ship they could to save the Titan. PL's Machariel fleet got vaporized by Black Legion, who promptly began working on the Titan as a cyno jammer came online in the system. Unable to get a cyno beacon up, PL's super fleet had to take the long way through the jumpgates, which was made even longer by the numerous warp disruption bubbles HERO set up in their path. The Titan melted within a minute, and then the hunt was on for stragglers as PL withdrew from the fight. A supercarrier was caught in the chaos and destroyed as well, along with several carriers.

In the space of 3 hours, PL lost over 200 billion ISK worth of assets. That was more than HERO had lost in the entire war. HERO's morale was boosted immediately: a Titan had been destroyed, the relentless juggernaut had been wounded. PL's leadership refused to reimburse Hurley's Titan; he had ignored the fleet's warnings and fallen into a trap sprung just for him. A day later, Hurley put up his Titan pilot for sale on the EVE forums. This evening, on the first timer to defend HED-GP from PL's siege, HERO formed up 900 pilots; PL showed up in a small subcap fleet (sans supercapitals), took a couple potshots at HERO, then left as HERO reclaimed the system.

The best part of all this is that several newbies that had just joined the game (and HERO) in the past week due to the newest EVE trailer. And now, in their words, "My first kill ever is a fucking Titan!"

EVE can be annoying sometimes. But times like this make it worth it.

Stories from EVE sound insane, but even with the aid of some of those pictures, I still can't understand how the game actually functions. Is it like a strategy game, or do you manually point and shoot? The whole thing is just a weird confusing game that produces amazing sounding stories.

I cannot believe I missed this.

@liquidprince:

All those colored squares are players in a spaceship. At the bottom center of the screen you see the hotbar. Those are modules fitted to the ship. You can double click in space and your ship will head in that direction (manual flying), or right click an object or player in space and follow them, orbit them, so on. Then you activate your modules and manage your recharging energy.

The game mostly plays by outfitting your ship, right clicking and telling your ship what to do (jump through stargate, warp to, orbit, approach, keep at distance), and then activating modules (guns, defenses, repairs, propulsion mods and so on). What makes the game insane is a lot of good systems like the free market, construction of assets and the groups of players interacting with each other to create an incredibly dense meta game.

You double-click in space to move your ship in the direction you clicked in, although CCP is adding in WASD movement controls next patch. You can put a targeting lock on ships within X km (depending on your sensor range). Once you have a targeting lock on a ship, you can shoot them, remote-repair them, use electronic warfare to trap them or scramble their sensors, etc.

Compared to other MMOs, each individual ship has very few options (it usually boils down to where to move and whom to shoot). The strategy is in outfitting your ship properly, having the proper fleet composition, knowing which range you want to engage certain ships at, etc. Or, in this case, knowing the metagame well enough to make a deal with a coalition halfway across the galaxy, figure out how to get them here, and then bait an enemy Titan into a trap without their spies figuring it out.

@liquidprince: Also, if you want to see the game in action, this video by Black Legion of the Titan's death is a pretty good indication of what large fleet battles are like.

It's no B-R5RB, but 400-600 pilots were involved in the battle total.

You're a great reporter! had me on the edge of my seat the whole time!

This kicks ass, I love everything about eve stories like this.

So you're saying there was an attack...on a titan?

Sounds awesome. Congrats on being a part of that. Maybe I'll come join you guys and mine some rocks some time.

Missed this by about two hours.

Gutted.

@development: Our miners are bloodthirsty. I swear they get into more fights than the roamers.

And people argue that new players are useless in PVP. Tides can turn drastically if meta game is played correctly and logistics are figured out, even if it's week old toons in (what I assume are) cruisers just mucking about.

@driadon: Frigates, actually. IIRC, they had an interceptor/frigate fleet harassing a rapid-response interceptor fleet PL sent in to keep them off the 'dictors. Or just getting a few potshots in on the Titan.

Damn. If only I had taken that 9.99 euro offer. I could have been part of this. Ffffffuck! :D Good job Kite Co! Keep it up with HERO and keep hiring the crazy guys like Black Legion.

@hero_swe: We didn't hire them, it was a temporary alliance against another enemy. There's a lot of "frenemies" in EVE that'll shoot at you one day, then work with you to take down another enemy the next. Keeps diplomatic relationships... "lively", to say the least.

Fuck I love listening to EVE stories, you guys always make them sound like the most epic of things. The sheer number of players and proper collaboration that is required to set up and execute stuff is always incredible.

I wished I enjoyed my time more back when I tried it but I had no one and was just lost in space. Now it seems like late to try and get into it but I will always read about EVE battles. Thanks for post!

@junkboy0: Never too late. HERO's still recruiting newbies, and like I said, some of the players on that Titan killmail were less than a week old.

Well that's sort of what I meant. Trust me I know how quickly sometimes a friend can be a foe :P

@junkboy0: Like you I tried EVE a few times and was just lost for most of it. The last week I have been back in with Kite co/Brave has been the most fun I have had with the game ever,.

There is nothing quite like the first time you take warp with a fleet of 100 plus ships. it's one of those moments that gives you goosebumps.

Also EVE players perhaps more than any other gaming community understand that they only get to keep playing the game as long as CCP are making money. To that end you won't find a more helpful group of people in any other game than EVE players.

I love hearing stories like this from this crazy game.

Congrats to the KiteCo. Team!

@liquidprince said:

The core systems for combat in this game is far simpler than a screenshot of the game makes it appear. Much of it is, or can be, automated.

Movement wise, double clicking anywhere in space causes your ship to fly towards it. However, you can also right click on any object in space (all listed in the overview window at the lower left hand corner of the screen shots, which offers multiple filterable tabs) and automatically approach, warp, or orbit it at certain ranges.

Next to the circle at the bottom of the screen (which is a gauge for your ship's HP amongst other things) shows the modules on your ship. They include weapons, remote repairers (for space priests), armor and shield hardeners, afterburners, electronic warfare mods, etc etc. Weapons can be grouped together and are tied to certain F keys, and fire off like mmo-esque auto attacks.

Thus, a very simple and basic way to engage in combat, and has itself turned into a meme within the game, is target locking an enemy (Ctrl+lmb), orbit it at a proper range, turn on your hardeners, and press F1. Obviously, things are capable of becoming more complex in actual practice if you decide to move towards far more specialized ships such as stealth bombers, logistics ships, interdictors, sniping ships, etc.

I'm very proud of you all.

This made my morning reading this story. I miss all you folks (especially @brackynews!) terribly and will probably end up back in EVE within the next couple months (edit: fuck it I gotta shoot some rocks, its been long enough) knowing my luck! Really happy to hear that Kite Co. is still growing and thriving.

Also, @mikelemmer is right. We rock shooters can be a bit bloodthirsty. Something to do with all the rock slaughtering, I reckon.

@mikelemmer: So how much is 200 billion ISK, roughly, in ISK to Plex to dollars/pounds/euros?

I'm having some real issues uploading images, but here's an explanation for exactly what each of those windows are on @mikelemmer's screen, going counter clockwise. Hopefully it helps make things less confusing for some.

At the very top are a giant slew of chat channels. I can see alliance chat, corporation chat, fleet chat, alliance chat for other alliances, Brave Dojo chat (our newbie questions channel), and a few private chats. As someone that don't do large fleet things nearly as much, I am in only 3-4 chat channels at a time myself: Alliance, Corp, Coalition Intel, and giantbombing.

Left hand side in the middle is the fleet window. It has three tabs: one to show who is in fleet, one to show the orders being broadcasted by fleet commanders (that's the tab currently up), and one to show the fleets available to be joined based on various filters.

Bottom left hand corner is the Overview, a screen with multiple tabs and customizable filters to show just about anything you want: enemy ships, friendly ships, planets and suns, asteroid belts, space stations, etc. It also shows additional information such as their distance from you, their speed, ship type, alliance/corp affiliation, etc.

Bottom center is the gauge for your ship's hp, divided into Shield, Armor, and hull. It also shows your current ship speed. Next to it to the right are all the modules you can flip on and off that are currently equipped onto the ship.

Bottom right hand corner is the Local Chat screen. Local Chat shows the names of every pilot currently within the same solar system as your are, and is thus very important to intel.

Top right hand is the Coalition intelligence channel, and is used to track enemies flying through our space via players in various solar systems announcing what they happen to see.

This would be a lot easier if I had an image with all of these numbered, but hopefully this helps.

Edit: It is worth noting that the position of everything on the screen is changeable, and I personally think the OP is a god damned criminal for moving the overview away from the default location on the right hand side of the screen.

Amazing.

Plex is currently sitting at just under 1 billion isk each. At 20 USD per plex, that translates to 4000 USD.

It is very important to remember: these giant losses are usually not shouldered by individual players, but rather by corporations or alliances as a whole. No one spends four thousand dollars on a ship by buying and then selling plex. Either the alliance gives them one, or they have large sources of ISK income themselves. That is why Pandemic Legion denying this pilot reimbursement in this case is worth noting, and lead to the player getting rid of this particular character.

Make no mistake, the fun parts of EVE is by no means relegated to giant engagements. There is plenty of fun to be had simply roaming around in small gangs as well. Kite Co. is always willing to take in duders, so it's never too late.

That's really cool. Thanks for sharing and the great write-up.

This game is utter madness and I love it.

I love this! Thanks for reporting in.

I love hearing about the adventures of KiteCo. Can't wait for the next big story.

Going by the linked Hurley sale thread, someone has been upgrading that character since 2004 and now someone is willing to pay the game equivalent of thousands of dollars for him? Also, can you tell if a toon has been played by multiple users over the years? Also, what the hell, this is intense.

Hurley is a character that, from the looks of it, has been sold multiple times. That character has lost 3 titans so far, and the last time, it was PL that blew up the Titan.

It is important to note that super capital pilots are rarely the main character a player has. The reason being super capitals cannot be docked in an indestructible space station, thus there is never any truly safe way to exit from one. You can park it within the forcefield of a space tower that only you have access to, but that tower can still be destroyed.

In fact, super capitals are often jokingly referred to as coffins as the only way a character will ever leave a super capital is when it is destroyed. As a result, people train up, or purchase, a super capital capable pilot as an alt, and log it in only in the case where those ships are needed.

I would love a read a complete story of the corporation wars in EVE Online. A giant, 500 pages book on the complete history of the game.

Here are PL (Titan pilot's alliance) comms during the fight: https://soundcloud.com/nickfuzzeh/pl-titan-death-pl-comms [Warning: Explicit Language]

The pilot in question ragequit mumble when he hit structure in the titan.

"[Hurley] won't get a single red cent [for himself]." - Grath Telkin

That is pretty amazing.

I miss HED-GP.. i'm looking for a new home. my corp left The Initiative. maybe KiteCo is for me?

This is super fucking cool. Thanks for sharing, and you did a great job of telling the story.

@vincentvendetta said:

There is a kickstarter of just that, one that well surpassed its goal, so we should get it eventually.

Until then, there is this. Just note, these "true stories" are written by the people involved in them, so expect it to have some degree of propaganda to them.

Join the channel giantbombing in game, and I'm sure someone can help you with that.

@vincentvendetta: Your wish is coming true soon:

Kickstarter: A History of the Great Empires of Eve Online

@turambar:

I know Beggars can't be choosers these days.. but is US TZ active?

will do.

US TZ is where most of the action is honestly.

@turambar:

awesome.

"Request permission to leave the station."
"For what purpose duder?"
"To give PL back their GiantBomb."
"...permission granted."

Reading stuff like this always makes me want to give Eve another shot, thanks for sharing!

So the whole quote about "victors being horrible historians" applies to that second link, I reckon?

Had to miss the HED reclamation fleet due to RL commitments but I can report a buoyant mood from within the Brave Alliance today. Yesterday Brave Alliance command claimed the titan was one of the biggest kills ever made, describing it as "unofficially recorded as the second most valuable non-Revenant ship loss in eve's history" before immediately setting the wheels for last nights attack in motion. Losing that system would have been inconvenient at best, making it much more difficult to get trade in from safe space. From what I've heard we lost a carrier and our battleship fleet took a pounding unnecessarily due to too much comms chatter causing confusion but people seem upbeat, if pensive. We've held it, for now.

I managed to find a video of the battle for the station - the actual clash occurring around one of the jumpgates into the system - that someone took at a safe distance and posted on youtube, for the curious. Brave are highlighted with red hostile markers and PL with gray neutral markers, from this player's point of view.