As PL moves into 3GD6-8 to claim the system as a staging system, HERO tries it’s best to resist and hold the system. The first two timers for the IHub and Station went the same way. Pandemic Legion countered the traditionally large HERO fleets with a large number of caps and supercaps. The first Armor timer for the system on the IHub saw a TFI fleet brought in by PL countered an around 300 strong HERO fleet. The main crux of the Mixed TFI/T3 fleet was expected. As the attitude about the past two fights with Pl dropping escalations doctrines on HERO left both sides wanting to brawl.
HERO brought a mix of Tengus, Ishtars, Eagles, logi, with heavy bomber and Ewar support. The Pl fleet had expected heavy ewar support, but the DPS fleet for HERO synced quickly with the Ewar to primary T3’s for PL off the field. It got to the point quickly that the Ewar fleet ran out of targets to damp/disrupt. As the battle progressed, PL was too quickly losing TFIs to hold the field. Another highlight for HERO was a miscalculation by the PL Thrasher FC that left the support fleet in range of the HERO DPS ships. This left them completely exposed and they were quickly blapped off the field. The decision was made to bring in a large Archon fleet with dread support to blast the HERO IHub and SBUs.
The jubilation of HERO at blasting off several Billion ISK in PL subcaps was quickly crushed as the PL Caps and Supers warped in and crushed the IHub and SBUs. HERO quickly disengaged to run off and destroy the SBUs PL had anchored during the fight. The PL SBUs were destroyed and replaced by HERO ones. So in a sense PL had it’s nose bloodied but still hit the win button on the timer.
HERO tried valiantly to tackle the PL caps and had some success. Pinging for many more tackle frigs and dictors. But sadly for them, PL returned with a new subcap fleet and was able to keep DPS off the caps while the caps moved around the mass of warp bubbles. By the time the HERO reinforcements arrived, the only thing left on field was Pandemic Legion subcaps.
Now it’s time for some rampant speculation. With Goons being allegedly paid for bomber support of PL forces, mostly just harassing HERO, there have been some murmurings within BRAVE/HERO about a potential wider invasion by PL for the often-stated reason of “gudfites”. This seems very unlikely to me. The obvious intent for PL to take 3GD6-8 as a staging system could be used to headshot HERO systems, but it seems to clash with their recent actions in Stain. Pandemic Legion has spent quite a bit of effort hitting high-value moons in Stain. As such, the obvious inference is that PL has been paid to take moons in Stain for some unknown entity. This is based primarily on the more mercenary style of PL since the mass selloff of their SOV a few months back.
However this all plays out, it’s now obvious that BRAVE is now once again fully engaged with PL. As a member of BNI, I can’t wait to see how the fights go. I know, I’m the rarer kind of lunatic that enjoys being repeatedly blown up by a tougher enemy.
