The Struggle for J105837

I've been quiet for a couple of weeks but not through lack of activity. The C1 PI Farm that my alts occupy has a pesky Customs Office located at planet one that I need gone. Trouble is, the owners like it just where it is and have kept a scan alt in system despite leaving the system unoccupied for quite some time. I found this out the hard way when I left some Combat Recons to grind away at it whilst I was AFK. They scanned their way in and halted my little party in its tracks.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained. I conclude a more dedicated effort is required. As such, I get some friends together and we reinforce the POCO in short order with a kitchen sink fleet. No effort is made to interrupt us but I suspect that we were operating well outside of their normal time zone. Accordingly, the timer for the destruction would be 6am. Great. I have a fat chance of getting my AU bros out of bed that early so I logged in alone in a bomber and pecked away at it to see what sort of response I would get. For a while nothing happened and then a Proteus appeared on D-Scan. I cloaked and moved off of my position to see him land close to me moments later. So clearly he had a scout. 

By this time I had joined No Vacancies and managed to get a few of their guys together to have another crack. They have an active US TZ contingent so even if there was a bad timer for me, it was likely it would work for everyone else. Again, the reinforcement went smoothly enough and this time I was rewarded with a 4am timer. Yay! Undeterred, I left my new corporation mates all the details and the promise of a good fight and looked forward to logging in to see some kill board activity. Alas, nothing transpired. I'm told only one of my corporation members logged in and, coupled with a demonstrable lack of activity from fellow corporation members in general, decided No Vacancies, who clearly have vacancies, was no place for me.

Unable to get a reinforcement timer to suit but determined to remove this customs office I thought to engage some Mercenaries for the job. Most that I spoke with either couldn't be arsed or didn't do wormholes, until I spoke to Low-Class.

Low-Class were very accommodating, inviting me onto their TS3 for a briefing. Their rates were spectacularly good seemingly more concerned with getting a good fight than they were in ISK. So plans were laid and we were soon working on the POCO for a third time. As per fucking usual it was a shit timer, this time at 2:30am, absolutely no chance I'd be there for that, but Low-Class were more than happy to proceed.

Judging by the kill reports a good fight was had. Half a billion in ISK was lost by my Mercs but they inflicted over 1.2 Billion in losses upon the enemy. More importantly, the POCO was finally destroyed too. I'll reimburse the losses to my hired help, it's well worth it for the service provided, but something tells me this isn't over yet. Even this morning, as I erected a new POCO on the planet, I spotted combat probes from their scan alt. I think they were expecting me to drop it at 0. ;)

Curse the lack of Curse!

Having a NullSec static is a new experience for me, as a Wormholer. I mean, sure you get transients and those delightful Q003 connections, but with a static you come across new and interesting things more often.

I had only just logged in and got on comms when I heard someone call out the presence of a Tengu on our NullSec static in our home system. I expected he was a cloaky prober that would just jump and warp away when someone tried to tackle him so didn't make a move immediately but it soon became clear the Tengu was there for a fight. We were disorganised and unprepared but #YOLO so a few pilots tumbled through the Wormhole into NullSec to continue the chase. Obligingly, the Tengu didn't try to escape, instead pointing and firing on a fleet mate until he was forced to withdraw, and then my late arriving Cerberus until I was forced to withdraw. My 700+ DPS Cerberus had put him into very low shield but I was very suspicious he was bait tanking me to get me off the connection, so I played it cautious until reinforcements arrived. I've tangled with enough bait tanked Tengus to know my buffer tanked Cerberus can't hope to crack it without help.

Help soon arrived but it was light on eWar. The speculation was that it was a dual ancillary shield booster fit and that eventually he would run out of charges and die. Well, the speculation was wrong and when a Gila joined the Tengu we soon lost a Sabre and a Cerberus. The Gila was driven off and soon replaced by a Dominix which was quickly primaried whilst maintaining tackle on the uber tanked Tengu. With the neuting Dominix gone attention was once again focused on the Tengu until the Dominix pilot returned in his Gila. Once again, DPS was focused on the new arrival and he was dispatched before he could cause any headaches and, once again, we refocused on the Tengu. Try as we might, his tank just would not break. Heavily webbed down, scrammed and being bombarded with all kinds of damage types he just kept on boosting.

Finally someone brought the neuts, our Bhaalgorn landing on field and sealing the Tengus fate. The kill mail does make for some interesting reading...

As interesting as the fit is, the pod mail deserves a lot of the credit. We know he had skirmish links so I'm going to assume there were Siege links in system too, combined with the High Grade Crystal set and a pretty shiney Deadspace fit, it would certainly account for the damage he sustained.

The whole engagement dragged on for about 45 minutes with the Tengu tanking almost half a million hit points of damage before finally succumbing. Despite being very slow to get neuts on the field it was a pretty ISK positive engagement however, costing us about 350 Million ISK for about 3.5 Billion in kills, not to mention the important lesson that comes from not having a neuting ship in your gang. Always bring a Curse people. Always.

Space Presents!

After a somewhat eventful evening of scouting our chain and catching out a Skiff, Venture, Hyena, Astero and a Heron, I was heading back to our Astrahus when I noticed a POS that had a forcefield up only minutes earlier, now did not. I resolved it's location just to make sure it wasn't a fly swatter set up and was pleased to see it anchored about 300,000 km's from their Astrahus Citadel with no pilots visible. So we formed up and joked about the Archon that would inevitably drop from the Ship Maintenance Array and moved into position. The SMA went pop soon enough and the rest of the structures around it, including a Capital Ship Assembly Array followed suit. And guess what? An Archon dropped. :S

Sadly, it was completely unfit. Even worse, we were in a Class 4 Wormhole with no way of getting it out. The only logical solution was to self destruct the ship and collect the insurance and pretty soon I had a 519 million ISK insurance credit in my wallet. Beats the shit out of ratting, hey? To sweeten the deal, a heap of capital components worth several hundred million ISK dropped from the Capital Assembly Array and a steady flow of Deep Space Transports got all the goodies home just in case we are taken with the urge to build Capitals of our own.

Would've been nice to siege out their Citadel with it, but hey, half a billion ISK is half a billion ISK.