Aivonen Wrap Up

Greetings my fellow Empyreans, my fellow Aideron Robotics members, and my friends.

This last week has been incredible for us. After our successful experiments in Loes and Heverice, there was a militia wide call to action, and boy did we respond to the call.

Not too long ago, we as a militia were collectively celebrating our successful Okkamon campaign. That push was designed to teach the Caldari that we were still top dog, and in this it succeed, beyond our expectations. Our victories at Okkamon were so complete, the very alliance defending it was disrupted. For a while the Gallente leadership feared that we would break the backbone of the State, a real concern.

Faction Warfare works best when you have an enemy, and for quite some time the State have not been a viable threat. Because of this the Federation had resorted to sparring with local pirates, and even descending into civil war, rather than fight for the causes we signed up for. A healthy State is good for both of us, and we feared that after the rout at Okkamon, our enemies may take quite some time to recover.

In the end it was decided to offer them a cease fire against major staging systems. Offer them an opportunity to regrow, and regroup.

They responded by attacking Enaluri, in a blitz campaign that saw it fall faster than we could react. It goes without saying that this was quite a surprise. As a result of this, the State militia began to show confidence, and even gloating over their victory. Our own leadership, fractured by months of internal strife, quickly pulled together to assess the situation. Quickly it was decided: the only way to show truly prove our might was to strike at the current heart of Caldari operations, the home system of TEMPLIS: Aivonen.

Citadels were deployed and billions of assets were moved into Aivonen in the following days, and on Sunday October 23th, YC118, the bloodshed began. However, it was soon discovered that opposition was fierce and resilient. The State was regularly fielding numbers that far exceeded our own. Very quickly the war descended into a conflict of attrition and literally thousands of T1 frigates and destroyers poured into the conflict time and time again. However, after the first few days it seemed as if the State had gotten to a level where they could hold us back. For nearly three days our forces were incapable of getting the system above 20% contested with any reliability. Then on Thursday, our Citadel became vulnerable.

Thanks to a sequence of very unfortunate out of game events, much of the leadership that were expecting to be able to mount a defense during our vulnerability hours were incapable of doing so. The State quickly capitalized on our weakness and reinforced the Citadel. Real concern that the Citadel would fall, and the offensive would be dead in the water spread. Morale was low.

However, the next day things began to turn around. Up until this point, the cracks within GalMil seemed to be breaking our ability to mount a proper offensive. RDRAW, one of the largest and most powerful forces within the Militia, refused to assist in major efforts, including having active operations elsewhere in the early week. However, when the might of the Federation is at risk, RDRAW and their allies came through, bolstering the militias defenses and turned the tide against the combined forces of the the State and their allies, WAFFLES.

This victory stood as a turning point for the war, with the State unable to remove our fortification within their system, the will to fight began to wane. The foundries of New Eden struggled to keep up with our war efforts, as major trade hubs were emptied of hulls and weapons. Supply teams from both sides had to compensate and build alternative fits to keep the war of attrition going. However, by this time the writing on the wall was starting to become clear: the unstoppable force was budging the immovable object. Sunday, October 30th, YC 118, a day that will live within the militia as ‘Bloody Sunday’ over 25 billion ISK worth of ships and equipment was left as wrecks, and the tides finally swung to the Gallente side.

'Bloody Sunday', in graph form

'Bloody Sunday' was good to our pilots

In the end, nearly 90 billion was left on the battlefield, and nearly six thousand ships were turned into scrap. Aivonen is now in Gallente control, but is no means secured. The overwhelming effectiveness of having an Citadel in an enemy system has been unilaterally proven, and the State militia citadels still stand. Meanwhile forces on both sides are having to take stock of a much more capable State than previously imagined. All of this on the 11th hour before Ascension and the alpha clones potentially change our war forever.  

I am intensely proud of my membership, and our allies for their relentless effort in this war. I would like to commend all of those who worked diligently to bring billions of isk worth is ships. Most of the ships were worth less than four million ISK fitted each. I am happy to announce that thanks to Aideron membership’s incredible effort we have managed to top our all time kill record, beating out a time in which our corporation was literally double in size.

While this victory has been incredible, it is by no means the end. The State will be looking for signs of weakness to pursue a counterstrike, and we must not give them such. Keep to your watch, and we shall continue to secure Essence region for the glory of our proud Federation.

Ashterothi, Aideron Robotics CEO, Commanding