Organized POS Attack
Posted: 2009-10-10 Filed under: wormhole | Tags: capital, carrier, pos, ships 6 Comments- 11 Grav (3 core)
- 15 Ladar (4 core)
- 7 Radar
- 2 Mag
- 4 WHs
Core sites in C5 WH space usually have around 1 to 1.5 B worth of Arkonor, Bistot, and Crokite guarded by a Sleeper BS or a BS and two support Battlecruisers so we jumped at the opportunity to move into this new system.
Our move procedure is as follows:
- Get our alts in cloaked ships on any active WHs in system.
- Send cloaked hauler into new system to anchor and online Small Tower.
- When Small Tower is up and has fuel, begin to move all ships into Small Tower POS bubble. Start with valuable ships such as Orcas, Hulks, and Battleships. Tip: always, always have more than 24 H worth of Strontium in your tower.
- Take down Large Tower from old system and launch in new system.
- Once the Large Tower is up, setup defenses, launch Hangars, move ships, etc.
- Take down Small Tower
Why not just launch a Large Tower and do the move in one step? Well, a small tower can be up and running in 15 minutes while a large tower can take over an hour to bubble. You can land and claim a home in a new system ninja-style with a Small POS. While moving an interesting thing happened.
In between steps 3 and 4, my alt was attacked and podded by a Phobos (Heavy Interdictor) and a support Battlecruiser right outside the connecting WH between our old and new systems. I was able to identify the gankers and warn my partner. We immediately stopped moving all valuable assets and switched our main accounts into Covert Ops ships.
If you are a anti-pirate WH corporation, set Endless Destruction (END..) to red; they attacked and podded my alt character and began a POS assault.
My main character was at the Small POS and within a few minutes, the Phobos and support Battlecruiser were outside the Small POS. Next a Carrier arrived, followed by two BS’s, a Nighthawk (Command Ship), and a T3 ship. It seemed that they want all the juicy ships inside our Small POS and were hoping that we didn’t have any Strontium.

Enemy carrier attacking POS

Double Bubble
These people apparently meant business and wanted our POS down. After around 1.5 hours of POS bashing, we went into reinforced mode with a 1 D 16 H timer. Their guns went silent and every ship remained still for a number of minutes.
I knew they were chatting about what to do — keep a scanner ship logged off in system and scan down an empire link for them to attack once were out of reinforced mode? simply leave the system and forget about us?
After 5 minutes, ships started to warp off or dock up in the carrier. The Mobile Warp Disruptors were taken down and they left the system. Whew. It was very fun to watch as I have never been on the offensive end of a POS attack.
WH Rule #1: Don’t talk about WH space. Er, I mean… WH Rule #1: Always have Strontium in your towers.
If we didn’t have any Strontium, the bubble would have gone down. Multiple Battleships, support Battlecruisers, an Orca, and haulers from every race would have been theirs for the taking — a multi-billion ISK loss and a podding back to Empire.
A few hours after they had left, we finished hauling over the Large POS from the old system and got it online in the new system. Ah, so nice when that Large POS bubble goes online.
Nice try Endless Destruction. Now to make some money!
Absolutely epic, especially with the screenshot of the large bubbles. Epic. I’m definitely adding this to my blogroll. Been exploring w-space looking for practice and practical knowledge about exploration. I’d love to get my corp into it, but they’re fairly risk averse, and clearly for good reason. This story just made my day. I spent nearly a week in a w-space system (I call them “warrens”) this September, just to observe, scan the openings, and try to determine the spawn behavior of the different sites, because I found the same system twice in a week from the same constellation. The possibility of having an above-average chance of getting to a warren from one constellation or region is tantalizing to me.
i’m pretty sure we led off w/ a phobos and a crusader…
but yes… 40hrs of stront is a pretty big deterrent. we have (and would again) continue sieges in w-space even with long reinforced timers if we thought it was profitable, but it makes it a much harder call to make. anyway.. good thinking on the stront. maybe we’ll get you next time 😛
Just as a small note setting us red will not change much considering that the local in WH space doesn’t list names unless someone speaks in local.
Yes, an Orca, multiple Dominix, and other ships were a juicy target. We were spying on you for quite some time but unfortunately were not able to get more than one of your ships on the return, and not a hauler either.
Remember to always be paranoid in the wormhole. You never know who’s watching.
Thanks for making my carrier semi-famous.
stay away from my dominix! i need that! for… shooting stuff. i mean, telling my drones to shoot stuff. yeah.
good on you for having stront in the 1st place, bad for not timing the pos
to point out the obvious, you can “time” when your pos comes out of reinforced by managing the amount of strontium in the pos.
mainly useful if your corporation has a strong presence in a particular TZ etc