I had hoped that this post would be one of celebration following the successful anchoring of an Astrahus in our home wormhole. But, like a large majority of the Astrahus killmails since their introduction, ours suffered an untimely death before it could complete the repair process. What follows is a bit of a post-mortem of the undertaking.
24 hour lockdown
Anchoring a citadel in high-sec is easy. As long as you aren't wardec'ed in the first 15 minutes of putting it into space, your Citadel will build itself for 24 hours, spend 15 minutes repairing from its initial damaged state, and then be ready for use.
Anchoring in low-sec and null-sec is a bit more difficult though it appears that low-sec residents simply aren't attempting to anchor them at all:
Anchoring in low-sec and null-sec is a bit more difficult though it appears that low-sec residents simply aren't attempting to anchor them at all:
Current online Citadel distribution by security class: 47.3% Highsec, 25.7% WH, 22.4% Nullsec, 4.6% Lowsec #eveonline #tweetfleet
— CCP Fozzie (@CCP_Fozzie) May 17, 2016
Null-sec enjoys larger organizations presumably actively working in the space where they are deploying citadels. While this is also true for wormholes, the size of the corporations wanting to use them is probably, on average, quite a bit smaller. This has resulted in many dead unfit Citadels in wormhole space which were spotted and destroyed by invading fleets looking for content. To give yourself the best chance of success, you must plan to lock down your wormhole for 24 hours while the Citadel anchors so that a fleet does not appear to crush it during the 15 minute repair timer.
This was our plan. Our members showed up in big numbers (for us) and made sure our static connections were closed, that no random wormholes existed, and we set to watching our probe scanners like hawks for the next 24 hours. Everything was great for the first 18 hours or so with people biding their time with mining and movies...
This was our plan. Our members showed up in big numbers (for us) and made sure our static connections were closed, that no random wormholes existed, and we set to watching our probe scanners like hawks for the next 24 hours. Everything was great for the first 18 hours or so with people biding their time with mining and movies...
Until...
we caught a new signature. It was noticed quickly and scanned down and when we warped to it, we found it to be the dreaded C008 frigate hole to C5 space. It was the worst case scenario. Frigate holes are exceptionally difficult to close by normal means* and have a short lifespan which provides only about 1 hour of time before you can assume it was connected on the other side even if you haven't jumped through it. We did what we could and formed up some DPS ships with the people that were online, bubbled the connection to prevent as much travel as we could from anyone that would jump through and waited.
In the end we had two visitors. One was a random explorer, by the looks of it, who quickly turned and went back through the hole. The second was our undoing. A scout from the wormhole group Exit Strategy came in and also quickly left, but just as quickly returned in an interceptor and scouted out our anchoring citadel. We knew at this point that trouble was coming. Our numbers were not as high as we would have liked and our fleet composition suffered. We made a go of defending the entrance but in the end, they brought a tough fleet of T3TD, frigate logi and jams as well as HICs that easily took care of our few battlecruisers and cruisers without logi support. A couple of us lost pods, but the scout we had in the C5 was able to scan out to high sec via the static C1 and get us back in using interceptors.
As we refit to our remote rep battleship fleet at the POS, the invading fleet left. Now, at this point we already had probably made a number of mistakes including not using our stronger ships from the beginning once we knew a fleet was coming. We also did not bring logistics or EWAR to the fight to tip it in our favor due to numbers. Our lack of strong pvp experience was showing but we were ready to make a stand at the Citadel. A call was made to roll our static C3 knowing that we had enemy scouts in the system. With that done, we watched for more scanning and never saw probes even though the enemy brought another Astero through the frigate hole. Another fatal mistake was assuming that scanning was not occurring when we didn't spot probes. This was roughly 1 hour before the Citadel was to come online. We were also phased by the killboard showing our enemies losing a large fleet in low-sec, quite probably on their way to us. We falsely assumed here that this might delay or disinterest them entirely.
In the end, a strong cruiser fleet that outnumbered us 2 or 3 to one came in through our static with logi, links, and lots of DPS with only 2.5 minutes left on our Citadel repair timer. Just in time to kill our defenses and then the Citadel.
As we refit to our remote rep battleship fleet at the POS, the invading fleet left. Now, at this point we already had probably made a number of mistakes including not using our stronger ships from the beginning once we knew a fleet was coming. We also did not bring logistics or EWAR to the fight to tip it in our favor due to numbers. Our lack of strong pvp experience was showing but we were ready to make a stand at the Citadel. A call was made to roll our static C3 knowing that we had enemy scouts in the system. With that done, we watched for more scanning and never saw probes even though the enemy brought another Astero through the frigate hole. Another fatal mistake was assuming that scanning was not occurring when we didn't spot probes. This was roughly 1 hour before the Citadel was to come online. We were also phased by the killboard showing our enemies losing a large fleet in low-sec, quite probably on their way to us. We falsely assumed here that this might delay or disinterest them entirely.
In the end, a strong cruiser fleet that outnumbered us 2 or 3 to one came in through our static with logi, links, and lots of DPS with only 2.5 minutes left on our Citadel repair timer. Just in time to kill our defenses and then the Citadel.
You know what they say about assumptions...
We screwed up. More specifically, I screwed up as the CEO. I didn't make the call to exercise extreme hole control but instead made the assumption that our enemy had either retreated or lost interest. I should have known better. They would not retreat from having thoroughly trounced us and EVE is not full of players who give up on content. All we needed, in the end, was 2.5 minutes of delay to the fleet coming for us and we would have a Citadel in our system. I'll kick myself for that for a long while...
What's good is that as a group, as we always will, we were able to use this experience as a lesson with many learning opportunities. Some of our members went so far as to exchange some EVE mails with our opponents to get their perspective. A friendly exchange in local during the destruction showed what I have always loved about our corporation and is embodied in the tag applied to us by previous members : "Not good at much but at least they fucking try".
Try again we will. It is no secret that Citadels are a massive quality of life improvement for wormhole corporations and most, if not all, will be wanting one in their system. Of course, eventually, we all will have no other choice. So for now, we are reorganizing our strategy and planning for another attempt hopefully with better results.
What's good is that as a group, as we always will, we were able to use this experience as a lesson with many learning opportunities. Some of our members went so far as to exchange some EVE mails with our opponents to get their perspective. A friendly exchange in local during the destruction showed what I have always loved about our corporation and is embodied in the tag applied to us by previous members : "Not good at much but at least they fucking try".
Try again we will. It is no secret that Citadels are a massive quality of life improvement for wormhole corporations and most, if not all, will be wanting one in their system. Of course, eventually, we all will have no other choice. So for now, we are reorganizing our strategy and planning for another attempt hopefully with better results.
RSS Feed