Life in a Wormhole: A Flurry of Activity #eveonline

Things are heating up for the madness of the coming month, and I’m not able to get on until late the next evening, after everyone is already gone for the night.

Everyone, that is, except Bre, who is admiring her new Anathema covert-ops frigate and scanning the system almost as an afterthought.

The scanning pays off, as Bre is able to pin down a rare magnometric signature indicating piles of sleeper goodies waiting for trick-or-treaters dressed up as space ships. It takes a bit of coaxing, but I’m even able to convince Bre to leave her Anathema behind and ship up into something a little more durable and pointy, and we make short work of the site. Once that’s done, I switch to a salvager refit with a analyzer used to crack open the discarded sleeper containers floating around the site, and in about the same time it took us to destroy its defenders, the site had delivered a cool 50 million isk profit. Not bad for 20 minutes.

Unfortunately, that’s an end to the evening for both of us, and I won’t be on for a few days due to a decidedly unfriendly work schedule.

My estimation isn’t wrong, and it’s several days before I can make it back online, finally reconnecting in the middle of the afternoon as Em, Ichi, Shan, and Liss muster up for an Alliance-wide operation in another wormhole.

Yes, we are functioning under a wardec, but after seeing some information about this particular target, we decide that taking part in taking this tower a-part is a moral imperative; it’s just THAT bad.

Protip: When you are bringing your tower defenses online, you might find it more effective to anchor the shield resistance arrays INSIDE the tower’s force field. I don’t want to tell you your business, but… you know. Just think about it.

/headdesk

I’ve logged in to join my Walrus brethren and sistren for the op, which requires 20+ jumps through known space. Em and Ichi and I are making the trip in stealth bombers, which provide quite a bit of natural defense against getting jumped by war targets as we travel, but Shan and Liss are bringing a battlecruiser and command ship, respectively, so we enlist the aid of one of the operations scouts to assure a safe route from point A to point B, and although his voice comms are incredibly quiet, he knows what he’s about and we arrive in the target system without incident.

What can I say about a tower bash that hasn’t been said before?

How about this: If you don’t already fly Amarr ships, it might be worth your time to crosstrain a bit — at least for laser turrets, so you don’t have to reload all the damn time.

Barring that? Bring a lot of ammo. More than that. Yes, more than that too. Just… bring all of it.

Yes. All of it.

Anyway, after a few hours of hurling torpedoes at The Tower of Incredibad Decision-Making, everything goes boom, dozens of incredibly poorly and/or stupidly fit ships are collected for resale, and our mini-fleet reforms to return home.

This time, Em has a scouting alt handy to make sure the path is clear, and I take over as the-guy-who-makes-sure-everyone-jumps-and-warps as a group, a role in which I perform adequately for almost… 85% of the trip.

Still, despite the VERY OCCASIONAL leaving behind of my fleet-mates when I forget to initiate a group warp, we coast home with nary a war target on scan, and tuck back into the home system. It was good practice for moving the fleet as a group (prep for the roams Em and I have been planning) and secure in the knowledge that today, we did our part in the constant battle to raise the collective IQ of wormhole dwellers everywhere.