The War for Insmother and the Siege of C-J6

On May 25, 2006, 70 Russian pilots sat tired and bleary-eyed in their battleships near the first moon of the fourth planet in a star system so remote it was known only by the obscure designation "C-J6MT." They had dug in their heels, huddled around their last stronghold — a defensive starbase — and were preparing for the fight of their lives. Their fleet commander, a Russian-born New Yorker known to his compatriots as "Death" spoke to his friends and fellow pilots, rallying the troops for one last stand.

"You have to be able to show people that there is a hope," he later said. "Even a fucking tiny one. Just show the people that there is a little tiny hope that exists."

A fleet of over 400 "Coalition of the South" ships — the enemies of the Russians — warped in on the position of the 70 defenders. Among the massive fleet were 15 state-of-the-art, siege-capable dreadnoughts designed to rip the entrenched Russian position to shreds. As the Coalition dreadnoughts aimed their huge guns at the starbase and fired the opening volley, the Russian fleet commander gave the order to retaliate. They were outnumbered almost six to one, but they were prepared.

"When you're going up against those kind of odds you'd better have some great fucking idea about how you're going to beat their asses," Death told me in a thick Russian accent. "We managed."

The siege of C-J6MT began. It would prove to be one of the most memorable battlefield moments in Eve Online’s history, and a turning point that would shape the political landscape for years to come.

Alamo

The Russian pilots were all that remained of the former powerhouse Red Alliance, a group whose holdings had once spanned five regions and over 450 star systems, making them the dominant power in the southeast of New Eden.

The Coalition of the South was comprised of several smaller alliances which each had an "ancestral claim" to the territory Red Alliance conquered (Some very old groups in Eve occasionally claim ancestral rights to certain territories if they were among the first to settle there when the game launched in 2003).

Before they joined forces and became the Coalition of the South, the smaller groups each individually asked Red Alliance for their territory back, but each request was denied by Red Alliance at the height of its power and its hubris. Real world relationships can heavily influence politics in Eve, and in this case the path to a peaceful resolution was being obstructed because some Coalition of the South pilots thought it was funny to mock the Russians for their nationality.

"You have to be able to show people that there is a hope." - Death

"They really bore grudges, the Russians," said Lallante, a former fleet commander in the Coalition of the South. "We tried diplomacy initially to say, 'We're happy leaving you in the East, you can keep your old regions. Let's just be friends.' And they said, 'No. We remember all those vodka jokes. This is gonna go down.'"

Not content to take no for an answer, those alliances came together to remove Red Alliance from the southeast. Individually, the alliances that made up the Coalition of the South were no match for the Russians, but as a combined unit they were the dominant force in the southeast of New Eden. And so the fingers (Lotka Volterra, Knights of the Southern Cross, Chimaera Pact, and Veritas Immortalis) formed a fist: the Coalition of the South. Its ranks numbered in the thousands. It was wealthy. And it was capable of fielding fleets bigger and better equipped than any in the region. The ranks of Red Alliance had swelled too. The Russian alliance now recruited American and French wings among other nationalities.

As Red Alliance accepted more and more partner groups into its alliance, the Coalition of the South prepared for a massive invasion of Red Alliance territory.

A bright light in the darkest age

The stage was set for an epic war between the two giants of the southeast, but it didn't pan out that way. The initial invasion of Red Alliance territory went unopposed. From the region Tenerifis, Coalition fleets invaded Detorid and found no resistance. Immensea — west of Detorid — fell next and Red Alliance defense fleets were nowhere to be found.

Mactep

Two whole regions, 180 star systems, were lost for the most mundane of reasons: Red Alliance's leadership couldn't convince its pilots to make the long trip out for the battle from their headquarters in Insmother. The newfound girth of Red Alliance was working against it. In the words of a former leader, "Mactep," (a Russian word both pronounced and meaning "Master") they had too many language barriers and were weakly organized.

These are two terrible qualities for an organization trying to field an army in Eve Online. Loyalty takes time to develop, and Red Alliance's constituent corporations were like newly absorbed independent states, still more loyal to themselves than to the alliance as a whole. Beyond that, it's difficult to form camaraderie between soldiers who speak different languages, and it's also difficult to ask new alliance members to spend their time and risk their ships to defend territory they played no role in conquering. Not to mention the difficulty of leading a fleet under the guiding voice of a single commander when many of your pilots don't speak that commander's language.

In Wicked Creek, Red Alliance finally stood its ground and mounted a defense on March 8, 2006. They fielded their largest capital ships, dreadnoughts, and made a stand.

Dreadnoughts are extremely powerful — yet vulnerable — warships. They have the ability to go into "siege mode," which gives them huge bonuses to firepower and survivability, but in 2006 this also rendered them immobile for 10 long minutes (later reduced to five minutes). They can output enormous amounts of damage in siege mode, but if the battle goes south then these expensive ships have no way to extract or receive incoming healing from repair ships.

The battle for Wicked Creek began. Red Alliance's losses were catastrophic.