I log in a few days after our last big day to find a notification of War Declaration in my mailbox, so my evening plans are put on hold to make proper preparations.
War declarations are something in EvE that never fail to amuse me a little bit, probably because of when and how I’ve experienced any wardecs during my time in the game.
The basic idea behind the wardec is that war between corporations or alliances in high-security space is illegal, according to the Yulai Convention. In order for one group to declare war on another group, the instigating corp has to pay a fee to bribe CONCORD so that they will leave the aggressors to attack their target without getting mobbed by a bunch of peacekeepers. The bribe lasts for a week, at which point in time it must be paid again to keep going (with, I think, increasing costs every week), or allowed to lapse, at which point in time the pencil pushers at CONCORD finally notice the shenanigans and call a halt to the whole illegal mess.
It makes me smile, because the process has a very heavy EvE flavor to it. I know the folks that suffer from (or instigate) a lot of these wardecs are aware of more than a few deep flaws in the system, but that’s pretty far outside my arena of regular activity.
Which brings me to the reason that I’ve always found wardecs personally amusing. The whole point of the things is to allow you to attack someone you otherwise would not be able to attack, while in highsec space… and I’ve never been in highsec when I’ve been wardecced. I remember two wardecs while living in Curse (to which the corp responded “we’re right here, come get us!” — it was a very quiet week) and now while in Wormhole space which (I believe I’ve mentioned) is a lawless frontier wilderness.
When you can safely assume that everyone is trying to kill you, it doesn’t matter that much if a particular group is paying an extra special fee bribe to do so.
So why worry?
Well, as I understand it, the group in the process of deccing us specializes in ganking inattentive haulers as they move in and out of (and between) market systems, and they’re associated with a wormhole alliance that doesn’t much care for ours, so it would seem that their goal is to get some easy kills and screw with our lines of supply. This affects the whole alliance as well — not just the three corps in our system — which at this point numbers something like 20 inhabited wormholes. That’s a fair amount of logistics.
The war goes into affect 24 hours after the fees bribes have been paid, which gives me about 22 hours to get ready from the point where I get this notification, and pretty much everyone else in our home system is doing the same stuff: scan down the exits, get some hauler ships out into highsec, grab whatever tower fuels we’re a skosh low on (in our case, there aren’t many), get any lingering ship/drone reparis done, update the Planetary Interaction colonies to make sure the tower fuel we can make will be entirely sufficient, double check everything…
And then wire the doors shut and just ignore known space for awhile.
If these corporations want to come and find us in our home systems, they are welcome to: this is our home territory, where we understand the rules and idiosyncrasies, and where we fully expect trouble. To try to function around a high-sec ‘griefer’ wardec corp in their home arena — where they are the ones who know all the little tricks and exploits and can turn them to their advantage — is pretty much the height of foolishness and (despite evidence to the contrary) we try fairly hard to avoid being foolish.
So, 20 hours later, we have closed up the wormhole, taken stock of the activities with which we can amuse ourselves for a week (quite a few gravimetric signatures indicating mineable asteroid fields), and settled in.
It’s only then that realize I never brought in any mining vessels. My time-killing options just got a *lot* more limited.
Oops. Keep these stories coming. Want to know how that war plays out.
We had some highsec mercs wardec us during the first 2 weeks we were moving into a new WH. Which was pretty amusing, as we’re WH dwellers, and they weren’t. The result was them ‘camping’ us by hugging the highsec wormhole off our static, never moving more than a couple of KM away.
Needless to say, not much happened, and we eventually podded out their scan alts.
Just make sure you don’t get tailed moving to the WH if you’re in k-space. Also, don’t let people linger in the k-space connection, as they will be running locators. Locator > scan ship > WH. If they know the J# of your hole (from your killboard usually) they can scan the chain and find it.
Not that I think they will, given what I said above.
@Khanhrhh:
That is all sage advice, and it’s even come in handy before for my own alliance.
However, it’s only useful against a group that doesn’t know what they’re doing. A competent opponent won’t even let you know they’re stalking you until they’re knocking on your POS door with very big knuckles.
Oh, I agree Nathan.
Neutral alt best alt, etc. What I meant by “don’t get tailed” is simply “move like the fucking wind or use your own neutral alts.”
I have to stop myself writing 2000 word long replies, which happens if I insert too many “ifs” and “if x, then y.”
So in as few words as possible – ignore K-space. If you can’t, use neutral alts. Also consider the outside chance that you’ve got the wardec since they already have someone in your WH, and want any fights on a highsec WH to be terminal. But they’re probably terrible, and will stop bothering once they realize all the locator agents aren’t working.