WTF? Seriously? Again? How Many Jumps!?

So we've been looking for a C2 that is within our region, or even better, in our constellation, to do some testing, as well as give us more grav sites to mine. We also wanted to give our alliance an option to place other corps inside it, since we did not want any neighbors in our home C2.

So, after a few days of looking, I happened upon a post of a guy selling a C2 w static C3, just like our home system. It had terrible PI, so I offered the guy 200 mil. His asking price was 1.5 bil. Ouch, well that wasn't going to fly, and the best he could do was 500, so I let him slip back into the pool of goo he came from. Next day, I find a post on his selling post that he isn't in control, so I contact the other person listed, and they want 1.5 bil too!

I negotiated it down to a reasonable 300 mil, and started filling my Orcas with all the loose POS gear I had lying around while the seller and their fleet scanned down the high sec. He indicated the system and I dropped into high sec and set destination.

43 jumps!?!?!

15 through lowsec???

That wouldn't do, and the seller already knew it, and jumped into action, finding a K162 inside to high sec. 26 jumps away. Ouch. And it's End of Life? Double ouch.

Okay, I got my fleet moving. I was 12 jumps away when he told me the wormhole had collapsed. *head smack*

Okay, the seller says, we're still looking. There's the C3 static. In go the scouts.

The C3 has a nullsec static.

...

*thrown desk chair*

The seller headed out into nullsec and said there was no one for three jumps in any direction! No, sorry, that's not an option with two Orcas loaded with about a bil in POS gear and fuel.

Not to worry, this seller had his stuff together. His scouts went out and started scanning the high sec island for WHs, and found a C2 with a connection to high sec.

22 jumps away.

So I get started moving that way, re-destinationing my fleet, which is, by now, spread halfway across New Eden.

I'm jumping, jumping jumpingjumping....

10 jumps away.

Oh, and the hole is now critical.

$$$*#(#*&^@$$%!!!!

Alright, I'll bring in my cov ops and at least get one of us in there. So I arrived at the system, pick up the bookmarks.

I had to go high sec--> C2 -->High sec --> C2.

Yay, I'm in system.....and so are many other people, it seems. There are like four cov ops on scan. This does not look good. A gentleman from the high sec island is claiming to have sold the wormhole, so now it becomes a race to get a POS inside.

The seller uses a Falcon to get the hole closed, and the new one opens up.

22 jumps back in the direction I came from.

...

....

.....

*cat hurled across room*

Alright, no biggie, let's get going. again. Jumping again. By this time I had probably jumped over 200 times with the multiple characters I had logged in. What's 60 more?

So many many jumps later, I arrive, and get the POS anchoring. I release the seller, with a good job done, and leave all the transports in high sec while the POS anchors. We leave our small combat fleet circling the WH side of the high sec static. I'm off cloaked in my Anathema. The WH flashes and an interdictor destroyer jumps in. He squirts off an interdiction sphere and jumps out.

WTF was that? We already had our bubble up. Field disappears.

It's dinnertime, so I need to get some stuff cooking, so I afk while the corp watches the hole.

A few minutes later I hear something from my headset as I'm walking by, so I plop down...to find all hell has broken loose. There are ships with me yellow boxed, and as I put my headset on, they all turn to red.

"JUMP! JUMP OUT! JUMP!" they're yelling on Vent. I look down, my Devoter pilot is the last corp pilot on this side of the WH. My armor flashes red, I look down at my modules, slam both armor reppers on and hit jump.

WTF was that!?

Turns out, it was the interdictor's corp looking for kills. They had jumped through on the fleet with a Tempest fit with a full rack of neuts..and FIVE Tengus. JFC FIVE?

After some smacktalking local about how leet and uber they were, to the disappointment of the guy in local who thought he was selling to someone else, they jumped out the high sec.

We moved our fleet out of the system and took a break for dinner for everyone. We came back 30 minutes later and I found them on a locator agent, ten jumps away.

GO GO GO!

We warped the fleet over to the wormhole. Just as the final Orca was jumping through, the same fleet appeared in the high sec local and started talking more smack.

All they got was a single sentence before the wormhole popped in their faces.

Onlined the tower, got the shield up, and spent the next six hours onlining 40+ guns and ECM.

Hmm, I don't have as much ECM as I thought I did. Better open up the B274 and get some more.

I jump outside and check to see where I am by checking how far Jita is. Hmm, four jumps from Amarr....hey wait. Set Destination. omfg.

I am one jump from the system I started in that morning. Where my other C2's wormhole still is.

The things that happen in Eve sometimes are mind boggling. I ended up where I began this wild trip across the galaxy.

So I got a couple Impels and loaded them to the gills with more POS gear. And, lo and behold, I was ten jumps from where I'd dumped all the C3 POS gear, so I went and got that too. Now this POS was looking mean.

I had had a terribly long day, so I headed to bed, secure in the knowledge the POS was secure.

Unless the Russians invade.

That Got The Blood Flowing!

So after waiting around for a WH seller to get us into a C2 that was in our current wormhole's region, the deal fell through and we had time on our hands. I had run most of the combat sites, so I and Soulofchaos decided to poke our heads into our C3 static. I was itching to try out my new Purifiers, so I headed in and scouted around.

I am not that good at combat scanning people down, I'll just say that right off. But my new shiny stealth bomber can't fit an Expanded Probe Launcher anyhow, going from a fitting on Chessur's bomber blog. So I've got Core Probes only, and of course, my DSCAN.

DSCAN is a powerful tool in the right hands, which are not mine if you were wondering. I can't figure out on which degree or exactly how far people are away, but I'm trying.

So this is where I found two Retrievers, a Hulk, a Mammoth, and an Orca on scan. There were two POSes in system, and I assumed the Orca was at one of them. And then it disappeared from scan. I found it at where the other POS came on scan, so it must have warped between POSes. Interesting, wonder why it did that.

So the Mammoth was moving back and forth from a grav site I couldn't find without dropping probes. Oh well. I headed out to an outer planet out of scan range and dropped probes, telling my corpmates, who now included Raphid and Freethinker Zun by this point, what I planned on doing. Hopefully they wouldn't see the probes, I could get up close, and have them jump in and help kill something worth killing.

Well, wouldn't you know, I probed down the grav site, stuffed my probes back in the bay and arrived....to find nothing. There was no one in the site.

Hmmm. They are definitely mining. There must be two gravs. So repeat, but this time I take too long, and they see the probes and get out of dodge. I scan the site down anyhow and warp to it, recalling probes as soon as I can. I arrive there to find, Sleepers? Looked like the Sleepers spawned as I probed them down, so maybe they were fleeing the Sleepers and not my probes. So I broke out a soda and waited to find out.

Over at the POS, a Cheetah appeared on scan. Rats. Means they saw my probes and were trying to find where they came from. Off to our connecting wormhole I went, watching the probes move about, until finally, they disappeared.

I let everyone know the Cheetah would be incoming, and to chase it back through when it arrived and found our welcoming committee. Waiting for it were Soulofchaos in his Tengu, Chaosofsoul in a Nighthawk, Raphid in a Zealot, Freethinker Zun in an Ares, and Nyslia in a Devoter.

On queue the Cheetah uncloaked, and it was indeed the corp I believed it was, with 41 members. This could get sticky.

The cov ops jumped into our home and I swear I heard another activation, so I jumped the Devoter through and bubbled the other side, when Soulofchaos reported the Cheetah was still in our system. Whoops.

But he was sufficently rattled that he jumped back to his side, our fleet in hot pursuit. I uncloaked and waited to see which way he would go, as we would only have the one chance to get him near the wormhole.

And there he was, 15km off from me and heading out. But Freethinker was quick on the draw in his interceptor and stopped him from cloaking. A few shots later, his ship was spacedust, and for some reason he floated in his pod, stunned and disbelieving, so we helped him on his way to his next clone.

Since they were obviously not going to come out and play again following the death of their scanner pilot, we called the Orcas over and started to collapse the wormhole. On the final pass, combat ships started to appear on scan. First an Abaddon, then an Apoc, a Domi, a Proteus...and a Stabber! Guess that was the anti-ceptor ship.

But, with only the jump home remaining, we collapsed the wormhole behind us, leaving their angry impotent fleet to rage about the system.

Onward to more targets! Our bloodlust having obviously not been satiated, we opened the next C3 static and found a C3 with nullsec static, NPC kills, jumps and a ship kill in the last hour. Hmm, looks like it might mean some business.

I headed out into the system and got a Nighthawk on scan. Hmmm. He was running a combat site, and I only had one on scan. I thought maybe it was bait, seeing there was a ship kill in the last hour, bu I warped into the site to see what was up. I found a Nighthawk busy running the C3 site solo, salvaging and using a tractor as he went. So his DPS was a bit nerfed. A conversation ensued since I hadn't had much experience getting shot at with missiles and wether or not they could hit me going 1.5k in the bomber.

In the end I figured, what the hell, that's what I bought them for. I have three fitted out and ready to explode, in a fashion after the Flight of Dragons Punisher experiment blog. So I crept in as he finished a wave and made my first mistake. I should have timed my attack for when he was almost done with the wave. Instead, I attacked while four cruisers were on the field.

But, I had him tackled and my fleet was on it's way. And then all the Sleepers switched to me. Whoops.

So my bomber quickly turned into glittering shards of tritanium, but not before my glorious corpmates arrived to resume the trap I had sprung. Freethinker's interceptor resumed the warp disruptor as the Devoter was warping in, but he too was targetted by the sleepers, and had to warp out as well. All our guns then turned to the Nighthawk as I headed home to reship in my Legion.

Somehow in the fight, I believe the Nighthawk continued to shoot the Sleepers, and triggered the next wave, including an advanced battleship. These are extremely nasty, and it and the wave turned on Raphid's Zealot, and he warped out of the site on fire after being webbed and focus fired upon.

But the Nighthawk went down in a blaze, and I activated the warp bubble to trap his pod. Nyslia's Devoter is going to need some time in station to wash it all off her nose.

So while spamming scan, we cleaned up the rest of the site and Freethinker slowly salvaged the site with the single salvager he mounted on the ceptor to salvage our kills, taking entirely too long as we glanced nervously about, knowing an entrance was open nearby, but not seeing anyone. Having performed an object lesson in how easy it is for people to sneak up on you in combat sites, we expected a null fleet to blob us out of nowhere, but we finished off the site and headed home before we tempted fate too many times.

Four Orca passes later and the hole went pop.

After perusing the T2 salvage, and counting all the sleeper loot, we found we had made 250 mil! Minus my Purifier, we had made 230 mil in profit. Not bad for a little roam, and we all sunk our teeth into some PvP and came away tearing huge hunks, blood spattering the walls....okay, too much.

High fives all around for some fairly well executed kills. We made mistakes, that's for sure. Hopefully we'll live long enough to learn from them.

Well That Did Not Go As Planned II : Lack Of Hitting Scan Returns; The Final Wormfail

You really figure after awhile you've got this all figured out and no one is going to get the drop on you. Whoa boy howdy did I just get the rug pulled out from under me.

As I have mentioned lately, I've been looking for a C3. My priorities for it were it had to have a high sec static and all PI available.

Well enter a sale for this wormhole.

I was in love. Full PI, a single static meaning a single WH only most of the time to babysit, and if it turned into something really nice, it's a C3 with mercoxit in the grav sites. And he only wanted 300 mil for it.

I finally got in touch with the seller this morning, but I had a trip scheduled with my fiance's family, and he said he'd most likely have it sold by then. Oh well, no problem, I'll be back by 2100 game time, I'll look you up then. Kthxbye.

Our trip ended up taking much longer than expected due to a dead battery on the car I rode in, so I figured, surely the WH sold. And, yes, the seller said when I managed to get home and on, it had sold. Alright, np, good day to you sir.

Close convo. 10 seconds later another one pops up from the seller. "Wait." he says. "No, the C3 hasn't sold."

!!!!

SELL IT TO ME!!!!

So I bought it, transaction went smoothly, and I was in anchoring a medium temp POS and off I went to buy a large POS since I didn't have one sitting around like I thought. I bought a new Impel for the hole, and filled up the fuel on medium, but no strontium, the local trade hub didn't have practically any. No matter, I'll head back to my C2 and grab some of my extra, but I'll do that later.



What was that? Oh, that was nothing except my hopes and dreams being crushed, pay no attention!

I pick up some White Noise Generators and head back to the wormhole. I had my Anathema with combat probes out, my Devoter at the high sec hole side, Firt in the Impel setting up ECM, and Jelloshot in an Itty V with a corp array, ship array, and some more ECM.

My mistakes started piling up. I was too estatic. I had that "new wormhole" smell.

And that's when they struck. As Firt slowly flew around the outside of the POS shield setting up ECM, ships started appearing on his overview. WTF!? Well, it's an Impel, I can make it.....except that's a Broadsword and it just dropped a bubble.

Shit.

I started yelling on vent, and got two corpmates to log on, but they were both in the other wormhole with no bookmark out. I warped the Devoter away from the hole as soon as they finished Firt's pod off. Full Standard implant set plus Mining Foreman Mindlink. *sigh* Oh well.

So now the Itty and the Devoter are in the shield, and more people are arriving. A Hound, a Malestrom, a Tempest, an Armageddon. They start attacking my offline, as of yet not onlined ECMs, three in all. At some point in time I opted to anchor the corp array, but had not onlined, so did not have anything inside the POS to lose except all the fuel. And no strontium.

Okay, well whatdoidowhatdoidowhatdoido. My mind raced. Bring our combat fleet in? No, Nick counseled, they're fit for PvP only, and probably have massive DPS, and we aren't set up to deal with that in here. He's right. So I decide to ignore the ransoms in local and the attempts at convos, and warp the Itty and Devoter to the far side of the system and logoffski. This goes according to plan.

Except the part where I realize I've left the wormhole with Forgotten, the only person with a scanning ship in there and have travelled 17 jumps to Pretoria, where I had planned on getting my combat Legion. They have battleships in the C3, and could close the high sec at any time if they realize this.

OMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMG.

So I log on one of the scanning alts, and me and him head back the 17 jumps to the C3. The hole is still there. Whew. But the Broadsword is probably sitting at the hole, cloaked, waiting. So my plan is to jump in with Peturbo, the scanning alt in the Magnate, get him agressed, and cloak and head off with Forgotten in the Anathema.

K, one two jump!

And no one is there to witness my awesome plan. Very well. Get the scanning alt logged off and I proceed to find out where these fuckers came from. Yep, there's the K162 from another wormhole. A Typhoon shows up on scan and I get the warnings that Starbase Is Under Attack!

Oh well, have fun. I figure out there are no other wormholes and go play something else for awhile.

Fast forward a few hours. POS is gone. They actually expended the time to kill it. All I wish is that I had had the prescence of mind to yank as much of the fuel out as I could have. Oh well, my mind didn't work as fast as it could have.

So I can't put up the large POS I have in the itty's hold as there's only one anchoring attempt allowed per corp per day. So, the plan is to come back with an Orca full of my gear, it has warp stabs and a cloak. And more POS fuel. I am going to crit the hole, or get close to it. And try again tomorrow.

Crap, I need to buy some Oxygen.

Things I Wish I Had Known About Wormhole Space

We've been living in wormholes for over a year now, starting in Class 1s, at one time running FOUR of them with our small corp, and moving up to our Class 2s.

A few lessons we have learned. Some are self explanatory, but are worth repeating.

- Hit DSCAN as often as you can.

- If you don't know what DSCAN is, jump back out of the wormhole and find out.

- Sleipnirs are ridiculous. Do not fight one.

- Players want to fight on top of your wormhole exits so that THEY can run away, not so you can. Use them to your advantage too.

- 4 minute Wormhole Timers can be your friend, espicially if some people don't know about them. You do know about them, don't you?

- Tracking how much mass your open hi sec static has had passed through it can come in handy if a gang of ships is inside waiting, and you manage to jump inside, and out, closing them inside your home, causing them to call you "Orca Jesus".

- If it looks like it's a trap, it probably is. Admiral Ackbar is completely appropriate.

- Yes, 15 Harbingers could be Prototype Cloaked at that wormhole and waiting for you. For hours. They were for us.

- You can only keep in wormhole space what you can hold onto. Capital ships in Class 1s are completely appropriate for how much you want to keep your home. Might as well use all that high sec ore for something, right?

- Low sec statics are for people that want a bit too much excitement in their lives.

- Null sec statics are for people who want to die. But they make great farming spots because no one ever lives in them. Ever.

- Just train for a Drake and a Tengu. You'll be disappointed when you compare whatever else you train to them.

- Interceptors need a special touch when you encounter them at your POS. Webbing them with your recently uncloaked Pilgrim so that your Anchoring V corpmate can hit them with all of your POSes small weapons works very well.

- People that say "Just stay in your POS noob" are afraid you'll come out of it.

- Apparently tons of people don't hit DSCAN and see your carriers sitting in your POS shield, and set up a Small POS anyway "to see what happens".

- Talking to people is 75% ineffective. Most people coming in your hole want to kill you or your sleepers. You have no choice but to kill them first.

- Or make them think you're coming to kill them with your combat probes.

- Moble Large Warp Disrupter 2s are an AMAZING deterrent to people even thinking about attempting to cross the up to 40km space of inability to warp "just to see what's in the system".

- People who say "We didn't think you wanted your combat sites" are lying. They were just hoping you weren't on.

- Honestly, who lives in a wormhole and never does their combat sites?

- Getting an email from your POS that it killed a Drake is funny. What's funnier is getting an email from the pilot asking you to kill him because he can't get out. Self destruct pod anyone? I guess that's not in the new tutorial?

- Always remember that the grav site is going to spawn sleepers....and they eat Mining Drone 2s for breakfast...oops...

- There are Ladar sites that spawn with FIVE sleeper guns.

- It is possible to drop combat probes and scan you down in the space of time between you hitting DSCAN.

- If you talk smack, you will pay the price for it sooner or later.

- Assume that you're going to need that scanning alt you've got in there for an emergency, sooner or later. You do have one, don't you? Your billions of isk venture can ride on it.

- When you leave your wormhole, always make sure that you leave a scanner, and ships the scanner can actually use.....

- Unless you or an intruder loads your wormhole system everyday by logging in or entering, your POS can run straight out of fuel and never send you an alert. Evemail alerts are not sent until the system is loaded, no matter how much fuel, or lack of fuel, there is! Confirmed bug!

- If you see combat probes, or someone in your comm channel says a very strong curse word, warp away immediately! You can always come back. You can't if the Tengu, Loki, Sleipnir, Broadsword gang lands on you because you were trying to figure out if the probes were yours or not...

- Fighters cannot hit even stationary frigate sized vessels.

- If you are actively running some sort of op in your hole with your statics open, placing a cloaked ship 70km away and "Look at" the wormhole will cause you to hear the wormhole activation very loudly, telling you that visitors have arrived.

- PI Ninjas, while appearing harmless, are letting people into your wormhole, who then steal your sites. Keeping your statics closed is one of the single most useful deterrents to getting ganked.

- Leave your Orca/Rorqual boosting at your POS. The ability to load the large amount of ore does not offset the amount of stupidity you will be cursing yourself for when it gets caught because of the immense align times they have. No matter how safe you think you are!

- K162s appear at the worst times. Be prepared, not complacent.

- Try to not let your fuel get down to less than one week left. You will invariably cut it too close one day, and your hi sec static will be behind 15 jumps of low sec....

- Do not put Cargo Expanders on your Orca, no matter how much cargo you need to pull in and out. Warp Core stabs ftw! If it saves your ship even once, you saved 400 million isk wiht a couple 3k isk modules. I know they've saved mine.

- If anything russian named appears on your scanner, you are probably about to die. They are not there to chat.

- If you leave your salvage vessel unprotected, it deserves to be ganked by a stealth bomber, because he's there, watching you. Waiting.

And the number one rule for wormhole space is:

If you can't afford to replace everything in your hole, you shouldn't continue living in wormholes, because you're doing it wrong.

As Star Defender says, "Fly safe-er!"

Dude, Where's My POS Shield!?!

So I've been in the process of moving alot of my acquired gear out of the class 1 WH with a static low sec, and there's been ALOT of runing around fueling POSes. I haven't had a chance to mine to raise some much needed cash, so running combat sites to keep up is all I can do. Suffice to say, with four Large POSes, I'm falling behind. So fuel messages are nothing new.

But I've kept up on them and check in on each everyday to make sure I'm not missing anything. While I was heading to fuel the first Class 2, I get the following message.

"Your POS in JXXXXXX is under attack!"

Hmm, how interesting. That's my Class 1 with high sec static. So I logged in the caretaker scanner alt and found a solo Gila shooting at the POS. Alright, this won't last long......as I realized in horror that there was no shimmer POS shield between me and the attacker. I was too surprised that I actually checked the fuel bay to see what was missing. No Mechanical Parts.

Whoops, I'm being targetted. Oh yeah. So I warped off and started scanning down my static high sec. Within a minute I had a WH on scan, and warping to it....discovered a Dangerous Dead Wormhole.....hmm that's not it. The attacking pilot must be from there.

So I scan again. Yet another K162. Wtf. Another K162. Holy crap, my wormhole has been the go to location for wormhole vacations and I didn't know it! Next hole..a low sec. With MY Orca sitting next to it. Crap. That means she's blown my ship array. Great. And she can happen to fly an Orca.

Seriously. I get a pirate that can fly an Orca.

At least she's a boneheaded pirate who doesn't understand the concept of wormhole mass limitations.

About this time I see more of our ships appear on scan, and somewhere in between me scaning, she leaves in the Gila and uses my own corp's Drake to destroy the rest of the arrays.

Finally, I get the high sec static, and our corp fleet consisting of my Zealot, a Devoter and Nick in a Malediction get moving the 15 jumps. I notice a Bestower moving on directional, so she's hauling stuff out. /sigh.

We finally get there and warp to POS. If my Devoter pilot had finished the training for the Warp Field Generator, I would have sent her to the wormhole to catch her as she ran, but alas, she's a few days away yet.

We arrive at the POS to catch her and scram her in one of our own Bestowers. She won't eject, so we have to destroy it, and can't catch the pod. She heads out to low sec and never returns, and we camp her in a station for awhile.

We then spend the next few hours taking apart what's left of the station and getting our Orca pilot here and ferry lots of stuff out through the high sec static.

And then we realize, we never got any fuel warnings for this POS. We backtrack and yes, there's no warnings at all from this POS. Nick petitions and a GM says, yes, this is viable for reimbursement! I decide to not get excited and assume the worst.

We start mentally ticking off what we lost in the ship array, as there wasn't much more than some modules in the corp arrays. An Impel, a Malediction, a Retribution, two Harbingers, numerous rigged Itty 5s, Bestowers, an Anathema, and a Helios.

Oh, and five hulks and four Covetors.

Ouch.

So everything gets packed up except the tower, which gets offlined after we re-onlined it. We can't fit anything else in the Orca, and it's way time for bed.

Fast forward to next day. We head over with an array of industrials and clean out the Orca, get the POS unanchored, and leave the Orca and a scanning alt inside, list the WH with our trusted WH seller, and critical the wormhole so no one else decides to check it out.

We were literally beating people away from the hole, and were repeatadly asked if we were putting a POS up or taking it down. Of course, the answer was always "Putting it up." There was even a russian I had to run through a translator to respond that "Yes, this is our system." The couple of T2 ships and the POS still up at the time convinced people to stay out.

About 3am last night, I get a text message from Nick. We're being reimbursed for everything we lose due to the bug in the POS fuel reporting. Holy crap. Whew. They are sending it all to Jita for us. Great.

Log in next day, Nick is already checking it over, and we discover nothing that was ejected from any of the destroyed arrays was reimbursed. That's kind of crappy, as it never would have been destroyed had the bug not occured......but then Nick makes a huge discovery.

Remember those FIVE Hulks? Yep, they're in a ship array in Jita. Wow. They shouldn't have fit out through the class 1 wormhole. I'll take that over all the other stuff we lost! No complaints here anymore. I fly the Providence to Jita, then over to where our current new C2 is open to, fly the arrays in, anchor them, and we're in business with six Hulks in system plus our other Orca!

So, what looked like a terrible Eve occurance turned around thanks to the GMs actually being very helpful!

Sometimes you gotta wonder, what the heck is gonna happen tomorrow?

Forgotten Heathen out!



So I warped off and started to scan down the exit.