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.