Invasion Update -- Damnatus

Invasion Update  -- Damnatus

We named the invasion hole Damnatus, Latin for Doomed. I felt it was appropriate because two corp enter 1 corp leave. Well that was our intention anyway.

These are the steps we did to move in.

Some people think W-space is dangerous ALL the time, but children think the dark is dangerous simply because there is an absence of light. It’s the unknown they fear. W-Space is just like that. The more knowledge you have about a situation, the less dangerous and favorable it is. You just simply play the odds with the parts you don’t have certainty with. The statistical average of monster actually being under the bed is far greater than a cloaked HIC sitting on a C2 to C2 connection waiting for hours.

1.       The hole owners were set to Red for the corp. This would make it easy to spot them in local  if they were coming in or out of the K-space. 

2.       Every member in the target corp was added to our scouts log in contacts. This would give us intel about when they were logged in. We could see if they were simply somewhere outside in high sec (this could be done with high sec locator agents. If the agent returned without telling us where they were, they were either deep in Null (unlikely ) or in W-space.

3.       Using EVE-Who, high sec locator agents, deduction and patience we could almost totally track their moments in EVE online.

4.       In the event a unaffiliated pilot was seen jumping into the target system, he was added to the log in watch. People think they are cleaver using out of corp alts as scouts but once those pilots are seen one time, they are added to the list. Even if that person is totally not connected, it’s not worth not knowing. In wormholes Intel is king.

5.       Depending on the activity level of the targets, if they were logged on, and the types of ships they got in, this would determine when we moved ‘The Kit” in.

6.       Since the target corp was only 9 members and I’m sure some of those were alts, we assumed they didn’t know our intentions before it would be too late. We watched and waited till they all logged off.

We made our move.

Damnatus being a C2-C2- LS means it will always have a LS connection and it will always have a C2 connection. The night we moved in Damnatus’s C2 connection was a c2-c3-HS. This HS would be our way in.

With a cloaked scout alt on the Damnatus to C2 connection and a cloaked scout inside the C2/C3/HS --- HS connection.  We had sufficient ‘eyes’ to feel safe to bring in ‘the kit’.

I warped in both Itty 5s to the High Sec to C2 connection. Immediately jumped in and warped to the C2/Damnatus connection. One last D-scan on all sides I moved the Itty 5’s into Damnatus and warped to a Safe spot already created and cloaked. Anyone sitting in either the c2/c3/HS or Damnatus that saw the Itty 5s on D –scan they wouldn’t be able to figure out where we had come from or where we had gone. I waited a few minutes to see if any ships jumped into system from any of the connecting holes. About 5 minutes passed and I felt confident not a soul had seen me move in.

In voice coms with my corp we discussed which planet and moon to place the POS. We choose moon 7 planet 11. We picked a moon on the same planet as our target corp. We thought it would be funny. Moon 7 planet 11. It would give us a chance to watch their POS (on D scan)  from the safety of our own. They could also see what we had too, but who cares, we wanted to destroy everything we brought in anyway.

Once we were ready to put up the POS we moved a scout to watch the POS go up. The scout would online the POS. If anyone did see the Itty on scan and then a POS suddenly go up would surely try and destroy the hauler who brought it. If we onlined it with a scout that could align before getting locked by a uncloaking ship, we could cover more of our bases. Also if a watching fleet had a cloaking interdictor/HIC they would need to warp to the POS and cloak. This would be seen by the scout.

The Itty 5 warped to Planet 11 Moon 7. The second the hauler landed, he launched the POS for the corp. For whatever reason, and I’m sure CCP has some sort of explanation about this the POS appears super far from the place it was launched. Like 40 to 100k away. This means, you can’t dump your fuel right off the bat. So you need to warp the Itty off and warp back again at 0 to the POS. Not too hard to do with bookmarks. Just bookmark the POS, warp off and warp back to the POS again.

I warped the Itty off to the safe again, then back to the book mark at 0 with the POS. I then hit anchor. This takes time so you don’t want to be on grid if you don’t need to be. I warped to the safe spot again and cloaked. Now I wait for it to be anchored.

This was the dangerous part. During the time a POS is being anchored, a patient hunter could have scanned down the new POS and waited for hauler to online it. Sitting cloaked. Waiting for a hauler to come back. But remember it’s all about odds. The odds of that happening after we had watched the hole for hours before moved in and there being a hunter not seen by our scouts beforehand, was slim.

After the POS was anchored, I just needed to get the fuel in it and online it. Even if a hunter was sitting next to the POS when the hauler landed he couldn’t prevent the hauler from dropping his fuel payload before the hauler was destroyed. The hauler itself was worth only 7mil. The fuel blocks, close to 100mill.

I warped the Itty 5 to the POS, the second I landed, I aligned to the safe spot again, while I was aligning I dropped the fuel blocks into the POS. More than enough time.  I warped out, POS anchored and fuel blocks safe. Now I just needed to online the tower, this could be done by the cloaked scout.

I’m sorry this was a long winded POS installment but these same steps can be used to invade an occupied hole with hostile pilots flying around trying to run interception. Unless they are RIGHT on top of the POS in force preventing a scout from getting close to it, they can’t prevent the invasion from happening.

The second the POS bubble goes up, they will have to bash it down and go through whatever stront you brought in. It’s VERY hard to stop an invasion kit once it’s in the system.

Contact with Targets:

Contact with the people who lived in the hole was limited at best. The fight we hopped for simply didn’t happen. No merc fleet showed up, no massive muster of corp members, zip, nothing total blue balls.

One funny thing that did happen, Bronya Boga said ‘Hi” in local. The only response he got was a 10million ISK  bounty placed on his head.

All he did was say ‘Hi’. I was so JELLY! I’m the one who moved in this POS put it up, brought in the ship assets, and chose the target. I didn’t even get as much as a “FU” in local.

Conclusion: 

 After about a week we were bored. The locals didn’t provide any fight what so ever, other than warping around in a scanning ship and sometimes moving out a ship or two to a high sec connection. We did roll the C2 connection looking for Pew a few times. The entire time with the corp in the wormhole with us watching us do it. No bites on ORCA bait. We all know ORCA bait is best bait. We expected a frig or a bomb or something… zip.

Finally after we could stand the boredom no more, I opened up a convoy with what looked like their most consistent pilot. Zageris. I started the confo up as innocent as possible. Just saying Hi, I asked him if he was wondering why we are in his hole. He stated, because he thinks we are trying to take it from him and his corp. I said he was half right. Since it is so much more personal to talk via voice chat and difficult to convey intentions over a text conversation, I invited him to our voice coms.

We gave him two choices at first. Pay a ransom to make us leave or give us a fight. Even if we didn’t win the fight, we would leave. He explained he was a small corp without any money or ships to fight with. I didn’t think he was lying because the entire time we were in the hole we never say anything substantial or pilots greater than 2. Not the best fight we were looking for.

He then said his corp was basically inactive and he was the acting CEO. He was just living in a c2 watching the director/CEO’s stuff. I guess they knew each other in real life. Boring!

I then recruited him. Not kidding, he is in my corp today.

 The reason I recruited him wasn’t because he was a great pilot, knew a bunch about EVE or could really bring giant impact to our corp. The reason I recruited him and I told him straight up in the conversation was he had balls.

He had the balls to come on voice coms with an invading corp, discuss things in an open manor, never acted butt hurt or shitty because we had brought this hardship to him. He was calm, collected and professional. I told him we could teach him to pvp, how to wormhole hunt, how to be an effective member of a team, that stuff was easy.

You can’t teach guts.

We moved out of Damnatus +1 pilot, to a new hole named Craig. More on that next time.