The Maths of Hole Rolling

Collapsing wormholes by exceeding their transiting mass limits is something most Wormhole residents can't exist without. It's an essential tool for helping you to find new content that your current chain doesn't offer, or providing security to your PvE fleet when grinding for Sleeper ISK. Traditionally, Battleships and Orcas have been the go to ship for this job because of their large mass, but the introduction of the Higgs rigs recently has made other options viable also.

The key downfall of using Higgs rigged Battleships is their exposure to danger. They are painfully slow to get back to the wormhole once you've jumped and easy fodder for anyone who may be stalking you. Just yesterday we witnessed Spectraliz vapourize three Higgs rigged Megathrons in one fell swoop when the owners tried to roll away their connection to them. Under such circumstances, alternatives are needed. We've used disposable options like Ruptures and Vexors as they can still get about 130K tonnage but they are still painfully slow and easily intercepted. So it was from a foe that we took note of rolling Proteus' as Trinkets has covered previously here. It's a doctrine we've used to great success, rolling connections from right under hostile noses and using it to disrupt the jump maths of people rolling holes we didn't want them to. Which brings me to last night.

After dispatching a Navy Omen in one of our static connections we were assaulted with all kinds of abuse from the pilot in local chat. He clearly wasn't happy with us and was going to spend his time spewing abuse whenever we transited his region of space. Eventually he had a friend log on and that's when we were surprised to see a pair of Victoreux Luxury Yachts turn up on the connection between our two systems and jump through. They then promptly cloaked and warped off before warping back and jumping through again. They were rolling the hole with them, it seemed. When you stop to think about it for a moment it's a pretty good option. With a Higgs rig and a 100MN Afterburner you can get 120K of tonnage, it's invulnerable to bubbles, it's covert and it's very fast to align. Moreover, it's very skill point friendly so almost anyone in your corporation can fly one effectively and it costs a whole lot less than a Tech III Cruiser. The only drawback however, is its 30 cubic metre cargo hold. You can't get a depot in there and it takes some fitting gymnastics to make it happen, so if you get rolled out of your hole you're going to have to self destruct your Yacht and your pod. So that became our plan.

After several attempts to catch them and failing miserably, we decided to put two rolling Legions through the connection once they had jumped into our system and warped away. We then sat cloaked on the hole, hoping to slam the door shut on them with ships that were much fatter than they had probably anticipated. It ended up working a little too well, on their last pass into our system the Wormhole collapsed, leaving our Legions in their system and their Yachts in ours. But as was suspected, they didn't have the ability to refit and probe their way out so it wasn't long before we saw two Yacht wrecks and two corpses on D-Scan. Op success!

In future, perhaps modify your fit somewhat so you can get out of a jam. Like this one I prepared earlier...

[Victorieux Luxury Rolling Yacht]

Reactor Control Unit II
Expanded Cargohold II
Expanded Cargohold II
Expanded Cargohold II

100MN Y-S8 Compact Afterburner

Covert Ops Cloaking Device II

Medium Higgs Anchor I
Medium Ancillary Current Router II
Medium Ancillary Current Router II

Mobile Depot x1

Core Probe Launcher II x 1
Sisters Core Scanner Probe x 8