Wrath of Bob

I spent a good deal of time cryptically tweeting about Bob the Wormhole God this weekend. Bob is patient, but he demands sacrifice. This will also give you the time scale of what it takes to do a siege in w-space. Here’s the story.

November 10, 2012

While traversing the hole of Revenge of the Liquidators [ROTL], they crash out a Future Corps scanning escort for a Revelation pilot who was collapsed in at the other end – the Rev is now trapped, with no scan capability. Future Corps begins regular ragerolls in an attempt to reconnect to the lost pilot.

November 23, 2012

After weeks of ragerolling, sometimes 20 new holes in a day, hope of connecting to the Revelation grows thin. Future Corps management tries one last negotiation with Niku Aleera, CEO of ROTL. He now wants 3 billion ISK to show the Revelation an exit, but says he will settle for a billion.

In the end, however, no ISK handoff timing deal is reached and no exit is forthcoming – it is all a troll.

November 26, 2012

Tired of not being found (and thus not playing), and of the locals taunting rather than helping, the Revelation pilot self-destructs his ship and pod to escape. In Future Corps home “R3”, leadership takes the upcoming release of “Retribution” to heart, and begins planning Operation Walla Walla.

In retrospect, we should have known better than to try to reach a deal. Others had seen similar behavior before.

Summary: This corp is a small handful of bitter vets. They are rich and enjoy the bullying side of the game. They lack tenacity and manpower. A well defended POS should be too much for them unless they call in favours. I half-remember some story about Stain getting a kicking a few months ago, these guys probably bailed after that and are now, in the time-honoured tradition of people who have just had a kicking, looking for someone smaller to bully … I don’t think the main guy is a Goon spy, I think he really is someone who’s failed over and over again in nullsec and given up each time.

– Intel Report, Stabbed Up, August 2012

But Future Corps likes a good White Knight operation, especially when we gain our own Retribution.

February 21, 2013

Scouts from PLEASE NOT VIOLENCE OUR BOATS alliance <.IFAP> notice a cyno parked outside a lowsec k-space entrance hole, and give chase to a mouthy Cheetah pilot in their wormhole. So mouthy, in fact, that he stands out for being way outside normal behavior patterns for a typical silent-in-Local wormholer. The Cheetah pilot logs out, and PNVOB pilots notice that the lowsec hole has been collapsed, where it had been fine before the cyno’s discovery. This means a lot of mass just went through that hole in a short period of time while they were chasing the Cheetah. They send a warning to the whole corporation.

What they don’t know is that the capitals that collapsed their hole were not there for them. The bloody hand of Bob has passed them by.

February 22, 2013

After days of capital placement and logoff in ROTL’s home system, Operation Walla Walla launches. All of the towers are reinforced and bubbled, and the waiting game begins. The first pilot who logs in has his Thanatos destroyed and gets podded out to highsec for good measure.

And then … nothing. There are hours to wait before the Russians’ regular playtime, and so the fleet begins to rageroll ROTL’s static for entertainment.

How to Buy Some Capitals
Click to Enlarge

And yet, no one expects to suddenly hear that the scout has found a fleet of T3s and capitals sitting quietly on another wormhole in the system we just opened. Transmission Lost had been touring w-space, chasing other targets, and now sit in ambush, unaware they have just turned from predator to prey.

[–]JustAnAvgJoe  Funny thing is that about 20 minutes after I took this screen we got caught with our pants down by SSC 😦

The Future Corps fleet warps in, bubble goes up, and TL takes the pain intended for ROTL. Their Phoenix pilot barely escapes the bubble, ejects, and hightails it for the nearest exit, presumably with a head full of expensive implants. We claim it for free. The Moros, ironically, is luckier. For the good fight, we pay him 1 billion ISK for the ship, and let his pod go. To their credit, the TL guys are gracious in defeat, and we have two more capitals with which to beat on ROTL.

February 23-24, 2013

In your wormhole, owning your stuff
Click to Enlarge

ROTL manages to escape the cages and logoffski a pair of capitals, but as these could as easily have been logged off in the POS, they would have gotten away regardless. There is no exit for them. The bubble gap is soon corrected.

As is often the case in a no-win siege situation like this, the remainder of the corp begins to self-destruct all of their ships. This leaves no loot, and generates no killmails.

At first, they express surprise that we are “picking on” them. Until they are reminded of their karmic debt and shown some pastebins of logs of their CEO’s false promises.

[ 2013.02.23 15:03:09 ] MyrddinBishop > How bout next time when your neighbor needs a little help.  Take it seriously

[ 2013.02.23 15:04:30 ] MyrddinBishop > I mean seriously we waited for hours over the course of several days to scan us an entrance.  Willing to pay and everything.

And then the system is brought down around their ears, and the eviction is served.

Bob’s wrath is great, and his memory is long. But at last sated, he returns to his fitful slumber, somewhere deep in dangerous unknown space.