Throughout the later afternoon of EUTZ on 1/29, the M2-XFE infrastructure hub (IHUB) came under fire again by PAPI forces. This time, armed with more than 1,100 people, they were successful in reinforcing it. The costly battle lasted for around four hours, resulting in more than 150 billion ISK lost. The IHUB’s reinforcement timer ends at 21:29 on Sunday the 31st and there is more than likely going to be a large engagement over control of the system.
The system of M2-XFE has been the center of World War Bee 2 for the last few weeks as history has been made in more than one way. First, records were broken for the most ISK lost in an EVE Online battle, then a few days later marked the record for most concurrent players in a battle (and also the most one-sided battle in EVE’s history). Following their defeat at M2-, the PAPI coalition remained logged off for several weeks, losing the occasional Titan at downtime and droves of capital ships before finally breaking out a large portion of their Titan fleet.
The IHUB in M2-XFE is important for one of a few reasons. One, it is a Keepstar system. Following their defeat in their first attempt at killing the M2-XFE Keepstar, PAPI has reverted to their original plan of holding a system long enough to get a cyno jammer. This gives them the ability to control the flow of traffic into the system via a cynosural field. They are then able to get into position and restrict access before anyone else can join them. In order to online and anchor a cyno jammer, an alliance must reach sovereignty level 3 in the system, a milestone that the Imperium has almost reached. This is another reason this IHUB must be recaptured. Though an Imperium cyno jammer will do little to prevent the remaining PAPI supercapitals trapped from jumping out, it will cause a fairly significant inconvenience in the process.
If possible, we will cover the engagement on Sunday on our Twitch channel, otherwise we’ll let you all know how it turns out after the dust settles in M2-XFE.
[…] Sunday, nearly 6,000 capsuleers formed to fight over the Imperium-held M2-XFE infrastructure HUB (we previously reported on its reinforcement). Unlike previous fights in M2-XFE over citadels, sovereignty contests are fought throughout a […]