Friday, August 23, 2013

The Iron Price Invasion






TLDR : REALLY FUCKING LONG! I'm sorry, but it was a big deal for us. Anyway, we invaded some guys, destroyed a bunch of stuff, got some money and a new home. 

UPDATE:

Where last we left off, my corp had a new direction to find a target C5 static C2, scout it, infiltrate it, seed capitals, invade it, burn all defenders to the ground and then finally colonize it as our new home.

We did all of those things, here’s how.

Once each of our pilots moved out of Jim, they were tasked with scanning wormholes from every possible K-Space entrance. Our siggy wormhole mapper was covered in connections. I think in a 48 hour period our guys covered close to 200+ different connections. Each of our scouts focused, on the payout reward for finding a suitable target. I was very impressed.

The target wormhole was found of our members using a corp recruitment search on the EVE Recruitment forums. In the contents of a recruitment post was the mention of a c5 to c2.  In the recruitment post, it stated the public channel to join, what they were looking for and who to talk to.

We checked the total member base of the corp and alliance, to ensure we were not picking a fight with a major player. From what we could determine on our digging, this group participated with some larger groups, but nothing very consistently.

 We determined they were either not very active, didn’t have direct 3rd party blues, and may actually be a corp of wormhole farming alts. All of those possibilities made them good for removal.

Target selection for us was as critical as execution. We are fighting for our new home here, we couldn’t leave anything to chance.

The infiltration.  

One of our members who had a somewhat ‘clean’ alt applied to their corp. He had direct connection to us, but he felt that he could bull shit his way in. Also, we are a pvp roaming corp, and don’t normally do evictions.  The SUSU infiltrator was interviewed by the target corp for what he described as 7 hours. I don’t know what was said during that interview, but the recruiter did his absolute best to ferret out any kind of plot. Kudo’s to them for taking the extra time. It wasn’t enough, and risks where taken by them. I shudder to think that this person is still in my corp and is very good at what he does.  

Now we could have found the target hole through locator agents and following their members from trade hubs, but an infiltrator made it soooo much easier.   

I want to point out something right now btw. The infiltrator left out some critical (to me) things on purpose. These are not critical to most people, or even most other SUSU members… but this shows how well my guys know me.

1.       They knew who we are and what we do. – This is important to me because having knowledge of us, our member base, our time zones, kill boards, activities and how we operate isn’t such a good thing for a target to know. 

2.       They were fans of the Down the pipe podcast show. – This might sound vein and in some light it kind of is, but wormhole space is big, there  are a lot of podcasts out there… To attack, kill, and infiltrate a fan strikes me as going too far. I don’t know why, but it hits me in my empathy spot. I don’t know how else to describe it.

We may have switched our target based on those two points. Good on my guy for keeping it from me.


Scout Insertion.

With our infiltrator in position and full access to their wormhole mapping software, it was easy to get into their home. We had at least 3 out of corp and with no SUSU corp history or correction alts in that hole within 20 minutes. Again very scary that as a CEO I didn’t know and still don’t know the pure volume of infiltration ability of my member base. We have terrible people in my corp, just sayin.

Our scouts began the process of adding every single corp member to their watch lists. We watched the hole for a solid week noting not only alliance visitors, but out of corp alts that had access to their POS’s. Using this in combination with the infiltrator, we got a solid line of the target’s play style, behaviors, play times, friends, enemies.. you name it. We recorded and noted the data. The NSA would be proud.

Intel provided from our infiltrator and scouts gave us a clear number of how many capitals, who flew them, how they were deployed and where they were stored.

The targets were very quick to close unneeded holes that may have opened to their home. Good on them, but they didn’t have 24 hour coverage.


Capital seeding.

We could get 3 capitals through a single null sec. We broke up our seeding to characters that were not terribly critical in other tasks, because the first ones in, would essentially be offline till the day of our invasion. This could be weeks out, we didn’t know.

The first set in was 3 dreds.  Moving them was no small feat btw, the null sec that appeared in the target hole was in deep south. Like 5 or 6  cyno jumps, I don’t jump capitals around much, but I’m guessing that’s a lot. /shrug.

By the time we got our 3 dreds moved, one of the target pilots had logged on and was sitting in POS doing whatever. There was a very tense few minutes when my scout was uncloaked and our dreds were logging off at a safe spot, he could have seen us. Seeing 3 dreds on D-scan would scare the shit out of most people, but I guess we got lucky.

The next set of capitals was 2 more dreds, we wanted to do one more, but he wasn’t online or ready. Similar situation, but this time there were 3 people online in the target. Still no alarm bells. Thank god for afk players.

The next and last set where 2 triage carriers. We at first were not going to use triage carriers for this because of the effect of the wormhole. The effect gave us sig radius bonus and made guardians hard as hell to kill, but after we got an update from our infiltrator, they may have moved in more capitals themselves, putting the defender capital total at about 2 dreds, 3 carriers and rouq.  During the attack fighting all that, their subcaps, and the POS guns… we estimated we would lose at least 2 friendly capitals.  The 2 additional triage carriers were inserted.

Execution:

I sent out an email to the corp that capital seeding was completed and provided a date and time for execution. With so much capital assets on the line, it was the first and only time I made a SUSU event mandatory. I threatened my guys with some sort of punishment if they didn’t all show up for this. I don’t do this, nor like to do this, but this was going to be our new home and we wanted this to happen, no matter what.

EMAIL;
Phase 4.
INVASION!
Phase 3 was completed with minimal real isk losses. The battle of Iron Price will begin on Thrus 23:00 EVE time. That's Thursday real life date... not EVE date. Figure it out
All corp members are REQUIRED to attend. This is the first time I have ever required much of anything as it goes to ops. This won't be a regular thing for us, but for this invasion with this amount of risk.. I feel not to, would be an error.  This may be an issue for EU and AU TZ's, they will have a bigger job. They will maintain hole control after the attack during their respected TZs.
When I say REQUIRED, punishment will be levied to those that don't attend. I just haven't thought of it yet.
If you can't make it for an actual real life 'thing' hit me up before over voice coms and we can talk about it.
The fleet comp will be one of the ships from the "Bad HACs" doctrine on fleet-up.com. Fly something from that. If Hawk, Cethion or Bronya asked you to fly something else, that's ok, but if they didn't, sort your shit.
Plan for this, I'm giving you an advanced warning.
This needs to happen.
This WILL be happening.
We WILL win.
One way or another we WILL win.
If I do not have appropriate corp commitment to get this done, I will seek assistance elsewhere, and all profits from the hole and future Sleeper sites. will go to paying me back the cost of mercs. Iron price will be transformed to gold price.. and that will be sad.
Let’s have a good time, lets blow up some stuff and launch ourselves into the c5 community with a bang!

Day 1 – Thursday
I took Friday off from work to ensure we could cover all bases during time zones. I was not alone in this, and I thank those people for showing such huge support in the operation.

I want to say this right now and I said it then I was totally impressed with the participation level of my corp as a whole. When we moved out from Amarr on our way to the target hole.

 We had 27 humans on voice coms. This is the largest turn out form our corp EVER. Brings a tear to my eye, that this many people where on the same page at the same time. For those of you reading this in a larger corp/alliance, you may not think this is impressive, but for a small gang like us, it’s a big fucking deal. 

We had 100% participation. Not kidding, I actually checked. I have never been so proud, in all my EVE Online career.  

We rolled into target with a sub cap support fleet for the dreds. Guardians, legions, proteus, webbing loki,, even some dumb asses in shield tengu (armor system effect) T1 painting cruisers and T1 webbers, extra scouts and a Itty 5 with an invasion pos package. The goal of the support fleet was just that, support. The Dreds and carriers would do most of the heavy lifting, the sub caps would be there for back up if shit got real.

You may think this was overkill for such a small group, but this is what we expected and planned for to happen.

1.      Counter drop—SUSU isn’t without its own enemies. There are those out there who fundamentally dislike what we do. They have isk, they have motive and would love to welp our plans. There were those in SUSU management who felt we could already be infiltrated by a 3rd party. With as long as we took seed caps, infiltrate a target, and move to destroy our targets… it gave time to people who could counter seed caps and ships. Paranoia for sure, but healthy paranoia in our opinions.

2.      Targets could Batphone – I know at least 30 other wormhole entities.. let me rephrase that.. I know ALL other wormhole groups that would love to drop in on us shooting a POS. All the target needed to do was pick up the phone, get them a high sec connection and then SUSU would be in a world of shit. 

3.      Mercs/3rd Party already seeded – We had no idea if our targets knew what was occurring. Someone from our own corp could have told them, sold them the information, hell they could have total gone double agent on us. We didn’t know. We have less than scrupulous people who we call friends in our corp. This is EVE. A 3rd party could be logged off in the target hole already waiting for us… someone we didn’t plan on fighting.

The Fight. 

The moment we showed up in the target chain, alarm bells began to go off in the targets heads. They started being very suspicious of our infiltrators activities. At one point he was trying to get into the wormhole from the outside and was waiting on them to scan their way out. Well let me say they scan slow, we didn’t have time for all that.

Our scouts already in target scanned out of their hole with the quickness and our infiltrator actually passed the targets scouts in one of the holes. They then asked him in corp chat… “how did you just get in?” With no real way of answering, our infiltrator said… “well yea, … hmm “ At that point. The cat was out of the bag.

The infiltrator then deleted all corp bookmarks to instill confusion.

We erected the invasion pos with without resistance and we logged in the dreds

Since the infiltrator knew the most about their defenses and he would be getting a pay out in the form of the first POS destroyed, he choose P1M1, the location of all their assumed phat loots.

This was our prayer to Bob … By HerrBert  https://soundcloud.com/cylin-rath/herrberts-iron-price-speech

The dreds began their work of encapping all 6 POSs.

The entrance hole was crit and bubbled.

Encapping didn’t take as long as we though, but we had a small strontium supply issue, which was solved fairly quickly. We encountered no defense fleet what so ever. Some guys tried to scan their way out, but the hole was quickly closed behind them. We then quickly found and crit the next static hole to repeat the process again.

After all the POSs where encapped, all dreds logged off at safe spots, thinking their defense fleet would attack us at their EU prime time. The defense fleet never happened. All we saw was capitals log in and gather up stuff, warp to a safe and log off. We tried to combat them down, but no luck.
Each of the POS had full stront timers. 1 day 16 hours, the clock was now ticking.


Day 2 – Friday

During my morning coffee.. I got the SITREP from the pilots what were awake when I was sleeping. They updated, they trapped out another scout, and capitals where scooping stuff and “safe-ing up’.

This the first convo from their CEO to me.

My infiltrator just notified me the information he withheld earlier.

  Channel ID:      -50238570
  Channel Name:    Private Chat (alone)
  Listener:        Longinius Spear
  Session started: 2013.08.16 05:50:47
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[ 2013.08.16 05:50:54 ] calaretu > o/ fine morning to you
[ 2013.08.16 05:50:56 ] Longinius Spear > I just found out you guys are fans of the show
[ 2013.08.16 05:50:59 ] Longinius Spear > :(
[ 2013.08.16 05:51:03 ] Longinius Spear > I feel terrible now
[ 2013.08.16 05:51:08 ] Longinius Spear > Nobody told me that
[ 2013.08.16 05:51:12 ] calaretu > hehe
[ 2013.08.16 05:51:27 ] Longinius Spear > I'm not kidding, I actually feel bad
[ 2013.08.16 05:51:46 ] calaretu > so you guys planning to move in or just trying to have fun
[ 2013.08.16 05:52:05 ] Longinius Spear > Yea, we are moving in, but we aren't after kills
[ 2013.08.16 05:52:16 ] Longinius Spear > We are willing to make a deal if you are
[ 2013.08.16 05:52:29 ] calaretu > very possibly
[ 2013.08.16 05:52:47 ] calaretu > will have to make a chat with some more of my directors first
[ 2013.08.16 05:52:49 ] Longinius Spear > We know a great deal about your corp, we have been at this for a bit. It’s a big move for us
[ 2013.08.16 05:53:01 ] Longinius Spear > Understandable
[ 2013.08.16 05:53:25 ] Longinius Spear > from one CEO to another. I'm sorry this happened to you. But honestly it was totally random and nothing personal
[ 2013.08.16 05:53:44 ] calaretu > yeah. we invaded this wh ourselves. we know how random stuff can be
[ 2013.08.16 05:54:19 ] calaretu > they are not that easy to find.
[ 2013.08.16 05:54:35 ] Longinius Spear > We actually found 2 on the same day
[ 2013.08.16 05:54:42 ] calaretu > oh?
[ 2013.08.16 05:54:54 ] calaretu > don’t tell me one was the one aharm moved into:P
[ 2013.08.16 05:55:03 ] Longinius Spear > No they wanted a pulsar
[ 2013.08.16 05:55:13 ] Longinius Spear > They have already moved in to that one
[ 2013.08.16 05:55:28 ] calaretu > yeah 27 juli iirc
[ 2013.08.16 06:00:35 ] Longinius Spear > Well I don't want to be a pest, so I will let you to it. Again, we aren't after kills, we just want a new home. Sorry it had to be you. Open up a convo any time with me
[ 2013.08.16 06:00:52 ] Longinius Spear > My guys have been told to be respectful at all times. please tell me if they aren't


That last bit I totally meant. My pilots are to be as respectful to our targets as possible. Shit talking in local is not to happen, taunting isn’t to happen, that behavior isn’t tolerated. Its counterproductive to what we want to accomplish as a corp.

The big pucker…. 

Camping a crit hole isn’t very exciting, but its 100% necessary. Here is why.

If you allow even a single 3rd party into the hole, that 3rd party can wait till an off time, when we don’t have great coverage and move in a fleet, or destroy our ‘crit hole’ team. If you lose wormhole control, all sorts of shit can happen. They could call in all sorts of terrible people who could field far more stuff than us, and make our entire invasion a shit storm. Once that 3rd party is in, they begin moving in pos’s, ships.. pilots… yea, GAME OVER!

With 100% wormhole control, there is only 1 other way to get in. Rage rolling.

If you pay a merc/3rd party enough they will rage roll a static wormhole exit in the target classification enough times to eventually roll into the target. I think someone did the math once and the percentage is 2% of finding the hole. Once the call goes out, and the contract excepted… the rolling begins, a good ‘rolling team’ can roll a static exit every 2 and half minutes. All they are looking for is that single time, they can put in a scout, fleet, pos, capitals.. whatever.
It’s the single biggest threat we as invaders have on our minds. Since any sig K162 that opens to us, must have been opened by another person… each one needs to be found and closed ASAP.

Well, two K162’s opened to the target hole at the exact same time. Butthole pucker time!

I was one of the scouts who warped to the new K162 sig and jumped on contact. Another guy, did the same thing… when he jumped in. He saw little to nothing on scan, no ships, no fleet.. not even a pos FF. Me other hand, was greeted with about 10 force fields a dread on scan and some Itty 5. Nothing on the hole, thank god.

It gets better… HerrBert asks me.. “who owns the POCO’s” I responded. “Exhale”
Exhale are wormhole mercs. “BUTTHOLE PUCKER FACTOR now at 1,000,000!” OOOOooo shiitttttttt…

We are dead.. we are soooo dead.. shit just got super real!! But where was the Exhale Murder Fleet?

We thought for a minute their fleet was at a deep safe, so we dropped combat probes and did a 64AU scan looking for ships. Nothing.

We thought also they were going to try and trap out our closing capital with a capital of their own. This is a trick employed by jumping through a capital with a cloak.. The hole doesn’t look reduced but an unsafe level of mass is put on the hole. The cloaked capital jumps back, trapping the closing capital on the wrong side. Holding cloak right off the hole and when the closing capital jumps through. Sad face for closing capital.

HerrBert says on coms. “Spear, are you ready to do something stupid?” I responded “Man, I was born to do stupid shit” and I warped my Moros to the hole.

We can’t leave it open… Risks need to be taken to close it.

Dred through… orca threw… scout back orca back… Dred jumps… hole closed. No one murdered.
BTW this is the first time I have ever closed a hole with a capital EVER~!

I don’t always close wormholes, but when I do, I do it with a dred into the Exhale home hole ,with 3 friendlies online. GG!

Negotiations 


 On Friday one of our members was sent a list of terms via Email. I didn’t see it. I’ll include it in at the time in the story when I saw it.
---------------------------------------------------------------

  Channel ID:      -50256634
  Channel Name:    Private Chat (calaretu)
  Listener:        Longinius Spear
  Session started: 2013.08.16 17:31:55
---------------------------------------------------------------

[ 2013.08.16 17:32:00 ] Longinius Spear > Sorry was afk
[ 2013.08.16 17:32:13 ] calaretu > heh yeah guessed. cloaked up and everything :)
[ 2013.08.16 17:32:39 ] Longinius Spear > Yep. How can help you sir?
[ 2013.08.16 17:35:58 ] calaretu > we sent a proposal earlier and was wondering if you guys had had the time to review it?
[ 2013.08.16 17:36:36 ] Longinius Spear > to me?
[ 2013.08.16 17:36:56 ] calaretu > to eh. let me see
[ 2013.08.16 17:37:02 ] Longinius Spear > resent do me
[ 2013.08.16 17:37:28 ] calaretu > wimple
[ 2013.08.16 17:37:38 ] Longinius Spear > ahh he isn't on line.. send it to me
[ 2013.08.16 17:39:27 ] calaretu > hm. he said he would send it but resent it to you now
[ 2013.08.16 17:39:33 ] Longinius Spear > kk thanx
[ 2013.08.16 17:41:58 ] Longinius Spear > reading it now

This is the mail forwarded to me by one of my guys who talked with them when I was afk earlier.
--------------------------------------------------------------


[ 2013.08.16 07:37:19 ] Vimple > Im back if you wanted to talk
[ 2013.08.16 07:37:20 ] calaretu > hey
[ 2013.08.16 07:37:23 ] MD74 > good morning
[ 2013.08.16 07:38:00 ] Vimple > so how do we begin this little chat
[ 2013.08.16 07:38:18 ] calaretu > We have a proposition.
[ 2013.08.16 07:38:37 ] Vimple > im all ears, we’ll all eyes I guess
[ 2013.08.16 07:38:49 ] MD74 > you could hop on our ts, if you want to
[ 2013.08.16 07:38:55 ] MD74 > then its ears
[ 2013.08.16 07:39:11 ] Vimple > I would rather conduct this via chat
[ 2013.08.16 07:39:15 ] MD74 > ok
[ 2013.08.16 07:39:15 ] calaretu > that’s ok
[ 2013.08.16 07:39:39 ] Vimple > then I have a log to pass on to the other decision makers that show exactly what was discussed
[ 2013.08.16 07:40:01 ] MD74 > yeah makes sense
[ 2013.08.16 07:40:10 ] calaretu > we are aware you probably know much about our corp, how we work, our history wnad what we have been trying to accomplish
[ 2013.08.16 07:40:29 ] calaretu > in this situation you very much hold the upper hand
[ 2013.08.16 07:40:48 ] Vimple > correct on most accounts
 [ 2013.08.16 07:41:32 ] calaretu > what we are interested in proposal is if there is a way for our two groups to work together for a common goal?
[ 2013.08.16 07:42:10 ] calaretu > forgive my grammar mistakes :P
[ 2013.08.16 07:42:55 ] Vimple > The SUSU member base are rather deadest on 0 blues
[ 2013.08.16 07:43:38 ] Vimple > so that probably would not fly, I can pass the proposal on if you like but is highly unlikely
[ 2013.08.16 07:43:55 ] calaretu > not blues. allies
[ 2013.08.16 07:44:17 ] calaretu > we too are very fan of the no blues :P
[ 2013.08.16 07:45:11 ] Vimple > I can pass that along.
[ 2013.08.16 07:45:30 ] calaretu > thank you :)
[ 2013.08.16 07:45:41 ] MD74 > our two groups could possibly be a rather impressive force together
[ 2013.08.16 07:46:16 ] Vimple > It would allow for alternating time zone coverage, and may have benefits.
[ 2013.08.16 07:46:40 ] MD74 > we are mostly eu, you are mostly us if im not mistaken, so yeah that would have benefits indeed
[ 2013.08.16 07:46:51 ] MD74 > need more coffee..
[ 2013.08.16 07:46:57 ] Vimple > I will pass this message up the line and send you both a mail when I get a response
[ 2013.08.16 07:47:00 ] MD74 > no fun waking up to this loll
[ 2013.08.16 07:47:07 ] calaretu > we also have seeded several of the constellation wh which makes it easier to respawn anoms
[ 2013.08.16 07:47:14 ] Vimple > coffee sounds good brb it’s been a long night
[ 2013.08.16 07:47:19 ] MD74 > hehe
[ 2013.08.16 07:54:14 ] Vimple > Im back
[ 2013.08.16 07:55:34 ] MD74 > wb
[ 2013.08.16 07:55:50 ] calaretu > wb
[ 2013.08.16 07:56:35 ] Vimple > was the offer to join alliance mainly what you guys wanted to discuss
[ 2013.08.16 07:57:26 ] calaretu > first. but not necessarily that you join our alliance. we would be happy with an alliance where you held exec as well.
[ 2013.08.16 07:58:37 ] Vimple > That I will definitely pass on.
[ 2013.08.16 07:58:45 ] Vimple > tell the others I mean
[ 2013.08.16 07:59:16 ] calaretu > ofc if you guys have any preferences on structure, how to run etc we are very open to it
[ 2013.08.16 07:59:34 ] calaretu > (except making us some pet slave farmers :P )
[ 2013.08.16 07:59:34 ] MD74 > we are easy going people
[ 2013.08.16 07:59:35 ] Vimple > Understood
[ 2013.08.16 08:00:25 ] Vimple > Allies are equals not pets, the standpoint of pets in Wspace is just taking the path of failure.
[ 2013.08.16 08:00:32 ] MD74 > amen
[ 2013.08.16 08:00:44 ] calaretu > /emote nods
[ 2013.08.16 08:01:14 ] Vimple > Well I will inform the others and get back with you when they have discussed it granted some have logged for a bit to rest.
[ 2013.08.16 08:01:15 ] MD74 > we are good guys, if you want to know what we are like, don’t judge us by our current kb, but look at Axial tilt, that what we split off from
[ 2013.08.16 08:02:05 ] calaretu > we started off with 4 guys in march invading this wh from a solo farmer and have pretty much built up from there
[ 2013.08.16 08:02:08 ] MD74 > and in a wh like this, a good force is needed, as the bigger wh groups actively look for C5's with lower end statics
[ 2013.08.16 08:02:30 ] MD74 > to live in, that is
[ 2013.08.16 08:02:47 ] Vimple > Yep well im gonna shoot out some mails and will be in contact with you two when I have a response
[ 2013.08.16 08:02:55 ] MD74 > ok, thanks
[ 2013.08.16 08:02:57 ] calaretu > sounds good :)
[ 2013.08.16 08:02:58 ] Vimple > til then have a nice day
[ 2013.08.16 08:03:02 ] calaretu > you too
[ 2013.08.16 08:03:05 ] MD74 > we will try hehe

[ 2013.08.16 17:42:12 ] calaretu > ok
[ 2013.08.16 17:49:38 ] Longinius Spear > Well, that’s a lot to think about
[ 2013.08.16 17:51:46 ] Longinius Spear > So sell me on this idea cause I'm not sure exactly what we are getting out of it.
[ 2013.08.16 17:58:43 ] calaretu > heh ok. it’s not so much selling as offering. You’ll be able to move into a c5 without any losses. Keeping your strength, motivation of corp and isk investment. You save further investment on pocos as well
[ 2013.08.16 17:59:05 ] calaretu > as getting an ally that cover your off time and also will contribute to isk gain of your corp
[ 2013.08.16 17:59:11 ] calaretu > as well as pvp fleets
[ 2013.08.16 18:00:17 ] Longinius Spear > Fair enough, a good base to work off of
[ 2013.08.16 18:01:13 ] calaretu > the larger manpower will also be an assurement against bigger blobs (you know who)
[ 2013.08.16 18:01:29 ] Longinius Spear > I understand your goals are isk retention and asset protection at this time.  Step back and look at it from our point of view
[ 2013.08.16 18:02:01 ] calaretu > Do tell :)
[ 2013.08.16 18:02:47 ] Longinius Spear > We want this wormhole. Our goals are different from yours in a few ways. You listen to the podcast you know that
[ 2013.08.16 18:03:18 ] Longinius Spear > We don't want your spaceships. We don't want your assets
[ 2013.08.16 18:03:51 ] Longinius Spear > We don't even want your money really.
[ 2013.08.16 18:04:23 ] Longinius Spear > Moving forward from these points I think should be our goal
[ 2013.08.16 18:06:03 ] calaretu > Am I wrong in assuming you want a good launching point to do pvp from and also occasionally engage the larger entities in bigger fights. as well as easier support replacement of ships with the added income of a c5
[ 2013.08.16 18:06:20 ] Longinius Spear > I would like to give you an out in this situation
[ 2013.08.16 18:06:50 ] Longinius Spear > Yes this is correct
[ 2013.08.16 18:09:47 ] calaretu > looking at your kill boards from the last year I notice you seldom ever bring a fleet bigger than ten people (this being an exception as you are about 20 + capital alts). Do you think it would be a good addition for more pilots also eager to do and learn
[ 2013.08.16 18:09:51 ] calaretu > pvp?
[ 2013.08.16 18:11:28 ] calaretu > I will admit it’s not something we have excelled at last months but are working on increasing both frequency and skill wise
[ 2013.08.16 18:12:08 ] Longinius Spear > Yes, but we are very selective in our recruitment. Histories, API's... and a personal pilot history of wanting to pvp. We recruit people who have these histories. I honestly think our values are different.
[ 2013.08.16 18:12:54 ] Longinius Spear > If you would like to app after this is all over we can work this out. We don't hold grudges.. or at least try not to
[ 2013.08.16 18:14:17 ] calaretu > 2 sec .. phone
[ 2013.08.16 18:20:48 ] calaretu > yes we have a more diverse gameplay focus as we are not pure pvp. But as I understand you prefer purely pvp focused people to work with?
[ 2013.08.16 18:21:37 ] Longinius Spear > Yes
[ 2013.08.16 18:22:13 ] Longinius Spear > I would like to make you an offer
[ 2013.08.16 18:23:02 ] Longinius Spear > Would you like to hear it?
[ 2013.08.16 18:23:17 ] calaretu > yes of course :) thought you was already writing it :P
[ 2013.08.16 18:23:23 ] Longinius Spear > lol
[ 2013.08.16 18:24:10 ] Longinius Spear > We respect what you’re doing, we respect your pilots and the work you have put into this hole. Any kind of alliance/friendship should begin after we are completed this weekend.
[ 2013.08.16 18:24:50 ] Longinius Spear > We would like to offer you a an exit to get our your most valuable objects.
[ 2013.08.16 18:26:05 ] Longinius Spear > You have a static 2 ... always. We will crit the hole. We will allow you to fly one way out of this hole in any ship you desire, with as much as you want in your cargo holes
[ 2013.08.16 18:26:48 ] Longinius Spear > The hole will be closed behind you for the next pilot moving out
[ 2013.08.16 18:26:58 ] Longinius Spear > We will pay you for your pocos
[ 2013.08.16 18:27:04 ] Longinius Spear > we will pay you for your dreds
[ 2013.08.16 18:27:30 ] calaretu > dreads only? or carriers as well?
[ 2013.08.16 18:27:47 ] Longinius Spear > Well we aren't made of money :)... but we can work something out I’m sure
[ 2013.08.16 18:28:35 ] Longinius Spear > We understand your values and want to be as professional as possible. It’s not the best of situations to be sure for you, but honestly I'm doing my best here.
[ 2013.08.16 18:29:59 ] Longinius Spear > We always keep our words btw. It’s kind of our thing
[ 2013.08.16 18:32:42 ] calaretu > understand. I think I need something more concrete in case of capital ships. Have a good number of members who have them (and I know Hawk don’t know the number). And if you are not able to buy them all at a fair price?
[ 2013.08.16 18:34:16 ] Longinius Spear > What would be a fair price... I know I'm a semi poor pvper. So I'm not exactly sure who can buy them all. Without a number I'm not sure I can commit
[ 2013.08.16 18:36:19 ] calaretu > would you be able to buy 3 dreads and 2 carriers at current contract price? (that’s approx. 10,5 bill or so)
[ 2013.08.16 18:36:38 ] calaretu > we have more but won’t give you entire number yet
[ 2013.08.16 18:36:45 ] Longinius Spear > I understand
[ 2013.08.16 18:37:14 ] Longinius Spear > How are these dreds and carriers fit? will this come with drones/fighters?
[ 2013.08.16 18:38:29 ] calaretu > some named and t2. no dead space or officer.
[ 2013.08.16 18:38:41 ] calaretu > carriers have fighters and drones
[ 2013.08.16 18:39:52 ] Longinius Spear > I know not all your pilots are logged in, but I think we would want links to fittings. But I really enjoy the progress we are making, thank you for talking with me.
[ 2013.08.16 18:41:05 ] calaretu > we like to keep our options open
[ 2013.08.16 18:41:09 ] calaretu > :)
[ 2013.08.16 18:42:45 ] Longinius Spear > We can't pay retail prices, but if you were to knock off 20% off hull prices, we could do that
[ 2013.08.16 18:43:42 ] calaretu > hehe we lived in a c4 for some years as well. we know it doesn’t help the wallet much. especially when you go and buy a nice capital fleet ;)
[ 2013.08.16 18:43:52 ] calaretu > let me talk it over with my directors
[ 2013.08.16 18:43:58 ] Longinius Spear > Alright
[ 2013.08.16 19:53:35 ] Longinius Spear > Any progress?
[ 2013.08.16 19:56:01 ] calaretu > the capital owners are having some difficult in regards to the possible loss. and we are not managing to get hold of the last directors. May I also ask. Ships we would bring out would they be given a HS route? as we don’t have scanners to fit on all ship
[ 2013.08.16 20:00:19 ] Longinius Spear > One ship, one pilot, one way.. We will not harass you while you are doing it. There will be no return trips. If it’s a simple matter you don't have enough probes and launchers, we will provide you the equipment.
[ 2013.08.16 20:01:06 ] Longinius Spear > as far as the capitals are concerned. Do you have a compromise in mind?
[ 2013.08.16 20:05:59 ] calaretu > not getting all the owners aboard yet. regarding assets. will we be allowed to wait for timers on towers to grab stuff in hangars?
[ 2013.08.16 20:08:28 ] Longinius Spear > Look at it from our point of view. By allowing the timers to pass, we are giving up part of our strength.. Not sure that’s such a good thing for us. I hope that’s not the main issue. What are the owners issues, perhaps we can come up with some ideas.
[ 2013.08.16 20:10:27 ] calaretu > most of them want full price or they will just log off in a safe
[ 2013.08.16 20:11:09 ] Longinius Spear > Understandable. Would they be on board if we paid full hull price for the capitals?
[ 2013.08.16 20:19:22 ] calaretu > perhaps. most have started to log off now and are taking an early evening. will it be possible to give a final answer tomorrow morning? (well morning for us. about 0800 eve time) not sure how early that is for you?
[ 2013.08.16 20:26:55 ] Longinius Spear > Well I would hate lose all the progress we have made already. By giving you more time, I think we might be at a disadvantage. We are looking for a show of good faith. Without it, I don't think our offer will be as good in the future.
[ 2013.08.16 20:27:20 ] Longinius Spear > Your actions in the next 30 minutes will dictate our activities in the future.
[ 2013.08.16 20:32:30 ] calaretu > considering so much of our assets and ships are locked down we cannot accept the offer at current time regrettably
[ 2013.08.16 20:33:25 ] Longinius Spear > DO you have an alternate suggestion for the next 25 minutes? We would like to resolve this situation.
[ 2013.08.16 20:36:08 ] calaretu > considering so much of our assets will only be available after the timer runs out we don’t see an option for evading tonight
[ 2013.08.16 20:41:13 ] Longinius Spear > Do you have any intention of resolving this peacefully? The reason I'm asking this question so clearly and directly is, I feel you’re a man of your word and do what you say you will. No matter you're response at this time, I would like a point of reference
[ 2013.08.16 20:41:18 ] Longinius Spear > for future conversations
[ 2013.08.16 20:44:17 ] calaretu > In short I cannot make a promise in either direction today
[ 2013.08.16 20:44:28 ] Longinius Spear > Understood. o/
[ 2013.08.16 20:44:38 ] calaretu > o7

Well negotiations didn’t go as well as they could have. But let’s be honest, my guys held most of the cards, we backed them into a wall and all they could do was run.

The BASH

About 3 hours before the first POS was out of RF. We had another conversation with target corp. This time it was a verbal conversation discussing them getting out, and us buying their capitals. They agreed to sell the fully fit capitals at hull prices not including fitting/rig prices.

We figured, why not? We could use them to bash the POSs faster and used Chitsa Jason as a 3rd party. 

 We discussed them turning off the hardeners as a show of faith toward letting some of their Orca’s out of the hole. We wanted them out no matter what, less old corpies in the hole… less chance for vengeance reasons in the future.

They could go on and live their merry lives, and we couldn’t really prevent them from moving the stuff out during down time/off time zone anyway.  

Well when the 1st timer went off, and we started bashing the first POS the CEO we had been negotiating with turned off the pos FF! with him in it!. He was instantly popped by Jack. Creating a very awkward diplo conversation.

God bless my guys for their blood lust.. but FFS! These dudes will fuck anything!

You can hear Jacks Narration of the events on this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iROctpgv4HM

We named the new hole Max, and his static is Debbie

During the time between the first POS and the next one in the timer, they started ejecting ships and destroying them. Starting with a rorq. Some of my guys commented in local that we would have bought some of those things. This started the most epic fire sale I had ever seen. Entire groups of t1 and t2 ships being sold for 60 to 80%  of hull prices. One of our guys bought a bunch of stuff for 1.5 bill.

This created a very funny situation with them giving us the new password to retrieve the ships. Yes I said, they gave us the NEW password to get into their POSes…

 With the snafu of Jack killing their CEO that I was really trying to make friends with … if my guys started flying into their doomed POSes… while all the logged in members were waiting on us to give them an exit. I don’t know what I would have done. I honestly felt at this point I had lost control

. I just started giggling and laughing uncontrollably, the situation was that sad.. and that funny.

 I asked my guys nicely that if we held our end of the deal we would benefit in the long run. I explained all this and my viewpoints on the actions we were taking and how we could still accomplish our goals and still be cool guys. My guys were not having any of it. I had to tell the CEO of the target corp... Sorry but we will be destroying everything.

I still got to instill some good will by letting ships pass through the static one by one. At first it was just few,  By the end of the bash… we had escorted out over 10 orca, and countless other subcaps. We were good friends.

This made me feel a little better that we where not unnecessarily tormenting this corps member base. That is really my end goal. Pvp and ship destruction is one thing, but being a dick just cause... totally different. 

Our reward for being so magnanimous was the ships they deemed not worthy to self-destruct sat unpiloted when each of the 5 other POSs went down. Because we were cool to them, they were cool to us.

Once all pos’s where down, we went about the task of erecting Bug zappers at all old pos locations to catch anyone who logged off in the old pos locations. A bug zapper for those that don’t know is a post that doesn’t have its FF up but is online. All the guns work… and people can land on grid with the tower and all its guns. Park a large tech 2 mobile warp disruptor on top of the tower, and you have yourself a little death trap. --- AKA bug zapper. You just fly over there and pick up the wrecks :)

All in all our total take in assets was close to 10.5 billion in fittings, pos mods, blueprints/copies and ships. This isn’t including the ships we bought at a charm. Not a bad haul, and the best part… we didn’t need to haul anything in other than towers, because the dreds simply bypassed the defenses.

The fee to the scout/infiltrator pay out was 600mil – we used all other gathered assets to purchase new corp POS, fuel and stront. Once everyone who ponied up money for this op is paid off, I will give the entire corp a cut of the remaining take.

Not the most exciting of fights but very well organized and executed  from start to finish. Great work SUSU. I have never been prouder.






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2 comments:

  1. Great read, I really enjoyed that.

    Keep it up,

    V

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ok I know I'm replying to a old post. However: I thought I'd let you know I'll very soon be covering this from our point of view. you can follow the story as it unfold at my blog. (I know; sneak advertising)

    ReplyDelete