Editor’s note: The following is a campaign summary written up by members of Suddenly Spaceships [CYN0] This has only been edited for some readability but otherwise is presented as written. These are written for a internal target audience so readers should keep that in mind. The thoughts and statements below are from the author and not EN24.

Content Ring: Mk2 or How to lose space and aggravate people.

So, from the beginning,

Suddenly Spaceships. were based in lowsec, we were and still are an extremely small alliance. We are the kind of people that love to push the boundaries of this game, and not conform to the general “meta” that is set for every alliance that you see today. We currently hold at 232 members, of which 57 are actual people and the rest are alts, we are primarily EU tz with our select few UStz nutters that want to stick with the family. Recently, with the addition of Spacesheeps, our training/industry alliance, we sit at just under 500 members total, and roughly 100 actual people (including our industrial corporations). We spent a short time in Metropolis before realising that lowsec just isn’t what it used to be and now nullsec (0.0 Security) is a much preferred play-style for us, this is when we set our eyes back on Cloud Ring.

Cloud ring was controlled by Initiative Mercenaries and The Initiative. when we originally got there, with the Tinnimerci constellation owned by 2 smaller alliances that go by the names of “Liquor Guns Bacon and Tits” and “Voxis Accord”. They were currently fighting each other for control of the constellation but neither could push ground due to assistance from outside parties (the usual). The Initiative was occasionally helping out LGBT fight VOXIS, and VOXIS was receiving support from a few people in Pandemic Legion and another corporation by the name of Cruiser’s Crew. Our main worry was that most of the space was vulnerable only in the UStz, which meant for us, taking it was going to be a lot harder than you’d expect. We did some scouting of the local area, we noticed not much in the way of defensive infrastructure and figured this would be a perfect time to show our face.

We went for the “Shock-and-Awe” tactic, forming up almost 13 jumps away from the entrances to Cloud Ring, but with perfect bridge range in to the area. We needed to forge ourselves a beach-head and by god did we do it quickly. Our first fleet comprised of 20 of our guys eager to get going in our standard doctrine fleet of Cerberus/Recons/Scimitars, with a fleet of t2 Entosis ships behind us (we brought out our cheapest doctrine to hopefully entice some fighting). We quickly realised that VOXIS had it in them to defend their sovereignty as they formed up roughly 11 Navy Apocalypse with Guardians and other rag-tag ships to engage our Cerberus fleet. This is thefirst time VOXIS had set eyes on us, so probably thought we were a roaming gang just up for some kills.

After a while, VOXIS began to realise their home was under threat and also realised our old friends Scrubs. alliance were actually with us too. We had reinforced a fair chunk of their space, not including their home system (which we could not break due to timezone). We faffed around a lot using Cerberus fleet, our own Snatch fleet and other smaller, non scarier doctrines. Until the day that VOXIS got extremely ballsy and decided to form a proper fleet comprising of Napocs, Bhaalgorns, Triage and also call Pandemic Horde to bail them out of their problems. We decided this was the time to unveil that we have heavy hitters as well, so formed our favourite Vindicator/Bhaalgorn + Capital support fleet, along with some friends Overload This that later joined Suddenly Spaceships. and Scrubs. The result was 12.78b Killed, and 0 ISK lost.

Overall, it took us just over 3 weeks to conquer the area and move in. We raised the ADMs as high as we could and decided on 6-4V20 to be our home staging system, this was because of it’s central location to the pocket and ability to chase all hostile traffic through the systems with ease. With a small VOXIS presence left, they tried to push us out as hard as they could, trying to reinforce our Astrahus citadels and towers. We then decided a Fortizar was required to stage our cap fleet in, so deployed one and saw the hostiles panic a little. They batphoned everyone they could and finally got hold of a large force by the name of Escalating Entropy to assist them to destroy the fortizar, unfortunately they got the timer wrong, so they had 1 minute on it when they landed and didn’t reach the damage cap alone, so we deleted VOXIS with roughly 15 carriers on the Fort grid. When the citadel anchored, we noticed a cyno go up in the distance, and a Moros appear on scan. We also noticed Escalating Entropy’s titan getting in to range in lowsec, so it wasn’t hard to put 2+2 together. We warped our small carrier fleet over to the cyno including a couple of Moros and 2 Apostle to counter. Funnily enough Escalating Entropy jumped in a small group of t3s and a few Dreads/Triage, we dispatched them all and lost 1 Moros in the process. Next thing we know, they have jumped in multiple titans, supercarriers, dreads and carriers, with another 8 Apostles to triage for them. At this point we decided to show our ace and counter escalated with an Initiative supercapital fleet, and our own supers and titans that were already in system, causing over 483b damage vs EE. Here is the video from Apostle / Nyx perspective.

A while passed, we mopped up the area and began seeding our own infrastructure in to the area, we took the opportunity to roam the local space and see what’s up. Next thing we know, Horde and friends are taking all the sovereignty around us, leaving us as a buffer zone between INIT and HORDE space and a fleet of Horde svipuls arrived to entosis the area. We opened contact with Gobbins from Pandemic Horde and organised a deal where-by we do not invade each other’s space, commonly called an “NIP – Non Invasion Pact”. After this was agreed Horde and SS abided by the agreement. A while later we decide to clear all hostile towers and citadels from our constellation as a clean slate, and so we can make some ISK on the land we live in, this included 20+ small money moons and a bunch of citadels that were later transferred to us for free. Our primary target however was an R64 in 00TY-J, a Horde tower in Initiative Mercenaries space, we reinforced it, INIT decided to help us out for the timer and kindly gave us the moon after a fight with Horde. We won the tower and that is when Gobbins spat his dummy out and decided that was a breach on our “No entosising space” agreement and spun it to his membership as “We had an agreement not to do this exact thing too!”.

WAR

BEGINS, Pandemic Horde spent the best part of 1-2 weeks constantly entosising our IHubs, trying to bring down ADMs with absolutely no effect they welped constant Hurricane fleets in to our 20-30 guys with anything from 90-150 people and made no progress as seen in this video. We tried to re-open diplomatic lines and not hit any Horde/Renter space at the time due to not understanding what Gobbins’ problem was, with no reply, we knew that soon we were going to lose Cloud Ring, especially when a Horde Astrahus was anchored 1000km from our Fortizar grid and set for AUS TZ. After realising that they were losing fleet activity in Cloud Ring operations and not making any progress, they decide to attack our staging Fortizar in 6-4V20, which was a surprising move for us, especially as this time they had 90 Mercenary Coalition turn up to assist them with the reinforce, just incase. We ignored them and carried on our Black Ops fleet while one of our skilled Fortizar gunners snagged a few expensive kills.

We expected this to blow up massively, our Fortizar had been reinforced, Mercenary Coalition had placed AFK hunters in to all of our ratting systems to reduce ADMs. Northern Coalition. had recently moved in to fight The Initiative. which means Pandemic Legion isn’t far behind them either and also the Guardians of the Gate coalition started paying attention too. It seems that this measily 100 people had pissed off a coalition of well over 20,000 people. Our Fortizar comes out of reinforced and Pandemic Horde brings a fleet we haven’t seen from them before, a bunch of Maelstroms fitted with 1400’s, and a couple of Cruise Missile Phoenix at 250km to hit the Fortizar DPS floor. Our friends in The Initiative. formed a Mach fleet and jumped in to assist us vs the Maelstroms, we then get intel of NCdot, Mercenary Coalition and Pandemic Legion in the area with T3 fleets of their own, and GotG with a Mach fleet of their own to assist horde. Final numbers stood at roughly 700 hostiles vs 500 friendlies. The Fortizar was saved and a bunch of Maelstroms and their Capitals were destroyed in the process, friendlies were mopping up Mercenary Coalition on one gate, Pandemic Legion decided to let Horde die by waiting in W-4, and NCdot did not even showing their face. GotG at least warped on to grid, and then disappeared immediately when we undocked, as seen in this video.

Since then, Horde has focused massively on evicting us and NCdot and co have been giving The Initiative a hard time in Syndicate, cutting off our only support in the area. We knew it was pretty much time for us to go, sadly a single timezone 30 man fleet can’t hold off 60-200 dudes in all timezones. We were getting weary of constantly toasting nodes and fighting only hurricanes all the time. One of our directorate approached Horde with the option of us to pack up peacefully and leave the sovereignty to them. Horde membership voted on it in an alliance meeting and said they would allow us to pack up and leave (Thanks hordelings o7). We had a meeting of our own to see if we wanted to accept this offer, and figured that it saves us a lot of trouble in the long run and took the deal. (You can see the details on this offer on a Reddit post, where it was put as a brag that Horde did something).

As such, that ends our recent era in Cloud Ring, but good lord did it produce a good story, final statistics sit at:

1.07 Trillion ISK Killed

127 Billion ISK Lost (+1 Fortizar +15 Small Towers)

Horde took just over 1.5 month to evict a 232 man alliance (with a little backup on both sides)

Horde was apparently “merciful”, but according to many of their line members, bored of toasting our sov for days.

I want to thank everyone who assisted us in this era of our life. That is:

Scrubs.

The Initiative.

Initiative Mercenaries

Goonswarm Federation

Overload This

Snuffed Out

Project Mayhem

Iron Armada

I also want to thank all of our enemies during this chapter:

Voxis Accord

Cruiser’s Crew

Sarcos Federation

Rebel Alliance of New Eden

Pandemic Horde

Northern Coalition.

Mercenary Coalition

Pandemic Legion

Guardians of the Gate Coalition

Pure Blind Cartel

(and any others I forgot, sorry!)

and a huge shout out to all the members of Escalating Entropy, for providing us the most exciting and memorable fight of our Cloud Ring campaign, you guys really made our time there, thanks for bringing it o7

That’s Suddenly Spaceships signing off on Cloud Ring,

A message from my members: It’s been a blast!

–Buhhdust Princess

CEO Suddenly Spaceships.