The BoM Eviction

Many of you have probably already read all about the Band of Magnus (BoM) eviction that took place last weekend. I'll go ahead and add my 2 cents as a HRDKX line member. You can see our main FC's AAR at reddit and news coverage at EVE News 24 and The Mittani (really great tears in the comments of both articles).

Our bosses had explained why we were evicting BoM, a Slovak and Czech outfit, but I wasn't particularly interested in the whys. I don't usually require justification for shooting shit - this is a shooty spaceship game, after all. My only concern was BoM wouldn't fight for their system and that I was going to seed my main into a WH for the weekend and just F1 structures.

Bumbaclot

How frig holes work for most ships

Since the release of Hyperion in August 2014, w-space has been populated with tiny little frigate holes. Frig holes are common but aren't taking over; they make up about 10-15% of the chain at any given time. As their name would suggest, they can fit only small ships such as frigs, destroyers, and hictors with multiple bubbles fitted. They also regenerate mass, which makes them just about impossible to close. Their qualities give them a very limited engagement profile, but with the right numbers and fleet comp, anything can happen.

String of pearls

Some days in EVE you just have one of those days. In a good way. You log on, find a bunch of cool shit, asplode some people, and maybe not even die. On this particular day I found a pinata, killed two carriers, some BSs, and a marauder, and I survived everything. Maybe for you that's not a big deal, but I was quite tickled about it.

First day in Thera

After Rhea landed yesterday morning, the search began for Thera in earnest. As advertised, it was chock full of w- and k-space connections, and was discovered barely a half hour after the servers came up. A few CCP devs sat in station in the system, taunting us in the Thera intel channels. The first few scanners to find it kept their mouths shut for another half hour, after which Peter Moonlight released his siggy map and the floodgates opened. There was a mad dash for all of the highsec entrances, so I slipped in quietly through a low and began to creep around.

All roads lead to Thera

In case you have not read CCP's new dev blog, for the first time since Apocrypha was released in 2009 there will be new wormhole systems in EVE. One hundred and one new systems to be exact. They are called "shattered wormholes," and none of them will have moons (ergo, none will have any starbases). All planets will be unavailable for PI, but ice will be available. All systems will have at least two statics, and at least one of those two statics will lead to k-space. Twenty-five of the 101 systems will only be accessible for small-mass ships - frigs, dessies, and hictors using the hict trick. And, one of the systems will be Thera.

Morning glory

Finding a pinata party

Pinatas are relatively uncommon in w-space. In several years (of varying levels of activity, admittedly) of living in wormholes, I've only come across two. A pinata in this context is a tower whose force field has dropped and there are several arrays left behind, hopefully with oodles of goodies inside. Cashing in on a pinata is uncommon for two reasons: with fuel blocks, PI, corp fuel notifications, and most recently buffs to haulers, it has never been easier to keep your tower fueled. The second reason is that some other w-space d-bag will likely find the pinata before you can capitalize on it, leaving you with naught but a dead tower and maybe some pos mods to shoot for free KMs. My last pinata was over two years ago, but was quite lucrative.

And they say WH mining is dead

The other day we were just during our normal thing; creeping around null and harassing the residents there. We were near a Bovril mining hub in Catch and were trying very hard to get a fight out of BRAVE by molesting their miners, who all seemed to be bait-fit. Eventually we succeeded in this endeavor and were engaged on a gate by a much larger BRAVE gang. Unable to fight toe-to-toe, we did our best to peel off trigger-happy pilots from the main group and take them down one by one. We were successful at this and blew up a lot of cheap atrons and such, with the most expensive ship we caught probably being a ferox. They continued to escalate until we could no longer feasibly remain on grid, and so we departed. Inexplicably, one of their barges immediately resumed mining in the same system, and we briefly returned to asplode him.

First week in HRDKX, part 1

Since closing down my last wormhole, I've been looking for a larger w-space corp to fly with. I've mostly been with very small, inactive corps over the last few years, and I wanted something with more content available. I spent a few weeks in highsec (I know), absentmindedly carebearing in between public fleets like Spectre, RvB Ganked, and the Tuskers.

My acceptance into Hard Knocks Inc. (HRDKX) happened to coincide perfectly with a 4-day weekend, so I finally had some time to actually play EVE instead of just logging in to skill between work marathons. And play I did. The content train that is HRDKX was chugging at full speed all weekend, and I logged on as much as I could to take advantage of the action.

NOTE: The dates may be borked, as I am nocturnal and therefore look at days and nights a bit differently than normal people.

Night of the living yolo

A few hours after we went up against SSC, I was exploring the WH chain with my new corpies in Hard Knocks. There were a lot of wormholes and not a huge amount of explorers, so we were just slowly kind of making our way down the pipe, looking for whatever content we could find that was tucked away in the nooks and crannies of w-space. All was quiet until someone said, excitedly, "Orca is yoloing a C3!"

A Tale of Two Brokerages (free drama!)

The fires have died down enough now that I can relate the rather boring tale of how myself and most of the brokers of CAPLF WH Sales parted ways with the Taggart bunch. I suppose I'll start with how I began the whole business years ago and we'll go from there.

In 2011 I was leading Taggart Transdimensional (TTI). Taggart is an ancient corp that had began in null years ago, been kicked out, and then settled into C5 wormhole space where it would slowly become a small group of inactive carebears. When Kushan passed the torch to me, I started lighting fires under asses and going crazy with recruitment and generally rocking the boat. For the first time in years, Taggart had a CEO who played EVE, for better or worse. This upset the status quo and the delicate egos of many old Taggart personalities. This wasn't much of an obstacle because most of those bittervets didn't actually play EVE. Redslay, an odd carebear hermit, in particular was miffed, especially because he had been passed over for CEO by a complete n00b. When Kush had offered me the position, and I asked why Redslay had been passed, he answered that Redslay becoming CEO was the worst thing that could happen to the corp and he wasn't ready to doom it quite yet. You know things are depressing when the n00b takes over. Redslay and myself had begun our strained relationship a few months before, when I'd moved into his wormhole and then exited after one week because his leadership was just so fail. Micromanaging, flip-flopping, browbeating, and the other hallmarks of people who do not know how to lead people.

I was CEO for a year or so and Taggart began to rebuild. We were still carebears, but at least we were active carebears. In zooming around w-space we noticed a lot of empty wormholes, and like many optimistic entrepreneurs we posted many of them on the EVE-O sell orders forum, hoping to sell them for a quick buck. We sold quite a few and noticed a glaring hole in the process. There were no brokers. To quote the wonderful film Lord of War: "Selling a [wormhole] for the first time is a lot like having sex for the first time. You're excited but you don't really know what the hell you're doing. And some way, one way or another, it's over too fast." And so I whipped up a quick mailing list and started a forum post to advertise it. Customers trickled in at first, but after a few commendatory posts, they started to flock in. Business was brisk. So that I would not get overwhelmed with evemails and convo requests, I decided to open up the brokerage to the corp at large, and it was called "Taggart WH Sales". Even after hiring and training a half-dozen brokers, we still couldn't meet demand, a problem which persists to this day.

I would eventually resign from my position as CEO due to RL issues, and active management of the corporation and brokerage fell upon Stealthgogi, an excellent Taggart and close friend of mine. In my absence he upgraded the business from the mailing list to a website, webmastered by Jbmidnite. While the site is not perfect (notably it is more vulnerable to scamming than the mailing list, and therefore has to be policed more closely), it works very well for our purposes.

Last year I returned to EVE, started a new corp and a new wormhole, and resumed management of the brokerage business. This was not a problem, because as usual most of Taggart was inactive. Redslay had finally been promoted to CEO while I was away, and this time only because Gogi literally had no one else he could hand it over to when he needed to step down. Redslay had attempted to subsume the brokerage business into Taggart as a whole, even going so far as to stack his board of directors (all inactive) as directors of the brokerage. Most of these people had no idea how the business operated.

None of this was really a problem until I made a business decision that Redslay disagreed with. A rival broker (yes, a few of those pop up from time to time) was using our site to advertise his own services. I shut that down and admonished him via email, and he wrote back a rather angry, spergy response about this and that. I informed him that the business was mine to run as I saw fit, and he whined about it to the other brokers. Redslay then informed me that he disagreed with my decision because said rival broker was an officer in a large, scary wormhole corp and he feared eviction. Holy carebear - were we really going to make business decisions based on an ephemeral, non-existent threat of violence?

Then the real drama began. I booted all of the Taggart brokers out of the in-game sales channel, and Gogi responded by booting me back (I had forgotten that he had created the channel lol) and declaring that the brokerage was in fact owned by Taggart, even though I had created the business and had owned it since its inception. Smelling a scammy scam, I then took the nuclear option and walked away with the webmaster, my forum post (now filled with many pages of recommendations), and the majority of the active brokers. Taggart sent me a weakly apologetic evemail in an attempt to reconcile, but the damage was done. They had tried to steal my business, old-fashioned EVE style. And that was that. All I had to do was get a new channel (CAPLF WH Sales in-game), rewrite our FAQ, and we continued business as usual. Customers were confused at first but they got the hang of it. Taggart helped by being completely inactive as usual.

So now we continue on, selling wormholes. Of course, now that CAPLF is disbanding and I'm moving on, it is no longer a requirement that all of my brokers be in my corp. I must either know them personally or they agree to go through a training program. This will hopefully allow us to solve our chronic staffing issues. I believe Taggart wrote up a forum post advertising their new brokerage, but I cannot seem to find the post, and their brokers are even harder to find than mine. Their forum and website also seem to have lapsed as well. I strongly recommend you do not do business with them - they are not above a good scam.

Shutting down Naraka

Since early 2011 I have led a half-dozen or so wormhole crews, all within the Virtue of Selfishness (VoS). My first one was Anthem, a 5/3 red giant, and from there I "graduated" into 5/5 and eventually 6/5 space. All of these crews were mostly carebearish, as that is the kind of pilot that Taggart attracts. After leaving Taggart in late 2012, I headed up the People's Capitalist Liberation Front (CAPLF), with the express purpose of creating alliance content while leaving Taggart HR intact.

Our plan in a nutshell

After returning to EVE in January 2014 after a long and refreshing hiatus, my most recent expedition with CAPLF was a class 2 with class 5 and null statics. After carebearing it up in my last few wormholes, I decided to get a bit more pewpewy with this one. Naraka (J221337, so leet) was its name, the Hindu concept of hell (this is w-space come on, we need a spergy faux-edgy name right??). Recruiting was surprisingly not horribly horrible at first, and I collected quite a few n00bs and old friends alike. Sadly, the momentum could not continue, and a few weeks ago I closed the doors on Naraka.

It has been my most successfully killingest wormhole to date, although that's hardly notable considering the pitiful state of my killboard before moving in. We had a lot of fun in there, including a carrier theft, a horribly executed awox, leading an impromptu Provifleet, poppin n00bs, and more. Several of the pilots are friends now and may join me wherever I end up next.

What's next? I haven't decided yet.

Becoming the Hunter

I have played Eve now for a few years.  Admittedly, most of my career has been that of a carebear.  I have been, like many, the victim of pirates, thieves, gate camps, ganks, and camps.  I have tried my hand at new player friendly pvp corps on several occasions, but never truly found a good fit.  I eventually went into Faction Warfare space solo to learn the hard way.  Many traps sprung, fights being outnumbered, not to mention ships lost, and I finally started to get decent at it.  It wasn’t until I joined my current corporation that everything finally fell into place.  Living in wormholes forces you to learn or be victimized.

Moving into the wormhole it didn’t take long to start getting kills.  It wasn’t until a particular solo kill that I felt I was ready.  I was ninja gas mining some fullerite-c320 when I noted an imicus on d-scan.  So I watch diligently until the probes get close to my location, and then move on.  Knowing this person has my location I decided to head back to base before I lost the progress of gas I had mined.  Once I unloaded I thought, “What the hell,” and returned to the system with my nemesis.  To my surprise, even though several minutes had passed, the person was still scanning.  At this point a familiar feeling for those newer to eve’s brutal pvp system emerged…

My pulse increased as the adrenal glands released those oh so lovely endorphins into my blood stream.  I begin using all the skills I have acquired with d-scan and note the target seems to be showing up and disappearing.  Going on the idea that said target is uncloaking to check his wormhole findings, I track the location of his probes.  I have the entire system bookmarked already so once I would figure out what signature he was on I would warp there at 100km and wait.  Sure enough I see the imicus on d-scan, and approaching.  My heart rate increases to that of a sprint, and sweat begins to dampen my skin.  The would be victim arrives on grid… 30km away from the worm hole, but 70km away from me, and cloaks.  Through the excitement I realize that I didn’t align and approach the last known location.  Disappointed I again look to get ahead of the probes.  This time though I have the player’s name, and also begin to creeper stalk their kill mails.  I figure out which wormhole is their home, and keep this in mind if they decide to leave, but a chase isn’t what I want.

Once again ahead of the probes I warp in at a closer range to the wormhole.  Once again imicus on d-scan and approaching…  by now my heart rate has increased to levels I only experience while fighting a fire, and my hands are shaking like a virgin on prom night.  Sweat pores from my face the likes of which are reserved for habanero peppers.  They hit the grid 30km from me.  This time I remembered to align and approach.  They cloak up.  At this point time seems to slow in the anticipation of finally turning the tables.  I know I have them.  I launch a bomb at their location.  At this point I wasn’t sure that a bomb would destroy the target just that I wanted to spook them out of cloak.  What happened next I wasn’t prepared for.  I am looking for the ship to uncloak when I notice the players pod in front of me.  Time seems to be taking way to long as my shaking hands fumble at the commands to tackle the player.  I land the tackle and immediately go for the kill.  I want no bargaining, no scamming, I just want blood.

After dispatching the player I immediately recloak and hide in case of retaliation.  None came.  I almost get back to my home when I realize that I hadn’t checked my kill mail.  The wreck contained 90million isk of loot.  So, being greedy I turn around to go collect my reward.  I get the loot and his body for a new collection that I still have.  He opens a conversation with me asking how I found him.  In this moment all the shakes are gone, and calm washed over me.  I knew.  I was the hunter.

Have you become trapped?

The other day we were using the hict trick to close a mass crit wormhole. For those of you unfamiliar with the hict trick, it allows you to close mass crit wormholes in relative safety. Hictor bubbles reduce the mass of your ship by 80% and stack, so with 3 of them, the mass of a cruiser comes down to less than that of a frig. The chances of your hictor getting stuck are very low (but still possibru). Sometimes it takes a few roundtrips to close the WH, but during this time it is unusual for anyone else to enter, as only the n00biest or most desperate of pilots will roll the dice on a mass crit WH.

This is the difference between a hict with a
100mn prop and a hict with 3 bubbles on it

So while I'm sitting on this WH with the hict waiting for the polarity timer to run out, I hear an activation. I had a few crewmembers on grid with me on the off chance that someone came through, and they all said "Activation?" on comms in a confused tone, not sure if I had gone back through, as my bubble wasn't up. We then watched in shock as the womhole disappeared, trapping the retard who had just come through into our wormhole. As it finally sank in that it wasn't any of us, I hit the bubble and then a wild tengu appeared on grid.

I shouted at the crew to get scram on him, as scouty t3s often fit nullifiers that allow them to ignore bubbles. My wingmen opened fire, we made short work of the tengu, and then his sad pod as well. Examination of the killmail revealed the first blaster-fit tengu I had ever seen. While there has always been a hybrid subsystem for the tengu, I hadn't actually seen one with it before in w-space. It was an unorthodox choice and made him completely useless when Jarek decloaked in the pilgrim and neuted him out. He also had a scanning sub on the ship but no probes or probe launcher, which raises the question of why he would risk entering a mass crit wormhole to begin with. At the very least he could have put the launcher, probes, and a mobile depot in cargo in case he ever found himself trapped. But no, his cargo held only ammo, not even paste or boosters, despite the tengu clearly being fit for pvp. At least the ship was cheap, despite a couple of faction mods (that were miraculously not destroyed).

Tl;dr: Always have friends on grid when you're closing a WH - you never know what the EVE gods will drop in your lap.

Grand theft carrier

If you keep your eyes open in w-space, you can sometimes spot the telltale signs of the presence of other pilots, often long gone. Some containers there, a mobile depot there, the flight of drones left floating in space during a mad dash for the exit. Most of the items floating are garbage, but occasionally, if you're vigilant and lucky, you will find something worth taking.

On this particular day I was scouting a C5 where we had discovered a highsec entrance, which was serendipitous as there were several new pilots who needed to enter the wormhole. I covered with a falcon as they brought in their ships and possessions, all neatly packed, like Boy Scouts going on a campout. In the middle of the convoy, a wild Colonel Smash appeared in local, and at the exact same time a thanatos appeared on dscan.

Colonel Smash: hey I'm selling these carriers, good price

This is my thanny. There are
many like it, but this one was mine.
Kind of

Obvious trap is obvious, I thought. It was an odd choice of bait, however, especially because Smash's corp did not match the towers in this system. I hustled the remaining crew into the wormhole and began looking for the pilot. Sure enough, there was soon a corpse on dscan - Smash's corpse. I quickly scanned down the thanatos and, lo and behold, it was unpiloted. I logged on a carrier alt and instructed the crew to get into position for coverage. We grabbed the thanatos and got away, and that's when we discovered 2 archons on dscan as well, at a different planet. They were also unpiloted. Sadly I didn't have an archon pilot available, and asked in alliance chat for an assist. Some Taggarts dashed over as quickly as they could, but just a few minutes too late - the Lead Farmers had found their way into the WH and were also making a grab for the archons. Vastly outnumbered, I ordered the crew to stand down. We then managed to find a null and cyno the thanny out of there.

I cannot say the events that led to Smash entering the C5, but as he did not live there, it seems more likely that he had trapped himself without a scout. Whatever happened, CCP soon confiscated the thanny, as Smash had apparently filed a petition that he had been hacked. I find it more likely that he derped EVE and then cried about it via petition, but who knows. At least my crew had some fun that night.

The mother lode

My first POS looting was around 6 months ago, when I was leading Rapture. While exploring, I discovered a class 5 wormhole with a control tower that had several arrays and defenses. Not unusual. What was unusual was the lack of a force field. I brought in my crew and we torched it and stole what we could. We made off with around 5b ISK of loot.

That was nothing compared to what happened a few weeks ago. Again, while exploring, I discovered an inhabited system. This system had 3 control towers, and many ships floating. My dscan was filled with results. For some reason I spent several minutes studying it and realized that, despite all of the ships and arrays, there were no force fields.

WH Armor Fleet Basics for Domi Pilots

Dominix Navy Issue

For those of you who have never flown in a TTI wormhole fleet, here are the basics. The core ship of a class 5 wormhole Sleeper op is the remote repair (RR) Domi. In an armor friendly wormhole environment, Sleeper sites can be cleared with a fleet of three Domis, if the pilots have the proper skills and equipment (T2 sentries and faction Domis help quite a bit). More Domis are always better as well as one or two DPS ships in the fleet to speed up site clearing.

Before You Warp

Before any op, always check that your drone bay is full and all your modules are fitted and online. Don't assume they are or you'll end up warping to the site only to realize you never replaced the drones you lost two days ago or someone borrowed a module and never put it back.

The fleet commander (FC) will list the energy transfer (ET) assignments. Each Domi in the fleet shares energy with another Domi, thus keeping everyone cap stable. In Rampart, the ET assignments are done by alphabetical order. For example, if code pink, Cynn, and Dick00 Haus are the Domi pilots, the ET assignment will be code pink -> Cynn -> Dick00 Haus -> code pink.

It's helpful to add your fleet mates to the damage watch list. You do this by right clicking their name in the Fleet Window and select Add to Watchlist. This will open a second window which displays their damage. Fleet mates taking damage will flash red in the Watchlist Window.

The fleet should form up so all ships are within 1,000 meters or so. Domis are slow and remote armor reps and energy transfer arrays have limited range. If the fleet warps to a site and is scattered, any ship outside the armor rep range is likely to asplode before it can get back in range.

As fleet commander, I always provide a link to EVE Survival for the type of site were are doing. Like many empire space missions, class 5 sites have triggers to spawn the next wave. I want my fleet pilots to know what the triggers are so we don't accidentally spawn the next wave before we're ready.

Sleeper Guardian

Arriving at the Site

As soon as you drop out of warp, make sure your defensive modules are on and begin targeting all of your fleet mates. Get your ET on your assigned fleet mate and check your watchlist to see who is taking damage. Put two of your remote armor reps on that person. The fleet commander will be calling out targets, so watch your overview and lock the indicated Sleepers. Launch your drones and begin asploding Sleepers.

Cap Management

Even with good energy skills and using ETs, Sleepers can drain your capacitor if you don't manage your modules. Try to run as few remote armor reps as possible. If you are only facing frigates, you only need to run one rep. If you are facing several battleships, you will need to have all of your armor reps on the pilot taking damage. If you are taking damage, finish repping the last pilot who was taking damage and turn all your armor reps off. Be ready to put them on again if you see someone flashing red in the Watchlist.

If you see your cap is going empty, ask to make sure the pilot assigned to ET you has it turned on. You could also be getting energy neutralized by the Sleepers. Let your fleet mates know if you are going on empty. If you go empty, the first priority is to get your ET back online. Next, start turning armor reps on, one at a time until you have enough cap to run the amount you need without going empty again.

Garde Sentry Drone

Drones

The only way an RR Domi does damage is through it's drones. Sleepers will target drones, so make sure you keep an eye on them and pull them in when they take damage. The more drones you lose, the less effective you are. Also make sure your drones are set to passive, so they only attack what you tell them to.

Use the appropriate drone for the range or type of ship you are attacking. Sentries are for cruisers and battleships. Bouncers are carried for targets 35 to 90 km away and Gardes are for targets in the 10 to 35 km range. Hobgoblins are for clearing out frigates.


Other Things to Keep in Mind

• Make sure you do not move. Watch your distance from fleet mates and let someone know if they are moving.
• Taking damage. Let your fleet mates know when you are taking damage. There's a lot going on and they may not notice when the Sleepers change targets.
• D-Scan, D-Scan, D-Scan. Fleet security is everyone's job. Hit D-Scan as often as you can and watch for scan probes and ships. Let the fleet commander know as soon as you see something.
• You can repair your drones. If your drones take damage, lock it and repair it. It is advisible to wait until you are only fighting one or two sleepers.
• Pre-lock your targets. The fleet commander will designate two or three targets at a time. Lock as many designated targets as your skills allow so you can begin dealing damage as soon as the first target is destroyed.
• Everyone shoots the same Sleeper. If you see two Sleepers taking damage, make sure you are shooting at the right one. Ask the fleet commander to re-mark the target if you are unsure.

WHEN ORCAS ATTACK!!!

WH pvp is hit or miss. It's mostly about surprise buttsecks, as one crew tries to trap and take down another crew that's not prepared for pvp. Evenly-matched, consensual WH pvp engagements are rare. In fact I don't think I've ever witnessed or been involved in one.

When you're out running sites or gassing, you gotta spam that dscan or risk getting hit. Dscan is often the only tool that can save you. Having an alt sitting on known holes is nice, but new ones could be opened at any time and let stranger danger into your system. But sometimes, you're the one prowling, and every once in a while you get a sweet kill.

Last night I was in an adjacent wormhole, a C5, when I noticed a POS with only a bubble. That was it; no arrays or other defenses at all. Weird right? Sometimes you see stuff like that out here; I figured it was someone who had been setting up or taking down a POS and had been interrupted. Promising, but who knows when they could be online to finish the job. So I flew off and did some other stuff for awhile and kind of forgot about it. A few hours later I returned absentmindedly and noticed that the force field was gone. I warped to the POS and saw that it was being unanchored, with no ships nearby, and 6 minutes to go on the timer. I raced back willy-nilly to grab my onyx and alerted the rest of my crew that were online.

We came back to the POS just as it was finishing its unanchoring and saw an Orca on dscan as we warped. "ZOMG ORCA KEEL IT!!!" I screamed. As we landed, the Orca cloaked and its pilot attempted to convo me. I ignored him and approached the last known location of the Orca, activating my hictor bubble. I bumped it almost immediately and we opened fire. The Orca pilot immediately started to re-online the control tower in a pitiful attempt to force us out by activating the bubble, but that would have taken much longer than he had available.

It turns out that Orcas aren't exactly the bloodthirsty animals that their namesake would indicate. This guy had a couple of faction jammers he turned onto my crewmember's harbinger with little success, and that was about it for his defenses. Orca hulls are pretty tough, however. We shredded this guy's shields and armor and then the structure took awhile. We did eventually smoke him and with the hict bubble got his pod too. To add insult upon injury, we brought in a dreadnought and took down the POS he had been trying to anchor. This is actually the second orca that the Rapture crew had taken down recently.

After the destruction, the guy convo'd me again and explained that if we had listened to his initial offer, he would have given us 2 billion ISK to not waste him. We would not have accepted; an Orca kill is worth way more to us than that paltry sum, and the wormhole business prevents me from not honoring ransoms. I won't transcribe the convo (full of tears as it may be), but the gist of it was that the guy was a one-man traveling gassing show. He used his Orca to cart his ships around class 5 WHs looking for fullerite-C320, the most valuable type of gas. He simply took down and set up his lil POS whenever he moved. Apparently he had been hit at least 3 times before and had managed to buy his way out for 2b apiece. Seems a little counterproductive. All kinds of strange people out here in w-space.

Welcome to Rapture

"I am Andrew Ryan, and I'm here to ask you a question. Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow? 'No!' says the man in Washington, 'It belongs to the poor.' 'No!' says the man in the Vatican, 'It belongs to God.' 'No!' says the man in Moscow, 'It belongs to everyone.' I rejected those answers; instead, I chose something different. I chose the impossible. I chose...Rapture, a city where the artist would not fear the censor, where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality, where the great would not be constrained by the small! And with the sweat of your brow, Rapture can become your city, as well."- Andrew Ryan

Rapture is one of TTI's wormholes (WHs). For those of you unfamiliar with WHs, they are systems in space that can only be accessed by going through unstable, naturally occurring gates (also called wormholes). The EVE wiki has a good article on them. The tl;dr is that they don't have a local channel, the sites in them must all be scanned down, and they are populated by badass rats called the Sleepers that are basically big metal isk pinatas.

Rapture is a class 5 WH and therefore the sleepers there are quite difficult and can be taken down only by a trained, coordinated gang, generally made up of battleships or t3 cruisers. The Rapture crew is made up of salty space dogs who are equally familiar with sleeper strategies, coarse language, and extensive de-n00bification tactics.

Rapture's primary purpose is sleeper combat, but its pilots occasionally engage in pvp as well, such as yesterday when several crewmembers asploded some Russians who apparently like to run sites sans d-scan.

Some of you who are familiar with Ayn Rand and videogames may have already guessed it, but Rapture is named after a fictional underwater city from the BioShock series of video games. The city of Rapture was built as a haven for those seeking refuge from the oppressive philosophies of the surface world, which included religion, socialism, and other such nonsense. Similarly, our Rapture is hidden away from the conventional world and only objectivists and those who are interested in the power of the individual may live here.