Location: Amarr, Planet VIII, Moon 2

Time: 01:30

Date: June 25, 2017

P I R A T declares war against »insert your alliance name here«.

Like most established alliances in the game, Yulai Federation has been on the receiving end of PIRAT wardecs for many years. These highsec gankers fly the main trade routes in blingy T3 cruisers or other expensive ships, practicing ~~elite PvP~~ by taking down dangerous prey like Tayras, Occators, and Corvettes.

Faced with anything remotely dangerous, the group will simply dock up in their favorite system in highsec, Amarr, capital of the throne worlds. Getting any sort of real fight from the group is almost always impossible, and most alliances simply ignore the wardecs and use alts to move things around highsec, occasionally losing a ship or two to a wardec when some clueless line member fails to read a mail or an MOTD, or logs back in after a prolonged absence.

Several weeks ago, it was learned that PIRAT had a small POS at one of the moons in Amarr. After initially considering a structure shoot during a previous PIRAT wardec, Yulai Federation ultimately determined that such an endeavor was likely pointless, since PIRAT would likely drop the wardec, stront the tower to the middle of the night, or pull some other shenanigans using broken highsec game mechanics to get out of needing to defend the timer.

Fast forward to several days ago, and Yulai learns that another Provibloc alliance has a highsec fortizar that’s entered its final timer against PIRAT. A sizable number of Provi alliances had active wardecs against PIRAT, and the coalition formed to try and defend it. At the same time, Yulai decided to reverse its earlier decision and shoot the Amarr POS, if for no other reason than simply to annoy them.

The Fortizar fight turned out to be a shining example of ~~elite highsec PvP tactics~~. Shortly before the timer went down, and long after it would be possible to join another wardec, PIRAT moved the bulk of its combat alts into an unaffiliated corp which was also at war with the owner of the Fortizar. This corp was not at war with any of the other provi holders, though, so the coalition was largely useless aside from playing the role of neutral logi.

That PIRAT was able to move so many players from one corp to another at the last minute to avoid a fight and kill a structure seems to be an abuse of the wardec mechanics, but that discussion is not for this article. The Fortizar died with 16 seconds left on its timer, and the coalition fleet moved on to Amarr to shoot the POS.

Upon reaching Amarr, the fleet noticed that there were surprisingly few PIRAT in local, and warped to the POS to begin shooting the small dickstar’s ECM and guns, and ultimately targeted the stick itself, until the tower began burning strontium in its reinforced window. Just over 29 hours of stront put the timer squarely in the middle of USTZ prime time, a bit late for EUTZ, and the dead of night for RUTZ. Between the PIRAT alts leaving for the Fortizar shoot, and the bad timing for PIRAT’s Russian contingent, Yulai and other Provibloc coalition members were hopeful that the POS could be successfully taken down the following night, giving PIRAT a nice kick to the nuts. It would be no Fortizar, but any time there’s a chance to kill PIRAT, it’s worth the effort.

The following night the coalition was able to form a 40-odd man gang from the alliances that were still at war with PIRAT to shoot the POS. After leaving Providence and quietly stealing through highsec and lowsec to reach Amarr for a second consecutive day, the fleet arrived in Amarr to only 3 PIRAT members in local. Excited at the prospect of actually destroying an 80M control tower and dozens of ECM modules belonging to the ganker alliance, the fleet warped to the tower and began targeting the stick directly, bypassing the few remaining online guns while the logi wing easily repaired anything taking unmanned POS fire. Two lone PIRAT Protes sat behind the tower, apparently unable to man the POS guns, and too scared to warp off in the face of actual combat in their home system.

Typically a POS shoot is a boring affair, and at the beginning this POS shoot was no different, except that the target was so loathed by everyone that folks didn’t mind spending an hour of their night bashing a cheap POS. However, several minutes after the tower exploded, an NPC-corp Bhaalgorn pilot warped in on the fleet (which was killing the remaining POS modules), and began targeting the suspect cap-chained logi pilots, figuring that he could score a couple of risk-free kills and win the ISK war. The pilot in question, Tiran Taranovich, was actually a PIRAT member who had been a part of the Fortizar-killing corp the day before, unable to rejoin PIRAT for 7 days because of the same game mechanics they’d previously used to evade the coalition defense fleet.

The pilot, probably unawares, also had a killright on him, for the low, low price of 150M ISK. After something like 15 or 20 seconds of shooting Provi’s logi, the Bhaalgorn pilot began to feel comfortable and the killright was activated. The pilot instantly went suspect in the middle of the 40-man fleet. Tackle instantly landed from all directions, including from a Lachesis pilot that had come along for the fleet. With heavy-ish tackle and overwhelming DPS from actual combat ships, the Bhaalgorn died quickly, providing the fleet not only with a shiny killmail trophy and a hilarious story to go home with, but also 750M in loot that dropped from a 1.5B-isk ship. Whoops.

Along with the Bhaalgorn, the POS itself dropped quite a bit of loot from corporate and personal hangars (although for some reason that didn’t show up on zKillboard), making the whole structure shoot worth something north of 2B ISK. 2B ISK is a small figure in the grand scheme of things, but finding a way to bloody PIRAT’s nose made the whole fleet worthwhile, putting a nice red smear through an otherwise green killboard and clearing a moon in Amarr.

As of this writing, that moon is still open for anyone looking for a POS location in Amarr. You’re welcome.

Yulai Federation is recruiting! Do you want to know more?

https://meta.eveonline.com/t/providence-nrds-yulai-federation-is-recruiting/6144

KS