I got back from dinner to see a Gallente Battleship wreck and two corpses on the d-scanner. =)
After scooping the corpses and salvaging the wreck, I opened a conversation up with Roniki. He turns out to be very, very noob, but not talking smack like his friend. I had to take a little pity and give him some advice.
[ 2009.12.20 02:55:29 ] Roniki > hello
[ 2009.12.20 02:55:31 ] Khalia Nestune > thanks for the corpses!
[ 2009.12.20 02:55:39 ] Roniki > lol
[ 2009.12.20 02:55:42 ] Khalia Nestune > that brings our total up to 15
Woke up today to my WH to find a Megathron and a Zephyr on scan. Scanned down the mega pretty quickly, and as I arrived cloaked I found the Zephyr arrived too. Went and got into my 100km+ sniper Apoc, returned, killed the Zephyr in seconds and then pewed at the Mega until he warped off. Second Zephyr kill for me! \o/
Then, local comes alive.
tl;dr version: Attempted ransom. Much tears ensue. Targets eventually logoff, and will provide more tears when they log back on.
Highlights:
[ 2009.12.19 23:18:41 ] Roniki > OH PLZ im begging you let me out!!!
[ 2009.12.19 23:19:29 ] Tyier Estameine > you guys are ASSHOLES
[ 2009.12.19 23:23:05 ] Roniki > PLEASE LISTEN TO ME HOW MUCH WILL IT COST FOR ME TO GET OUT!?
[ 2009.12.19 23:27:23 ] Roniki > cuz i can go to eve seller and buy 200 mil and give you some
[ 2009.12.19 23:27:30 ] Khalia Nestune > o rly?
[ 2009.12.19 23:23:06 ] Tyier Estameine > you guys are the biggest motherfucking douchebags on the face of this plantet
Around about 2 months ago, I jumped from Suddenly Ninjas and into a new corp I created for wormhole operations. Several good blogs – my favorite is Eve Wormholes – got me excited about the prospects of profit and pew-pew potential.
Here’s the short version: Setting yourself up in W-space is a lot of work. Level 4 missions are a lot easier for the money. On the other hand, the experience is much more interesting. I am now experienced in how POSes are setup, fueled, and defended; how to turn w-space gas into polymers and polymers+salvage into components (full T3 subsystems “soon”); running my own research labs; and building ships from blueprints.
Your experience living in w-space is dictated to a large part by what type of ‘static’ exit WH you have. Most low-class WHs (mainly C1/C2) will always have a direct exit to low-sec or hi-sec space. We lived in a C2 that had exits to low-sec Amarr space most of the time. A hi-sec exit means you can easily procure more supplies. It also means significant traffic in your system from people looking for PvP action or to run your sites. A low-sec exit means less traffic, and some ability to get supplies and transport goods out, at increased risk. Scouting worked well for us.
The C3 we have moved into only has one static exit – to 0.0. This makes life very interesting for us. We receive very little traffic, but getting to empire space is risky; unless we happen to open into CVA space. I had to make a 30+ trip through 0.0 a few nights ago, and it took me over two hours. Logistics become critical. We stockpile months of fuel for our towers. Multiple ships for PvE (sleepers) and PvP. BPOs/BPCs for things we need often (ammo, drones) and arrays to build them. Tons of extra fittings, and as many modules as you can cram in, to have a library to work from. One bonus of opening to 0.0 space is that we can go ratting for a few extra ISK.
Our usual way to get out to empire is through a connecting wormhole to ours, which then has a low or hi-sec exit. This happens perhaps once a week to once every two weeks, depending on luck. Once found, there is a mad scramble to haul goods in and out before the wormhole closes.
The PvP experience out here is unpredictable and usually with a lot of skirmishes instead of pitched battles. With delayed local, no one ever uses it, and so dscan and probes are your only way to notice other players. Early into our w-space stay we found a Harbinger and Hurricane running a sleeper site. We probed them down and dropped in with our PvP ships; the Harbinger got away but the Hurricane was popped. No tears – never really see any tears.
In another event, I was attempting to ‘choke’ a wormhole to 0.0 – bring it down to critical mass to dissuade people from coming through – and was spotted by the locals. They brought over 15 ships in, and I was getting prepared for a POS defense. Apparently they tried to run a site and failed, or someone ganked another one, because a wreck and a pod showed up on dscan, followed by them all leaving. =) We’ve also attempted to set up gate camps in our 0.0 systems, without much success. The people traveling through these areas are usually in greater numbers and force then the 2-3 of us.
I’d recommend the WH experience if you are good at long-term planning, will not go crazy without local, and are willing to sink a lot of time into the game. The profit has been good – we’ve collected several billion. If you’re like me, you’ll plow most of it back into your POS and ships. This is not for everyone, but it can be quite enjoyable.
One of my alts has formed a new corporation for the purposes of Wormhole-space exploitation. He’s currently sitting in our chosen system while the funds are being raised for the POS and fittings.
Every day or two I scan down the new wormhole exits and go looking. On this day, I found a Class 2 wormhole which was well populated – two towers – and that wormhole itself had an additional exit to a high security location in Amarr space. This wasn’t very unusual, but I also noticed industrial ship traffic through this wormhole.
Seeing the potential for some quick pew, I sent out the word to Suddenly Ninjas. Only two people – Llyan and Emizeko Chai – were willing to make the 20+ jumps from Dodixie down to deep Amarr space. Llyan was bringing a Broadsword heavy interdictor for the locking on the inside of the wormhole.
We stage ourselves inside the wormhole, and after a few minutes, a Badger Mark II pops in and quickly dies. Apparently lacking in communication among their corporation, the CEO pops in 4 minutes later, also in a Badger Mark II and dies as quickly.
We open the cargo on this one and HOLY SHIT WTF FACTION TOWER? The Shadow Control Tower (Large) dropped by the Badger is worth at least 900M on contracts. None of us have the cargo space, so Llyan makes a mad dash to the nearest industrial he can buy. We’re expecting a fleet of guys from their POS to descent on us, but nothing ever happens. The tower gets scooped and put on contracts. There’s a cool 300M for each of us.
I had to go deal with real-life at this point, but Llyan, Zeke and some others managed to beat the snot out of the same corp a few times:
Check out that last one, the Harbringer. Shield and armor tanking? Someone needs to turn their pilot license in to CONCORD.
Lesson of this story: When moving a billion ISK of equipment into wspace, guard both exits with a decent fleet. Lacking that, I hope to see more of these fellows again!
To: Elizabeth Hope, CEO Zahn Consortium, member Death from Above alliance
This message is being sent to you as an instructional message from the TEARS alliance, who feel that you need some advice and guidance in light of your recent string of losses from same.
Specifically, regarding your attempt to establish a POS inside wormhole system J121915, several very obvious mistakes were made. These are listed below for your education.
1) When establishing a new POS, high priority must be given to defenses. Your team put up only a single large laser battery. A single battery is highly vulnerable and best practice is to place at least two batteries on opposite ends of the tower bubble, or not to place the POS at all. Four batteries, at 90 degree angles to each other, are preferred.
2) The choice of a large beam laser battery was poor. These weapons have extremely poor tracking (.001 rad/sec) and are easily speed tanked even by battleships while at close range. Large beam lasers are intended for defense against Dreadnought-class ships, which are impossible to place inside wormholes. The TEARS team had no problem removing this laser battery. In the future, you should limit yourself to medium batteries, and in multiples (see #1 above).
3) Once the POS was put into reinforced mode, it had only 5 hours of strontium. This was a reasonable period for the TEARS fleet to wait out. POS warfare best practices dictate that either 12 or 36 hours of strontium be available. As a POS is usually put into reinforced mode during peak hours for a fleet, 12 or 36 hours would be the opposite time of day and most inconvenient for the opposing fleet.
4) The fleet assembled to defend the POS was vastly underpowered. We record that a Brutix, Blackbird, Caracal, Tristan and two Iteron Mark IVs were destroyed, as well as a Maller that was captured. Not to mention the command ship piloted by the CEO of your alliance. Your team should not attempt to setup a POS unless at least 8 people with battle-cruiser class ships are available for defense.
5) Your team was not prepared for the closing of the wormhole and finding the new wormhole exit. The TEARS team placed several operatives inside the wormhole prior to it’s close, and was rapidly able to find the new exit. If your team located it, we saw no evidence that wormhole was ever used by your team.
We hope that with these tips and some experience, you may be able to successfully place a POS inside a wormhole without loss.
On a related note, I believe that Zedrik Cayne of the Standards and Practices (IEEE) group has started an investigation regarding the failure of your alliance to issue a formal war declaration, or hire mercenaries to do the same, against the TEARS alliance. As it has now been more than one week since this threat was issued, your record as a corporation will likely receive a reprimand. Other corporations may not take any of your threats seriously if you are unable to deliver on past ones. We suggest you correct the situation by providing us with a formal declaration of war, or a formal apology.
The TEARS team will continue to engage with targets from Zahn Consortium and Death From Above while this threat remains open.
While I can’t speak entirely for my corporation, I will put forth a claim that there is only one thing that gets us more excited than tears from mission runners: Threats of war. In general, we welcome a good war. It gives us the chance to exercise our ninja skill in a different way. We use hit-and-run, ambush, and the ability to entirely vanish to confound and frustrate our war targets.
On the other hand, some mission runner corporations are all talk and no game. This is no fun at all, so we often have to bring the war to them. This can be by direct wardec, but it often is through sister corporations or by suicide ganking of strategic targets.
You may recall from this earlier post of drucore and the friend he ran crying to, Elizabeth Hope. Elizabeth promised war and hell, but failed to deliver. Over a week has passed without a wardec either from her alliance or from any mercenary corporation. In the interim two of our sister corporations – The Logistical Nightmare and IEEE – declared war on Zahn Consortium and proceeded to attack with out mercy. They even succeeded in pod killing Elizabeth Hope.
I logged in late Saturday to find that IEEE member Zedrik Cayne had located Elizabeth and a group of corp mates attempting to set up a medium Amarr POS inside a worm hole system, and with an entrance not far from Dodixie. While Zedrik suicided some of their neutral haulers, I and several Suddenly Ninja corpmates arrived in the wormhole with stealth bombers, preparing for a takedown the following day.
Elizabeth clearly expected we would be unable to do anything about this, dropping some smack talk in local when I decloaked from time to time to let them know I was still watching.
Elizabeth hope > Comon cloak up :)
Elizabeth hope > Don’t think we got people no cloaked too ;)
Elizabeth hope > go ahead set safe points, I’d love to see what you got Mr ninjas :)
Elizabeth hope > tomorrow this place will be full of people
Elizabeth hope > ta ta kessie lover tech II
I said nothing, but stayed on all the way until downtime to watch their lone Thorax pilot defend the medium POS and the large beam laser they had onlined.
When I logged back on Sunday afternoon, I found that a 15-strong Ninja And Friends Fleet had assembled, beat the living shit out of Zahn’s forces inside the wormhole, and was in the process of taking down the POS.
Zahn ships lost: Iteron Mark IV , Brutix, Tristan, Caracal, another Iteron Mark IV, a Blackbird, and some others from IEEE and/or Logistical Nightmare. They also stole an unpiloted Maller due to some epic fail with shield passwords (hint: don’t choose easy to guess passwords).
With their forces gone and a new wormhole opened just a little bit from our home of Dodixie, we were able to quickly put the medium POS into reinforced mode. Preparing for a 12 or 24 hour wait, we were gleeful when the reinforced mode counter was only five hours! We staged our ships and called in more forces as the time ran down. To be honest, we were hoping for a rematch with Elizabeth and company – POS destruction can be very tedious.
Our final real pew of the night came when MECHcore, who seems to be the CEO for which the alliance which Zahn Consortium belongs, logged in with a Vulture – inside the wormhole. Having the old wormhole gone he had to probe down the new exit, and we raced to scan him down. No fool to this game, he was warping around from place to place. We finally got him pinned and a pitched battle took place. We took out his Vulture at the cost of two stealth bombers, which we thought a good trade. He was a good sport about it even when we podded him.
After this it was almost easy; the tower went down with relative ease and we returned to our usual pastimes.
You may think we’re not worthy of your attention because we primarily play in high security space, making life hard for mission runners. Elizabeth thought that too – and her group lost a pile of ships and a shiny new tower. We are are very individualistic group, but when we get together we can yoink on a much larger scale. Don’t mess with Ninjas or our friends. And if you’re going to make threats, make good on them, or we will bring the pain to you.
NinjaFleet was on cloud nine following the epic salvage op that ended in a battleship kill and many tears. I was online the next night, putzing around, clearing out loot from the previous op, and just relaxing, when fellow ninja OzoneFriendly pipes up in alliance chat: Anyone want to take out a w-space POS?
Now, I had precious little experience with POS warfare, with my only actual sighting of a POS being the time I came in for the last 20 minutes of NinjaFleet wtfpwning an Eve-Uni POS that had been set up without guns. I was curious about the technical specifications of a POS with defenses put up. I was about to get a crash course.
OzoneFriendly gave me a warp-in to the wormhole, and then led me to the POS in question. While Ozone went to get something a bit more durable to test the range of the guns, I lurked in my Stealth Bomber and got a good look at the thing. The owner was a three-man corp full of young characters, so my assumption was that this was an alt corp running a POS for a more experienced player. Drat, no intel to be had there about the enemy’s ability to bring the pew should we decide to pop this thing.
While I was waiting for Ozone to return, two of the three POS owners logged in, made a fuel run in a bader, and logged off.
The guns were small Amarr lasers anchored in all six directions. Ozone did some testing and reported that the guns were barely hitting him at 68km, and not at all at 70. There were very few ninjas online at that point, and both he and I had a full day on Saturday, so it was decided that we would both log out in the system in CovOps ships with probe launchers, and the next day whoever happened to be on and could scrape together a sufficient fleet would attempt to do so without the other. I sent an eve-mail to the alliance with instructions to put together a ship that could hit at 70km, and wait for Ozone or myself to come online.
The next afternoon, I logged on to find that Ozone had not been available, but that several ninjas had begun preparations for attacking the POS. I made the announcement that hostilities would begin at 0130 Eve Time Sunday.
Jons Squire, Nin’ja Tamake, and I were the only ones to begin on time, and it was rocky. Nin’ja and I were both in Stealth Bombers, and within minutes of each other got careless and wandered into range of the fast-tracking guns, getting our ships insta-popped. Jons’ Eagle fared better, and he continued the fight while we went to grab replacement ships.
It took nearly two hours for the three of us to kill the first POS gun, but that includes initial set-up and replacing the loss of the two bombers. Nin’ja came back in another bomber. I returned with a bomber fitted with two rigs to increase the range of my torpedoes out to 80+ km, but neglected to check my targetting range, and was limited to shooting at 77km. This was fine at the time, and with more ninjas and friends of ninjas joining us, the guns started to go down faster.
As NinjaFleet was chewing through the guns, one of the owners of the POS logged on, undoubtedly to much surprise and annoyance at finding his mighty POS guns outranged by mostly Stealth Bomber frigates. He did something–I assume changed the frequency crystals for the lasers–and suddenly NinjaFleet found that what used to be a safe distance was now… not. Some ninjas got away with major damage. I alone lost a ship: my second rigged Stealth Bomber of the night. Ouch.
Looking at the information for the small laser batteries, I learned that they had a maximum engagement range of 90km. Period. I left in my pod, and once in hisec purchased and fitted a Caracal which I named “Screw You, POS Guns”. Even without explicit orders, most of NinjaFleet somehow ended up with range-fit Caracals instead of Stealth Bombers. Funny how rational self-interest works. :)
In time, we got the guns down. Everyone went back and switched to whatever they could find that would hit hardest at 15km, and for most of us, that meant climbing back into Bombers.
It took a while to knock down the shields on the POS, but it was uneventful. At 25%, the POS went into reinforced mode, and we got our questions answered about how much fuel the owners had placed in it: This POS would be invulnerable for about 40 hours. We marked it on our calendars and disbanded the fleet, with myself staying put in my cloaked bomber so that I could keep an eye on things and get us a new wormhole when the current one expired.
Sunday afternoon, while the POS was reinforced, I logged in to see what there was to see, and discovered that the owners had mounted five new guns: four medium turrets, and an additional small turret, which they left anchored but offline, presumably due to fitting limitations on the POS tower.
I looked at the specs on the medium turrets. Not good. They had an engagement range out to 300km, and could hit perfectly almost all the way out. I ran some numbers in Eve Fitting Tool, thinking that perhaps I could fit a Raven with cruise missiles to outrange the guns. It turns out I could, but my targeting range maxed out at 249km. Besides, my DPS would be no better than the Caracal and not everyone in NinjaFleet could afford such a specialized ship, much less have the skills to fly it. Then I remembered that this particular system limited ship sizes to cruiser hulls and below, anyway. I logged off in despair, and was somewhat gloomy for the rest of the evening and all day on Monday.
I got home from work just a few hours before the base was to come out of reinforced. I logged in and was staring at the troublesome POS when a thought occurred to me: Would it be possible for a frigate to speed-tank the medium turrets? I got out of the w-space system in my Bomber, switched it for a throwaway Tristan frigate with speed mods and one light missile launcher, and came back.
Just like the time I attacked the Typhoon in a Caracal, I was pretty certain going in that I was about to fail. I warped to the base, orbited one of the medium guns at 5km, engaged my afterburner to increase my orbit speed to about 700m/s, targeted the gun, and began firing.
The guns targeted me. I went ahead and pulled up my bookmarks folder to warp my pod back to the wormhole after my frigate was destroyed.
The first gun missed. So did the other three. Ten minutes later, they were still missing, while I poured ineffective light missiles into their shields.
Newly hopeful, I retrieved my Bomber and found that the same was true even at a slightly lower speed: the tracking on the medium guns is so poor that even if you don’t have perfect transversal velocity, they will not be able to hit you in a fast-moving frigate.
As more ninjas and friends got home from work, they joined in the fun in their own bombers. Geno110, a friend of TEARS, was an exception, flying his Zealot cruiser and typing “OW!” once in a while in fleet chat as the guns punished his larger ship.
About halfway through the second gun, a ninja brought it to my attention that, with a medium gun incapacitated and no longer sucking power from the POS tower, grid was available for the owner to re-enable the small gun that he had put up. This would have been a disaster: We can outrange the small guns, and outrun the large guns, but not both. That one solitary small turret had the potential to make all our hard work vanish into thin air. I ordered the fleet to cease fire on the medium turret and disable that anchored small gun ASAP.
Taking down the rest of the guns was uneventful, and soon the tower was out of reinforced and we were chipping away at its shields once again. At this point we had nearly a dozen ninjas, mostly in high-DPS stealth bombers, unloading torpedoes into the tower.
At this point, I felt really good. We were there in force, and there was no sign of the enemy. I mused in fleet chat that any enemy action which could derail the takedown would have to be so spectacular that I would not have regretted the opportunity just to see such an event. Unfortunately, it never happened, and within about 90 minutes the POS was down for the count.
We moved in quickly to unanchor the various POS structures that remained. They’re valued at about 200 million ISK, which is a lot of money but not really spectacular considering the 80 or so ninja-hours put into the effort, not to mention the loss of three stealth bombers. My usual policy is to divide the spoils evenly among all participants, but there’s talk of a ninja base in w-space, so the equipment may go to that effort unless I get strong objections. Of course, the non-TEARS members of the NinjaFleet in question will get their fair share in cash.
Special thanks to Geno110, who was not only involved for nearly all of both nights, but also recorded the POS takedown with some amusing music from a YouTube link that was passed around during the siege:
Lessons learned:
- POS Warfare can be really, really boring if you’re safe the whole time. If you’re not safe the whole time, it’s really, really stressful. I’m not sure which is worse, but either way, POS warfare sucks unless you enjoy talking to the people you’re flying with. Luckily, NinjaFleets are usually packed with great folks.
- The Stealth Bomber changes the game. None of the other members of NinjaFleet, even those with experience in POS warfare, had any idea that you could speed-tank medium and large POS guns. I guess you always could, but there wasn’t much point in it, with frigate damage being so low. With the newly-redesigned Stealth Bomber, however, you can be small, move fast, and bring battleship-sized pain, all at once. This has serious implications for anyone defending a POS: If you fit it with all small guns, we will outrange it. If you fit it with all medium/large guns, we will outrun it. You MUST either mix small and larger guns, or add a webber to your defenses, to slow down orbiting Bombers enough for your guns to track and kill them.
Even against a properly defended POS, this discovery might change the SOP for taking down the defenses. You only have to do traditional large-ship bombardment long enough to kill any of the relatively weak small turrets and webbers, after which you can swarm the medium/large guns with Bombers. Fleet members who are young and can’t fly much can always bring a rocket Kestrel to chomp on the turrets with.
- Items in hangars and labs don’t drop when you unanchor them. This made me a seriously sad panda, since the entire motivation on my part for the operation was to crack open that mobile lab array and hopefully scoop out a BPO.
- If you want to run a POS in w-space, pick a system that doesn’t allow battleships. Though creative thinking got us around that limitation, eliminating battleships from the equation makes it difficult to overpower a POS with brute force alone.
- Most folks in Eve are quite friendly, when you get right to it. I had a good conversation with the owner of the POS after NinjaFleet popped it, and we both talked about what we had learned from our perspective of the fight. We agreed at the end that it was worth the losses and time on both sides to learn about POS warfare, which is unfortunately not terribly well-documented outside of private alliance forums. Hopefully blog posts like this one can help those who are considering running or attacking a POS.
