NC vs Dronelanders: LXQ2-T: 3100 in local, station captured

I missed a major fight on wednesday-ish, during which we took out the LXQ ihub and put the station in its' second reinforced cycle. We made out pretty well in that fight, killing 600 ships and losing 300.

Today the LXQ station finished its' final reinforced timer. Anticipating a big fight and for hostiles to try to get in system around downtime, we got in system 8 hours before the station came out, three hours before downtime, and local was already 600, mostly blue. Intel reported the hostiles had 98 supercapitals logged off in system, 74 supercarriers and 24 titans, while we were subcapitals only. We were hoping to get some super kills, since with so many inexperienced super pilots in one place a few are bound to make mistakes, but they never logged in. Numbers climbed slowly as we waited, reaching 1900 in local and mostly blue just before the station came out of reinforced. At that point the hostiles jumped in about a thousand guys and the node got a bit slow.

Pilots in space

We started out on a grid where several battleship fleets had titan bridged in. Lag was at the level where you expect the node to crash, but it hung on and local eventually broke 3100. I'm not certain how many we killed there, but it's highly unlikely that anything entering system would ever load. Based on a lack of armor broadcasts in my fleet I don't think we lost anybody, but there were probably 5 blue fleets on grid. Enemy bombers did a run, but their bombs decided not to move and blew up in their faces.

Brackets at the first fight

After approximately four hours that grid had been cleared and we warped to a second spot where hostiles had bridged in a battleship fleet. None of the ships moved as we killed them, indicating that none had loaded system.

These guys look blackscreened

Then we warped to a gate where blues were engaging an enemy drake fleet. These ones were actually in system and fighting, but that didn't do much to stop the multiple blue fleets on grid killing them. Local finally fell below 2000 at this point.

First drake fleet

When this was finished we warped to a different gate, where an IRC drake fleet had clearly blackscreened jumping in, and killed them too.

Blackscreened drake fleet

Eventually local got down to 1500, the fighting was over and lag disappeared. We're hitting the station now, and I'm logging off after 14 hours in fleet. I didn't get any kills except for a tower and some mods early in the morning, but it's all good.

EDIT: I actually got on one kill from the fight itself.

Hitting station

Killboard

To say the dronelanders' strategy during this fight was questionable would be an understatement. Jumping your fleet into a system with 1900 already in local is a futile gesture and hurts morale; strategy in a scenario like this should revolve around gaining system control during your prime time and keeping it until objectives can be completed.

According to rumor CCP moved the jita node to LXQ, which may be why the node didn't crash outright. Multiple CCP employees were present in local, and an ISD guy showed up as well.

Also, we killed god.

Victim: CCP Atlas
Corp: C C P
Alliance: C C P Alliance
Faction: Unknown
Destroyed: BH Mega Cargo Ship
System: LXQ2-T
Security: 0.0

EDIT: CCP used this fight to gather data for lag fixing purposes and we are now looking forward to a possible devblog. Their reporting software showed a peak of 3242 players in system. Also one of the things CCP Atlas was carrying when we killed him was actually a data gathering tool... oops :)

Some information here.

MORE EDIT: CCP Atlas' corpse was apparently sold for 5 billion isk.