Nika Mandic
Battle Information
Mouse over battles to see:
- Press and media reports about the battle
- Battle report links
- Screenshots from the engagement
- Unlisted video material
And, of course, context for the engagement within the wider Frontier story.
Default ordering has the most recent engagements first.
After capturing the West in early March and then marauding around the map, we return to where we began: EFK station. Here we end the cycle relatively peacefully in the West. It's been another cycle where we have engaged all the major parties in the game in fleet warfare, using Frontier's new mechanics, and again killed some 70–80% of all the battleships killed in PvP during the cycle. These numbers are only possible thanks to the clash of the apex assets of the major groups in such fleet warfare: Caruda fleets are mostly only vulnerable to other Caruda fleets. It's in this realm where the big toys are brought out to play.
Now, however, the final week settles into a relative calm. There are still kills around EFK station. We also befriend some of the individual local pilots who set up fuel stops, hunt for rifts and generally go about their business.
One of the names killed here on station is familiar from Cycle 1, where he fought alongside the Trinary Accord in battles like Y:1SII: BadpixelP45. Although still a target, this Polish auteur makes wonderful imagery of the Frontier on his travels.
When it comes to imagery, the dark aesthetic of the Frontier is summed up in this little clip of catching a Caruda on EFK station.
Watch a Caruda being caught on EFK station
How far is too far? Although we now have control of EFN itself, the hunt for REAPERS ships and structures continues. This is a hunt that takes place both in space and on chain. In this example, the chain has yielded an inventory of MADMONK's structures and he is followed home to a prime candidate for his main base. There, we kill him in his Grus battleship and then set to work on the base. Since structures are filtered out by default on the killboard, the video below gives some idea of what the destruction of a Frontier home looks like.
Watch the destruction of a Frontier base as we follow a Grus home
With us having won control of EFK station in the West, we considered our next target. The answer was clear: REAPERS had assembled a large Caruda force and were active in the East of the map, having made their capital in EFN. Their main opposition was Algorithmic Warfare (AWAR). However, in Cycle 2, the Trinary Accord coalition which AWAR had led in Cycle 1 had largely disbanded. This left AWAR to mostly fight alone and pursue a whack-a-mole strategy to hit REAPERS' Smart Gate networks rather than directly engage the larger REAPERS apex fleet.
AWAR's strategy was not without merit, and Ergod's AWAR had interesting asymmetrical engagements with MichaelJD's REAPERS. You couldn't ask for two more capable and interesting leaders to spearhead their respective strategies. However, although we were enemies in Cycle 1 (and they would remain targets in Cycle 2 and 3), AWAR did suggest that we might want to visit the East to engage REAPERS in the manner of our Cycle 1 battles with them. This was not any sort of NAP or agreement — AWAR remained viable targets too. Something more akin to a Thomas Harris character handing us a crumpled note saying 'kill them all'. And so the work begins.
Below is a video that covers some of the action in EFN. It includes a memorable moment when REAPERS Carudas are attacked live on a CCP Stream. It ends with action on gate timers and a slow motion shot of a 'double kill', i.e. targeting one Caruda and killing a second untargeted Caruda in front of it by virtue of Frontier's line of sight and occlusion mechanics.
Watch action from the battles in EFN against REAPERS and an on-stream assault
A word on the REAPERS since one might observe that we targeted them often. Some of this is inevitable, since REAPERS were generally the largest pure-PvP force on the Frontier in this era (probably numerically smaller than the Trinary Accord forces in Cycle 1, but larger than AWAR thereafter). Some is also simply that we wouldn't want to disappoint: it was the player 'Run' from REAPERS who suggested we join Frontier when he contacted Lord Maldoror in the middle of December 2024. It seems that in some humble way the exploits of RnK in EVE Online played some small role in inspiring Run and leader MichaelJD in their exploits and considerable achievements in EVE Echoes and elsewhere. Michael of course is also known to RnK from his time in Psychotic Tendencies and elsewhere in EVE Online. It's never good to disappoint and, even in dark corners of the internet, there is comfort in constancy.
REAPERS have much to commend them: Michael's leadership, Raw is the winner of Frontier's 2026 Hackathon, Scetrov and ProtoDroidBot are among the most helpful people in the Frontier community on the technical side, and Habi's multiboxing antics garner our respect simply because we acknowledge his desire to take things far.
An Iconic Shot
With full control of the EFK area established, we cleaned up EXTI's remaining gates and those in the area from WOLF. This task did not meet with resistance, allowing for time to indulge the scenic pleasures of destruction. One such moment yielded an iconic shot, reused various times in Frontier media, of the gate-killing fleet warping as our deeds ignite behind us.
Watch an aesthetic moment of the gate-killing fleet in warp
By the 10th of March, EFK is fully under RnK control. EXTI begin to evacuate ships and materials, and we ask EXTI Rabb to make a list of pilots to be given free passage to move their assets out.
In the early hours of the 10th, a WOLF raid kills a mining cruiser before narrowly escaping as our forces land. We note that during this exchange, WOLF see a Grus of ours in the belts, and we reason that they'll likely return with a bigger force to try and kill it.
Sure enough, in the evening of the 10th, WOLF Lacal leads a larger force back to EFK. The fate that befalls them is owed to the Frontier-specific mechanic of Smart Gates — stargates that can be programmed for selective access or offlined at a moment's notice, including for the purpose of denying access to visiting battleships at a critical moment and leaving them trapped. In Frontier, a stargate that brought you in might not let you back out.
The clip here, from a CCP discussion with RnK, has footage of this episode. Bizarrely, it ends with the death of an EXTI Grus that was itself carrying a Caruda battleship — a rich catch. Yet the pilot was EXTI Rabb himself. Even though there was no limit to the number of names and ships he could have submitted for free passage, he had chosen not to add himself so as not to take advantage of goodwill. There's still nobility in space.
Watch a discussion about the WOLF visit to EFK and a Smart Gate trap
With the major battle for EFK won, EXTI no longer possess a viable Caruda threat, and it remains too early in the cycle for them to have had time to source replacements for the lost assets, especially with our forces controlling the regional resource possibilities.
There thus follows a long line of kills on the 9th of March. Although some of these are Caruda battleships, the bulk of the EXTI forces now consist of smaller vessels. In EVE Online this approach might be a viable strategy. But at this point in the Frontier, the physicalised nature of weapons has changed a lot about what a small ship needs to do to 'kite' a larger one, and the apex battleships are especially powerful (a situation a little akin to the 'tracking Titan' era of EVE Online). Tracking speed and signature radius no longer exist as a dice-roll in a formulaic calculation — weapons fire in a cone and the actual visible cross section of the ship dictates the outcome. Correctly flown and angled battleships are perhaps disproportionately powerful. The damage meta also revolves around large alpha damage strikes that kill the target before the shield boost can cycle — something more difficult to coordinate in large groups of smaller vessels that have high DPS but lack alpha strike.
Once the major battle had been won on the previous day, larger numbers of cruisers and frigates were unable to overwhelm our Carudas.
A sea of wrecks:
When Cycle 2 dawned, there was no direct equivalent of 'Egon' (E.G9N.711), the home in the plum center of the map from which we'd launched our operations in Cycle 1. At this point in the game, different stations could build different ship hulls. For those seeking to be a power on the Frontier, it was vital to select a station system with a specific 'Stellar Assembly' that could build the formidable Caruda battleships (with patch changes in Cycle 2 making the Caruda outpace the Grus battleship in damage). Vastly more expensive and powerful than other ships, the clashes between apex fleets of these vessels dictated the outcome of most power struggles in the first Founder Era of the game.
With no ideal central availability, the needs of battleship construction forced a snap choice between broadly West and East. For us, the pin fell in the central West, in the station system of EFK-3GK ("EFK"). Two large groups with whom we had enjoyed battles in Cycle 1, REAPERS and AWAR, both began their Cycle 2 adventures in the East, where we would later invade.
But EFK was not empty. Another major group in the Frontier had chosen it for their home: ExoTech Industrial (EXTI). In Cycle 1, EXTI had been members of the Trinary Accord with AWAR, and present for some of our clashes in the East. In Cycle 2, EXTI had left the Trinary Accord to strike out on their own (a fact which left AWAR outnumbered against REAPERS in this cycle's Eastern adventures, toward which we would later build a gate network).
Returning to the present, both RnK and EXTI wanted EFK, a system where the station's battleship construction advantages made it a natural Western capital. The resulting clash would in fact yield the largest battle anywhere in the Frontier during Cycle 2. The battle took place across the O0K-09K and EFK-3GK systems, and the story of the engagement was discussed in the CCP stream linked below.
Watch footage of the largest Cycle 2 battle in Frontier
This operation was the destruction of the Secret Necropolis, the first Deep Safe broken by Blockchain vulnerability and the first event of its kind in what might be loosely termed Blockchain Gaming. It was also the largest strike anywhere in the Frontier during Cycle 3.
A paper has been written on these events, discussing the operation as a Vector Attack in Physical Cryptography:
Distance Attack on Frontier Dead-space Hiding
The Battle of B-2AK7: The biggest battle of the Founder Era of EVE Frontier, and it remains so as of autumn 2026.
The most powerful fleet the Frontier has ever seen assembled to finally kill the Mooneater, a huge NPC steeped in Frontier lore.
But the Mooneater's description box says, "Mooneaters bring calamity wherever they travel." And just as the Mooneater was approaching death, a group of Grus battleships from the hitherto unseen corporation Calamity launched a surprise assault to save the Mooneater.
In the longest and bloodiest battle in the Frontier to date, the Mooneater was saved. During the battle itself, a video was released on the Frontier Discord revealing a Faustian bargain with mysterious entities that had sealed the server fleet's fate, and revealing the identity of Calamity.
Click here to see the video released midway through the battle, as the Frontier community pieced together what was happening, why, and by whom.
Watch the video released during the Battle of B-2AK7
Click here to hear a longer version of the story, told by CCP Overload at EVE Fanfest:
Hear the story of B-2AK7 at EVE Fanfest
The Battle of Y:1SII took place after we discovered five reinforced Smart Gates in the system. As in the battle of I.EXP nine days prior, the adversary was once again AWAR and the forces of the Trinary Accord coalition.
While waiting at a safe spot, we observed events. There are no cloaking devices at this time in Frontier, thus preventing us from watching them directly on grid. But there are also no scan probes, thus preventing them from watching us.
Timing the seconds between the gates exiting reinforced mode and their destruction — consistent for gates 1, 2 and 3 — revealed the likelihood of the mighty Caruda battleships.
At this time in the game, Stargates in Frontier regenerate quickly after exiting reinforced mode. This necessitates maintaining a tight schedule when multiple gates are exiting reinforced mode in close proximity in time.
Given the prompt destruction of the gates like clockwork, it implied that the target fleet was warping directly from destroyed gate to fresh gate. Thus an "in-line" spot was made between gates 3 and 4, and we attempted to time a blind ambush on gate 4.
Since the Trinary forces later provided the Frontier community with their perspective, we have an interesting side-by-side view of the engagement, much in the manner of EVE Online videos. The Trinary comms are shifted to the left channel and ours to the right channel.
As you'll see, we actually arrive at Gate 4 ahead of the enemy fleet, who then exit warp into us at point-blank range.
The Battle of I.EXP was, until the monstrous engagement of B:2AK7, the most significant loss of ship steel in the game to that point. It was also the culmination of the rising but unanswered question of what would happen when two battleship fleets actually met.
Battleships in Cycle 1 of the first Founder Era represented considerable toil and grind — certainly more so than in later cycles. For most players on the server who had them — itself a small number — a battleship was the culmination of the Cycle's work, much in the manner of either the battleships of the primordial days of EVE Online or, indeed, the various endgame capital ships of its later years.
In Frontier, the battleship's enormous volley damage made it the apex predator of the ship tree. Unlike its counterparts in EVE Online, it was also very effective against smaller ships and highly self-sufficient.
A write-up is provided here by CCP:
Read CCP's write-up of the Battle of I.EXP
The engagement itself was the culmination of a week-long campaign to bring the forces of I.EXP to a decisive battle. The battle took place in I.EXP itself — the capital of the game's East and the most 'built-up' system in the game.
In the event, AWAR and the Trinary coalition surprised us by unleashing a larger battleship force against us at I.EXP station.
The key to victory was Eldareth's swan dive into and under the enemy fleet, which caused significant damage to two of the hostile battleships through friendly fire. Unlike EVE Online, EVE Frontier has line-of-sight mechanics.
Additionally, the placement of the guns on a Caruda battleship was not uniform, and their ability to fire down at Eldareth was therefore limited. He was able to tank the incoming fire and survive.
With the initiative thus established and the opening exchanges favouring us, our five battleships were able to overwhelm the enemy force of seven battleships.
In Cycle 1, even ships like the battlecruiser-class Axte represented considerable investment of time and resources. Obtaining a larger ship was a target measured in days and weeks of work rather than a trip to a well-stocked trading hub, and was much more akin to the timescales involved in acquiring supercapitals in EVE Online's later years.
Harking back to the early days of EVE Online, groups regularly undertook alliance- or coalition-wide fleet mining operations, with dedicated combat forces assigned to guard the industrial vessels. It was this sort of activity that we continued to target during the Eastern campaign.
I.EXP, the capital system of the East, was the most industrially active system in the game and home to its largest coalition: the Trinary Accord, led by Algorithmic Warfare (AWAR). By exerting continued pressure, we hoped to force them into a climactic battle.
We remained unsure of the extent of what their industrial muscle had already built, and AWAR leader Ergod's prescient allocation of resources during the preceding months would soon be on display when their large battleship fleet engaged us in I.EXP.
As we pressured their industrial operations and defence fleets, many outlandish and Frontier-specific strategies were employed. These included the use of asteroids as cover to avoid detection and aid ambushes, and even the use of Frontier's complex ship-identification mechanics to 'seed' our own industrial Flegel vessel into a hostile hauling fleet.
The loss on the 28th was a neutral alt account that died during this successful action — the noble Sir Gregory Grus. Honour dictates that even in subterfuge there must be a clue offered, and the keen-eyed will note that 'Nainsooks Grandsons Mining' corporation is an anagram of Rooks and Kings.
Our Campaign in the East begins with the blockade of the game's industrial capital system, I.EXP, and its surrounding systems and gate networks. The element of surprise allows us to destroy two valuable Grus battleships on the opening day — assets that will prove difficult to replace.
Such is the power and material significance of battleships at this point in the game that even two additional Grus could have made a significant difference to the outcome of the final battle.
Although most of RnK in Frontier were from the original crew, Alpha and Mr. Deadmeat were playing an EVE game properly for the first time. In this clip you can hear the whoop of joy as Deadmeat watches a volley of railgun fire hit the immobilised prize.
Watch the first Grus kill of the blockade
Once again, the home system of REAPERS was targeted and all infrastructure destroyed. As documented here in the data from the surrounding days, the reinforcement timers did provide a few skirmishes. Still, for the most part, the work now continued unopposed.
With the campaign to burn the West of the map essentially complete, our eyes turned to the riches of the East. The empire there was run by AWAR and the Trinary Accord, who had recently visited us in our home system of Egon (E.G9N.711). Although that fleet battle in Egon had been won, plans were already being rapidly drawn up for a new campaign.
In Frontier at this time, it was very possible to "follow" the path of a gate network while it was under construction — akin to watching fresh railway tracks being laid into a great expanse. So as not to alert the Eastern powers to our intentions just yet, John orchestrated the construction of a Smart Gate network eastward using an array of alt-corps, dynamic gate-linking, and selective onlining and offlining.
The aim was to obfuscate the true route woven between the many seemingly disconnected paths: a road from Egon straight to the Eastern capital of I.EXP. And once in I.EXP, we planned to blockade it.
With these things in motion, the 19th of January became a long, final operation to conclusively finish our affairs in the West.
Watch scenic footage from the second destruction of M.ECK:
Watch the Second Burning of M.ECK
The forces of the Trinary Accord, led by AWAR, paid us a visit on the 12th of January. We had the good fortune that, during their journey to us, they destroyed an offline structure of ours. The resulting alert gave us live information on their fleet composition, which consisted of a core of Axte battlecruisers. This was a heavy composition for the state of industry at that point in the Cycle, and so we prepared with firepower of our own and awaited them.
Once they entered our home system, a fight ensued. Reps held on our over-tanked bait, and we were able to destroy three of their Axte, after which they realised the battle was lost. Holding on to retreating ships at this point in Frontier was difficult because a warp scrambler could remain active for only a few seconds before cycling off again, necessitating multiple scramblers or alternating ships to hold a single target.
Some set course for home — always a more complex matter in Frontier than in EVE Online, since the home side could lock Smart Gates — whilst others who warped off to the station were trapped there.
On the 14th, KramReipan, who had already been hunting industrial vessels in Egon prior to the fleet battle, took an opportunity to leave with his Axte. On his way, he killed a Flegel cruiser hauling material. This served as a reminder that AWAR were still keen to fight the good fight, and we would later meet KramReipan again during the blockade of I.EXP, where he would be flying his Grus battleship.
The short-term objective remained to maraud westward from the centre of the map, where we had our base in Egon, and target REAPERS. But these incidents also showed that fights were waiting for us in the East.
After the burning of the REAPERS home in M.ECK in the West, we returned to Egon (EG9N), the system we'd somewhat audaciously chosen as our home in the centre of the map. Here, we set about the industrial business of completing our battleship fleet.
But REAPERS, an excellent group always thirsting for PvP, weren't done yet. On the 11th of January, they arrived in Egon with a large force by the standards of this point in the Cycle, numbering some 20–30 ships. Our Smart Gate network detected them en route, and we powered down certain vital gates to give us time to put the industrial work aside and entertain our guests in battle.
Although they had more ships, our composition was significantly heavier, giving us a considerable advantage. The opening exchange gave us an Axte kill along with several Dremars. The long subsequent chase resulted in them extracting from the region with us gaining only one further kill.
It showed that, despite the New Year's fire in M.ECK, the work in the West was not yet done.
While in future we hope to add footage from that engagement here, for the moment we'll instead return to the industrial matter of strengthening the fleet and building apex ships. Trinary Accord members from the East, such as Algorithmic Warfare and their allies Heavy Metal, tried to harass those mining in Egon and the surrounding area. The possibility of building 'locked' Stargates in Frontier made this more challenging, but not impossible for a patient hunter.
The clip here is, in many ways, a nothing incident: an ad hoc response fleet in the middle of the night after Nozaj was tackled in the belts. But as much as it is nothing, it's also everything: the sense of camaraderie of primordial EVE, the sense of a community with soldiers manning the Wall day and night, and the sense of a world continually ticking along with engagements and activity.
Nozaj, a great hero of the past, was probably playing an EVE game properly again for the first time in a decade. You can hear a little relish in his voice at the fact that Heavy Metal, led by DakkanUdan, had attacked him — in the Heavy Metal belt, no less. Also referenced therein is the fact that, a mere day earlier, DakkanUdan had told Caly that his group would be looking for us. Having little narratives like that play out also adds to the texture of daily life in the Frontier.
Watch a random response fleet in the early hours of a morning
The fleet that waited for REAPERS on the 11th:
After we made our home in Egon (EG9N), in the middle of the map, we set about building a Smart Gate network.
When two of Kieser's gates were destroyed by REAPERS, it gave us our first real target. These were not quite the first hostilities: in response to them killing one of our mining Flegels on the 26th of December, we had already destroyed two of their Flegels and a Smart Gate in retribution. But Kieser is a particular man, and this was the slight escalation that sparks good EVE adventures.
During the New Year's holiday, we visited them in the West and operated out of deep safe spots in their systems. The REAPERS home system of M.ECK was targeted, along with an operation to dismantle their Smart Gate network between M.ECK and their hub in Brana, where we were also able to catch their ships.
Although more dramatic and interesting battles with REAPERS would follow, this remained a significant moment for us. Not counting cameos and community events, these were the first 'called ops' by Rooks and Kings in an EVE universe in nearly ten years.
As M.ECK burned and a new year dawned, the future looked violent.
