Monday, August 22, 2011

Should I Stay or Should I go Now

It was a very interesting week, to say the least.

It started a little over a week ago, when I logged in to find yet another person had setup a POS in my system.  I am truly amazed at the number of people that cannot figure out I have a POS in this C1.  Sure its over 14AU from the Sun, but really who goes through multiple hours of work without checking every planet.  This is like the 4th time this has happened.  Maybe picking an outer planet for my POS was not such a great idea.  Maybe I should have put it in the middle of the system instead.  Oh well, time to deal with another lazy explorer.

So I quickly find the POS, get the corporation running it and fire off a nice "hey there" evemail requesting that they remove the POS from my system.  I headed off to bed thinking like the last 3 times this would be resolved and the corp would realize their error and move on.

Well I guess my luck had run out on reasonable and lazy both being adjectives to describe my guests.  

While watching the POS the next day, I saw 4 characters log into the POS.  I got one into a conversation that went something like this.

Reasonable Current Occupant (played by me) "Hey there, did you not see my POS in this system?"
Person Too Lazy To Check (played by leet Euro PVP'r) "I don't see no POS, except the one offline."
RCO "Did you check Planet 11?"
PTLTC "Nope"
RCO "Might want to"
PTLTC "I might not"
RCO "Why not?"
PTLTC "I don't care if you do or don't have a POS."
RCO "Okay, I will plan accordingly"
PTLTC "Flyz Safe"

So now what? A quick check shows the corp in question is a decent sized PVP alliance from NPC Null Sec. Not really someone I would expect to be interested in a C1.  In addition, a quick check of planets showed at least 6-7 people already had setup PI on planets.  Now the POS was not my main worry, but the fact that there is no way to really "kill" their PI at this point.  So like it or not, they had the ability to make my life in this hole much less desirable.  On the other hand, I had no desire to simply pack up and leave.

So I asked myself "Should I stay, or should I go now."  

Now when I acquired this hole it came with 4 BS's, but I knew that would not be near enough firepower to take down a Large Control Tower. I also knew that using "hole denial" was unlikely to yield much results, since they were only here for the PI and on the opposite side of the world from me.  They would need to only have access to PI maybe once every few days, and we would have to have almost 23/7 coverage for weeks to make an impact.

So I figured I had a few choices:
 Find 40-50 of my closest buddies in Drakes, 
 Build more Battleships that would be trapped in the system
 Leave

Well, I had no desire to simply pack up and leave such a nice C1, that generates so much pretty planet goodies.  On the other hand, I did not really like the idea of investing 1B to 1.5B to make a large enough BS fleet to make an impact, unless I knew for sure I could muster the pilots to fly them.  Fortunately for me, most of my alliance and friends are Killboard junkies, always looking for a fix.

So as I was preparing to take the offensive (read shuttling a crap ton of mins into my wormhole), I got a reply from their CEO that basically said "RAWR, we are old and leet PVP corp.  We see no sign this system is yours RAWR.  Pack your flying circus and leave. RAWR."

Well, I like circuses.  Especially flying ones.  Hope they would find my show to their liking.

Have I mentioned I am a DOTLAN junkie?  If not, well "My name is Mick, and I am addicted to using DOTLAN to monitor my wormhole."

Final plans were made to hit the system over the weekend to insure maximum coverage and play time for our pilots.  So the middle of the week turned into a waiting game.  One day DOTLAN showed a ton of jumps during their play time and I was wishing I had a way to check notifications for POS attacks while out of game.    I was relieved when i finally was able to log on and see no notifications.  But I did have a surprise.  They had setup a second POS on the outer planet with mine. (Hey at least they finally flew out to that area).  So now we had double the fun waiting for us.

So POS 1 was very well put together.  12 ECM, 14 Small Arty, couple Warp Distruptors, Couple Webs, and a few hardeners.  Overall a very nice setup and one that would not be a cake walk to take down.  The second POS was weird.  12 Medium Auto, no ecm, no warp, no web, and a ton of hardeners.  While the hardeners would make the shooting time increase a ton, the POS had no real defenses, as the Medium Autos could easily be sniped. 

So as I went to sleep on Wednesday Night, the additional BS's were built and mostly equipped, and the plan was coming together to move in some additional scanners the next night.

Well the best laid plans of mice and capsuleers never seem to go as planned.  

I logged in on Thursday to find POS 1 was now offline, but POS 2 did not have any new defenses.  This opportunity to take down the POS's while poorly defended could not be passed up, so the assault was launched 24 hours early.  And as with any spur of the moment operation, it was a total cluster.  By final count we had over 25 people trying to get ships or pods to the entrance, while the people inside tried to quickly sort out the BS's, ammo, and everything else we thought we had 24 more hours to prepare.  In the end it took only about 2 hours from announcement of the operation, to starting to snipe the Medium Autocannons.

The next 12 hours saw all the weapons on the active POS incap'd, the anchored POS destroyed, and the Online POS reinforced, but not before the corp logged in and onlined every hardener, taking the resists above 80%.  It was grueling to watch the shield tick down so slowly, but it was just a matter of time, since the guests seemed to have neglected to bring any of their leet PVP'rs into the hole.  

The next night, we turned our attention to some other space junk in the system, and took down another offline POS that had been taking up space for a month or so since it went offline.

Other then a few gawkers from High Sec, we saw no activity for the next 2 days.

The final stoke good luck, was the fleeing guests had not left enough fuel in the tower to get it all the way through the reinforcement timer, and the tower, and its umpteen hardeners, all went offline, mercifully sparing us hours of shooting at a tower with 80% resists.

All told, we killed 3 towers and around 50-60 modules.  The C1 is now clear of all space junk (save some warp bubbles that no one seems to remember where we anchored them), and I have a shiny fleet of BS's in the hole.  Maybe we can see if a fleet of 5 Tempests can crush C1 sleeper sites.

Now I just have to decide if I want to move my tower to the inner planets, or just wait for another lazy, unreasonable house guest to arrive.

Fly Safe,
Mick

3 comments:

  1. You should stay.. Think of all the fun you had evicting your unwanted guests..

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  2. definitely stay there. more killmails for us whores omnomnom

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  3. Just waiting on the next lazy explorer who thinks my system is empty. It will happen, especially now that a d-scan from inner planets is clear of any POS or mods.

    Next time I am not sending any eve mails either.

    ReplyDelete