WH Payouts

There are quite a few questions in our public channel (TAGGART) about how our WH operators pay out after ops. While I only operate Rapture and the other operators are free to pay out however they wish, we all follow the same basic model.

Our operators generally pay out immediately after an op (well, after they've had some time to crunch the numbers). We have some fancy spreadsheets that calculate everything up. Each pilot is given a share value according to what kind of ship they're flying and the fittings on it. We have precise fits for WH ops, but if you have the right skills, you can upgrade some of your mods and get a higher share value. Share boosts are also given for support activities such as salvaging and spending a significant amount of time scanning in preparation for an op. Unlike many other WH corps, there's no socialist BS; in Taggart WHs you are paid exactly what you're worth on an op - no more, no less.

To pay for the risk and investment that the operators put into their WH (which they own - the corp does not own or operate wormhole facilities), 10% of WH income is required from each crewmember. This number, called a POS fee, is automatically taken out of each pilot's payout after sleeper ops. Just like in real life, you can't live somewhere for free. The operators provide the fuel, infrastructure, and organization that each facility requires to operate smoothly. This fee provides each crewmember with space in the corporate hangar array (CHA) and ship maintenance array (SMA). It also means that crewmembers do not need to worry about fuel or hauling loot. The operators handle all of this.

In Rapture we take the share model to the next level by using micro-shares. Micro-shares, as their name suggests, are small share boosts that are given to pilots who train useful skills to a high level. These skill levels are not required to participate in the ops, but they make it easier for the entire crew. Individually they are small, but train a few of them and they start to add up.

Join the public channel and feel free to ask any of our WH operators in there if you have questions about our payouts.

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.

Home

This is Lucius Arcturus' entry to the Inspired by Images of EVE Competition. More details and links to all entrants can be found at Starfleet Comms. This contest makes use of the following image, which has been copied here in accordance with Starfleet's creative commons license.

Lights flickered on and gadgets whirred to life in the previously dark room, as though it were waking up from a long rest. Viewscreens lit up with colorful status reports from a variety of industrial and planetary assets. A cheerful woman’s voice could be heard, reading the news from Dodixie and its adjacent systems. The lights and screens illuminated a small and sparsely furnished set of rooms; rooms that had not seen activity in some time. Viewports in the walls looked out into the space around the station. Occasionally a ship could be seen in the distance, either approaching the station carefully to dock or slowly turning and then disappearing into a speck of light in the distance as it warped to its next destination.

A door slid open in the office and a young man entered. He was clean-shaven with dark, closely-cropped hair and light skin. He wore simple clothes of recent Gallente fashion. He squinted slightly as he entered the now brightly lit room, as though his eyes were adjusting to the light, and a look of irritation flashed across his face. “Dim the lights”, he said weakly, “and turn down the audio.”

The suite’s computer systems obeyed and softened the lights and newscast. The man sat down at the desk. He turned towards one of the viewscreens and tapped it a few times. After a moment, a woman’s face appeared. “Report, Shana,” the man said to the screen, the irritation still present in his voice.

“Oh Malcolm…I’m so sorry you got podded. It’s over. I got my scanner and I’m getting out. Look.” The screen switched to a view of the outside of a Helios, and then widened out to a vast expanse of space. Malcolm could see a large, oblong structure, awash in blue light from the solar system’s pulsar star. It was surrounded by smaller arrays and silos, all in various stages of destruction.

Malcolm’s small crew of pod pilots were wormhole residents, scanning down and collecting the incredibly lucrative remnants of the long-extinct Sleeper race. They had been doing this for some time and had become adept at it, possibly to the point of complacency. During a routine op the morning before, one of Malcolm’s crewmembers had spotted scan probes on his directional scanner. Malcolm had ordered the crew back to the starbase to avoid any unpleasant encounters with hostile strangers. “Get in your scanners and find where they’re coming from,” Malcolm ordered. “It must be a new entrance.”

While the pilots switched their ships at the starbase’s maintenance array, Malcolm absently hit the directional scanner again and his blood froze. He hit it again to confirm, and then again. A dreadnought was present in the system.

“Do you see that?” Shana’s voice came over the fleet comms with a worried tone.
“Yes…” Malcom said with a slight hesitation. “It’s probably someone closing their entrance into our system. The other ships are just guards.”

Just as Malcolm’s pod had finished moving into his Cheetah, the starbase alarms sounded in his brain. He focused on the source and saw the massive Revelation come out of warp almost right on top of the starbase. As he watched in mute horror, the stern of the ship began to move and change position, as if it were assembling itself. It was a siege module. The bow of the dreadnought glowed for a few seconds until it was almost too bright to look at. The light then dissipated as it was released from the ship’s turrets and blasted one of the starbase’s smaller defensive guns, causing massive damage.

Malcolm ordered his crew to board their combat ships and engage the enemy. He continued shouting orders as he took control of the base’s guns and returned fire on the Revelation. A multitude of smaller ships appeared and defended the dreadnought, resulting in a dogfight outside of the base’s defensive bubble.

The strontium bay is full, Malcolm thought. Just need to keep them occupied until they get bored. Malcolm had managed to keep firing for an hour or so, his crew more or less evenly matched with the enemy fighters. Just as it appeared that he would be able to break down the Revelation’s armor, a second dreadnought appeared next to it. Malcolm’s heart sank. He would not be able to fight off both.

In the dim light of his quarters, Malcolm was silent as he watched his remaining ships and belongings get torn to shreds or stolen by the attacking forces. Only Shana was left; the rest of his crew must have either escaped or been podded as well. “I’m leaving the system now, Malcolm,” Shana said softly, her voice barely registering to him. “There’s nothing else we can do. I’ll get in touch with you when I find my way back to empire space.” Malcolm didn’t respond. He clicked off the monitor and stood up absently. He opened a drawer in the desk and took out a small package before walking to an adjacent room in the suite and sitting down on his bed. He stared off into space, sighing occasionally, while he slowly opened the package in his hands. It was full of a spare set of implants, which he always kept around in the rare event that he was podded. He methodically plugged each one into his cybernetic jacks before laying down and staring listlessly at the ceiling for the better part of the night.

* * *

Malcolm piloted the small Rifter-class frigate through the dying wormhole and aligned to the next one in the pipe. After wallowing in anger and self-pity for most of the night, Shana had messaged him. She had managed to find an exit to known space, and contracted the bookmarks to him at a nearby station.

Malcolm didn’t know exactly what he was doing. The starbase was gone; its remains certainly looted by now. The attackers may even still be there, either mopping up or setting up shop themselves. But he felt some need to go back. He had lived in that system for a long time. He hadn’t even taken the time to put a proper scanner together – he’d found the Rifter sitting in his hangar at the Vylade station where his clone was, probably an antique from his old days doing odd jobs for the Federation Navy.

Malcolm entered his home system through the last bookmark in the entrance pipe. Thank you, Shana…made it here somehow, he thought. He activated the Rifter’s warp drive to take him to the location of the sacked starbase. The warp only took a few seconds but felt like an eternity. When he arrived, fully expecting to be greeted by a new starbase set up by the attackers, he saw nothing. No ships, no structures. Nothing except for a small asteroid a few dozen kilometers from his ship.

Malcolm started approaching the asteroid to get a better look. Almost immediately, his ship lurched and he could hear a grinding, clanking noise somewhere in its bowels. The engines stopped, he thought. The ship lurched again and slowly began drifting towards the asteroid. I’ve never seen a tractor beam this powerful, Malcolm thought. He realized he was much more calm than he should have been in a situation like this.

As his ship neared the asteroid, Malcolm could get a closer look at its surface. He saw only an endless expanse of docking platforms. Hundreds of ships, Malcolm thought. Thousands even. They look like Sleeper drones. But they would never be this far away from their stations. As he got closer, several of the ships approached his vessel. Here we go, Malcolm thought, expecting the worst. But she Sleepers did not attack. They simply approached and flew alongside his ship, as though they were escorting him. Where are we going?

Home, came the response, in a quiet, calm voice in the back of his mind. Malcolm would have gasped if his mind had been in control of his body and not the ship, and his mouth hadn’t been filled with the amniotic fluid of his pod. We’re going home.

How can you speak to me? Malcolm thought. Where are the pilots who evicted me? He heard no response. His ship was closer now to the structures on the asteroid’s surface. He was nearing not one of the platforms, but a huge opening on the surface, like a cave. It was so dark it looked like a giant, gaping mouth that fully intended on swallowing his shop whole.

As his ship entered the cave, his camera drones flickered out, one by one. Malcolm was disconnected from his ship and opened his eyes in his pod, seeing just the pink emergency lights and the many cables of his neural uplink. We are home, the voice said as the ship came to a halt.

The pod went dark.

Some wormhole weirdness

The other night, I was winding down after an op; just listening to some soothing Lady Gaga while procrastinating paying my crewmembers. While working on my main character's Facebook page, a voice appears in local! (For those of you who don't live in WHs, this is quite uncommon, especially in high-class holes like ours where you can go days without seeing a soul.)

The pilot was named Lydia Addams. I did not realize it at the time, but her name was obviously a combination of characters from Beetlejuice and the Addams Family. Here is a transcript of the convo, along with some additions in parentheses when I was consulting with Jae Ronin, a Rapture crewmember:

Lydia Addams > Nation I have arrived

(LA: Wtf...someone's talking in local. It's some crazy b**** talking about a nation.

JR: So...what do we do?

LA: Well $#@% if I know. I guess I'll talk back to her.)

Lucius Arcturus > Hello?

Lydia Addams > Did you hear the calling?

Lucius Arcturus > The calling?

Lydia Addams > Nation is calling. Nation led me here.

Lucius Arcturus > Which nation?

Lydia Addams > There is only one Nation.

Lucius Arcturus > You mean Sansha's Nation...

Lydia Addams > I was called to serve Nation today. "Nation is calling. 373Z-7 is where to go." all day all I could hear. When I arrived in system the calling stopped. Nation stopped calling. When a wormhole opened in 373Z-7.

(LA: That's a null system she mentioned. Stain...Sansha NPC space?

JR: Hey I found a thread on the roleplay forums from her about this.

LA: Ah bummer. Just some terribad RP then.)

Lydia Addams > "Enter" "Enter" "Enter" was all I could hear. In wormhole designation [WH locus] another wormhole opened and "Enter "Enter" "Enter" was all I could here. Now I wait. The calling has stopped. Nation will provide.

Lydia Addams > Nation I have arrived.

Lucius Arcturus > How did you get in here?

Lydia Addams > [Several pilots] have assisted me this far by finding wormhole entrances to this location. I am being led to ...

Lydia Addams > I am being led to believe there is another wormhole entrance here leading me closer to Nation. Nation will provide.

Lucius Arcturus > What happens when you get to Nation?

Lydia Addams > I do not know.

Lucius Arcturus > Where are you from?

Lydia Addams > Amarr

Lucius Arcturus > How is Nation communicating with you?

Lydia Addams > Nation is calling. The calling has stopped for now. Nation has stopped calling.

(LA: Heh I hope she gets free incoming calls, with all this calling.

JR: ...)

Lydia Addams > It has been only in the past when another pilot or more has show up that a womhole has been found and the calling will start agian.

(LA: Pff. What a weird coincidence. You better say something or she'll never shut up).

Lydia Addams > Nation I have arrived.

Jae Ronin > Hello

Lydia Addams > Have you heard the calling?

Jae Ronin > What calling?

Lydia Addams > Nation is calling. Nation led me here.

Jae Ronin > Is nation a person? Or something else?

Lydia Addams > There is only one Nation.

Jae Ronin > I see. Is ther anything we can do to help?

Lydia Addams > I am being led to belive there is a wormhole that helps lead to Nation here.

Lydia Addams > I am mearly flying a pod and have no means to scan for such and entrance.

Lucius Arcturus > Right...why are you in a pod?

Lydia Addams > I am in High orbit above the sun I pose you no harm.

Lydia Addams > I have been in my pod since I began my journey today In Amarr when I first heard the calling.

Lydia Addams > Nation will provide.

Lydia Addams > Nation I have arrived.

Lydia Addams > Jae Ronin do you still offer your help?

Jae Ronin > What help do you need?

Lydia Addams > I am led to belive there is another wormhole entrance in this system leading closer to Nation. I have no means to scan for such an entrance. I am in high orbit above this systems star in a pod I mean you no harm.

Lucius Arcturus > Which system?

Lydia Addams > I entered from [WH locus] not that one.

Lydia Addams > Another entrance must be here. Nation will provide.

Lucius Arcturus > One second

Lucius Arcturus > We have two exits besides your entrance...how do you know which is the right one?

Lydia Addams > is someone in close proximity to an entrance now?

Lucius Arcturus > yep

Lydia Addams > That is it Nation is calling.

Lucius Arcturus > But this WH is uninhabited....no one can help you there. It only leads to null

Lydia Addams > are you willing to share this information?

Lydia Addams > Then that is not it.

(LA: Trololol.)

Lydia Addams > It will lead to wormholespace.

Lucius Arcturus > The other one is a hub system. Leads to a C5, with a C6 static...but the WH network is dead. All uninhabited, all quiet.

Lucius Arcturus > Once you leave us, there will be no one else to help you

Lydia Addams > If the entrace the pilot is near leads into wormhole space it is the one. Nation is calling.

Lydia Addams > "Enter" "Enter" "Enter" it will not stop.

Lucius Arcturus > Ok give me a second and I'll help you get into the hub system. But like I said, that'll be the end of it

Lydia Addams > Any help you can give is fine. Nation will not forget.

Lucius Arcturus > Ok, ready when you are

Lydia Addams > Nation I am entering the wormhole.

EVE System > Subspace communication beacon unreachable. Channel list unavailable.

Lydia Addams > Nation I have arrived.

Lucius Arcturus > Hey Lydia...I'm still here. Like we said, there's no one here, just us

Lucius Arcturus > There are several exits from this system

Lydia Addams > I am led to belive there is another wormhole entrance in this system leading closer to Nation.

Lydia Addams > Nation will provide.

Lucius Arcturus > There's only 1 WH exit from this system

Lucius Arcturus > besides the one you just entered from

Lucius Arcturus > You want me to take you there?

Lydia Addams > is someone in close proximity to an entrance now?

Lucius Arcturus > stand by

Lydia Addams > Nation is callling. "Enter" Enter" "Enter" it will not stop.

Lydia Addams > Nation I am entering the wormhole.

Then she thankfully went away. I can only assume she nagged in local for awhile in the next system, but it was dead quiet. No one was there to help her.

At first we were excited that this was some kind of live developer event, but we quickly realized that it was just some awful roleplayer after one of my pilots found this thread that she had created in the official EVE forums; the in-character roleplaying subforum specifically.. We talked to one of the previous pilots who had passed the buck to us and he said that one of his guys had smoked her and she had simply appeared in a new clone several system away from the null she had originally been sighted in.

Some weird s*** happens out here.

Taggart WHs: A brief history (updated 3-19-2014)

Since leaving null years ago, Taggart needed a new focus for its activities, and wormholes filled that need. Wormhole life is perfect for capitalists because of its independent nature - there is no empire out here, no Concord, no nullsov, no mandatory CTAs. Taggart has been involved in wormholes since the release of Apocrypha over two years ago.

2009

Our explorers, led by Petyr Baelich, and others, set up the facility formerly known as "Gulch" shortly after Apocrypha released in spring 2009, and it has been consistently inhabited ever since by a wide variety of Taggarts, although it has been renamed "Rapture" by its current owners. The Gulch pilots would later expand their own facility and open a second WH. Because WHs were still brand-new at that time, the Gulch pilots spent their first few months developing the tactics and fits needed to defeat the powerful sleepers. Their methods are still used today by contemporary Taggart WH pilots.

Shortly after the founding of the Gulch, Taggart pilots MidasMulligan and Musagetes opened a facility in lower-class wormholes, called Farpoint Station, to cater to newer pilots who wanted to learn about w-space. Located first in a class 2 and then a class 3, Farpoint was focused on sleepers and mining. Because of the less dangerous nature of sleepers in these system, Farpoint pilots were able to work in much smaller groups than in Gulch. Farpoint moved several times throughout its tenure and would eventually become a kind of "plague of locusts" operation, staying in a system until all of the resources dried up and then moving to a new one.

In the summer of 2009, Naphead and Zweet Zen, who had been working in Gulch, set up a class 4 WH known as Parsec. Parsec was mostly interested in sleeper salvage and made ludicrous amounts of ISK using the methods they had learned in Gulch. Later that fall, a thief from a neighboring WH made off with some of Parsec's hard-earned salvage while they were doing a different site, and Taggart retaliated by shredding their POS.

Around the same time, James Wagner opened We the Living, a class 5 wormhole with a class 6 static that was originally intended for gassing and mining operations. Class 6s have a large number of high-quality harvesting sites. Later in the year, combat pilots Oleksandr and JudgeBob began sleeper ops in We the Living and were quite successful, refining Taggart's PvE tactics. Also in the summer of 2009, Oxigun and Kushan purchased the original Gulch, privatized it, and would be its sole owners and pilots for the next year and a half. A few months later it was sieged by an attacking force that even managed to set up a POS there. Kushan initiated an alliance call-to-arms and many pilots responded, resulting in the enemy POS being destroyed and its forces routed and expelled from the Gulch.

2010

In early 2010 former We the Living pilot and Taggart CEO Oleksandr opened his own facility, Atlantis. Although he had problems with his initial location, he quickly got settled in and began operations once again. In fall 2010, Gulch and Parsec veterans Redslay and Yeshmiel opened Rockdale station, a 5/5. They briefly trained Taggart newcomers Lucius Arcturus (LA) and Linux Box (LB) in the ways of the wormhole.

2011

In early 2011, LA and LB opened Anthem, a 5/3 intended to serve as a training ground to less experienced corp members. They made a lot of isk and a lot of mistakes and had a great time training a new generation of Taggart pilots.

After assembling a crew and learning the ropes of WH space, LA and LB sold Anthem to Hideo Mazatsuki and moved into Gulch in the spring of 2011, which was being vacated by Kush and Oxi. Hideo was unable to maintain his facility and Anthem closed down permanently. Meanwhile, LA/LB renamed their wormhole Rapture and took much of their Anthem crew with them. Rapture would later be bought by Ethan Bellator.

In summer 2011, former Anthem pilot Jarek Avanti, after living in highsec for awhile and becoming disgusted with it, started his own facility, named Rampart. The system had been discovered by Rapture pilots, who also assisted with its anchoring. Rampart was a 5/1 system, suitable for very new WH pilots and veterans alike. After about a month, JA bought Rapture from EB and moved his Rampart crew in. In fall 2011, Cynn also founded her own facility, Valhalla, a C3. Later, Alraxan would purchase Valhalla. Recently, new Taggart pilot Khyra Rae established a facility in a 5/2 geared towards EU TZ pilots, and Taggart's first shield gang. It is called VISION. LA also tried his hand at a 6/5 called Olympia with his Rapture crew, which lasted a few months.

Many changes occurred in the realm of Taggart WHs in late 2011. LA purchased Rockdale Station and rechristened it Purgatory, and in so doing combined his own crew with the Rockdale crew and continued to hire more Taggarts from k-space. Jarek Avanti left Taggart and operation of Rapture fell on on Izz for a short time. Luckas Beckott, after some experience in VISION, left that crew to found his own WH in a 4/5, named Dispater.

2012

In 2012, Valhalla petered out, as did Rapture and Dispater. Dispater's operator, Luckas, formed a new corp within the alliance and continued his WH operations. Rapture operator Izz left the corporation under mysterious circumstances, and both Rapture and Rampart were dismantled. VISION was sold to another alliance operator, Dan Conia. The former VISION crew started their own 5/5, Lateralus.

2013

In 2013, LA left Taggart to head up CAPLF, an initiative designed to reinvigorate the VoS alliance while leaving Taggart's HR policies intact. One of the new CAPLF recruits, Monk O'Loki, discovered an inhabited C2 while scanning. He fell in love with it and decided to ask the current residents if we could co-habitate. Surprisingly, they agreed, and Monk founded the Prometheus facility. That lasted a few months.

On the Taggart side, Purgatory was left to Stealthgogi in the wake of LA's departure from EVE, and he later sold it again to its former owner, Redslay. Red soon left and the WH facility was divvied up into a share structure, with Sylvia Lafayette running the show. Sylvia would later go on to become the Taggart CEO.

2014

LA returned to EVE in 2014 after nearly a year in absentia. He decided that he had had enough of the carebear lifestyle and, with his old friend Jarek Avanti in tow, opened up a 3/null. That kind of sucked and a week later they purchased a class 2 for a song. The WH facility, named Naraka after the Hindu concept of hell, is mostly interested in pvp. LA recruited many of his old friends and crew from over the years, including Keliana Loqiri, Linux Box, Khyra Rae, Aspen Maddereck, and JBmidnite, and also began collecting new recruits from k-space.