It started around Valentine's day. One of our members scouted a wormhole and noticed a medium faction control tower with zero defenses and expressed interest in shooting it. A review of the corp history showed that their activity was very limited and usually only on the weekends. Given the potential timers involved with the POS, it was quite likely that the tower could be destroyed before they ever logged on. Additionally, there was an Astrahus owned by a different corporation vulnerable shortly after a potential POS operation would be complete. Many corp members responded, joining up for what would certainly be a multi-day excursion into this C3 wormhole. With a good amount of DPS on the field from various ships including Oracles, Vexors, and Talos, the POS hit the 25% shield mark revealing a full strontium bay and a timer that would next appear an hour or two before downtime. Not ideal at all for many US players but good enough for the EU guys to keep going. Ships were brought to the ready and during my playtime late US, a small POS was brought in so that we had a place to sleep.
We named the wormhole "Jack" and found over the course of the next 41 hours that this particular C3 was exceptionally busy compared to our C4 home. Signature after signature appeared including many relic sites and C2 connections from the common C2/C3+HS combination. We even had some HS connections directly into the C3 which allowed us to bring in the POS as well as more members to participate in the POS timer and the pending Astrahus vulnerability. We even had opportunity to engage a well planned Gnosis bait ship which resulted in the loss of a Stratios for me to a few of his T3 buddies, not a good trade but it wasn't hard to get myself reshipped and back into the hole for the timer. When the time came, the remaining shield, armor, and structure went surprisingly quickly. So quick that by the time I logged on just after DT, the group had already destroyed the initial POS and had moved on to clearing out older dead sticks and scooping POS mods in the hole while waiting for the Astrahus timer that night, late US TZ. The POS dropped a smattering of loot including some BPCs and mining ships. As we researched the Astrahus corp, we found that many members of the POS corporation came from the Astrahus corporation. There was an obvious arrangement and no big surprise that the POS would be light on inventory with the Astrahus being available to store more valuable materials. The POS destruction though had gotten the members excited for the next round and the numbers continued to increase in the hole with the more favorable Astrahus timer. There was also the wishful thinking that because the POS had dropped a Rorqual BPC, there could be a Rorqual hidden inside the Citadel using the "bug" that existed a while back allowing them to dock in the smaller structures. Interested had definitely peaked for poking the Astrahus.
The initial timer was met with no resistance despite now being Friday evening. We half expected the POS owners at least to log on, as they usually did on the weekends, and find their POS destroyed and their Astrahus under attack to give at least some kind of defense. The shield dropped with no resistence and we set about to monitor the hole and keep connections to a minimum with the forces we had. During this time, a neighboring C4 corporation did some activity in Jack. Most of our members were offline but a few noticed and ended up rolling a Paladin into the system that apparently had no probes as a frantic chase and fight ensued with the Paladin ultimately escaping to log off. Jack was a very exciting place indeed.
The weekend proceeded with each timer drawing better attendence. We continued to find decent connections though one day we had low-sec connections to an area PL routinely uses and Tama, the hotbed of gate camping. We rolled the connections away when we didn't need them and stocked up on ammo and people. The Saturday timer was no more exciting than Friday with again no one logging onto the structure for the entire day. As Sunday came, we had a full contingent of over 20 pilots on the final killmail. As before, not a single person logged into Jack to defend the system or even notice it was being attacked. As far as structure fights go, this was as boring as it gets but for us, on our first excursion against a fully operational Astrahus, it was at least memorable.
The loot drop was very good for as small as the corporations were. Since our policy is to give all loot to the scout, our little explorer who started this whole operation made a very good take for his observations. It took us a few more days to transport everything else out with the final exit happening today. We still never saw anyone from either corporation log in. We haven't received any kind of mail asking us why or insulting our mothers.
We named the wormhole "Jack" and found over the course of the next 41 hours that this particular C3 was exceptionally busy compared to our C4 home. Signature after signature appeared including many relic sites and C2 connections from the common C2/C3+HS combination. We even had some HS connections directly into the C3 which allowed us to bring in the POS as well as more members to participate in the POS timer and the pending Astrahus vulnerability. We even had opportunity to engage a well planned Gnosis bait ship which resulted in the loss of a Stratios for me to a few of his T3 buddies, not a good trade but it wasn't hard to get myself reshipped and back into the hole for the timer. When the time came, the remaining shield, armor, and structure went surprisingly quickly. So quick that by the time I logged on just after DT, the group had already destroyed the initial POS and had moved on to clearing out older dead sticks and scooping POS mods in the hole while waiting for the Astrahus timer that night, late US TZ. The POS dropped a smattering of loot including some BPCs and mining ships. As we researched the Astrahus corp, we found that many members of the POS corporation came from the Astrahus corporation. There was an obvious arrangement and no big surprise that the POS would be light on inventory with the Astrahus being available to store more valuable materials. The POS destruction though had gotten the members excited for the next round and the numbers continued to increase in the hole with the more favorable Astrahus timer. There was also the wishful thinking that because the POS had dropped a Rorqual BPC, there could be a Rorqual hidden inside the Citadel using the "bug" that existed a while back allowing them to dock in the smaller structures. Interested had definitely peaked for poking the Astrahus.
The initial timer was met with no resistance despite now being Friday evening. We half expected the POS owners at least to log on, as they usually did on the weekends, and find their POS destroyed and their Astrahus under attack to give at least some kind of defense. The shield dropped with no resistence and we set about to monitor the hole and keep connections to a minimum with the forces we had. During this time, a neighboring C4 corporation did some activity in Jack. Most of our members were offline but a few noticed and ended up rolling a Paladin into the system that apparently had no probes as a frantic chase and fight ensued with the Paladin ultimately escaping to log off. Jack was a very exciting place indeed.
The weekend proceeded with each timer drawing better attendence. We continued to find decent connections though one day we had low-sec connections to an area PL routinely uses and Tama, the hotbed of gate camping. We rolled the connections away when we didn't need them and stocked up on ammo and people. The Saturday timer was no more exciting than Friday with again no one logging onto the structure for the entire day. As Sunday came, we had a full contingent of over 20 pilots on the final killmail. As before, not a single person logged into Jack to defend the system or even notice it was being attacked. As far as structure fights go, this was as boring as it gets but for us, on our first excursion against a fully operational Astrahus, it was at least memorable.
The loot drop was very good for as small as the corporations were. Since our policy is to give all loot to the scout, our little explorer who started this whole operation made a very good take for his observations. It took us a few more days to transport everything else out with the final exit happening today. We still never saw anyone from either corporation log in. We haven't received any kind of mail asking us why or insulting our mothers.
As for that Paladin, after a couple attempts to bait him out, one of our members generously guided him to a low-sec exit. Adding a Paladin kill to the Astrahus and POS would have been icing on the cake but in the end, a good deed in EVE was done to perhaps account for our destruction of other people's stuff. While I don't think this will be something that becomes our standard thing to do in EVE, it was a great lesson for our growing corp as to what capabilities we could bring and what can come from good scouting. I think we all wished for a bit of a fight to test our mettle, but perhaps next time...
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