To The Victor Go The Spoils

For those of you who don’t know, operating in wormhole space can be a stressful and hectic experience. With the spawn of every new connection comes a change in the rules. Nothing stays the same for very long and that is what leads to a lot of the excitement. Even if sometimes that excitement comes at the cost of your profitability, planning, and health.

Summer Friday had me out of work early today and I got home as quickly as I could to log in some Eve time. Just before getting home my phone had lit up with messages from the corp saying there was trouble brewing in the HQ system. Am I the only wormhole pilot that isn’t in a European timezone? I swear I am always missing the action. Anyway there is a K162 connection in our HQ which has lead to some class four inhabitants. Apparently a few of them are parked in our system in battleships and other nasty things. Our forces are apparently in stealth bombers monitoring the situation. I log into the comms channel in time to catch Oz formulating a plan of attack. It sounded something like this:

Oz: “You guys warp in and get into bomb range, while I fly around over here and kite the Dramiel.”
Me: “You’re going to kite a Dramiel?”
Oz: “To keep him off the bombers while they make their runs.”
Me: “You’re going to kite the fastest frigate in the game?”
Oz: “Yes?”

Good luck with that. I’m going to work on my target practice. The enemy ships were clustered in one of two bookmarks, which Snow had already scanned down. Oz and I took potshots at ships when the opportunity presented itself. We even managed to take down a Kestrel at some point. Unfortunately they managed to catch Oz during one attack leaving the score 1 T1 frigate to 1 T2 stealth bomber. Oh well, this has been fun either way, and in all honesty I’m glad for the chance to practice bombing on real targets for a change.

The enemy fleet begins running the three anomalies we have in our system. They have an overwhelming force present. A pair of Ravens, cloak fitted Loki, Dramiel, a few Drakes, Hurricane, and Onyx make up the fleet that we know about. Anything else can still be on their side of the wormhole. There is no way we can force them out of our system in a direct engagement. But we can make their trip as frustrating as possible and deny them as much isk as we can.

We deploy Snow into the anomaly they are currently working on and have her bookmark wrecks from the sleeper ships as they come up. Oz and I then position ourselves around the enemy fleet for what I am calling “surgical bomb strikes of annoyance.” When the intruders get a couple of wrecks up Oz or myself decloak and attack the wrecks denying them the loot. Sometimes we used torpedoes, sometimes bombs. We attacked their drones when they would cluster them around a single target. Basically we did whatever we could in our outclassed ships to harass and demoralize the enemy. It worked well.

In the first anomaly they only made off with the loot from a single cruiser wreck. The second anomaly they fared slightly better with two or three ships worth of loot and maybe one or two salvages.  We couldn’t keep them from stealing all our anomalies, but by god we were going to make them fight for every damn isk they tried to take. I would say the mission to make them wish they had never bothered with our system was paying off, right up until we got the idea to try to collapse the wormhole on them.

Now I’m not sure when that idea came about, I was busy bombing wrecks and drones. I think it was a bad call to be honest. They were about done with our anomalies and I don’t think they would have caused too much trouble after they got what they had come for. Regardless, a wormhole collapsing fit Abaddon was eventually caught on the wormhole and destroyed. We tried what we could to draw their attention away from Snow’s cloaked ship, but with that number of hostile ships buzzing around the wormhole it was only a matter of time before they found her.

The engagement ended and I logged off to grab some dinner. Hopefully I can wash the taste of defeat out of my mouth with a few slices of Sicilian pizza and Pepsi.

Boredom, The Anti-Blockade

Logged into Eve after a super cold refreshing shower. Six hours of beach and volleyball has taken it’s toll and I’m anxious to sit in one place and not move for a while. It’s a tough life isn’t it?

The corpmates are on and buzzing about, running PI and setting up industrial…things. I am still rather ignorant of the whole operation. Anyway our lo-sec static connection is to a useless system in Gallente space. It is a lo-sec island surrounded by hi security space that is less than appealing to me. We decide to collapse it, which is a new trick for me. I understand the mechanics behind it, but have never been confident enough to put it into action.

Oz and Mel get to work while I rat out the static. My security status has plummeted these last few weeks, I need to make a serious effort to get it back up. We finish off the wormhole and I grab my Anathema to scan out the new one. Just as I jump back into the HQ system after scouting our new connection we spot a Manticore blip on the direction scanner in the HQ system. Oz was sitting on the new static wormhole so he must have come from a new one. I launch my probes again and quickly scan down a new K162 connection to a class 4 system.

As I jump through to the C4, I’m greeted with a less than friendly welcome. An Armageddon is parked on the wormhole. Luckily I’m far enough away from him and the wormhole to be able to activate my cloak and burn away from them. Just as I’m reaching a safe 30km from the hole and battleship, a Devoter and Jaguar show up. This isn’t looking good. The Devoter jumps through the hole, and my isolation in a hostile C4 begins.

After the initial shock of seeing the hostile ships wears off it occurs to me to have a look at the d-scanner. Hmm, This doesn’t look very promising at all. Dominix, Armageddon, Velator, Orca, Archon, Ibis, Scorpion, Revelation, Bestower, Oracle, Dominix, Dramiel, Hurrican, Jaguar, and a Scimitar. That’s quite a fleet. No, this is a fucking dread fleet. This is going to be a serious problem. Our only saving grace is that the capital ships won’t be able to pass through our small wormhole, which is really all that is stopping them from obliterating our towers and ships if they wanted to.  The corp gets eyes on the HQ side of the wormhole and as I suspected the Devoter is parked on the hole with his warp disruption bubble up.

I decide to be as productive as possible while in a covert ops ship in someone else’s wormhole. I find a remote spot in the system and launch probes to start scanning down the dozen or so signatures that are present. I also locate their tower and park my ship a good 200km away from it to watch what is going on. I’m a little less frightened now. The hostiles only have about 4 or 5 pilots online from what I can tell. Only the Dramiel, Scimitar, Devoter, Jaguar, and Hurricane are actually being piloted.

I scan down an absurd amount of ladar sites in the C4 but there are no other wormholes present. The only way out is heavily guarded. This isn’t going to be pretty. Scanning all of those anomalies has eaten up quite a bit of time however, and luckily for me the blockade is lifted. Boredom is my ally in this one. I notice the Devoter and Dramiel that were previously in the HQ system back in the C4. It’s now or never! I rocket to the wormhole and dive through. Success! Glad to be home! The last thing our killboard needs is another loss this month.