On 2/9/2020 around 1600 I stumbled into J165412 (C2, HS/C1 static) from ZN0-SR in the back pocket of NSC. Initially there was nothing remarkable besides a few drones and a container in space above an Azbel. But wait. The Azbel was unanchoring. I got excited until I learned that unanchoring takes 7 days, and an Azbel would take an Orca fitted for max cargo to pick up. I decided to keep eyes on it anyway and check back every few hours or so. The highsec static was at that time 3 jumps from Jita, so I parked my trading alt in the hole after injecting it into covops helios (yay for skill injectors).
Planetary Industry
The next day I was poking around the hole a little bit and talking on NSC comms, when an astero decloaked on the can above the Azbel. I still didn't want to expose myself, in the case this new guy was an alt of the owning corp and just watched. The same character started flying around the hole decloaked and ran a relic site I had a perch on before leaving the hole. While I was dscanning and researching the corp, the same guy came back in a Tayra and seemed to loot the can. I realized this guy was not at all in the same corp, so went to Highsec and brought a mammoth back scooping the rest of about ~100M of PI and stront. This was around the time I convinced Xyrin Bacard to put his alt with a cargo Orca in the hole logged off.
Waiting
The following 4 days were not very interesting, as the highsec connection was further away from everything. I spent a little time making safes, tacs, and oh picking up another 150M in PI/stront that someone left around again. It was at this point I started to make sense of the killboard, and specifically the last fight that took place (standup fighter). It seemed to me that The Mighty Beans was evicting Stake Tatare on the 8th around 0300 and the fight involved fighters owned by Stake Tartare from that same Azbel. There was no activity in the hole after that, minus an opportunistic MTU kill, giving a pretty tight window of time. As I found the structure the next day under the ownership of The Mighty Beans, and the corp seemed to not have much activity past 06-07, I figured that 0330-0800 on 2/15 was a reasonable window for unanchoring.
The Perfect Harvester Hole
The day of the unanchoring was the day after the gala event started, and I was scouting for a HSC Guardians Gala VIP roam trying to find wormholes acceptable to attempt a run on the site. The hole I found however was even better than that, a C4 static highsec shattered Pulsar with 85+ Green combat sites and only two wormholes connections out. As it was nearing the end of Cutecumber Roll's PvE fleet, the HSC guys ran only a couple sites before running out of MTUs and calling it. I stayed in the hole and notified WHC, who then promptly brought these wonderful folks to run a harvester:
Spoiler
Danny Algaert
Erywin Chelien
John Echeriedes
Lucius Septimus Severus
Larkvi
Sophia Ligeti
Brock Carlisle
Erywin Chelien
John Echeriedes
Lucius Septimus Severus
Larkvi
Sophia Ligeti
Brock Carlisle
Moment of Truth
The pirates involved:
Spoiler
Biwako Acami
John Echeriedes
Rusting
Lucius Septimus Severus
Brock Carlisle
Xyrin Bacard (under the alias Tyrin)
John Echeriedes
Rusting
Lucius Septimus Severus
Brock Carlisle
Xyrin Bacard (under the alias Tyrin)
The Fight
As we had rolled out the majority of the reinforcements The Mighty Beans, those left in the hole were bouncing around in capsules trying to grab any of the ships they found to fight us. Most of them forgot to turn on their hardeners and died quick. The battle commenced at 0549 2/15:
Kills:
Gila +258M
Raven +181M
Megathron +204M
Epithal +2M
Sigil +4M
Procurer +44M
Epithal +1M
Sigil +1M
Procurer +44M
Epithal +204M
Sigil +204M
At some point, perhaps due to confusion, The Mighty Beans began killing their own ships. It is unclear whether these were manned or not, but it would be hilarious if they were.
Catalyst +7M
Ibis +0M
We only suffered one loss, though technically Xyrin had stolen this epithal, so probably still counts as a kill?
Epithal -1M
What we stole
While we were unable to loot the Azbel, we came away with around 1B in stolen ships/goods, including an Orca (thanks Xyrin for focusing on the important stuff) and a Crane: LOOT
Battle Report
ISK Destroyed: 756,277,456.31
ISK Stolen: 1,035,753,101.52
ISK Lost: 1,038,357.65
ISK Delta: +1,790,992,200.18
Efficiency: 99.99%
Lessons Learned
- Hacking a structure is a thing. But only for reinforcement timers and not unanchoring.
- Always leave someone watching the structure. Work out shifts.
- Leave your ship at a safe and get in an enemy ship for the fight.
Thanks to all for coming out, it was some good fun, and my first WH stakeout.