Storytime 8: Forward, unto Bastion!

... or (tl:dr) Not quite what we expected.

... or The SYJ adventures. Part 1 of 2

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Being invited to join one of the big names in wormholespace and come live in their c6 was a big thing for a small corp like ours. Going from a tiny group up to a huge one is a big change. Moving to a c6-c6 is an even bigger change.

Bastion, also known as J133906,  was the new promised land. A land of milk and honey. Of isk ever flowing and capital ganking as far as the eye could see. This was the land that smaller entities fear to ever connect to. Where the mere whisper of an invasion sends the most seasoned alliance leaders into a spiral of fear, paranoia and depression. And now it was ours. We would have a part in this. In our static we would fight names like NOHO, Ragnarok, Disavowed and TLC. We could just reach out our hand and grab at ... no wait. What are all these empty towers? Where is the hoard of bloodthirsty privateers?

It is revealed that the entire US timezone just moved to stain. They no longer found fights in the static and it seemed they all got bored of it. Instead we are welcomed by a single EU corp (Twilight Soul) and an Australian one (Lycosa Syndicate). This is not what we expected. But we settle in, get a tower up and get to know the current residents. We start chainrolling, recruiting and getting fleetnumbers up. Sites are done, pew is had (and more aswell). And we generally have a good time in our prime timezone. But complaints are coming in from some of our members. Everyone who are online outside our primetime finds the c6-c6 a horrible place to live. Chains are long with little to no solo content and the kspace exits we do have are mostly nullsec. At the same time the majority of alliance decide to move away from Stain unto Sieh. A popular staging system for roams and drops to providence and catch. A more lively area than Stain. As a corp we have found our place in the wormhole with Twilight Souls, but several of our members start hunting in lowsec with alliance instead. As a corp we found ourself split.  This is not a situation any corp ever want to find themself in.  However our members are having fun so we let it be.  The coming weeks we see recruits joining both in lowsec and in the c6. Even most of the people from Axial Tilt joins in on the new content in lowsec.  For a moment we have this strange thing going that actually works pretty well. And what seemed to at first be a disappointment turns into something full of potential.

After Sieh didnt turn out to be what the people in us tz hoped for they set their eyes on Khanid.  What brings about this change is the ill considered use of supers from the local residents (JIHADSQUAD). With the taste of blood on the tip of his tongue Pell Helix,  the joker himself, picks up arms. And right behind him stands a thirsty crowd. And so it came to pass,  SYJ and EE taking over the moons of Khanid.  Supported by some powerful allies the battle is won.  The details of this campaign may be recorded elsewhere but is not my story to tell.  Even after several attempts at pushing for a common coordination across timezones there was just simply no effort made by the us tz players at including the eu leaders in the planning (With the huge exception of Bradford Clear. This man deserves much respect!).  Occasionally we would be asked to aid on timers already engaged,  but the short notice and lack of coordination made this a hot point for irritation among me,  md,  grimch and manira.  We did not like this way of leadership. We had seen better. We could do better. We shared some of our frustration with the leaders in TWSL and LYCS but having different experiences prior and also; them having been in SYJ longer (and had tighter relationship to a lot of the people in alliance), did not feel the same way. But that was not all.

Living in a c6-c6 and rolling the static as your only source of pvp make the game boring very fast.  Attempts at getting out to null or do blops out of wh never took off. People stopped caring and fleet sizes did not reach as high as they used to. We decided it might be time for. ORLY to move on. Then i get a comment in one of the norwegian channels from a long standing NOHO member:

(roughly translated)  What the f*** is your alliance leader thinking?

Next chapter >>

Storytime 5: invasion of many failures

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So it had come.  The showdown.  Nimon+friends vs Shadow Politics.  The lone wolf and his lost pack against a newborn alliance trying to make a home of its own. This had been brewing for months now.  Ever since we came in and took the system in march this had been a long time coming.  Its like the dust on horizon that has come closer and closer suddenly revealing the riders kicking it up,  coming into your town and you just know trouble hit.  You muzzle your small army of citizens,  arm up and make ready to make a stand.  To fight for your land against and older enemy who claim it is his land.  In the history of wormholespace this might have been one of the most insignificant events, but for us this was the climax of a long building crescendo.

Now when you're invading someone in a wormhole you put a lot of dedication to it. Not only ISK for the offensive fleet but also planned time to keep control of the wormhole. There are several scenarios you want to prevent. You need to make sure the target dont call reinforcement (like we did last time) and also make sure any reinforcement you bring yourself can get into the target wormhole. This is usually obtained by keeping a fleet on the exit wormhole and make sure the target dont find the exit of the chain or at least you can close the wormhole if they do scan it out. Another important aspect is to make sure that the initial engagement is done with your full force. You want to have the needed force both in ships and pilots avaiable that can actually finish up the work you start on. All of these points seemed to escape the invading force.

Call it idiocy, impatience or bad luck. At the start of the siege Nimon+friends put up a large faction tower as staging point and then put a fleet on the static to c2. We stayed in POS and watched. Observed. Plotted a respons. Then out of the blue something very odd happen. I dont know what to liken this to, but it completely stunned me. At least for a few seconds. Then people started screaming on coms. Action. We needed to act. NOW.

The invading force had pulled back to POS, stored their ships and taken pods out to HS. All of them. There was no fleet left in our home. Nothing. After gathering my wits a brief moment the call went out. All combat ships to static. NOW!. In less then a minute the wormhole was collapsed stranding all their combat pilots outside. There was still a few alts inside but suddenly they lost every momentum they had. To say it mildly. Our spirits was on the rise. After whelping some bombers on them anchoring stuff earlier we now brought out our dreads. Siege. Shoot. Reinforced. Now we would do what they failed to do. Keep control of wormhole. We scheduled among ourself and our token aussie member, Deathly hope Cesaille, took charge on keeping the night safe along with some of our members who had the opportunity. They really had no force left inside to regain the entrance and we kept it tight. And so the tower came out of reinforced. Some friends from Eve ryuken came over for the campfire. And as the shields went down nimon self destructed all the ships still left inside. And so their invasion ended. A feeble small tower was also put out of its misery.

The final victory was affirmed a few days later. Nimon moved his carrier, that he staged out of, out through a connecting c5. We had won our land. Claimed it. And now noone disputed the claim. It was an hour of triumph. An hour of joy. And of peace.

We did however realise that only having people in one timezone left us vulnerable. So we decided to step up and expand. Get some eastern us tz as they would be able to join in on what to us was late night bearing. And so recruitment opened up. Little did we know that this desicion for more security would hasten on our utter destruction...

Continue to Part 6>>

They said it was all quiet!

Logged on sunday morning thinking it was a good day to haul in some stuff. The static c4 had a c2 leading to 3 jumps from Jita. Good stuff. I have tried to stay away from the eve forums after patch. My optimism is not in line with the common mood of hate towards the Hyperion patch. And especially towards the mass effect on jump. It seems like a lot of people are moving out. Or so they say. There is no real numbers. No statistic yet. Nothing to confirm a change in either direction. 

I notice a few guys coming back from Jita so decide to take my alt with Deep Space Transporter out to Jita. Scout the chain and dscan look clear. Exit from chian without issues.

But still I cant help myself. The doom and woe criers are so loud I just have to post something sometimes. Mostly I get ignored. Thats ok. Been playing Eve on and off since 05. I've seen my share of bad desicions made in Eve. Had my breaks aswell. This is in my opinion, and experience, far from the worst. Now we already had decided to move down to a lower class and static and to us this patch opened a lot of opportunities. In my opinion you cant really pvp in a 5-5 with fleets below 8 people. You can gank stuff but you can't take a fight from majority of entities. So living in a 4-4/2 made a lot more sense. And yes we recently moved in. Haven't even gotten everything in even yet. However. Living in C4 the few days we have had now is a huge difference to c4 1,5 years ago. Before we moved out.

Buying pve drake -check

Prospect's and ventures for ninjamining c5's - check

Some random modules and PI stuff I was lacking - check
Load up my DST and undock from Jita

Now when I say content it doesn't always translate to kills on killboard. My idea of content is having fun when logging on. Be that scanning and stalking but not engaging, showing new guys the ropes or actually having a fight. We build our corp around playing the way we feel like. With a main focus on pvp. 

Arrive at entrance wormhole. Bah. Forgot the ships in jita. Turn around to go back and pick up

But I must admit seeing the response to a lot of corps towards Hyperion has me worried. If its true as people say that so many are moving out and wormholes become deserted it will automatically affect our gameplay. Could I have been wrong about the effect? Is this patch truly ruining so many lower class corps or is it just a overreaction of a few?  

Finally back at wormhole again with all the cargo. Systems was clear few min ago. Jump into c2. Dscan. Clear. Warp towards c4s. Dscan clear. Jump. Dscan clear. Warp towards home. Dscan clear. Jump.

What the.. 

That was a Heretic jumping with me!

Where did he come from? Oh **** 

Jump over on Calaretu while holding cloak on Thyrn to swap to the Gnosis with rapid lights. Bubble is up on wormhole. Warp Calaretu to it. OH. Proteus and Pilgrim. Break cloak and get back to wh with Thyrn. Have to try and jump back. The Heretic jumps back with thyrn. Pilgrim and Proteus stay and engage Calaretu. Try to hold cloak with Thyrn while managing Cal. Rapid lights is so wrong right now. I try the Pilgrim. Shields down but armortanked. No use breaking that buffer. Proteus is hopeless to kill. But they got tackle on me so I'm not getting out. Oh well. Tabbing over to Thyrn while ASB boosting on Cal. Try to head out of new bubble. Fire ECM burst. They loose lock. Heretic gets in another bubble up and relock with webs. ECM burst again. Breaks lock but the bubble is too far out and I cant tank the Heretic and Sabre now shooting me for long. I try to return to wormhole instead. Polarized. Jumping back on Cal. Low armor now. And it doesnt last long. The dps of the proteus is just shredding the Gnosis apart. As it pop I warp out the pod. Back to Thyrn. Going low armor there too. Throw out a mobile depot. Maybe I can manage to save some assets in it? It starts anchoring. Armor breaks. Hull. Pop. killmail. The depot didnt anchor in time :( And still being inside a bubble I am fast and surely provided a way back to empire. 

That was a perfect ambush. And I thought the chain was dead. Oh well. Maybe its time to sell that orca after all. Shoutout to BayneNothos, Tianve Lave, fetox74 and poepstreep66 for keeping wormholespace a fun place to live in Eve!

I take a break. Family deserve some time and I have some work to do. Later that day I get a ping. MD74 and Finarfin wants to roll the new C4S. I log on and get into my battleship. Finarfin breaks out his Orca. Power rolling right there. Or baiting. Yeah baiting is the new term for rolling. As I get on coms I suddenly understand theres activity in the C4S. Oh nice. We jump the orca. It lands in proper distance from wormhole :D Slowboats back. We jump two domi's with 100MN mwd in and back. Thats a total of 1200/2000(+-10%) on the wormhole.

Ferox and devoter land on other side. We swap out our ship to something more fitting the occasion. Warp to C4S and jump in. Tackle go on ferox and Devoter who bubbles us aswell. We burn for the ferox first. Blackbird arrive at 100. He jams my proteus :( Waiting for the dice to roll my way I burn towards the ferox (should have refit to rails for this) and manage to sneak on the killmail with 0% damage :P The Devoter try to burn away as the Blackbird warps of. We quickly burn after him and as his bubble goes down we have managed to get points up. He dies. Somewhere in there we also killed a Manticore but I have to be honest and say I honestly didnt notice him on grid. Big thank you to Rolling Static/Gone Critical for bringing a fight. Or at least bringing ships :)

As the sun fades away outside and the evening properly decends we decide to get working on some of the grinding left to us in the wormhole. Still some residues from previous owners. Including some Custom Offices. Out comes the Oracles. We stick scouts on the statics and the frig wh we have connecting to us and starts shooting. A few stray scanners come through but nothing serious enough to stop the bashing. And so goes the evening. At one point a purifier comes through the frig wh. We watch him instantly drop Core Probes. If you ever want to make people believe you dont know what your doing you go scanning with t1 probes in a purifier. It has so many facets of wrong to it that you leave your target confused and inable to act. After scanning our system for over an hour!! he went back the way he came. In the end we had enough of structures and went to bed. 

A good sunday indeed.

And the state of wormholespace? I might have been wrong, or people are overreacting. I will wait a bit and see.