Cheetah Hunter Caught in a One-Billion-ISK Trap in QBZO-R

A covert Cheetah vanished in QBZO-R in a loss worth roughly 1 billion ISK, after Rote Kapelle caught Dark Morgan’s frigate and stripped away most of the value before the ship was finished off. The kill was credited to Jack Times flying a Caracal Navy Issue, with Jack NotTimes’ Malediction helping set the snare.

THE CATCH

What looked like a small intercept in QBZO-R turned into a far more expensive prize than the size of the hull suggested. Dark Morgan’s Cheetah, flown for Republic Military School, was destroyed in a fight involving just five participants, but the wreck left behind an outsized impression: 876.5 million ISK in loot was recovered, while another 165.4 million ISK was lost with the ship.

THE HUNT

The attackers came from Rote Kapelle, with the final blow landing from Jack Times in a Caracal Navy Issue. Jack NotTimes, flying a Malediction, also contributed to the engagement. The pair appears to have cornered the covert ops frigate quickly, denying it the room a Cheetah usually relies on to slip away. In a short, sharp encounter, there was no sign of a drawn-out chase—just a fast closure and a costly end.

THE PRIZE

The Cheetah was carrying more than a routine fit. Among the contents were Covert Research Tools, Sisters Core Scanner Probes, Meta-Molecular Combiners, and a Packrat Mobile Tractor Unit Blueprint, all of which help explain why the loss crossed the billion-ISK mark. For a ship built around stealth and discretion, it became a very visible target the moment the trap closed.

WHY IT MATTERS

Single-ship losses do not always register beyond the local grid, but this one stands out for the value involved and the efficiency of the catch. Rote Kapelle turned a small engagement into a lucrative destruction, and the result is the sort of kill that reminds every explorer and covert pilot that one mistake, one delay, or one bad jump can be enough to turn an escape into a headline.

Sources and verification

Based on recorded combat data Narrative based on recorded New Eden activity and archived editorial analysis.

Permalink

CONTINUE EXPLORING

More Stories From New Eden

View all stories →

Nullsec

Scan Stakan Killed 55 Ships and Lost 186 in the Same Fight

E-WMT7 produced 376 killmails, somewhere around 134 billion ISK of wreckage, and one battleship worth more than a force auxiliary, a Nestor and a Typhoon Fleet Issue put together. The number that stings harder is 186. That is how many ships Scan Stakan lost in the same engagement in which they killed 55 - top of the kill list and top of the loss list, in a single three-and-a-half-hour afternoon.

Lowsec

x Never Regret x Takes 40 Kills as Raa Burns 26 Capitals

At 17:28 UTC, a Retriever died in Raa. Retrievers die constantly, and in Devoid that is more or less the job description. This one is only worth mentioning because of what followed it: for the next hundred minutes, a system on the edge of Amarr space turned into a scrapyard, and by the time the last shot landed at 19:10, 87 ships had been destroyed and the bill had reached 157.4 billion ISK. Almost half of that was one Revelation.

Highsec

Rattini Tribe and Prime Directive. Split Dal's 192 Billion ISK Bill

An Amarr Shuttle belonging to G0lden Fleet. died in Dal at 16:15 UTC. That is not normally the opening line of a 192 billion ISK story, but Dal spent the next three hours and forty-one minutes making sure nobody forgot it. By the time the last capsule in the system - belonging to x Never Regret x - came apart at 19:56, 557 pilots had produced 516 confirmed losses, fourteen capital ships had been wrecked, and the Heimatar system had eaten just over 192 billion ISK. That is not a skirmish somebody stumbled into. That is a decision, made over and over, for the better part of four hours.

Nullsec

Brave Newbies Topped Both Sides of the HY-RWO Ledger

The first ship to die in HY-RWO was a Rokh worth 44.7 billion ISK, and it set the tone for everything that came after. Over the following hour, 1,883 pilots fought in the Catch system, 243 ships were destroyed, and around 205 billion ISK was removed from the economy one killmail at a time. Not a single capital ship died. In a fight of that size, the most expensive losses were ordinary battleships, fitted in a way that makes the word 'ordinary' sound absurd.