Warfare & Tactics

Do not read any further if you're not interested in a long gloating, against all odds, how-I-foiled-those-evil-PvPers, type of war story.

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It's not often that the care bear's little-hauler-that-can gets a victory against a seasoned w-space PvP gang. Of course 'victory' in those circumstances means survival, but it was a lot of fun so I am gonna gloat about it while I can.

Here's how it all went down ....

There I was, quietly clearing out my previous home (C3 w-system) after having pretty well completed the sale and transfer. I'd hauled everything out to empire except a small tower, a CHA, a shuttle, and a little bit of fuel / stront. That is my usual system-exit strategy.

I've offloaded the fuel and stront into the POS of the system's new owner, have popped the CHA into my hold, and have just offlined the tower when I need to go run a few errands. So I leave the offlining tower and the 'canary' shuttle sitting quietly to await my return.

I come back to find the tower offline and that my canary has been killed and the wreck destroyed - both of those observations telling me something about my visitors. There were no extra ships apparent on probe scan, but I figure anyone who'd kill that canary and destroy the wreck was not gonna be making themselves obvious. They'd either moved-on or were quietly waiting for me.

What to do? What to do?

Risk assessment

Worst case outcome is that there's an ambush going down and I will lose ship, CHA, tower, and capsule ... prolly around 250M and some angst and humility. Best case is that they've moved on and I will safely and quietly uplift the tower and head off to my new home. Likely scenario = ambush, because they went to the effort to find and kill my canary and destroy the wreck, and so they were probably aware of my POS offlining and saw that, along with the uplifting ship, as an easy and juicy target.

If it was an ambush I reckoned on at least a fast-locking frig, a dictor / hictor, an EW ship, and some DPS doods.

Assuming it was an ambush I reckoned our respective strengths and weaknesses were:

Their weaknesses. PvPers = short attention spans. Good PvPers (as I assumed they were) = slightly longer short attention spans. If they're waiting around the unanchored tower they will be >2km from it, to maintain their cloaks, and they will have a target locking delay when they uncloak (NFI how that works for hictors / dictors tho).

Their strengths. I expected I was dealing with competent PvPers so they've prolly done this sort of thing before ... perhaps many times.

My weaknesses. No warp core stabs, no AB (MWD fitted), no tank, and absolutely no DPS for more than a dozen jumps.

My strengths. Possibility of surprise, getting to dictate the timing of any engagement. Cloak. Only a strength if I get to use it. Preparation. I already had a collection of warpable bookmarks around the tower.

Plan

I decided to take the all-or-nothing option and try to extract the tower.

First I decided to play on their attention spans with a little bit of a waiting game before I took action. Then I wanted to try to use the cloaking distance to my advantage and to take action as quickly as I could when the time came ... using a pair of above-and-below bookmarks.

Implementation

My first action was a key to my strategy ... I headed off to pickup the kids from their swimming lessons.

I figured that that 15 - 20 minutes would have any wannabe ambushers starting to doubt, and probably sharing lurid fukung postings ... rather than watching alertly for me.

When I got back home Itook a deep breath and warped to a bookmarked location above the tower, and aligned.

Hail Marys, touching of wood, crossing of fingers ... warp to zero on my POS tower bookmark.

As soon as my cloak dissolved I hit the little speed triangle on my HUD, to power straight ahead, then scooped tower to cargo, hit cloak (tower no longer stopping that) and MWD. True to expectations a fleet immediately materialised around me, and a hound appears to be rapidly moving towards me as my cloak tries to take and, heart racing, I fumble the menu items to warp to the inline bookmark below the tower. I was surprised that there was no bomb launched and am not sure whether a bubble happened or not - PvP is always a bit of a heart thumping blur to this non-PvPer.

As the hound gets close enough to frack my cloaking attempt, my exit warp 'takes' and I plummet down towards that BM - cloaking on the way. As I do this I see them all aligning and warping off in the same direction. I'd made it!

Buoyed by the adrenaline I make a wee taunting gesture in local ... stony silence from my attackers.

So then I warp to another bookmark a few hundred km from my planned exit WH ... to find their little fleet had relocated to the WH and had it bubbled and camped. Obviously they were expecting me to be warping there to hastily exit.

That part was easy! I then headed out to prepare dinner for the family. But first I grab an info window on these dudes and note it down - [ADHC].

When I returned, after dinner, their camp had dissolved and I jumped out to empire space to continue on my merry way.

Then, when I check their corp info, I ROFL bigtime. Even **I** have heard of adhocracy ... and I will dine out on my I-survived-ADHC ambush story for years to come, even though I have no doubt I will also die many times to ADHC or like-minded folk.

Thanks guys, it was fun, and a lesson for me in what can be gotten-away-with if you're lucky enough ... and dumb enough to try

Good story - Enjoyable read.
I had a similar experience once.

But your ending is much happier than mine.

Mine ended with me stupidly exiting a wormhole in Gallente space and the Faction Navy npc's eating my Badger.

Congrats :D good job!

good read, fun to hear about the carebears who make it. I am always interested to hear what is going on in the minds of the defenders

I assume you were in a BR, based on your description of events. As such, you did have a decent chance of escaping as long as they did not have a couple of SBs drop their loads on you.

Just curious what I would do in the same situation, but I think I would line up opposite a celestial in my overview (I prefer moons) so that I could skim past the tower, scoop it, and just click the warp button on my overview/hit cloak at the same time. I am not sure I would hit MWD, since it delays the warp a wee bit and makes you sig huge in case you do get bombed.

Kind of related, I was in a DST jumping from one w-space system to another w-space system when I ran into a small gang. I jumped back through and hit my cloak/pulsed MWD, and 'fled' - for the first 10 seconds or so at 140 m/s, and then at 29 m/s. There were three enemy on my side of the gate (two drakes and a HIC) and a couple on the other side (where my corp mates were doing their best to distract them). Anyway, for the next hour and a half, I snaked back and forth from the drone-wielding BCs until I got out of the bubble, and then continues to motor as far away as I could before I de-cloaked and warped back to hi sec.

It was the most exciting 1.5 hours of eve in a long time, even at 29 m/s. I am still not sure how they did not decloak me, but I do not think they saw me initially cloak after I jumped through, so it makes it very difficult. They did get withing about 3-4 km of me at least twice, but I never got decloaked by their drones - I think they (the BCs) were moving to fast to effectively saturate an area.

As far as attention span, these dudes never gave up

You know, if they'd put a cloaked HIC right by the tower, it can bubble as soon as it drops cloak, no need to lock you. I'm almost 100% sure a regular interdictor could do that too, but usually w-space people have HICs for the tank. Indeed Adhoc aren't bad, they should have had you, but perhaps you bored the HIC pilot(s) long enough to give those wise POS BMs a final use.

Also, you should PvP far more, as you've proved you're not a ****** and thus better than many,

Yes, the little-hauler-that-could was a prowler. All my prowlers are rigged for GTFO rather than cargo-space but since I needed 6k m^3 for the tower plus CHA I had cargo expanders in the lowslots (rather than the usual nanos).

Using celestials is always an option, but I am not fond of it. I rename my planned warp-to BM, starting the name with "!", so it's unmissable at the top of the list. In the past I have been caught by interceptors warping to a celestial, although I guess you could customise your warp-to distance to reduce that possibility or, as you mention, warp to a non-planet celestial.
To do this, though, I'd have to also potter around and build a new bookmark ... slowly while under cloak. As is was I had several paired sets of bookmarks that were ideal for this purpose. I have them because they're usually the entry routes to my POSes ... the only way to get to them, or the nearby moon, without getting caught in the nasty heavily spiked T2 large bubbles that I r.a.p.e-cage myself with. As a rule my POSes get many many more kills than any of their residents do.

To MWD or not-to-MWD is an interesting debate.
I figure that my primary defence is my cloak and that if I get uncloaked and target locked I am dead. I also figure that a w-space engagement of this kind will usually see me caught in a bubble of some sort, often with a fast ship powering towards me intent upon uncloaking.
Given this scenario I figure that the MWD bloom is a reasonable risk (quicker for bad guys to lock me, and slower for me to establish GTFO warp) given that it moves me more quickly out of line of the fast-approaching frigates and also more quickly beyond the bubble ... that probably didn't happen in this case.



FYI, I'd never heard of fukung until I sat in a few gate-camps in Pure Blind :-)

I was very courteous in local. I think it went something like this ....
Upon getting thru the ambush alive "No surprise there boys :-)"
Upon seeing the WH camped "Nor there"
They, quite appropriately, maintained radio silence throughout.



Absolutely. I had expected to be bubbled, hence my MWD pulse once I'd made the scoop.
I'm not sure that in this scenario a bubble would have changed it an awful lot ... it doesn't take a MWD-boosted prowler long to cover the 16-20km of a HICtor bubble. But if I was uncloaked by the hound before getting to the edge of the bubble then I'd be well and truly dead.

Yes, very happy with having those bookmarks.

As for PvP, I've done a little and enjoyed it mostly. Loved the ganky small gang roaming and hated big fleets and gate camping.



That was my reasoning ... removing the tower let me cloak, and hitting the MWD as I cloaked helped me power out of the bubble I expected.

That's certainly my gate camp approach but the ambushers in a gate camp are usually spread a bit wider than a group waiting on a sole unanchored tower.

good read!

Good one, I think its the lack of prep that screws people the most. If you rush it, you're more likely to f-something up and lose your cargo!

Nice work!

My bad, didnt know that, I sit corrected :)