Bravery in the Unknown
by Jack Miton
I have been around in the realm of WHs for a long
time. There are those who out date me by
a few months by since September 2009, I doubt there has been a week where I
have not visited at least 1 wormhole and certainly not more than a month where
I did not live in a WH.
There are many people living in WHs today that have a
similar history from whenever they first found the joys of the unknown space
lanes but there are also those new to wormholes who are just discovering their
many mysteries, dangers and joys that we, the 'veterans', often forget or take
for granted.
To us, wormholes are no longer the scary places of
nightmares where cloaked predators wait to pounce. The mechanics of wormholes are our bread and
butter and it is we who are now the nightmares we used to fear.
In my time I have seen a lot of people do great things in
w-space and I have also seen a lot of people do some monumentally stupid things
and make incredibly bad calls.
Such is the way of w-space.
I have been finding lately that I often forget what it is
like to be new to wormholes, to make mistakes due to lack of knowledge and to
follow others blindly into the unknown.
This brings me to my story.
As you may or may not be aware, we in SUSU have had
several dealings with the Brave Newbie Initiative over the past few months and
for the past couple of weeks I have had an alt in their lowsec home system
where I have been picking fights, rather meanly, in my PVP Tengu.
Last night I got home and decided to see if any of them
wanted to play. After checking the
system, there was little to no BNI activity and additionally, there are another
hostile group of 6 or 7 that was also trying to kill some newbies so I wrote
the night off and was going to go to bed.
First I decided to check their Mumble comms (yeah, they
have open comms!) and what should I discover?
The reason their system was so quiet was that there was a C3 wormhole
connected to it and that they had a fleet of 15 or so assorted cruisers, BCs
and BSs bashing a large, undefended tower in it.
Now this was a wormhole, my home turf. There was no way I was going to bed without
at least playing a little so I boated a scout down to probe it out.
Note that this was not the wormhole living part of BNI
but the main lowsec core of the alliance.
Let's take a short break here for a situation/expectation
check.
Situation:
I have a 15-20man fleet bashing a large POS in a C3 WH
whose only connection is its LS static.
Expectations:
- Cloaked scout sitting on the entry hole at all times.
- At least half the people in fleet hitting dscan at
least every 30 seconds.
- The other half of the fleet watching for new sigs.
- At least 3 scouts with probes in the WH to scan new
exits if needed.
- POS bashing fleet to have full PVP fits on at least half
of the ships.
- Fleet members to have the exit bookmark, or access to
it in corp bookmarks.
These are expectations from my WH experience and I would
never in a million years even think about conducting a WH POS bash without all
of them being filled.
As such, this was my expectation going in and I expected
not to catch them by surprise or to be able to fight a force that size for
long.
So what was the reality?
Firstly, no scouts.
On the WH or elsewhere, the fleet had zero covert scouts anywhere in system.
(Apparently there was a single probe launcher on one of
the bashing ships, 'just in case'.)
No one in the fleet was watching dscan and they didn't
notice me until I was on grid.
I cannot talk strictly about fits and I assume there were
some points in that fleet but what I can say is that all of the ships were
afterburner fit because apparently MWDs are bad in wormholes, according to
their FC, and he told them all to AB fit their ships!
Some members did in fact not have the exit bookmark and
had to ask for warpins when the fleet was leaving.
Given my expectations, I warped in at 50km when I engaged
as I expected their 6-7 cruisers and 2-3 tier 3 BCs to be able to chase me down
and lay down decent damage.
Needless to say, had I realized they were all AB fit, I
would not have been so careful.
As it was, I managed to kill a bomber and then started to
work on an Oracle but since I was being needlessly careful I was out of point
range and it warped out in deep structure and I missed it just barely at the
next 2 planets it bounced off. I need to
invest in a sabre pilot...
After that I went back to the POS but the FC realized
they couldn’t deal with me and warped the fleet back to the WH before I got
into point range.
Shortly after this BNI rolled out the works for me and
camped the WH with fast tackle, a few T3s (including a webbing Loki), and a
kitchen sink fleet with way more DPS than my lone Tengu could handle.
At this point it was also hitting 1am for me and with
work at 7:30 I didn’t have time to stick around so I waited out my timer and
logged off in the WH.
Always remember: I'm not stuck in here with you, you're
stuck in here with me.
Sadly, this was deep AU time zone and no one else was on
in my corp. Have we had even 5 people,
this would have been much more fun.
As it turns out, the other hostile party that was camping
their system also found the wormhole at some point during the night and I woke
up to find multiple wrecks and corpses on dscan.
Looking into it quickly, I found that they had bombed the
POS bash fleet to decent results:
While this operation did not go as planned for BNI, I
truly hope that they are not discouraged from w-space after this as these kinds
of people are exactly what w-space needs.
Not for the free kills or laughs at their attempt but for the initiative
they show in braving the unknown and generating content for themselves and others.
In particular, their FC was a 3 month old character yet
he directed the fleet competently and calmly even under fire.
I spend a lot of time poking around low class wormholes
looking for fights in the very same Tengu and I've lost count of the times the
people who live there simply will not fight in any way, regardless of numbers.
When faced with an enemy that out classed them, BNI did
not just run and dock/POS up like many of our wormhole brethren are known to
do, rather they reshipped and came back to fight.
This is the kind of new blood we need and want in
wormholes.
I hope they take their lessons from this event and
continue to participate in the unknown in the future.
To BNI, there is no mercy in wormholes and you should not
expect it from myself, the environment, or anyone else should you venture there
again. That said, you are most welcome
to fly here again and should I run into you, I'll be happy to engage you more
directly next time.
Take care and keep flying bravely.
JM
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