Frontier Developments should have been celebrating the visit of Farragut class capital ship the FNS Nevermore to the Hudson Dock space station. Instead it was left with an epic battle between two NPC behemoths.

A bug—possibly caused by a player firing on the Nevermore—caused the capital ship to return fire, and miss, instead hitting the Hudson. The Dock returned fire, the Nevermore returned fire back, and so on and so forth.

By the time Frontier got around to fixing the issue, the Farragut class ship was down to 26% hull strength and saddled with a 72,000 credit bounty—not exactly intended.

But instead of just fixing the issue and ignoring everything, Frontier decided it would become a canonical—very much accidental—community event.

As such, players are now able to travel to Hudson Dock (not this one) in BD+03 2338 and will be rewarded for selling metals there, based on both individual and community efforts. These metals will go towards the reconstruction efforts being carried out on the Nevermore and its silly turret targeting computers.

The event runs until March 26, though the disappointment that a capital ship wasn't annihilated so soon after being introduced into the game will forever be with us.

[main image from this album of the battle]