Wormholes

From the early days of daytripping:

So I used to run these nomad exploration ops where we'd just use cheap t1 transports with a cloak to bank loot. Since exploration loot is pretty light weight, you could do probably a week in wspace, just log in your cloaky transport at a safe, scoop up a jetcan, and log off. You just run chains from whatever system the transport is logged out in. Effectively you're a resident of that hole with no structures.

Well, somehow this worked for a few months, and we ended up doing it with exploration fleets of 3-4 pilots on a weekly basis. being extremely paranoid about scanning down the losec static and bookmarking it in case the transports got stranded, only moving the transports to a new "trailer park" hole right around down time, etc.

You can probably see where this is going.

Well, in my infinite wisdom, I never through about the possibility of the trailer park getting stranded. I figured I checked the mass of the holes, I was religious about bookmarking them, and I never logged out my exploration guy if he wasn't in system with the trailer park. Why would I need probe scanning skills on a throwaway alt?

Then my worst day happenned, and it is responsible for the current "trailerfleet" doctrine our daytripping (weektripping?) corp uses to this day.

I'd been running dry on sites for a while, so was out probably five holes holes from the trailer park. Finally decided to pack it in. Then I found a dictor bubble on the other side of the hole. I'm assuming the guys that set it up were running sites because the minute they saw me pop in and then right back out again I got to watch them roll the hole from the other side, 100km away in my exploration ship, powerless to do anything about it.

No problem, we bookmarked the static out. Warped one of the trailers to 100KM off the static to find no hole, no bad guys, and nothing but another dictor bubble left behind where the hole once was. They'd rolled it when they came in. Why, I have no idea. So I punch the trailer's MWD, quickflip warp back to safe, and about **** my pants watching the safe log out timer expecting something nasty to decloak on top of it after all that. Nothing happens, the trailer logs out fine, safe seems still pretty safe.

Separated from the trailer park, I was forced in to the sickening realization that my corpmates were still running sites on the other side. Since, you know, I was supposed to be scouting back and making sure everything was copacetic.

We had four logged out mammoths stuck in a hole we couldn't get back to, which were carrying a week's worth of exploration loot totalling about who knows how much ISK. Because hey, in my experience you don't REALLY need to leave a scanning alt behind. Just make sure you walk back the chain after each system.

So, I didn't just lose my loot in a hole. I lost the whole corp's loot in a hole, stranded their hauling alts, and had to admit that as the resident "wormhole expert" I had absolutely no prior knowledge about how quickly and efficiently people could forcibly close a wormhole.

That was embarassing, but now every single trailer has a probe launcher on it. The more you know.