(A few months ago)
At some point I had decided that I wanted to live in a wormhole. Not just me, but the many me’s. Me and the other me’s would start a one man corp and I would run all of us from a single box. Perhaps the 'bad luck' that I blame all of the time could also be called by the other name of 'poor decision making' but we shall see.
Having made the decision, I now needed to work out the logistics of the operation. For a single person, this can be a little difficult, but it can be done (I hoped). So the question is 'Where will I live?'. In a wormhole obviously, but which wormhole, what class, and how do I find one? This was the humble beginnings of my journey to HTFU. I wanted to learn everything there was to learn about wormhole life and survival. I wanted to come out of this experience a better pilot. Did it work? Yes. The way that I had planned? No.
My father had a saying: "Education is what you get when you read the book. Experience is what you get when you don't". Truer words have never been spoken. They are especially true in the world of Eve Online, A place where 'The Book' doesn't exist. A place where all knowledge is gained through experience. bloody, ugly, tear-filled experience; and lots of it.
I began planning what I needed my new wormhole home to be. Being a single person alone in a wormhole with only my alts to assist me (one at a time) I needed to find a way to give myself some kind of tactical advantage. After a little reading and a heaping helping of good luck (at least it seemed like it at the time) I found the wormhole of my dreams.
J133653
This particular wormhole was perfect. Firstly, it is only 11au across. This means that it is impossible to hide or drop probes anywhere in the system without me being able to see it at my POS. Secondly it is a C1 wormhole. While some people look down on this, for a single individual, it is ideal. Most of this reason is because of the mass limit on the wormholes themselves. You cannot bring anything bigger than a battlecruiser into the system. It simply cannot be done. The only way for anyone to do so would be to bring in a POS and anchor a large ship assembly array (Which I planned to do) And if someone else decides to do it as well, I was fully prepared to pack my stuff up and leave. This also has the bonus that it makes my large POS virtually unassailable as it would take EXTREME numbers of cruisers and battlecruisers to bring it down. Anyone willing to amass those kinds of number and bring them to bear against my two characters can have the wormhole. You simply could not stand against that that type of determined attacker, regardless of what class of wormhole you are in. In addition to the other advantages, this wormhole also had enough planets to produce all PI based fuels. That is a very big deal. If you don't know how much it costs to buy all of the fuel that a large Minmatar tower requires, you should look it up. It's ridiculous!
So now I've found the wormhole and I have decided that it would be perfect for what I was looking for, now what? How do I actually make this happen? I needed to come up with the logistical plan to make this happen. And so I did.
I had my two characters active. One in a scanning ship, and one in a bestower carrying the large tower and enough fuel for two days (just in case). Why a bestower you ask? As far as tech 1 industrials goes, I feel that the bestower is the best all-around hauler for wormhole ops. I know when absolutely maxed out an itty V will surpass a bestower, but for a pilot just over a week old, the bestower is the best way to go. It has a ton of low slots that can be used for expanders and two high slots. Why does two high slots matter? Because for wormhole operations, you need two high slots for your most important modules of all: 1. A cloaking device, 2. A probe launcher. In the event of some unforeseen catastrophe the bestower can do two important things that it couldn't before: 1. Hide, and 2. scan its way out of a wormhole. Never underestimate the importance of number 2.
Now it is go time. I green light the operation. I scan out the new high sec exit, and bring my bestower in to start setting up the pos. That process takes 30 minutes. 20 minutes into that process, things begin to go south... enter the heron of doom. I see a heron pop up on dscan. Now bear in mind that the heron is not an intimidating ship by any stretch. The problem is that any ship in a wormhole does not represent a single ship. It represents potentially dozens and dozens of ships and pilots with a thirst for blood that only your utter and complete destruction can sate (temporarily). The heron stays on scan for about two minutes. Then to save me the trouble, it shows up at my POS, which is still trying to get anchored. It makes a few passes looking at my ships and the POS and then decides to go away... (Sigh of relief)
The tower finishes anchoring successfully. I bring the bestower in closer so that I can input the fuel because you can online a tower unless there is fuel in it. Just as I begin fueling the tower something else pops up on dscan. A drake. (CRAP!) Needless to say, the drake waisted no time in coming directly to the tower. Luckily before he lands I have time enough to finish throwing the fuel in the tower and I start the onlining just as he lands. Not knowing what to do with two non-combat ships in the middle of a wormhole empty except for the blood crazed lunatic in the drake hell bent on my quick violent demise. I do the only thing that I can do with these ships, I cloak up and try to run. Only because they are both using protocloaks, I am running very very slowly.
While attempting to make my molasses-like getaway, the drake proceeds to turn on a sensor booster and begins slowly orbiting the tower at a range of about 3000m. I am utterly defenseless there is simply nothing that I can do at this point (Except maybe have a massive heart attack from all of the stress, which is was doing my best to do). Eventually he finaly managed to bump my bestower with the drake. It only takes about two volleys to destroy.
*Lesson learned: If you have the chance, instead of attempting to run, the correct response would be to begin aligning to a celestial or a safe spot*
As an extra bonus, when the drake bumped the bestower, the bestower ricocheted off of it and magically ended up bumping my Imicus right before exploding.
*Lesson Learned: If you choose to flee, for the love of god do not flee in the same direction!*
When the bestower was destroyed I was trying for all I was worth to right click on my high sec wormhole bookmark so that I could warp my pod out. I guess somewhere between the screams, tears, and curses, I was simply unable to get the menu to give me the 'Warp to' option. So I died in my pod.
*Lesson Learned: Don't try to warp to a book mark first. Select a celestial from the overview and spam the 'Warp to' button*
It wasn't until the pod died that I even noticed that the Imicus had been de-cloaked. The drake made short work of it as well, but I was 'lucky' enough to finally get the second pod to warp to high sec and out of harm’s way. I picked the first station on the list and docked so that I could begin sifting through the ashes of what was supposed to be my carefully laid plan. When doing this, I checked on the bestower pilot... and realized that he was 30 jumps away because I did not remember to move his clone before starting the operation.
*Lesson Learned: If you ever try something like this make sure that you move your clone to the nearest available location just in case something like this happens, you can get back into the action!*
I spend the rest of the onlining time building my own drake at the nearest economic hub I could find. Once I managed to get back into the wormhole, I headed straight for my soon-to-be-online POS so that I could seek the protection of its shields. Well, that was the plan anyway...
*Lesson Learned: When anchoring a POS always make a bookmark of the tower itself so that you can warp directly into the shields*
Otherwise your only recourse is to warp to the moon where you are anchoring it. This will put you out around 100km away. In a drake traveling at the brisk rate of 175m/s that trip will take about 571 seconds. Just under 10 minutes... (*#$%!!).
*Lesson Learned: You probably want to put some kind of propulsion module on that drake in the future*
Don't forget that the other drake is just sitting outside my POS shields laughing at me at this point. He was kind enough to wait for me to slowboat my stupid self just inside his prodigious missile range before he once again attempted to tear me apart. I was almost unlucky (er stupid) enough to oblige him.
*Lesson Learned: Use your head! If you are 100km away from your POS in the world’s slowest drake because you were too stupid to bookmark the tower in the first place, don't make the same mistake again! Don't do a 10 minute slow boat to the POS like a dumbass, just bookmark the POS warp to a celestial and then warp to the tower!*
Stress can sometimes overwhelm your good sense. Do what you can to prevent that. If you feel yourself beginning to snap, take a minute to get your head on straight. Once things start going wrong they will continue to go wrong until you take the time and effort to break the cycle. I shouldn't have made so many mistakes back-to-back-to-back but because I allowed myself to go into overdrive and didn't bring myself out of it, the situation just continued to get worse.
I did eventually manage to make it into my brand new POS that night, but the costs were high; both monetarily and emotionally...
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