Wormholes

Well, still learning this WH life...so far am having a blast and learning TONS!

I quit mining in the WH, moved my mining alt back to Hi Sec (see WH mining thread).

Now what I have run into is a WH Thief/Griefer situation I wanted your feedback on.

Our Corp was doing recruiting for US TZ, I and couple others were brought in on that drive.

I understand Corp thiefs, from what I read they infiltrate a corp, gain access to hangers by promotions, or scam on a courier contract, etc.

The whole promotion thing sounds like a long/difficult process - no so in WHs it seems?

When I joined a WH corp and first entered the POS, there were corp hangers full of expensive T2 and T3 ships freely accessible and unlocked secure containers floating about with sweet modules.

Well, I guess one of the new recruits that came in with me was a theif/griefer, either pre-planned or just an opportunistic jerk who couldn't pass up being a .... jerk.

He stole a bunch of ships, modules, and self-destructed several ships as well.

Well needless to say, recruitment is shut down and expensive ships/modules are locked down.

This Thief has now turned into a Griefer...bringing his alts and corpmates/buddies to live in our system and harass us.

Their scanning ship is visible once a day when he scans down sites/static WH, etc. then they cloak and wait...this is the major reason I moved my solo afk miner back to Hi Sec.

So how do you prevent thiefs or griefers from joining your corp? What measures have you found effective to defend/deal with them? What about once a WH griefer is now in your system hangin out?

I thought about a deposit to join but then folks would think it was a Goon-like recruiting scam.

Full API - on all accounts, of course.

Really though, not sure you can protect against em...and from a corp theif perspective, WHs seem easier to steal from than Hi Sec corps. From a griefing perspective, once they are inside, they can share the WH access with their corpmates/friends/alts and be a pain in the arse.

Thoughts/comments/suggestions?

ummmm...easier said then done, T3 WH fitted ships (Loki, Tengu, etc.), that only show themselves when they are about to kill you.

I was hoping you had a suggestion for rooting them out and podding them.

We have the firepower---but they pick the fights, then disaper.

Of course, you would have to kill AND pod ALL three (perhaps there are more?), and collapse the static WH, else they would just come back.


VR/JW

Bait em out. Alternatively, run your PVE ops in a neighboring system and camp the connection.

Ahh, a plan...you mean like a trap...brilliant....

which is why I came to the forums to tap into Eve's most brilliant minds!

What trap have you used...tell us your griefer story, both failures and successes.

My instincts are that a determined, skilled WH griefer and his alts/friends can't be cleared from a WH, unless they make a HUGE mistake and all die/get podded at once...'bout the only way that would happen is a bubble or heavy intradictor catch em all in same place?

We had an alliance member, solo grief a WH corp for over a month...getting several kills, all the while learning 'bout them, etc. and finally....our alliance came into the WH and took down their POS, killed some of their ships, and gave the WH to someone in the alliance who wanted that particular type WH (BTW, I had a blast, we have done couple POS bashes/WH takeovers since I joined)

Nasty business this WH...business

There are lots of options, but most require quite a bit of planning and some patience. A couple of ideas to start with:

Profile your 'griefer':
- Check his corp history and check with former CEOs to see if this is a pattern. If he has done this before, see what info you can get from his former corps as far as his friends/buddies that may fly with him, as well as how long it took him to get bored.
- make sure you have him on you watch list and track when he is on/offline and see what his patterns are. Same for his buddies (as best as you can identify them). Also, if you can keep an alt at a locator agent, you can at least see if they are in (or out) of w-space. You don't even have to pay - if you have a level 4 locator, then they will tell you it is 'out of their range' or something like that when they are in w-space. If they set a price, cancel the search, knowing that they are in k-space.
- Depending on if they are in a player corp, you can war dec them to make any hi-sec time a little less safe.
- Check their KBs to see their normal MO in w-space and especially check any losses/fits. Possibly contact any former victims if and see if they might be interested in assisting.

It all depends on what you can fly and how many pilots, etc., but some ideas for trapping them:
- Farm adjacent WHs with an additional ambush fleet waiting. If you can get two fleets (one for each side of the WH) you have a much better chance of catching them. It really helps to have 'unknown' neutrals take part, since the griefter's won't know they are there/online (hopefully). HICs are highly useful in podding, but can cut both ways. Bombers are next to worthless. EWAR can be especially effective against T3s that aren't specifically designed to counter it.
- POCOs can also be good ambush points, as there are no whs to jump through. A cheap, disposable alt can fly a hauler in as bait on a regular schedule and see if they draw anyone out. This can take some time. Warp Stabs and a tank and you might even live.
- Key to most is disguising your advantage - you do not want to have them know how many you have online, and they will not likely fall for an ambush if they are clearly out-gunned. There are lots of ways to find out who is in your corp, so out of corp mercs or friends work best. In-corp person needs to be logged on and check the status of the griefers before a 'sleeper' merc logs in and cloaks/sets up for an ambush.

Anyway, waiting them out and being extra careful also works.....go 'silent' on them - no emails, no taunting, no talking, no tears, no acknowledgement that they even exist.....they will eventually get bored and leave.

Fix the security loopholes to ensure assets are secured. Then either wait them out or bait them into a trap. As several people have said, they'll only hang around as long as they think they can get kills.

Worst case scenario you pack up your tower and "leave" (put a scout alt inside) and they get bored and bail. Then re-drop tower or find new wormhole.

As Klarion said, prevention is your best method for future issues. Also, if you had any "safe spot" bookmarks, those are now compromised. Make new ones.

Svo.

Rroff are you sure about that last statement? We were testing this the other day and if you didn't have the right roles you weren't able to view the corporate hangar array (we had one as corp, one as starbase fuel).

Svo.

You need to group up.
In your case with your experience you probably need to outnumber them.
Typical traps are logofskis, bait gassers/bears whatever.
Actually executing your strategy is hard.
As they are doing stuff right (picking their fights) you need to find a way to tackle them, (hics?).
If you bring logistics you can fight them in less shiny stuff.


Tbh for a group like yours the most difficult thing is to get organised enough to make the bait and take the fight as a cohesive group. Stuff to consider:
- do you have a fleet commander?
- has he any combat experience?
- why hasn't he organised your bait/though out a strategy?
.
Typically for a corp like yours a member gets impatient and starts doing stuff without the others and he is killed, then gets pissed and leave.
Rince repeat until your corp is down.

Alternatively you can hire mercenaries or mercenary instructors (careful who you trust).
There are quite a few out there, and some might even do it for free if you can assure a great fight (3 t3's not being it).

Hah I'm not gonna say I'm sure about it, POSes are pretty messed up to try and manage - but were you changing the access rights via the POS management interface for individual structures? But what I was saying with that last statement was that the hangar divisions have dependancies on external roles so you won't be able to necessarily see a CHA contents even when its set to corporation without the right divisions setup.

Hire some mercs to take them down for you.

Expensive, but the money you are losing due to ship losses and not being able to effectively operate in your space is probably going to cost you more in the long run.