Crime & Punishment

True story
So it was well over four years ago when I used to live in a little corner of High Sec space, along with my corp. We were industrialists, making a pretty penny by way of mining in a nice system with loads of fat belts, good ore and no station for two jumps. We mined in shifts, free of macro miners, gankers and can flippers (remember those?) and we built stuff to sell in order to make our way in Eve and play the game just how we wanted to.


All good things.
We did well and I must admit that those times have allowed me and those involved to play the game just how we want to, even now, with the earnings and investments we made, back in the day.
But there was a problem. It seems that some people are just not happy in seeing others prosper. They are concerned about their own income and the rights of others to mine in 'their spots'. A certain individual seemed to have taken it on himself to hassle our fun-loving-industrial-corp and get us out of our own corner of paradise. He did all kinds of things, hired mercs, constant threats and smack to mention but a few. Just a nasty little man with his own corp and agenda. We tried to fight back in our own way but we were really green back then. We just didn't have a clue.

Fast forward four years or so.
So, we have been 'out there'. We have made friends, made enemies, lived in null, hell, even been the 'higher ups' in one or two of the 'larger alliances'. We have fought tooth and nail in low sec, gained reputation, lost entire regions in null sec. We have lived the dream, my friends. But most importantly we have learned.


I have a long memory.
Temporarily without a home and without an alliance I found myself wonderingwhere I may be able to lead my friends. We needed something to do. I must admit, following what we had before was a difficult dilemma. By pure luck rather than reason, I saw someone come online, a name I had been oblivious to for such a long time, a character who had remained in my contact list for years. It was 'him', the man who had given me and my friends so much grief, back in the heady days of our High Sec lives. I had a purpose, a game to play and a wealth of experience, friends and hardware to throw into the fray. We returned to our old home. We set our sights bad guy's alliance.


Let the good times roll.
They had placed a PoS in the system we had lived in. They were still living there! A juicy target to get them to come out and fight. We did our homework, checked all of the usual sites, kill mails, activity, membership, all of the usual stuff. Try as we may, we just couldn't get an alt into their damned alliance. We began by war deccing the 130 man alliance with an alt corp, just to see what they would bring and if they were willing to fight. It worked and, dear reader, you wouldn't believe the hardware they brought in; Faction Battleships, Tech 3s, all kind of goodies, fitted with really expensive ****.
Next it was time to hit them with our mains. It took a little while to get our own stuff together, but eventually we managed it. 15 of us against 130 of them, sounded like good odds to me. They came, they smacked, hell, they even managed to camp us in station for an hour or two. They actually managed to take out one of our Megas (due to the pilots fantastic ability to log off during aggression timers). We watched and we waited. The PoS was our focus and it seemed that they knew it too, as they often had 15+ pilots logged in at all hours, sat in their uber faction ships, behind the shields. The enemy alliance begins to shrink; 6 corps left over the first few days and their numbers dwindled; just 88 of them remained against our 15.


Open fire! All Weapons!
We hit the PoS just after DT. We took out the Ewar with snipers to avoid the warp disruptors and then we switched to the brawler ships/ logis to take down all of the weapons. It went like a dream, the reds just sat there, inside their tower whilst we spent 5 hours pounding the damned thing (and I swear 2 of our corpies were playing Minecraft whilst they were structure bashing). Into Reinforced Mode it goes! OK, so we would have to have an alarm clock CTA at 3 o' clock in the damned morning, but the thing was dead for sure....Right?


Sanctioned exploits FTL
ProtoStar Trading Surrenders to CALL PRIMARY
The PoS owning corp drops alliance. Surrenders to us, or so the mail says. We have 24 hours to kill the tower, but the tower still has 30 hours of reinforcement. An exploit, for sure? Apparently so, but in their wisdom CCP have decided that it takes too much time to handle the petitions of so many people that they have deemed this god-awful cheating is now legal. Yes, I used the word 'cheating', we have been cheated through unintentional in-game mechanics out of our victory. OK, so we managed to take a 130 man alliance and reduce the membership to a mere 55, and we did make them look silly, oh, and I now know that my 82 year old mother is apparently having intimate relationships with someone from that very alliance, what a coincidence!


The Future.
Well I can only assume that one day, in the distant future, I will once more look at my screens and my thoughts will wander to 'that guy' and CCP will have got their act together, in the least to let me take my revenge.


TL:DR
Corp A war decs alliance > Corp A puts alliance PoS into RF > PoS owning corp leaves alliance > Corp A cannot attack offending PoS > PoS owning corp reps PoS > PoS owning corp rejoins alliance.

Nicely done CCP.
I was there.

feels bad man

lol roleplayers

I would read again :).

Some Dev input on this would be interesting, seeing as CCP are being all open and honest with us now ;)

...and Tarsas - your comment interests me. Hope you spill the beans :).

Your tears are of interest to me and the community. Please recommend our service to your victims so that they may better justly annoy you in the future. We will help any victims of highsec wars save their towers or wipe wardecs.

Your careful planning and inevitable anguish are what sustains the life force of our alliance. Your fleets of infinite size are no match against our exploit of wardec mechanics. Please carry on and waste countless hours grinding against towers you know you can never defeat.

This post is now an advertisement for Dec Shield alliance.

Good story, and yes ccp does need to fix that..

Just a quick thought..if you leave your alliance, will you not get 24 hours of free shooty goodness against all your previous wars?

Act now!

If I understand the original post correctly, the tower is already in reinforced, and the war will end before it comes out. You can't shoot the tower until it's out, but you might be able to shoot the batteries to extend the aggro.

Assuming his entity is a corporation and not an alliance, he'll have to first put a vote up to dec the corp with the tower, wait 24 hours for the vote to close, and then drop the dec, which would then begin another 24 hours later.

He can do the first part any time, however you can't issue a fresh dec against a corp that you already have dec'd... at least, I've never found a way to do that...

Nice read. sorry for your loss of POS killmail